Euphemia

 

Euphemia.

TRADING CITIES 1: Proceeding eighty miles into the northwest wind, you reach the city of Euphemia, where the merchants of seven nations gather at every solstice and equinox. (excerpt from Italo Calvino's book: The invisible cities.)

Rosamunda

Rosamunda

Als een reiziger, na drie dorstige dagen trekken door stoffige vlaktes, eindelijk de poorten van de stad ziet, met daarachter de vele op elkaar gestapelde torens met kleurrijk versierde balkons, dan.......

.... ontdekt hij dat elke toren een eigen functie heeft. Een bazaartoren, een herberg, een goudsmederij. De bovenste toren herbergt de bibliotheek. Daarin ....

.... zal hij, evenzeer dorstig van de reis als hunkerend naar kennis, zich kunnen laven aan de boeken, de oude manuscripten, de in verguld leer gebonden folianten, de slordig gedrukte stencils, de half verweerde paperbacks, en naar oud parkament ruikende atlassen, zich lui vleiend in eindeloze kasten, verbonden door trappen en balkons, door bruggen en wenteltrappen. Maar als hij dan deze werken opent ....

.... die hem met een glimlach door de oude bibliothecaris zijn aangereikt ontdekt hij dat op de eerste bladzijde van elk boekwerk een afbeelding van een roos prijkt. Hij vraagt de bibliothecaris naar de betekenis daarvan. De man kijkt verbaasd en ....

.... zal zeggen: "Maar mijnheer, de roos, dat is toch het begin en het eind van alles?". "Waar U een boek ziet, zie ik de dicht beschreven bladeren van de roos". "waar U de zoete parfum van een jonge ontluikende vrouw ruikt, ruik ik de frisheid van de roos". "Waar U de stad .....

.... ziet, zie ik de compositie van de bloembladeren van de roos. Dat was ook het model waarnaar onze stichters deze stad destijds gebouwd hebben".

Hierna verliet ik welgemoed deze stad genaamd Rosamunda, benieuwd naar wat de volgende stad, Tulipa, mij te bieden zou hebben.

Verhaal door Rene Fijten en Clemens Maasen.

When a traveller, after walking three thirsty days through dusty highlands, finally reaches the gates of this city, admiring the many stacked towers decorated with colourful balconies, then...

... he will realise that each tower has a function of its own. The Bazaar tower, a guesthouse highrise, a goldsmith. The highest tower houses the library. There.....

... he will, as thirsty from the travels as thirsty for knowledge, be able to submerge in all the books, the old manuscripts, the foliants bound in gilded leather, the faded stencils, the worn paperbacks, the atlases smelling of ancient parchment, all lazily reclining in endless rows of cabinets, connected by staircases and balconies, catwalks and spiral staircases. But after opening these books....

.... which are handed to him by the old librarian, he will realize that each first page of each book will show the image of a rose. He asks the librarian to its meaning. The man looks genuinely puzzled and... 

.... exclaims: "but Sir, the Rose, wouldn't you agree that it represents the beginning and end of everything?" "Where you see a book, I see the densely lettered leaves of the Rose." "Where you smell the sweet perfume of a young budding woman, I smell the freshness of the Rose!". "Where you see the city"....

.... "I see the intricate composition of the petals of the Rose. That was the model after which our founders built this city." After this explanation I good humouredly left this town called Rosamunda, curious what the next city, Tulipa, would offer.

A story by Clemens Maassen and me. I started with the first sentence, and Clemens did the second, etc. It slowly evolved into a Calvino type of story, neither of us knew where it would lead.....

Cavarinha

An imaginary city, I called it Cavarinha. (not a Italo Calvino place, but it fits in his world.
I started drawing with that person in the centre, standing alone under the arc. And just kept adding things and bridges and widows and stuff without a real plan. Maybe that's not completely true, as I started I immediately had the firm idea that the place should be an underground city.
I added the dark background digitally afterwards.
Here two detailed parts.

Calvino: Ottavia

The hanging city Ottavia (aka Octavia).
From "the invisible cities" by Italo Calvino, Chapter: "the thin cities 5"

THIN CITIES 5

If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell how Octavia, the spiderweb city, is made. 

There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm's bed. 

This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope-ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes-hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable-cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants. 

Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.

Calvino: Eusapia

Eusapia (from Italo Calvino: the invisible cities)

CITIES & THE DEAD 3

No city is more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life and flee care. And to make the leap from life to death less abrupt, the inhabitants have constructed an identical copy of their city, underground. All corpses, dried in such a way that the skeleton remains sheathed in yellow skin, are carried down there, to continue their former activities. And, of these activities, it is their carefree moments that take first place: most of the corpses are seated around laden tables, or placed in dancing positions, or made to play little trumpets. But all the trades and professions of the living Eusapia are also at work below ground, or at least those that the living performed with more contentment than irritation: the clockmaker, amid all the stopped clocks of his shop, places his parchment ear against an out-of-tune grandfather clock; a barber, with dry brush, lathers the cheekbones of an actor learning his role, studying the script with hollow sockets; a girl with a laughing skull milks the carcass of a heifer. To be sure, many of the living want a fate after death different from their lot in life: the necropolis is crowded with big-game hunters, mezzo-sopranos, bankers, violinists, duchesses, courtesans, generals--more than the living city ever contained.

The job of accompanying the dead down below and arranging them in the desired place is assigned to a confraternity of hooded brothers. No one else has access to the Eusapia of the dead and everything known about it has been learned from them. They say that the same confraternity exists among the dead and that it never fails to lend a hand; the hooded brothers, after death, will perform the same job in the other Eusapia; rumour has it that some of them are already dead but continue going up and down. In any case, this confraternity's authority in the Eusapia of the living is vast.

They say that every time they go below they find something changed in the lower Eusapia; the dead make innovations in their city; not many, but surely the fruit of sober reflection, nor passing whims. From one year to the next, they say, the Eusapia of the dead becomes unrecognizable. And the living, to keep up with them, also want to do everything that the hooded brothers tell them about the novelties of the dead. So the Eusapia of the living has taken to copying its underground copy. They say that this has not just now begun to happen: actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead.