Visibility

Calvino focuses on the role of images in literature when he talks about the principle of visibility. He mentions that it is important to ponder where images come from. Calvino focuses on how the imagination creates images based on other images that people have been in contact with, but these new images can sometimes seem strange in their origins. How do we know where an image created in our imaginations comes from? Calvino also asks whether images are individual, or if they come from a sort of world soul. This idea is interesting to me because I have never really thought about where the images that I create in my imagination come from. There has to be some sort of influence that causes people to combine different images into something new, but it is impossible to be certain where these images come from.

The image that Calvino uses to represent this concept is the idea of images and the imagination as an iceberg. I have chosen an image of an iceberg to represent this principle because while we can see the image above the surface, there are many influences underneath that created the image. This is like the part of the iceberg that is below water. The iceberg is much larger than it appears to be on the surface. The images that we see are much more complex than they first appear. There are countless outside influences that cause the images to be created. If we want to understand what is beneath the iceberg, we have to go under water to find out. I think this is similar to the way that we have to concentrate on where images come from to try to gain an understanding of out own thought processes. It is impossible to simply look at an image and see where it came from, just like it is impossible to look at an iceberg above the water and see how large it is underneath.

I have no specific example of literature that supports this principle, but there are many works that begin from the end of the story and then go back to fill in all of the information that has happened in the past. I think that this represents this principle well, because there is no way that the reader would understand what had happened to the characters in the story without reading the rest of the story. By learning the previous information, the reader also gains a better understanding of the feelings that characters may have, and may understand why the characters reacted in the ways they did.