Monday, January 23, 2017

My Reaction to "Visibility" by Italo Calvino

I really enjoyed reading "Visibility" by Italo Calvino because I agree with his understanding of the imagination and how different people can develop different thoughts and ideas.  Calvino basically goes back and forth between whether the image that is imagined is creating through seeing written text or certain situations stimulate the visual imagination and then these images are written down later in some logical form.  Based on Starobinski's two modes of thought, he asks himself whether he personally views imagination as an instrument of knowledge or as an identification with the world soul.  He ultimately decides that he would be closer to the identification with the world soul.  I really liked Calvino's statement that "The imagination is a kind of electronic machine that takes account of all possible combinations and chooses the ones that are appropriate to a particular purpose, or are simply the most interesting, pleasing, or amusing."  I could not agree with this statement more.  I feel like when we were younger and were asked to be creative and complete an art project, we were less concerned with creating a piece of art that would please the teacher and ultimately receive a good grade.  We were most genuinely concerned with creating a piece of art that made us happy to look at and that stemmed directly from our imagination or partially from what we had encountered through television shows or advertisements and wanted to replicate.  Calvino fears that our generation as well as later generations will have a really difficult time accessing the imagination because we are exposed to so many images starting at such a young age that there leaves little room to generate new images from the imagination.  I definitely agree that asking our generation or later generations to develop original thoughts, ideas, or images will be extremely difficult because we have the Internet and other sources of media constantly within our reach.  Another section that really caught my attention was when Calvino was discussing how learning how to read was actually a disadvantage for him because he used to develop his own meaning of the stories through the various pictures on the pages.  I share a similar experience to Calvino because I used to have a vivid imagination and would use my imagination when looking at the pictures in my school books, which also resulted in me not learning how to read until much later than other students.  I used to love Tomie dePaola's "Strega Nona" and would essentially create my own story through the pictures.  The imagination is such an important thing that should be considered when deciding how to education young people.

2 comments:

  1. After reading your blog, it reminded me of a point that I forgot to write about which was the fact that people either begin with an image or begin with text and work in the opposite direction depending on where they began. I found this very interesting to read about because as the author described this process, I could visualize myself on several occasions imagining visuals of what authors had been writing.

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  2. I also think it is interesting to think about which comes first, the visual image or the written word. I agree with the argument of the chapter that leans more toward the image being the source of words rather than the other way around, but arguments for both sides can definitely be made.

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