Infinite Limits

Intro to Visibility

          Today, visibility is measured by the distance at which an object or light can be clearly distinguished. Calvino uses the writing of Dante to explain visibility, believing that he uses visual images to create fantasy stories. Visibility is very relatable to the imaginative process and Dante believes there are two types to the process. The first starts with words and arrives at the visual image and occurs when one is reading. The other starts with the visual image and arrives at its verbal expression. Calvino believes that for many writers, visualized scenes come first in the mind and then are put into a story in a succession of phases.

          Also, Calvino stresses the idea that the shift from the word to the visual image brings forth a way of attaining knowledge of the most profound meanings. Visual images became the source of all of Calvino’s stories because he identifies with the thought that the imagination is a means to achieve an understanding about things that are completely outside the individual.

          It is also interesting to read that Calvino sees two paths for the future of visibility through images. He believes writers will recycle used images in a new context that changes their meaning or wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. In general, visibility contains operations that involve infinite amounts of one’s imagination because writer’s imaginations draw forms and figures from a bottomless well in their mind. This seems most influential when relating visibility to the words of Giordano Bruno, “the world is always the same and always different like dunes shifted by the desert wind.”