Power and Russian Dolls

I don’t know if a matryoshka doll is a good metaphor for metaliterature. Maybe not, but metaliterature has a sort of “matryoshkan” feel to it, because its writings about writings, like a doll inside a doll.   Let’s say Invisible Cities is a three doll Matryoshka, meaning we have three levels of understanding the book. The first doll, the big doll containing the other two, is  literal understanding. We see Marcopolo telling Kublai Khan about the cities he has visited, cities are cities, Marco Polo is Marco Polo, and Kublai Khan is Kublai Khan. Then there’s a second understanding on these objects. Maybe Marco Polo represents something else, and so do Khan and the cities. In the second doll, (figurative understanding) Marcopolo is the representation of knowledge, and hence power, because his words control the actual power which is Khan. And the cities are the way to control Khan, meaning the way to power. And in the third doll now relates directly to the reader. The reader is Kublai Khan, and the writer Marco Polo. The cities are life, and what we understand in this next level, is that the world is just as the writer portrays it, meaning he has control over our world, and yet the reader was infinite power of interpretation.

“At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted…”

This sentence proves that the reader can never be sure of the writer’s intention and the writer can never guess what the reader will think. This is because when we read we look at the story from a vantage point

“My gaze is that of a man meditating, lost in thought--I admit it.”

Therefore, we use our memories to recreate what the writer portrays. So our relationship with the text is very private. The writer is impotent towards our interpretation, and it can never go ahead of everybody to guess what people might get out of his writing. “…the emperor wanted to follow more clearly a private train of thought; so Marco's answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan's head.”

Upon understanding this, the story takes an entirely different turn. We are now reading about reading. Italo Calvino was writing about writing. Inside the third matryoshka is ourselves, and now we have to figure out how the meaning of the book applies to our life.