Komas uit 'n Bamboesstok en Invisible Cities van Italo Calvino

Abstract

The prose work by Italo Calvino, Invisible cities is of special interest in the study of D.J. Opperman’s Komas uil 'n bamboesstok.

Calvino’s novel also has a character, the fictionalised Marco Polo, who plays such an important role in Komas uil 'n bamboesstok.

When the traces of Italo Calvino’s work are sought in Komas, the coherence between poems in the volume emerges more clearly. The importance of Calvino’s “novel” as intertext does not primarily reside in the clarifying reciprocity which it has with single poems or pairs of poems. It is the central intertcxt in the volume, seeing that it is of determining importance for its structure. Opperman’s poetic technique in this volume reiterates the structure of Invisible cities: multiplicity which in the end can be reduced to unity.