Marissa Lorberau

Honors 384

August 7th, 2017

Invisible Cities: A City Called Berenice

In exploring the empire of the great Khan, as told to us by Marco Polo, I found myself

drawn to many cities and the vast variety of things they represented. However, none spoke to me

more than the final city, the center of the empire, the city of both the unjust and the just:

Berenice. Classified as a Hidden City, Berenice shields within itself an infinite spiral of the

just being morphed into unjust beings only to inspire a new seed of justice to germinate time and

time again. This struggle to reconcile power with justice, and to keep the separation between the

two, was eerily reminiscent of the ways in which the great metropolises of today sustain their

inequitable systems of wealth and privilege. It was also a reminder of the importance of striving

towards a better future, even if the destiny of each successive generation is to be overthrown by a

new one.

As Marco Polo describes the realm of the unjust, he mentions the perfumed pools of the

baths, an image of opulence and a descriptive link between the unjust members of Berenesian

society and the wealth that those in power typically achieve as a side effect of said power

(Calvino 161). The unjust sit about in their perfumed pools, pleased to rest on their laurels and

take in the world with the knowledge that they have it better than the unjust, who instead intake a

sober cuisine and who work the meat grinding machines of the city (161). Power seeks to

maintain itself, and those who possess power find that maintaining themselves as the wielders of

said power involves exercising it in whatever way the structure of a city or society deems
necessary. Power is, perhaps, a neutral entity in and of itself, but its very nature leads to it being

coveted, and therefore it becomes an instrument of jealousy and bitterness rather than a true

blank canvas. Perhaps if the very nature of power did not require it to be in limited and

inequitable supply things would be different, but as it stands, power is an unequal commodity

and therefore will always breed some form of negativity between those who have it in greater

supply than others. It is this imbalance that leads to the tendency to impose what is just through

what is unjust (162-163). One need not have bad intentions to have a negative impact.

Similarly, one need not have unjust intentions to perpetuate unjust actions. Besides, is there a

truly objective form of justice that all can agree upon? Does not each new generation look at the

system in place and find it lacking? Where is the line drawn between injustice inflicted upon the

unjust and injustice inflicted upon the masses?

So what comes of it all? Berenice, in its perpetual revolving door of spirited

revolutionaries becoming unjust and covetous regimes, offers a lesson. If, as Marco Polo tells the

Khan, all Berenices are already present in this instant, then what does that say about the true

nature of justice and injustice (163)? If the just and the unjust Berenice are inextricable from one

another, then what is the true shape of justice? The answer, by my reading, is this: justice is an

ideal by which the young and the bitter may rally behind in order to shape the world in their own

image. Unlike power, justice is inherently not neutral, despite the claims of courts and laws to be

unbiased. Justice will always portray itself and be portrayed by those enacting it as a positive,

while those on the receiving end of said justice will find themselves at odds with the missions of

the just. Therein lies the heart of Berenice, after all, that certainty and pride of being right the

natural desire of revenge on the unjust is colored by a yearning to be in their place and to act as

they do (162). It is easy to maintain the purity of ones own justice when one does not have the
power to enact that justice. However, upon obtaining the status required to control what is

perceived more broadly as just, the justifications also become more difficult. There will always

be a dissenting voice, but it can only begin to be heard when a prevailing system has been put

into place.

This may all sound like a study in forced objectivity, but here I will debunk such notions.

Though perhaps there is no perfect form of justice, there is merit, and even necessity, in the

striving towards a more perfect form of it. To look at a city like Berenice and decree that it

already exists in all possible forms at once is not incorrect, but it is also perhaps in need of some

clarification. Berenice does not exist in all forms in an instant because it has already seen all

there is to see in terms of justice and injustice, rather it exists in such a state because each

individual within that society exists as a possible future of Berenice. Every individualized code

of justice, every seed of revolution germinating beneath the toil of the latest corruption of a once

pure ideology, every spark of kindness and blaze of passion for the oppressed exists in someone,

somewhere within Berenice, and within all cities (162). Each person represents a possible future,

and when those most-similar possible futures ally themselves with one another, they begin the

important task of striving towards what one can only help will be a world that is just a bit kinder

to all. Calvino writes that with each revolution between the just and in the unjust sides of

Berenice, there is a new city capable of resembling a city still more just than it was before

becoming the vessel of injustice (162).

Perhaps what drew me to Berenice was its tendency to model the world I know. Despite

its cyclical nature and the acceptance of the tendency for the just to evolve into the unjust via the

corrupting influence of power and wealth, it still retains that bit of hope and the reminder that
there is no true ending or beginning to the fight for a more just world, only the continuous need

to strive for what we can only hope will be better than today.