Feel envy toward those who think they were happy

Italo Calvino 的寫作技法變化多端，在 If on a winter's night a traveler，尤其明顯。Calvino 炫技般地模擬不同作者的風格，書寫短篇小說，篇篇精彩，教人讚歎無已。在另一本書 Invisible Cities 裡，則用了奇妙的形式，把小說寫得像散文，又像詩，意境幽遠。

Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time.

選自 Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.