There’s a hint of Escher about Citagazze…..

 

 

The opening episodes of series two of His Dark Materials have taken us to Citagazze, a place that exists in a reality separate to that of both Lyra and Will. People have commented on how it looks like Mont St Michel off the coast of Normandy and having viewed that isle from the beach I can only agree. But once we get into the streets of Citagazze the feel is definitely Mediterranean. I would go further and say Italianate. The winding streets, the coloured houses, the  architecture, all speak of Italy. 

So what’s this about Escher? Most people are familiar with M.C. Escher’s lino and woodcuts prints depicting impossible scenes. The worlds in these books are written examples of these, things impossible in our world that nonetheless are totally believable in context. The credits of His Dark Materials explicitly seem to reference the link, with Will and Lyra walking on opposed staircases that are somehow linked. This image mirrors those of Escher, where faceless men move up and down the same stairwell in opposite planes and directions, as shown above.

His visual representations of unreality are entirely congruent with the multiple realities of His Dark materials. But there is another link too. Escher spent time in Italy as a young man and made pictures of the landscape. A particular favourite of mine, Castrovalva, is relatively naturalistic, although it already shows signs of  the move away from straight depiction of reality. Other pictures show a town overlooking the sea, and another on a hill, that call Citagazze to mind. This, remember, is the city in the sky that Lord Asriel glimpses through a rent in the Aurora Borealis. 

Later in his career, Escher began depicting metamorphic images. One of these shows a man running down steps who gradually morphs into an abstract shape.  There are definite echoes here of the stairs of Citagazze, or perhaps I should say, the stairs echo Escher, to be chronologically accurate.  In any case, the bringing to mind of M.C. Escher does no harm to the viewers perception of this town being a place where the doors of normality have, to say the least, been knocked  ajar.