40 / 39 Imagine a place …
Polo’s descriptions of these
cities set a stage, where his
characters dart and flicker with
the memory of vitality, only
to be replaced with another
place’s personality a moment
later. They remain hypothetical,
floating fictions: suggestions of
humanity’s chaotic variety.
but try as he may, though,
Marco Polo can’t fight the pull
of his home, venice: “every time
I describe a city, I am saying
something about venice,” he
tells his interlocutor. In these
circumstances, we have to ask:
which is the real city, and which
the mythical one?
