Rustichello da Pisa

But it's remarkable that Marco really spends his entire childhood without ever meeting his father and then sets off on this epic journey with him, which-

It- there's a connection with Calvino's own biography because it was in the M- prison in Genoa that, uh, Marco Polo told his stories to Rustichello, who was, uh, quite a famous writer, in fact, a writer of Arthurian romances, who happened to be in the same prison with him.

And it was he, Rustichello da Pisa he was called, who took down the conversation of this astonishing fellow inmate he had in the cell.

And, um, that Genoa is, is on the same Ligurian coast as where Calvino grew up.

So though Marco Polo was a Venetian, in terms of his authorship, he was actually a Ligurian, which is the same 'cause Calvino was brought up in Sanremo.

And that mood of dreamlike, almost stasis, pervades the book.

book.I would say that that dreamlike mode is very much in Marco Polo's own Travels itself.

And there's this question from our modern perspective where we often are preoccupied by questions of authorship, like what's Rustichello or what's Marco Polo? They're sitting together in this prison cell writing The Travels.

Tonight, let's continue our relaxing journey in the wayback machine with more from a book we last read from in 2021, which I honestly find rather shocking.

We're reading The Travels of Marco Polo, or The Book of the Marvels of the World, as told by Rustichello da Pisa, from stories told by the Venetian explorer Marco Polo of his travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295.

Here published in the complete Yule-Cordier edition, including the unabridged third edition of 1903 of Henry Yule's annotated translation, as revised by Henri Cordier, together with Cordier's later volume of notes and addenda of 1920.

Let's pick up right where we left off at the beginning of chapter 19 as we work our way through Central Asia.