Marco Polo

thumb|I have not told half of what I saw. Marco Polo (c. 1254 – 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies Quotes Non ho scritto neppure la metà delle cose che ho visto. I have not told half of what I saw. On his death-bed, when urged to retract "some of the seemingly incredible statements he made in his book", as quoted in The travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian (London: J. M. Dent, 1926), p. xxiv. Quote in Italian from Imago mundi seu Chronica (c. 1330) by Jacopo d'Acqui, as reported in the bibliographic note to Marco Polo: Storia del mercante che capì la Cina (2009) by Vito Bianchi The Travels of Marco Polo I must tell you that in all this province of Maabar there is no master tailor or dressmaker to cut or stitch cloth, because the people go stark naked all the year round. . . . The king wears no more than the others, apart from certain ornaments of which I will tell you. . . . Suffice it that he wears in all so many gems and pearls that their price exceeds that of a fine city. Ch. 7 (tr. Ronald Latham, 1958) When other men ask them [the Yogis] why they go naked and are not ashamed to show their members, they reply: "We go naked because we want nothing of this world; for we came into the world naked and unclothed. As for not being ashamed to show our members, the fact is that we do no sin with them and therefore have no more shame in them than you have when you show your hand or face or the other parts of your body that do not lead you into carnal sin; whereas you use your members to commit sin and lechery, and so you cover them up and are ashamed of them. But we are no more ashamed of showing them than we are of showing our fingers, because we do not sin with them." Ch. 7 (tr. Nigel Cliff, 2015) In fiction Io parlo parlo ... ma chi m'ascolta ritiene solo le parole che aspetta. ... Chi comanda al racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio. I speak and speak, ... but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. ... It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear. Marco Polo to Kublai Khan, in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1974), Ch. 9 About When Marco Polo traveled to the East and reported what he had seen, mixing truth with falsehood but in any event telling something of the truth, the men of the West refused to believe him. In the late Medieval Ages his account of his travels was viewed as a book of fables... It was as if occidentals were unable to believe in the reality of the marvels of the Orient. Jacques Le Goff, quoted in John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (New York: Bridge University Press, 2004) External links Category:Authors from Italy Category:Explorers from Italy Category:Travel writers Category:1254 births Category:1324 deaths Category:People from Venice