Since learning that Netflix has produced a ten episode series entitled "Marco Polo", I have been working diligently on an approach toward reviewing it for this blog. I began by re-reading my own copy of Marco Polo's The Travels, which I am still in the midst of reading, and by taking lengthy notes on the introduction by translator and editor Ronald Latham. Latham has been, for me, the Virgil to my Dante when navigating the text of The Travels. Marco Polo studies are nebulous at best, and require an ever-present shaker of salt for the many grains required when delving deeply into this subject.
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| Marco Polo's World Tour |
Before I begin my reviews on the new series (the format of which I have not even started to work on), I wanted to briefly address some issues with the text that I feel are necessary to keep in mind when engaging Polo's The Travels.
The first issue is the influence of Rustichello de Pisa, who was the principle individual responsible for compiling and authoring The Travels as they were dictated to him by Polo himself. As Latham points out, The Travels likely exists as a text due to de Pisa's influence, for "it is likely that without the aid of Rustichella Marco would never have written a best-seller...More probably he would never have written a book at all"(1). However, there are issues with de Pisa and his influence. He was a writer with a background in Arthurian Romance rather than History, and the notes of a practical merchant gathering mercantile, business, and asset observations of various foreign provinces, while fascinating, likely proved to be dry reading. Thus, de Pisa set to work dressing up the sights, events, and the Polos themselves in The Travels.
Rustichello's share in [The Travels] has probably been underrated. Professor L.F. Benedetto, who produced the first critical edition of the Polo manuscripts in 1928, has clearly demonstrated...that Rustichello was responsible for the leisurely, conversational style of the oldest French manuscript...He has also shown not only that the opening invocation to 'emperors and kings, dukes and marquises', etc. occurs verbatim in an Arthurian romance by Rustichello but that whole passages of narrative have been lifted with the minimum of adaptation from the same source. (2)
Latham goes on to give examples of de Pisa's grafting of scenes from his Arthurian tales into The Travels. I won't delve too deeply into these, suffice it to say it exists and it should be noted. However, Latham also notes that while literary flourish is evident in more familiar settings, the unfamiliar territories further east that Polo describes are not readily subjected to such embellishment. (3)
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| Lusty, Arthurian, 2014 Polo on the right. Accurate and boring Polo on the left. |
The second problem the reader (and the viewer, with regard to the series) needs to be aware of is tampering with the manuscript. There is no authoritative copy of The Travels known, signed by de Pisa and Polo themselves, or even attributed to them. The manuscripts available are of disparate age and provenance, with varying degrees of deviance according to the author's translation prowess and purposes. The manuscripts listed in Latham's introduction are as follows:
(F) - Latham describes this as the text that probably best preserves Rustichello's words. Dated to the early 14th century, this manuscript is written "in the same curious, Italianate French [used] in [de Pisa's] other writings..." However, Latham laments that this manuscript bears the signs of abridgement (4).
(V) - A compendium in the Venetian dialect. Latham describes it as a "very corrupt" version (5).
(L) - A Latin compendium containing passages missing from the (F) manuscript. (6)
(R) - Translation edited by Giambattista Ramusio dated to 1553. Ramusio claims as a source for his translation "a Latin manuscription of marvellous antiquity" (7). These claims were disputed and debated by some Polo scholars until Benedetto demonstrated that passages present in Ramusio can be corroborated with passages from the (Z) manuscript. (8)
(Z) - Another Latin compendium that Benedetto suspects to be an abridgement of an older Latin manuscript. Theorized to contain later additions, possibly from Polo himself. (9)
(VB) - "A second Venetian manuscript whose departures from the standard text do not inspire confidence." (10) Latham states excerpts from this manuscript can be found in Ramusio's compilation.
(I) - A translation by Friar Jacopo d'Acqui, written in the 14th century. Has a missionary slant to its additions, as Latham notes in his entry on Lesser Armenia: "(I) adds here, and again in the account of Greater Armenia that the inhabitants are imperfect Christians, but could easily be brought back to the true faith if they had proper teachers." (11)
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| Two examples of Marco Polo manuscripts. One is an illuminated text. The other is from a 14th century compilation of travel sources. |
These are by no means the only extant manuscripts of Polo's The Travels. They are, however, among the oldest and, therefore, most studied and dissected manuscripts. These texts have undergone many changes due to the inaccuracies of translation, additions and subtractions by translators and editors, and have been subject to the intent of their handlers. While the text we have today may not be the original as it left the care of de Pisa and Polo, the heart of the text remains ever the same: Marco Polo travelled extensively in lands unknown to Europeans before his time. His position as an emissary for Kubilai Khan allowed him to travel and observe the peoples, places, and goods of the Mongol Empire, and this knowledge would prove enticing and invaluable to later explorers and merchants. As it is today, The Travels gives modern readers a look into the world of the Pax Mongolica, and an especially detailed view of the workings of Kubilai Khan's court. It is a fascinating account of a world gone by, despite the flaws it has accrued over the centuries.
When viewing Netflix's new series Marco Polo, know that it counts as its source material a text that is problematic at best. Continuously dramatized, romanticized, and politicized, The Travels are now, in their translation from the printed word to a visual medium, morphing into an "action-packed" and "sexified" modern television program. Any expectation for historical accuracy probably ends at the inclusion of names such as "Marco Polo" and "Kubilai Khan", though it is unlikely that accuracy was high on the list of expectations for this series. Still, by all accounts, I have heard it is an entertaining show. I look forward to watching it and reviewing it in later entries here.
1) Latham, Ronald. "Introduction". Marco Polo: The Travels. (Penguin Books: 1958) pg. 18.
2) Ibid, pg. 17.
3) Ibid, pg. 18.
4) Ibid, pg. 25.
5) Ibid.
6) Ibid.
7) Ibid.
8) Ibid.
9) Ibid.
10) Ibid.
11) Ibid, pg. 46.
