Customer Reviews

Travels of Marco Polo (Signet Classics)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This volume will enthrall anyone interested in true adventure. Marco Polo was the original Indiana Jones and then some. Please do not waste time on Gary Jennings' The Journeyer. This is the real deal and needs no dramatic embellishments. The Travels takes you on a trip from 13th century Venice to "Cathay" and back again. You will learn how Europeans found out about fireworks, paper currency, printing and pasta. The harrowing journey across the Gobi desert is particularly well reported. Marco Polo was more than an explorer. He was one of the world's first anthropologists. This is an exciting read, an account of how medieval Europe initially perceived China and the far east, and of how the Mongol rulers and Chinese emperors perceived them. Highly recommended. As to the print quality of the Penguin edition, I have had my copy since the early eighties and it has yellowed only slightly. Viking is now printing on acid-free paper. One must remember that these editions were printed primarily to reach the widest audience for the least amount of expense at the time. For years, Penguins were accessible to students and to the collector who couldn't afford an elaborate, fully illustrated, fully mapped volume of a particular work. I couldn't have read as many of them as I did in my late teens and early twenties if that were not the case. I owe a lifelong debt to the editors for their efforts. I've also never read a bad translation of any Penguin Classic.

This is a fascinating and timeless narrative for many reasons. On a somewhat superficial level, Polo's book is a must read for lovers of travel or adventure stories, as it reads like a great lost book of the Bible, rife with historic vengeance, heroic warriors, eccentric mystics, penultimate battles and rallying speeches that seem torn out of the best passages of Thucydides. Many of the practices and beliefs Polo witnessed -- specifically, polygamous peoples, perspectives on sexuality, methods of execution and the dazzling ways in which the people Polo came across attempted to please the gods and interpret the cosmos -- offer a memorable glimpse into a unique historical epoch. Particularly engrossing are the stories of violent tensions between Christian and Islamic sects in Polo's day and region. One gets a sense that not much has changed in the past 800 years as Polo details the struggles between the eastern and western world even then, many of which redound to financial issues (sound familiar?). Polo's insistence on portraying Moslems and Buddhists as savage rogues does make for a one-dimensional and distinctly Christian view of the world as it was in Polo's day, and his language is hardly the most attractive aspect of the book, which is written in a particularly conversational and redundant style. But the stories and characters contained within these pages are epic and unforgettable. I encourage lovers of Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Rowling to read this book. Lovers of ancient history and philosophy are also bound to adore it. Most impressively, though, is the insight Polo offers into the birth of the now-infamous rift between the western and eastern worlds. This enduring relevance guarantees that we will be reading Polo's "Travels" for centuries to come.

If your desire is purely technical, you can't do any better than this. However, if you plan to read this book strictly for enjoyment, then thumbtack your eyelids up. The translation is quite literal, bringing you the repetitive references, archaic descriptives, and provincial wherewithal of the time. It is brutal and requires every ounce of perserverence to read from cover to cover. I was in pain as I forced myself through countless redundancies in thickly worded prose that left me yearning to drop the book and set off on another. It was a battle to stay engaged. But, I finish the books I start and saw it through to the end. Knowledge was gleaned and that's a positive. However, the book is better employed as a reference. Godspeed, determined reader.

The Travels by Marco Polo. Penguin Books. 1958.

In any review, the reader has to be compelled to have an interest in the subject. What is it about this 800 year old story that would interest the reader? I had always believed that this book was an adventure story about the first European explorer into the mid east and China. I do not know where this notion came from but on both counts, it is wrong. I picked it up and read it because I continually see references from other modern, authors.



What is compelling about the book is the writer's anthropological approach (however primitive) to viewing the societies that were racially and culturally different from the upper crust European society he was raised in. There is a generosity of spirit in this book that will be detailed more further down.



It should be noted that like, Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography, this book features hyperbole if not out right fantasy throughout. There is more than one version of The Travels as well. This book is not written in the first person as it actually is an "As told to" account that apparently was "told to" more than one transcriber. There has been much debate over the years about its veracity but that is for someone else to write about. I chose to read this book as if it were fact and not to fret over the overall truth or its details. That being said lets get into the story.



Over a period of about 24 years, the young Marco Polo joined his merchant father and his uncle in pursuit of the expansion of their mercantile trade into new regions. This concept should be familiar to any reader who reads about venture capitalism and Red China today. The dynamics may differ but the logic is the same. While this effort led the Polos to discover spices, material and trade routes, it also provided Marco, the opportunity to explore and log his experience with new cultures.



He is pretty magnanimous in his descriptions of the peoples he met as he traveled from Asia Minor through cities we hear about today such as Hormuz and Baghdad onto China (known then as Cathay) and into parts of Mongolia and Russia. I say that he is big hearted because he added very little value judgment in relating his experience with these cultures. Unfortunately, he limited what he could describe to a small variety of things.



Religion was broken into three categories. There were Christians (he did break them into a few groups such as Nestorian and Greek Orthodox), followers of Mahomet (Islam) and Idolaters (the rest). In some cases though few, he describes the cultures as having no religion as unlikely as that is. It is my suspicion that they were not devout peoples or their customs were too unusual for Polo to understand their worship. He did not render serious value judgments to the religions that were not Christian though he sort of favored that belief system. Specifically, the heroes of battle between people of differing religions was biased toward the Christians just as the performance of any miracles was.



Polo described the Great Kings, such as Kublai Khan and the lesser kings who gave allegiance to the former. This was important to him and was noted ad nauseum. He had great respect for Khan including the addition of a Genealogical Chart at the end of the book. He wrote of the Emperor's largesse-assisting the poor, providing examples of fair play and Solomon like wisdom. He also described the ruthless ability to hold power, destroy his enemies and land/nation plundering. He describes these latter events without a hint that anything was wrong with that. Perhaps at this juncture in history, Khan's methods were more civil and humane than the kings in Europe. Based on the North American conquests and slaughtering of Natives 200 years hence, this would seem possible. In my own opinion, the description of Khan reads something like Mario Puzo's Godfather.



Another area of special interests lies in Polo's interest with the spices, foods, material for clothing and adornment as well as native wood and building styles. This makes sense because that was Marco's career. He was a merchant. He describes in detail, the reasons different techniques were used to build a ship for instance. The description shows that he had a rudimentary scientific method and imparted that to the reader by explaining why certain procedures were performed based on supplies, climate and water conditions among other things.



Polo was a man of the world and that is obvious by his travels but he was clearly educated well. He brought to his journeys and writing, a skill and perception that would only be a result of solid education. His minimal judgmental phrasing also suggests to me that he saw the world as a big place and was not fettered by provincialism that might be expected from an upper crust 13th century European.



It is important to note however that the book reveals some of the Magical Realism that undoubtedly prevailed largely in his time. He believed in miracles, reported them on a second hand basis and claimed to see a few himself. It seems again, that by imagining the times and place that this was written, it would be nearly impossible to write a book that denied miracles. He does however toss a tiny bit of skepticism when describing a faith healer (a non Christian one of course). "You must not suppose that because I speak of `Diabolic Art' that that is their account of the matter: They attribute their knowledge to the power of the gods working through a medium of their art". He continues to describe these healers having ready made answers when their "cure" fails and of course it is Divine. Perhaps Benny Hine was acquainted with this book.



Polo was fairly interested in the sexual practices of these cultures and he reported some of the more lurid ones. In several cultures that he visited he found that the practice of entertaining visitors (of which he was one) by providing them with the sexual favors of their wives, sisters, nieces etc. The men would make the introductions and then depart to some distant retreat while their dear ones essentially prostituted themselves for the visitors satisfaction. He ended one such description by indicating that a man of 16 to 24 would find such a visit much to their liking. This made me wonder how Polo himself liked it but he did not mention such. Another thing to wonder, based on frank discussion of this and details of a pregnancy test in one of his towns, whether sexuality and the Christian's 6th commandment was considered as taboo as it was in say the Victorian Era. I don't know, it is just a thought.



The reader can enjoy this book for the fantastic descriptions of unicorns (probably rhinos), enormous and scary beasts (probably crocodiles) and men with tails. The reader might enjoy the descriptions of royalty which is one place that hyperbole abounds, for instance it is not uncommon for the story to pronounce that some king had thousands of concubines and thousands of servants and hundreds of thousands of soldiers for single battles.



The reader might also notice miracles which are plentiful, stories about hens with no feathers, cannibalism and people who live for 150-200 years. They might also marvel at the science that did prevail at the time. There is a description of a messaging system that is easily comparable to America's own Pony Express. Likewise the details of a sewer system that essentially matches our more modern ones, the logic behind curfews and birthing customs all suggest something of interest to me. Specifically, while technology has grown at an extremely rapid pace, people and their logic and belief systems have not really changed dramatically. Nearly, if not all stories that Polo related, have easy counterparts to something or someone that is visible in the media today.



There is a down side of this book. Previously it was mentioned that the veracity of The Travels was subject to question. Apparently in Asian historical chronicles there is no mention of this Italian visitor though there is mention of other European guests. He also describes many societies the same, almost verbatim. This may be due to very little difference between one culture and another or perhaps Polo simple cheated and threw in information that he did not have first hand (a little like the ever growing band of journalists, historians etc. that get revealed regularly in our current world).



Perhaps the most significant negative comment that could be said about this book is that by our 21st century standards it is just very poorly written. At times it is simply torturous to wade through a meaningless and repetitive description. The book is also written much like we talk. By that I mean phrases like ..."I nearly failed to mention..." are used throughout. Of course in our day the forgotten piece would simply be edited into its correct location and there would be no need for the brief apologetic line.



I assigned this book to myself for this book review. I enjoyed it despite its flaws and quite frankly, it may be all the fantasy of Polo or his transcriber, but I think the book gives us some insight into the 13th century mind of a learned traveler. For that it passes the litmus test of worthwhile reading.

Much of this book is just a merchant's version of poetry-- details of the spices, livestock, telescopes or rare jewels that are each city's specialty. There are funny stories (the Khan who employed dancing girls and troughs of milk and honey to convince his warriors that they were living in Paradise) and magical ones (the manufacture of asbestos, called "salamander"). Bigotry had more to do with religion than race; Messr. Marco will describe the marvelous works of some "Saracen" or an "idolater" and then say something nasty like "but he eats the unclean parts of animals, because he knows not the true God." But his employer, the Great Khan, ruled wisely over people of many diverse creeds, and Marco deeply respects the Khan's tolerance. A recent book by Frances Wood questions the details of the journey, but I prize these tales more for the images they evoke of the lost world where (for example) Iraq was widely known as a center of learning and culture, an exporter of high-quality rich, luxuriant cloths.

I have read this book while traveling in China by train. It is a very interesting description of past times, and essential reading for those interested in historical geography. Several points need to be clarified, though. First Marco Polo is not what one would call today an "unbiased observer". He traveled on the trips he wrote about while being employed as an emissary for the Mongols, and his admiration for the Mongol regime shows throughout. People and civilizations are judged by their proximity to the Mongol Khan. The point of view of the Chinese and other victims of Mongols is completely absent.

Second, Marco Polo was obsessed with power, money, prostitution, and religion. Most of his descriptions center about these things, to the neglect of other aspects of human life. He divides the cities he encounters upon religious lines, even in places like China where the inhabitants themselves weren't aware or didn't care about such divisions. His admiration for Christianity and his contempt for Buddhism (whom he erroneously associates with idol worship) shows through. He often writes as if drunken with admiration for Mongol power, praising the Khan for massacring entire cities, while at the same time labeling peaceful people as "pusillanimous".

Having said that, these travelogues are still interesting to read. The short-chapter format is very well-suited to reading in the bathroom. The translation by William Marsden is very well-done and easy to read. However, my edition (Wordsworth Editions, 1997) could be improved in several ways. A map for instance showing the route of his travels would go a long way assisting the reader to follow along. Otherwise one has to reconstruct the places from the crude narrative ("and then we traveled 3 days by camel heading East, then turned to left and walked 1 day ..."). Frankly, quite often I had no clue about which location he was writing. So I ended up copying a map from a history book and pasting it inside the back cover. Still one desires a more detailed map, with marks designating locations chapter by chapter.

Another desperately needed improvement is a translation table. Many of the place names he used had long been ignored and replaced with new place names. In my edition there is one page glossary of place names, but that is far from adequate. For example, the glossary only translates 5 place names in China, leaving dozens other names in oblivion, and leaving me wondering whether the city of Kin-Sai, the one Marco Polo praises the most and devotes the most pages to, is modern-day SuZhou or HangZhou. This is an important deficiency that needs to be corrected. Whatever edition you decide to buy, make sure first that it has a good map and a good glossary of names!

This book is not good on the Kindle. First it took about 10 minutes of hitting Next Page in order to get through all the introductions. Second this edition has 2 pages of footnotes for every page of the actual book. The text and notes are the same font so it is hard to distinguish between them. Maybe it is of interest to an academic but to a casual reader it is a bit annoying. It was only 99 cents so I guess it is worth the inconvenience.

NO ACTIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS = NO NAVIGATION = READER'S NIGHTMARE.

The first 6% of the book consists of three Prefaces in which the scholars who worked on the volume praise each other. We're even "treated" to a lengthy disquisition on one scholar's service in Bitish India. Pages and pages of one Prefaces are in French and Latin (perhaps Italian.)

THE ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS SCHOLARS' MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY IS VIA DOZENS (SEEMS LIKE HUNDREDS) OF CLICKS OF THE NEXT-PAGE BUTTON.

Avoid this Kindle book!!!!!

The kindle edition lacks any navigation features. There's no table of contents, no links to notes, no index. It's a large book, and the kindle edition doesn't allow casual reading.

If people really try to think back, to how things were in the ancient world, and see how improbable a journey Marco Polo and his father and uncle undertook, and then completed nearly 30 years after they started, they would probably realize how unlikely such a journey was and why so many people attack Marco Polo as a fraud. Nevertheless, simply as an historical Atlas of China, and with an incredible historical context, warts and all, it is a very illuminating book, showing Chinese cities using their ancient Mongol names (in what other context would someone serving the Mongol emperor record the city names?) and allowing the reader the opportunity to research and discover for themselves, just how fascinating and mysterious other ethnicities and other cultures were to a European of the middle ages.

One of the most fascinating aspects of "The Travels" is not just some of the factual innaccuracies, but the apparent perceptions of Marco Polo, fully willing to believe he had found the final resting place of the first man, Adam, and the wizardry of other peoples, the ability to do magic, and a legend of giant "Rocs" near Madagascar, and how the Khan sent a small expedition to investigate the rumors of such.

If you want a book that makes you ask searching questions about humanity, cultural bias, and the importance of lore and myth in cultures, this book is invaluable.