Reflection

When I began reading, it took me a few chapters to warm up to the structure of the novel. However, I soon was able to put myself in Marco Polo’s position as he described each city in detail to Kublai Khan. I began to enjoy the book; the italicized passages show the relationship between the men, and I found the descriptions of each city very interesting.

Although it seems like each city possesses only the prominent characteristics described, I couldn’t help but ask if any of the cities share characteristics with the other cities. I wanted to believe that each city was separate, but as I kept reading, I could see an increasing amount of similarities. When Khan asks Polo about Venice, Polo says that he is “afraid of losing Venice all at once, if [he] speak[s] of it”. He says that by “speaking of other cities, [he has] already lost it, little by little,” (Calvino 87). If every city he describes has a Venetian influence, it makes sense that every city is part of another city which is part of a place with many cities.

Calvino answers my questions well in the last few chapters when he describes the city of Berenice which “is a temporal succession of difference cities, alternately just and unjust,” (Calvino 163). Perhaps all cities have many different faces and that is normal for such an “immense metropolis.”

If these cities Khan imagines and Polo describes make up the same place, then one question remains: “outside [any city] does an outside exist? Or, no matter how far you go from the city, will you only pass from one limbo to another, never managing to leave it?” (Calvino 158).