Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

During the Middle Ages, most Europeans were poor peasants who never ventured more than a few miles beyond their villages. During this provincial era, Venetian merchant Marco Polo traveled almost all the known world. Like a water bug skimming across a pond, Polo journeyed to the ancient Holy Land, the Levantine, Arabia, Asia Minor, central Asia, Cathay (China), India, Southeast Asia, Africa and to other exotic lands. The captain of a Venetian ship, Polo eventually was captured by the Genoese after a brutal naval battle. He spent many long days and nights in jail describing nearly two decades of remarkable travel to fellow inmate, writer and avid note-taker Rustichello da Pisa. Polo told of serving as a trusted emissary for the fabled Kublai Khan, emperor of the Mongols. Polo's remarkable story became a hugely influential book, //The Travels of Marco Polo//. Like someone spinning a yarn of his adventures as an intergalactic warrior in the far reaches of outer space, Polo told a tale that was almost mythical - yet in most particulars absolutely true and accurate. getAbstract finds that Laurence Bergreen's fascinating biography of Polo ably describes him and his fabulous adventures in comprehensive detail and great color. You owe it to yourself to explore this delightful book.

After being on the losing side of the Battle of Curzola in 1298, in which the Venetian fleet was defeated by the Genoese, Marco Polo had the good fortune of landing in a very comfortable jail. It was due to the noblesse oblige of rank that he received such favorable treatment as a prisoner. In fact, he was allowed to take with him his copious notes from his foreign travels. He also had the good fortune of sharing a cell with Rustichello of Pisa, a well-known author of romanaces. With infinite time on their hands, the two collaborated on what became known as The Travels of Marco Polo. The Travels always were considered more fabricated than real, even before they were embellished by Rustichello. Marco Polo was considered by his fellow Venetians as a "teller of a million lies." (Il Milione was the Italian name of the book.) Down through the centuries there were many different versions of the events described in the Travels. One of the most famous - and one that added greatly to its mythical quality - was Coleridge's opium-induced hallucinations of Kublai Khan's Xanadu. Now biographer and historian Laurence Bergreen tells us that much of the original story had historical accuracy. He has researched his subject well and indeed rewritten the story of Marco Polo's travels. Not only does he put the story in chronological order, he fills in much of the historical background. Marco Polo left Venice for Cambulac (now Beijing) in 1271 at the age of 17 accompanied by his father and uncle, who had already made the journey before. The Polos were merchants in search of profit, and they believed large profits could be made in the lands controlled by Pax Mongolica. Kublai Khan, grandson and imperial heir to Genghis Khan, had a reputation for being leader of some of the most brutal and violent people on earth. They were known in Europe as "Satan's spawn." To Marco's surprise he found Kublai Khan a cultured and gracious host. Contrary to popular belief, the Mongols were very tolerant of other cultures. (Read Amy Chua'sDay of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall for more information on this topic.) Although merciless in their conquests they allowed other cultures to thrive as long as they subscribed to Pax Mongolica. Marco was so enthralled by the emperor's court that he stayed for nearly two decades. His experience as a merchant provided him with the skills to become the emperor's tax assessor and special emissary. Travels to various parts of the empire were duly recorded. Though the tales of sexcapades and court intrigue seem far-fetched, it may be true, as Polo claims, that at the time of Kublai Khan, there existed 20,000 of Genghis Khan's offsspring. The reason this may have some truth is that recent DNA tests have traced 1 in 12 Asian men back to Mongolia and the time of Genghis Khan. In any event, Marco definitely became more worldly after his extended stay in the emperor's court. Although Europeans had gon

There were travelers to the Orient before Marco Polo departed for China in 1271. In fact, his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo are among those who had ventured to China and come back to tell about it. But Marco told about it differently; he had taken notes, and he had a ghostwriter to help turn them into a book. As a result, his name is one that almost everyone knows, but he is a figure that seems to have more in common with legendary travelers like Ulysses than with historic figures like Columbus. It is good, therefore, to have the historic Marco brought forth, along with commentary on the degree of reliability of his tales, in _Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu_ (Knopf) by Laurence Bergreen. Bergreen has written a biography of Magellan, another explorer; but he has also written biographies of such diverse persona as Louis Armstrong, Al Capone, and Irving Berlin. He has the capacity to find interesting subjects, and bring out just what would interest his readers, and his Marco is a fascinating study, beginning his travels as a conventional and pious Venetian Catholic, and changing into a worldly, curious, and tolerant storyteller with special interest in sexual behavior and in varieties of religious expression. We could clearly use a little more Marco Polo these days, and here he is. Much of Bergreen's book retells the travels Marco undertook from 1271 until his return to Venice in 1295, sometimes going on what was centuries later named the Silk Road. Crossing deserts, mountains, and (on the return leg) seas, Marco saw more of the world than anyone had before, and it amazed him. There are generous quotations from his book here, remarks that usually Bergreen feels should be taken at face value, although he points out where Marco was probably exaggerating or reporting stories he had heard from others rather than telling of his own experience. We have no better or more interesting description of the Mongol world at its height than Marco's, because he became an intimate of Kublai Kahn himself. He served as Kublai Kahn's trusted messenger and tax collector, and so was able to travel all over the kingdom under the protection of the monarch. Marco gave a detailed portrait of Kublai Kahn, an innovative and humane leader despite all his military conquests. Kublai Kahn had a wide religious faith, and was interested in incorporating Jesus into it. There were plenty of intrigues within his court, with counselors ready to betray each other, and the unlucky ones condemned to the traditional execution of being rolled in a carpet and trampled. Marco describes the military efforts, including the failed invasion of Japan, but his most interesting descriptions are more intimate, such as his stories of Kublai Kahn's sexual life. Scouts would travel the empire to find the most nubile daughters to send to his harem, and the families would be honored to send them on. We probably have Marco's stories only because upon his return to Venice he had

There may have been other adventurers who left Europe as teenagers in the thirteenth century, made their way across continents into the court of the largest empire in world history, and then made their way home safely a generation later, living in the meantime a life of risk and reward that would be unimaginable to a terrestrial today. But there was only one who told the story to an author of colorful "romances." And he, a man named Rustichello, retold the wanderer Marco Polo's story for history, or at least for author Laurence Bergreen, who has retold it better for us. Bergreen, one of those great new creatures of modernity - a brilliant, worldly, tireless, non-academic historian and biographer - peels the onion of the impenetrable "Travels" of Marco Polo, filling in with level-headed, well-crafted reviews of the eight centuries of historiography borne of Polo's original work. Walking the walk, in part, Polo walked, testing the text against its many interpretations and criticisms and tweezing out the best modern wisdom from today's leading scholars, Bergreen has brought to us in great style the wide-eyed amazement of a 13th century European meeting the East for the first time. Polo described in his "Travels" politics, social organizations, architecture, money and people so different from those of his home that his descriptions sometimes sound like the blind men examining the elephant. He found black, soft rocks, taken from the earth that magically burned white hot without ever flaming up. This was coal, never before known to a European as a fuel. Clinically accurate and completely without context, the "truth" of this observation makes us smile and also gives credibility to other Polo observations not so easily contextualized today. Bergreen must have had the sense that he followed a man in someways like himself as he pieced together this fantastic story, its context and its many faces through the last 800 years. Like Polo, Bergreen has repeatedly wandered into places so disparate and opaque that only a hugely observant author of endless energy could find a reasonable proximity to the truth in each of them. He has done this in first-rate biographies of men whose names have never been put in a single paragraph before: James Agee, Al Capone, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin. He has also written a fine historical work on the astonishing world voyage of Magellan and of NASA's search for life on Mars. This new work is a delight to read, rich in content, easy in style, respectful but not reverent of its primary source.

There may have been other adventurers who left Europe as teenagers in the thirteenth century, made their way across continents into the court of the largest empire in world history, and then made their way home safely a generation later, living in the meantime a life of risk and reward that would be unimaginable to a terrestrial today. But there was only one who told the story to an author of colorful "romances." And he, a man named Rustichello, retold the wanderer Marco Polo's story for history, or at least for author Laurence Bergreen, who has retold it better for us. Bergreen, one of those great new creatures of modernity - a brilliant, worldly, tireless, non-academic historian and biographer - peels the onion of the impenetrable "Travels" of Marco Polo, filling in with level-headed, well-crafted reviews of the eight centuries of historiography borne of Polo's original work. Walking the walk, in part, Polo walked, testing the text against its many interpretations and criticisms and tweezing out the best modern wisdom from today's leading scholars, Bergreen has brought to us in great style the wide-eyed amazement of a 13th century European meeting the East for the first time. Polo described in his "Travels" politics, social organizations, architecture, money and people so different from those of his home that his descriptions sometimes sound like the blind men examining the elephant. He found black, soft rocks, taken from the earth that magically burned white hot without ever flaming up. This was coal, never before known to a European as a fuel. Clinically accurate and completely without context, the "truth" of this observation makes us smile and also gives credibility to other Polo observations not so easily contextualized today. Bergreen must have had the sense that he followed a man in someways like himself as he pieced together this fantastic story, its context and its many faces through the last 800 years. Like Polo, Bergreen has repeatedly wandered into places so disparate and opaque that only a hugely observant author of endless energy could find a reasonable proximity to the truth in each of them. He has done this in first-rate biographies of men whose names have never been put in a single paragraph before: James Agee, Al Capone, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin. He has also written a fine historical work on the astonishing world voyage of Magellan and of NASA's search for life on Mars. This new work is a delight to read, rich in content, easy in style, respectful but not reverent of its primary source. Bravo, Mr. Bergreen. May he keep wandering into places we all want to read about, making us all a little less blind to their wonders.