Unreal Cities

The cities I have been reading so far seem realistic to me. One could believe that Marco Polo is actually describing a real city we are just not aware of. As I started reading the third portion of the book, I realized that the cities were no longer based on the real world. Armilla is a unique city that has no floor, ceilings, or walls, but instead is composed of water pipes.  Its architecture it’s not only completely different and unrealistic but the humans living on it are fiction. “…the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in the possession of nymph and naidas.” (Pg.50) Once again in Chloe, Marco starts describing unreal characters: “A tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral.” (Pg.51)

I find it interesting how it seems that we are entering another world, were its normal to see giants and nymphs. At the same time I can relate Chloe with Bogota: where everyone is a stranger. Bogota has become so big that you can now a day walk through the entire city and not come across into anyone you know. Some characteristics are believable, while others are not. Zobeide is the first city in which Marco Polo explains the reason for it was founded. “They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream.” (Pg. 45) The only reason the city was founded was to find the woman that ran through the dreams of all men. As they dreamt, they started modifying the city so that it would resembled to their dreams and maybe this way finding the women: “…and they changed the position of the arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.” (Pg. 46)

While reading this section I started thinking about Dante Inferno. Even though the topics are completely different, they both have the idea of dividing everything into sections.  In Dante Inferno that people that committed suicide would be placed in a different circle than the ones that committed fraud. The same happens in Hypatia: “…I would discover young and beautiful ladies bathing; but at the bottom of the water, crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides….” (Pg.47) It appears that every character is assigned to a certain place, just as in Dante Inferno.

I also found interesting the dialogue between Marco and Great Khan at the end of the section. Great Khan starts describing the city of his dreams, making us see that none of the previous described has meet his expectations. It seems as if he has lost hope through out the journey, but Marco Polo assures him that his dreams are going to become a reality.