All the spaces we inhabit are in some way our dreams. All the spaces we pass through are composed by our subjective perceptions for us as much as they are composed of the objective material that works on those perceptions. All spaces hold and reflect something of ourselves, our histories. I sit in my carefully arranged room composing this piece on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities; I am seated in a comfortable chair, it is arranged below a window that lets in copious light in the mornings and afternoons, to better aid my reading and my writing, it is within leg’s reach of my bed, on which I rest my legs, and my laptop sits comfortably on my thighs, and being that my room is a converted attic with walls painted white and few decorations, I enjoy, in pauses between spans of typing, watching the late afternoon light play on the white walls with its brightness and shadows over the angular lines that used to delineate where the roof rose; the ceiling slopes at strong angles, there is a skylight above my bed that I generally keep covered, that during storms resounds with a soothing percussive patter. The only decoration on my walls is a block print of a human heart. It hangs adjacent to the west facing window, which catches light later than the windows behind me, which are south-easterly. Books run along my walls and rest in stacks beside my bed, a record player and stereo are directly to my left, on a kind of shelf, and records and books cascade here and there. This is my space, I have lived in it for years, I have made it mine, it is an outward projection of my interior; I have attempted to make the walls show their stark angles more strikingly by not cluttering them with decoration; I have placed my clothes carefully away and set my possessions in a pleasant order so that there are fewer obstructions to my thinking and motion; my bed is positioned so the south-easterly morning light does not interfere with my sleeping; the lamp is within arm’s reach of the bed; the only picture on my wall is of a heart. This room is as much my interior as my exterior, it suits all of my physical and psychic needs, the form it has taken is a reflection of some pattern determined within my being, almost without my being aware of it. Our exteriors, the things we inhabit and therefore influence and change by our thoughts, efforts, ambitions, are changed in accordance with interior demands, interior desires, interior longings, hopes, etc. It is the same for streets, cities, countries. The interior lives of the inhabitants of these places create the exteriors that they then exist within, shop in, shuffle about, fight, make love, laugh and die in. The physical world is a creation of the conscious and unconscious intentions of the human imagination, an agglomeration of all human hopes, drives, desires, made into a material reality.

So everything imaginable is realizable; and whether it is realizable in concrete, in steel, in glass, in brick, in flesh, or whether it is only realizable in images, words, pictures, pixels, is of little difference. A perfectly constructed sentence, a perfectly rendered painting, a perfectly filmed scene, a perfect cascade of musical tones- they are manifest realizations of ideas. All is possible that one can imagine if one can speak it, draw it, compose it. The limitations of the architect, the city-planner, the foreman can be realized by the artist, the writer, the photographer. The human imagination is infinite, and every iteration, every form, is in some way achievable.

Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a document of these ideas; it is a proof, in perfectly constructed, astoundingly deep and evocative sentences, that whatever we dream can be and will be fulfilled. That just two souls, sitting in a garden, outside of time and within it, their lips fixed to pipe stems, watching smoke trails’ shifting patterns ascend the sky and exchanging mere words, can invent a universe; and that the universe of the living which is the source and inspiration for their visions can be rendered into symbols that can then supersede, magnify, illuminate, and reorder that living world into something that speaks to and connects very deeply with the hidden currents and vibrations of what it is to be a thinking, desiring, dreaming human being. This is a profound book, one of those rare works where nothing seems missing or superfluous, where every sentence locks into a kind of crystalline totality, an affirmation of the vital importance and sovereignty of works of the imagination.

”The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.”-pg. 139

”Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”-pg. 29

”’I have also thought of a model city from which I deduce all the others,’ Marco answered. ‘It is a city made only of exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions. If such a city is the most improbable, by reducing the number of abnormal elements, we increase the probability that the city really exists. So I have only to subtract exceptions from my model, and in whatever direction I proceed, I will arrive at one of the cities which, always as an exception, exist. But I cannot force my operations beyond a certain limit: I would achieve cities too probable to be real.’”-pg. 69

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension; seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."-pg. 165

آپدیت 20 فروردین 1400

بالاخره بر تنبلی چیره شدم و شهر رو نوشتم:

شهرها و زخم‌ها

اول بار که وارد زخمینه شدم کودکی بیش نبودم. شهری کوچک در کنار ساحلی که آتش خورشید هر دم آن را می‌سوزاند و تنها در ابتدا و انتهای سفر هرروزه‌اش بود که اندکی به مردمان ساحل‌نشین و جاشوان لنج‌های باری امان می‌داد. اولین زخم‌هایی که در این شهر دیدم در گوشه چشمان ساکنین آن بود که گزند تابش آفتاب آن‌ها را نقش میزد. چشمانی که در طی سالیان دراز با شکاف‌هایی عمیق و چین‌هایی متعدد احاطه می‌شد.

اما این تنها چشمان مردم نبود که زخمی بر خود داشت. در و دیوار خانه‌های شهر نیز پر بود از زخم‌های تیره و معوجی بود که خونی ازشان نمی‌چکید و هرسال یا عریض‌تر می‌شد و یا دنباله آن کمی درازتر می‌گشت. با وجود آن که گاهی از لابه‌لای این شکاف‌ها مهمانان ناخوانده‌ای وارد می‌شدند، ساکنین خانه‌ها اما چندان تمایلی به پوشاندن این تَرَک‌ها و شکاف‌ها نداشتند.

عجیب‌تر از همه این‌ها زخم‌های بزرگ و درازی بودند که بر روی بدن مردم شهر نشسته بود. روی درست، کف پا، روی زانو، گونه و یا پشت گوش. در ابتدا تصور می‌کردم که این زخم‌ها بر اثر بی‌احتیاطی و یا حادثه‌ای روی پوست‌شان نشسته، ولی پس از مدتی پی بردم که این زخم‌ها هیچ‌گاه از بین نمی‌روند و مهم نیست که چقدر کوچک باشند. یک بار در گفتگویی که با یکی از ملوانان داشتم علت آن را پرسیدم. با دستش به زخمی که روی زانویش بود اشاره کرد و گفت: «این رو وقتی که بچه بودم برداشتم. بعد از اون هیچ وقت توی شهر اتفاقی نیافتاده که زخمی بشم. روی دریا چرا! طناب کف دستامو زیاد بریده. اما همین که پا روی خشکی می‌ذارم، دیگه هیچی نمیشه.» سرش را آرام نزدیک گوشم برد و زمزمه کرد: «میگن وقتی تو این شهر زخمی بشی، هیچ وقت فراموشش نمی‌کنی. شهرم هیچوقت فراموشت نمی‌کنه.»

تصور این که زخمی برای همیشه روی پوستم باقی بماند همیشه مرا می‌ترساند. شب‌هایی بود که کابوس می‌دیدم که دستم به میخی گرفته و یا گربه‌ای به پایم پنجه می‌کشد. بالاخره در یک روز پایم در حیاط خانه سر خورد و گوشه ابرویم شکافی برداشت. کمتر از یک سال بعد، کار پدرم در آن شهر تمام شد و من همراه خانواده از آن شهر رفتیم.

سیزده سال بعد دوباره در سفری برگشتیم به زخمینه. پس از سیزده سال، تنها من بودم که از بین اعضای خانواده توانستم دوباره خانه قدیمی‌مان را پیدا کنم. شاید به این دلیل بود از آن جمع تنها من بودم که در آن شهر زخمی برداشته بودم. شاید حرف آن ملوان درست بود، شاید هم نه. شاید ساکنین شهر کاملا تصادفی زخمی می‌شدند. شایدم هم این خود شهر بود که عمداً زخمی می‌کردشان. پس از سیزده سال فهمیدم که این شهر نمک‌گیر که نه، زخم‌گیر می‌کند.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
تجربه کاملا جدیدی بود برای من. خوندن شهرهای نامرئی که هرکدوم درمورد یه چیزی حرف میزنن و یه شکل عجیب و منحصر به فردی دارن. البته باید اعتراف کنم که اخرای کتاب کمی از این منحصر‌به فرد بودنشون کاسته شد. ولی همچنان اون حالت شعرگونه شهرها برام جذاب بود. اینک کالوینو با ایجازو نماد سعی میکرد مفاهیم متفاوتی رو با ساختن شهرهای خیالی خودش منتقل کنه.

و جدای از اون، بحث و شنیدن تعابیر مختلف از زبون هم‌خوان‌های عزیز، لذتشو بیشتر می‌کرد.

اگر میتونید انگلیسی بخونید، که انگلیسی بخونید. اگر هم میخواید فارسی بخونید، سراغ ترجمه ترانه یلدا نرید.

پ.ن.: خیلی دلم می‌خواست تجربه خودم از شهری که یه زمانی توش زندگی می‌کردم رو به شیوه‌ای مشابه شیوه کالوینو برای روایت شهرهاش رو توی این ریویو بیارم، اما فعلا مغزم نمیکشه. شاید بعدا این کارو کردم. شاید.

Όταν διαβάζει κανείς τις αόρατες πόλεις, είναι σαν να κρατά στα χέρια του ένα ονειρικό view master, κάθε μικρό κεφάλαιο και ένα κλικ μετατόπισης σε μια νέα οπτική, σε μια νέα εικόνα, σε μια νέα φανταστική πόλη. Εικονοπλαστικό βιβλίο, μόνο αν έχει κανείς ακονίσει το φαντασιακό του αισθητήριο θα μπορέσει να εισχωρήσει στο δαιδαλώδες ψηφιδωτό, να αδράξει κάποιο σύμβολο, να μυρίσει το λουλούδι, τη μούχλα, να πέσει το μάτι του πάνω στα αόρατα έμψυχα και άψυχα αποκυήματα της φαντασίας του Μάρκο Πόλο, μεσίτη εικόνων για χάρη του αυτοκράτορα των Μογγόλων Κουμπλάι Χαν.

Η ανάγνωση μπορεί να τελείται σε πολλά επίπεδα, αναλόγως τη διάθεση μετατόπισης του καθενός. Όσο ο φακός του αναγνώστη προτίθεται να «πάρει» τη μεγάλη εικόνα, μια πολυεδρικότητα διακρίνεται, με την κάθε έδρα να δίνει κάθε φορά το χρώμα, την αίσθηση, το ένα ή το άλλο χαρακτηριστικό που προεξέχει, τα μυστικά, τον τρόπο «εκτέλεσης» της κάθε πόλης. Σαφώς η αρχιτεκτονική σκοπιά κέρδισε έδαφος, στα δικά μου μάτια σίγουρα: το δομημένο περιβάλλον είναι ανθρώπων έργο και συνυφαίνεται με την καθημερινή ζωή τόσο σφιχτά, που εκπέμπει σε αυτούς που το κατοικούν κάποια σήματα, άλλοτε καταφανή κι άλλοτε αόρατα. Συστατικά μιας πόλης δεν είναι μόνο οι κάτοικοι και τα κτίρια, δεν είναι μόνο αυτά που διαμορφώνουν αυτήν και την αέναη πορεία της μέσα στον χρόνο. Υπάρχει μια διαστρωμάτωση, αμάλγαμα όλων αυτών των συστατικών, και αφαιρώντας κάθε φορά ένα φιλμ επικάλυψης, περνάει κανείς στο δεύτερο επίπεδο κ.ο.κ. Δεν είναι απαραίτητη η γλώσσα για να «διαβάσεις» μια πόλη και τα σημάδια της. Η εσπεράντο των αισθήσεων σού δίνει το διαβατήριο για να το κάνεις, αρκεί να την ενεργοποιήσεις.

Ο μαγικός ρεαλισμός αποτελεί επίσης ένα ηλεκτροφόρο νεύρο μέσα στο βιβλίο: η φαντασία παρεισφρέει στην πραγματικότητα -την πιθανή πραγματικότητα- και τα δυο τους συγχέονται μέχρι που μπροστά στα μάτια σου μπορεί εύκολα να παίξει στο πανό προβολής μια εικόνα του Moebius στην οποία αισθάνεσαι πρωταγωνιστής.

Υπάρχει αισθητική στις αόρατες πόλεις του Καλβίνο, το γλαφυρό και το ποιητικό στοιχείο μόλις που ξεπροβάλλουν και αν αυτό τείνει να σε ενοχλήσει, για τους δικούς σου λόγους, δεν προλαβαίνει τελικά, γιατί στο γύρισμα της σελίδας, το κεφάλαιο έχει ήδη τελειώσει. Ο Καλβίνο έχει ήδη πει αυτό που ήθελε, σύντομα, αφήνοντάς σε να το συνεχίσεις εσύ εάν το θελήσεις, εάν έχεις πάρει το ερέθισμα.

Όλες οι πόλεις έχουν γυναικείο -ομολογουμένως πανέμορφο- όνομα. Δεν απέφυγα να κάνω τον συνδυασμό: πόλεις-γυναίκες που κρύβουν μυστικά, που καμουφλάρουν το μέσα τους, που δεν είναι αυτό που φαίνονται, που δε βρίσκεις την έξοδο αν θελήσεις να φύγεις.

Στο βιβλίο αυτό ο αναγνώστης περιδινίζεται, καταπίνεται κάτω από τη γη ή αιωρείται πάνω στον αέρα. Είναι ένα λοξό βιβλίο που ίσως δεν τελειώνει ποτέ, όπως οι πόλεις αναπτύσσονται αέναα, είτε στρεβλά είτε σοφότερα. Μένει ίσως να παραμένουμε παρόντες και επαγρυπνούντες για να «διαβάζουμε» κάθε φορά τη νέα μεταμόρφωση.

Μέσα στην κατάσταση στέρησης της καραντίνας, προσωπικά μπήκα κυριολεκτικά στην πρίζα και η τροφοδοσία ενός φανταστικού ταξιδιού ξεκίνησε.

This book was magic for me. Read it as part of an English class in college and have since the read every Italo Calvino book because of this one. Reading this book was like experiencing an MC Escher drawing for the first time (I couldn't stop looking at it and wanted to examine it from every angle). The book also caused me to look at Marco Polo and Kublai Khan with a more open mind than what I'd learned about them in my history classes. They went from being one dimensional to fascinating figures whose flaws dominated their legacies but who were also full of dreams and adventure.

I only wish I could read this in Italian. Given the vastness of his imagination, I can only guess how much is lost in translation.

Marco Polo and Kublai Khan talk of cities Marco has visited.

Where to begin with this one? I thought the writing was beautiful. Calvino and his translator painted vivid pictures of various cities, each a seemingly magical realm with its own quirks. As Marco tells more and more stories, Kublai questions the nature of his empire.

Unfortunately, very little actually happens. While they are very well written, the individual city tales read almost like entries in a poet's travel journal. There's not really an actual story unless you consider an ongoing conversation between two historical figures a plot.

While I'm glad I read it and I thought the writing was masterful, I don't feel like gushing about this particular book. Three out of five stars.

n  “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”n

This is a collection of short stories about the cities which the narrator - Marco Polo - has visited. He tells them to Kublai Khan, who begins to question his own empire after hearing Marco's tales.

I once saw Invisible Cities called "prose poetry" and that seems like a fairly accurate description. It's a book made up of fragments - usually one or two pages at a time - each beautifully describing a different city. Lots of metaphors and gorgeous imagery that will take your breath away.

Unfortunately, though, beyond the writing I felt a little underwhelmed. Nothing actually happens and the short snippets, while beautiful, lead nowhere and seem a touch... pointless. It's definitely a book for those who read for the words themselves, not the story.

It's easy to describe what 'Invisible Cities' is not rather than what it is as it's really very difficult to ascertain which category it can be put into; it neither has a clear plot nor characters are developed as they normally are, it can't be called a novel or collection of stories, can't be put in any one genre since it surpasses so many; but still something extraordinary, something which can't be described in words, which can only be felt.

The book has loose dialogues between emperor- Kublai Khan and a Venetian explorer-Marco Polo, Polo is ordered to explore the empire of the Khan and to tell parables with which to regale the ageing, and frequently impatient conqueror with descriptions of every city he has visited on his long peregrinations through Kingdom of Kublai Khan.

The parables are surreal in nature and prose is very lyrical however I wonder how lyrical it would be in its original language. The book is divided into parables about fifty five imaginary cities which are categorized into eleven groups of memory, desire, sign, thin, trading, eyes, names, dead, sky, continuous and hidden.

Different groups are associated with different themes, as Cities & Memory stories are philosophical thought experiments about nostalgia, history; discarding old Memories which are formed through word of mouth and forming their own.
-"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands."
-"The city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honeycomb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember...."

At this point I feel It's not possible to review the book though I made a futile attempt; and the more I think about the book the more I feel I have to re-read it and then read it again.

However there is one thing which I can surely say about 'Invisible Cities'that it's 'A lucid dream: one which can be experienced and can't be described'.

In a way, this book is almost too good. I'm amazed that Calvino pulled off a work that so successfully blurs the lines between poetry, short fiction and novel, one that asks us as readers to expand our perception of what fiction is, and one that drums up such a sense of sweep and wonder while at the same time giving the puzzle-lover in me all sorts of room to play; it's a step above even masterpieces of gamesmanship like Pale Fire because Calvino hits so many of my intellectual and emotional buttons. At the same time, I don't think it's gotten credit for how radical of a break from tradition it is. Only a handful of works do that in the same way for me, and some of them have more canonical visibility than others - everyone reads Borges, Maggie Nelson and Amelia Gray these days, but someone has to plug Linh Dinh, Renee Gladman and Pamela Lu here, so it might as well be me. Most works don't even try for this level of virtuosity, let alone succeed; even the fat postmodern tomes I've sworn so much allegiance to, books that the press kits swear up and down rewrote the rules of the novel, still feel on a basic level like [i]novels[/i] to me, where this is a work of its own class. So that not only makes it the finest work under the postmodern umbrella and a strong candidate for the novel that'll inevitably usurp Infinite Jest as my favorite, but pretty much the best work of playful fabulism I've read, in that it's at once the most playful and one that instills the most wonder in me.

But you only get to pull that off once, and most people don't pull that off at all. Since all Calvino I've read prioritizes instilling of wonder, the book that instills the most wonder will inevitably rule roost, and in that respect even Cosmicomics is a distant second. Since this strikes me as by far the peak of Calvino's lifelong project, a book that hits notes the more-famous If on a Winter's Night a Traveler merely strains for, the rest of Calvino's work has been ruined for me, because I keep expecting him to take me where this book took me and keep finding myself not... there, you know? I wish I'd read a little more Calvino before I got here, because the rest of his work has, in a certain respect, been ruined for me by this one. It's still charming and funny and striking in its originality and intelligence, but it doesn't have the bottled-lightning effect that this book does.

Well, I guess that's what happens when you blow away your competition. You also outdo yourself, in a certain respect. But enough of that. I've read a lot of books, and some of them have outright faded from my memory. This one never will.

My review of Invisible Cities is published at Before We Go Blog.

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

Invisible Cities is a tour de force from Italo Calvino, the late Italian master of speculative fiction. This uniquely constructed novel is set in the late thirteenth century in the court of Kublai Khan. The Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, captivates the Tartar Emperor with descriptions of the cities from his unprecedented travels. By this time, the Mongol Empire has grown to be the largest that the world has ever seen. In the future, it will be eclipsed only by the British Empire in terms of the land area under its control.

The Empire has grown so large that the Great Khan feels like he doesn’t even know his own lands. He only learns about the far-flung cities in and beyond his Empire through the stories of travelers, and the well-traveled and poetically tongued Marco Polo is the greatest explorer and storyteller of them all.

Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan of wondrous and beautiful cities, cities of passion and desire, cities of memory, cities of light and the sky, trading cities, cities of signs, hidden cities, cities of the dead. The Great Khan is captivated by Marco Polo’s poetic descriptions throughout Invisible Cities.

While Marco Polo introduces each city by a different name, it soon becomes apparent that the descriptions are actually different facets of a single city: his beloved hometown of Venice. In this sense, Invisible Cities becomes Italo Calvino’s love letter to Venice.

But the scope is much broader than we think. It’s true that each description is a different aspect of Venice. But in Invisible Cities, Marco Polo is really describing all cities the world has ever seen or ever will see. He is describing ancient cities like Babylon, future cities like Los Angeles, and even mythical cities like Atlantis or Utopia. He is describing the universe of all possible cities that could ever exist, now, in the past, in the future, or in some alternate reality.

It is hard for me to describe the beauty and nuance of Invisible Cities. Just as Marco Polo describes his hometown in this work, as a reader you will find him describing yours as well. Italo Calvino will lead you to discover new and beautiful facets of urbanity in your own surroundings.

If on a winter's night a traveller were to set out to traverse the garden of forking paths, she could perhaps follow the moon in its flight to catch the sleepwalkers caught in a midsummer night's dream. She could walk east of Eden to see midnight's children appear, only to lose themselves into a frolic of their own. She could turn at a bend in the river to come upon the savage detectives figuring out the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. She could walk up to the tree of smoke and find the man without qualities waiting for Godot to arrive and hand out copies of a user's manual to life, not realizing that he jests with them indefinitely.

She could walk through the tunnel only to find no light at its end. The chirping of the obscene bird of the night could draw her attention to one of the 2666 wells lined with the yellow wallpaper. She could look into it to find herself gazing at the abyss of human illusion and hearing the satanic verses. She could look up to find notes from underground strewn all around. To escape the heart of darkness she could travel south of the border, west of the sun to the land where the sun also rises.

She could walk up the magic mountain to take in the breaking dawn and hear the wind sing. Before this moment stretches itself into one hundred years of solitude, she could consult the cloud atlas and find her way to the snow country. She could walk past the glass castle where the pale king sits on the iron throne. She could take a stroll on the cannery row to watch the crowd hypnotized by the enchantress of Florence. As the spell breaks they could each retire to a room of their own where a portrait of the artist adorns the wall and Foucault's pendulum swings to keep time. The window could be looking out to the lighthouse located on the treasure island. Beyond which lies the opposing shore where the setting sun is giving way to the hour of the star.

She could be travelling to the end of the gravity's rainbow as the sound of silence wakes her up and interrupts the dream story. In the faint glow of the city lights peeking in through the window, her gaze could fall upon the stacks of the people of paper carrying within themselves the remembrance of the things past and the shape of things to come. Each containing within itself invisible cities - one or many - with ephemeral paths waiting to be traversed. you could wander through them in thought, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off.

If on a winter's night a traveller...

_______________________________

Cloned Cities

It is not the voice that commands the story, it is the ear.

Marco Polo takes us on a wondrous journey through the invisible cities that live in his imagination. We pass each of his tales through the refractive prism of our own perception. We create tenuous threads connecting the city to all that we are and all that we have been. We build a whole another invisible city, sculpted in the image of that of Polo’s.
Every time a reader sits down to hear Polo’s tales, skewed clones of each city are born and thus the invisible cities proliferate.

This is my favourite Calvino book and the one I always suggest to friends to ask me for an interesting easy read or a start into Calvino's universe. It is hard to write a long review here without giving away the entire story but suffice it to say that it is poetic prose at its best.

In a nutshell, Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the various cities he has been to before his visit to China between 1271 and 1275 CE. Each description is more fanciful and beautiful than the previous and there is a spectacular poetic dénouement.

The nearest equivalent in graphic novels for me would be the many melancholy works of Schuitten in Les Cités Obscures series. A total classic and must read.

Marco Polo : Now I shall tell you of the beautiful city of Nottingham where the buildings are made mostly of blue glass, onyx and sausagemeat. The men of the city trade in fur, spices and photographs of each other with their respective spouses. All the men have large phalluses, sometimes so large they must cut pieces out of the tops of their front doors before they can exit their houses in the morning. This is a city of dreamers and anthropophagi, of astronomers and chess players, all with the largest of phalluses. The women of the city are the most voluptuous and lively. They wear clothes. Many times I have observed them gambolling and performing handsprings for sheer joy of being in Nottingham. The dogs of Nottingham are all sly and well-read. They play canasta and billiards mostly, but also trade junk bonds and enjoy swapping photographs of the men of Nottingham with their respective spouses. But describing the cats of Nottingham will tax me to the very limit of my powers, O mighty Lord -

Kublai Khan : One moment, Sr. Polo. You will see the sun is high. I must now bathe in Turkish Delight and oxtail soup. We will recommence in the cool of the evening.

Marco Polo : I await your pleasure, my Lord.

Kublai Khan to his chief fixer the Grand Weirdo of All The Kingdoms : Later this afternoon I wish you to tell Sr Marco I have died. Or tell me that he has died. One of the two.