L’eredità di Marco Polo nell’odeporica del Novecento

Il milione by Marco Polo can rightfully be counted among the great archetypes of travel narrative; a book that after centuries continues to influence the collective imagination of Western readers and writers. This contribution aims to find traces of the Venetian merchant in the works of three authors of the Italian twentieth century: Giovanni Comisso, Goffredo Parise and Italo Calvino. For the first of the three, we examine above all the articles that Comisso wrote for the «Corriere della sera», on the occasion of his trip to China in 1930 and which will be the basis of the reportage Cina-Giappone, published by Treves in 1932. As regards Parise, it is interesting to note the particular ideological function held by Marco, protagonist of L’eleganza è frigida. As the name easily suggests, behind this character lies the identity of Marco Polo; Parise uses the point of view of the Venetian merchant – characterized by a timeless curiosity – to tell the true soul of Japan. Finally, the last section proposes an intertextual analysis between Il milione and its most famous remake Le città invisibili. In particular, in the description of the city of Anastasia made by Calvino, there is an echo of the legend of the ‘Veglio’ of the Mountain, evoked by Marco Polo in reference to the city of Milice.