Last update: 17-Nov-99

Roger Williams

Narrative Form in the 20^th Century

This book—it would be a misnomer to call it a novel in the traditional sense—is written in a style that combines prose and poetry. The author's goal is to create a written work that evokes the visual, and alludes to the structural in its rendering of the main subject, to chronicle the cities of the great Tartar emperor Kublai Khan. Contrastingly, the result of this effort is to highlight and richly express the opacity of the essences of the main subject. So, we have the effect of trying to "touch the rainbow".

The discussions between Marco Polo and the Great Khan open and close each chapter. The narratives are untitled in order to designate these framing sequences as subtext. Each successive offering to the Khan is bracketed with the optometrist's insistently quizzical, "Is this better? Or this?". Back and forth.

In the close of the first chapter, there is a definition of an emblem, as "the first gesture or object with which Marco had designated the place" (22). When the Khan tries to seize the emblems of his empire as signifier of the same, Marco warns him from this (23). This is the first dialog between the 2 men, and portends the iterative—and possibly unattainable—nature of the Khan's quest. In fact, all of the sections contain types of emblems. These are: memory, desire, signs, thin, trading, eyes, names, dead, sky, continuous, and hidden.

Numerals, specifically integers, are used extensively to render the architectural landscapes that we think of as cities. By looking at the orders of the chapters in the table of contents, it is clear that some well-intentioned scheme is at work. The numerals in the first chapter are a buildup (2-1, 3-2-1, 4-3-2-1) to the countdown of each interior chapter (each is 5-4-3-2-1), that builds to a count up in the final chapter. If the chapter designators are placed on simple 5-step graph paper, the effect could resemble a landscape of 9 cities viewed from a balcony overlooking a valley.

The use of odd numbers (e.g. 5 examples of each emblem type, 9 chapters, 11 emblem types, 55 total cities) is important, because there is always a natural center. The author points out that the view of what surrounds the center is not symmetrical (54). The out-in-out of focus nature of this work yields a model structure like 1-2-3-2-1, but the lack of symmetry gives a better approximation as 1-2.5-3-1.5-1 (note this leaves the realm of integers).

The natural center (designated as 3 above in the model structure) is the point of greatest supposed clarity, and is exploited many times in the work. The emblem types are the main structure in the work and of the 11 types, the middle type is eyes. This is an example of our most natural rendering sense for this subject matter. As the middle type, there are 5 types that each precede and follow the middle type.

A further example of the exploitation of the concept of natural center, is the middle city of the middle type. This is a city called Baucis, and is designated Eyes 3 (77). Of the 55 cities, 27 cities each precede and follow Baucis, in the enumeration. In the 9 chapters, this city is described in the fifth chapter, so 4 chapters each precede and follow it.

This multiple partitioning is designed to serve two ends. First and foremost, it serves as an illusion, and alludes to an asymmetrical structure around a natural center. Secondly, although I have repeatedly used the adjective "natural" to describe the center, we should suspect that this choice of center is made by a man, and that it reflects a structure chosen by man. This is because nature, while heavily ordered, seldom preserves this consistency of a center in the way man, specifically architects, would.

Reaching this "city in the center", you are halfway across the valley. This one above all should be as clear as any of the others will ever be, but the traveler "cannot see the city even though he has arrived" (77). The language of this chapter describes "people who do not show themselves" (77), begging a question about their existence. Also, the use of "spyglasses and telescopes" (77) by its inhabitants, refers to a need for visual enhancement and inability to render the environment "in the raw".

The frame narrative for this central chapter, which brackets what I have called the "city in the center", is the first time that the Khan begins to suspect that a full rendering may be impossible when he thinks of these cities as "transparent as mosquito netting" (73), and "seen through their opaque and fictitious thickness" (73). And in the trailing frame exchange about the true support of the bridge, Polo's final answer (82) leaves the quandry unrequited.

Having analyzed the structural interpretation, we move out from the center to the other cities associated with the emblem type of eyes, that have the most resonance with the visual. These references stress the duality of the visual images. The reflected image is paramount in the first city of this emblem type, in which Valdrada's construction guarantees that "its every point would be reflected in its mirror" (53). The relative valences of the respective images are fleeting and temporary, and effect of the mirror on the measurement is described explicitly as "At times the mirror increases a thing's value; at times denies it" (54).

The visual rendering is further undermined in another canal city called Phyliss. It is described as a place of beautiful canals, and windows, and visual surprises. But, as time passes, the city "fades before your eyes" (90), and besides the zigzag where your feet are placed, "All the rest of the city is invisible" (91). This connotes a removal of the anchors needed for acuity.

As we move gradually outward from the mirror to the fading image, we find next that only a portion is visible depending on our gaze, as described in Zemrude, where the "mood of the beholder" (66) is the image rendered. Our gaze can be down or up, but the eventual resignation becomes clear when "sooner or later, the day comes when we bring our gaze down" (66).

As we move further out of focus, we enter a dream-like state in which it is easy to tell that the image itself is fuzzy. The language that describes this state is explicit in the frame narrative when Khan only wants to have his dreams validated, commanding "tell me if my dream corresponds to reality" (55). The correspondence between cities and dreams, not just with the image, is described in another frame narrative (44) in which desire is positioned against fear, as attributes that both cities and dreams share.

Of course, it is possible to dream with your eyes open or closed. And the eyelid as a boundary of the multiple dualities is described in the only frame narrative that has a third-person objective focalization. The narrative is limited to strict dialogue, and Polo concludes his exposition saying "the eyelids separate them" (104). In this case, he refers to the rubbish heap and the garden.

At the most outer level of focus, the cities are not fuzzy dreams, but seemingly in-focus crystal clear mirages. The duality of the oasis is best described by the view of the city from the desert, as a ship on the water, and by the view of the city from the sea, as a camel to use for land-based transportation. The camel driver "knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away" (17). In the opposite and sharply drawn image by the sailor, the language used almost identical (i.e. knows, but thinks of), and represents a "deliverance" from his own "desert of the sea" (17).

The weight of each layer is almost imperceptibly light, as an onionskin, described as "illusory envelopes" (123). As he peels to the center from one side and then proceeds back out to the edge, the nature of these cities can be rendered on planes different from the emblems offered. Although we must rely on the translation, the diction itself stresses simple, light concepts.

The lightness and duality of organization, diction and structure of this work naturally evoke a desire for a prosody-based analysis. Although this is beyond the scope of this paper, and perhaps my skill, the boundary between poetry and prose is blurred beautifully in this text and highlight the lack of necessity in these genre divisions.

So, in the end, you are left with a description of the artifacts of many cities, structural characteristics, a frame narrative describing the difficulties of the effort to "touch", and numerals used allegorically to further impart structure. The result is that the best you can do is to imagine what the "touch" would be like, if it was possible. This is probably the best that can be achieved.