Intelligible Cities E-Book

David Groves

• Herausgeber: goWare
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Exactly fifty years after the conversations recorded by Italo Calvino in Le città invisibili, Marco Polo and the Emperor Kublai Khan meet once again, this time to discuss the weird and wacky ways in which the inhabitants of 26 cities communicate with strangers who arrive at their gates speaking an unknown language. With a few sad exceptions, each city has devised an almost perfect method for language sharing, using translation buckets or hypnosis, game theory or computation, sexual intercourse or divine inspiration, magic rivers or reflections, drawing on the arts of music, dance and painting, and on the wisdom of plants, birds and fish. It is for the reader to decide if this is a fabulous travelogue up and down the Silk Road from Xanadu to Venice, a treatise on translation in the form of a comic novel, an allegory of friendship between people and peoples, or a series of bedtime stories in which the cities themselves are like female characters out of The Arabian Nights. In any case, Intelligible Cities is a distant tribute to Italo Calvino from a writer resident in Aotearoa New Zealand, a linguist and a traveller, deeply versed in things Italian.

Leseprobe

Cover

Introducing the book and the author

Foreword

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Table of Contents

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© 2022 goWare, Firenze, first English edition

ISBN: 978-88-3363-528-6

Editing: Gianluca Cioni

Cover design: Kate Walker

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Table of contents

Cover

Title page

Colophon

Description

Foreword

Abenaa

Brigidine

Cala

Dafei

Esterina

Ferida

Gwei-djen

Haqq

Iris

Jayanti

Kasandra

Liliana

Mittapheap

Nora

Omnia

Paloma

Qiúqiān

Radomira

Suyin

Tamasa

Urvya

Viola

Wynona

Xamak

Yangchen

Zylina

Envoi

Dedication and Acknowledgements

Description

Exactly fifty years after the conversations recorded by Italo Calvino in Le città invisibili, Marco Polo and the Emperor Kublai Khan meet once again, this time to discuss the weird and wacky ways in which the inhabitants of 26 cities communicate with strangers who arrive at their gates speaking an unknown language.

With a few sad exceptions, each city has devised an almost perfect method for language sharing, using translation buckets or hypnosis, game theory or computation, sexual intercourse or divine inspiration, magic rivers or reflections, drawing on the arts of music, dance and painting, and on the wisdom of plants, birds and fish.

It is for the reader to decide if this is a fabulous travelogue up and down the Silk Road from Xanadu to Venice, a treatise on translation in the form of a comic novel, an allegory of friendship between people and peoples, or a series of bedtime stories in which the cities themselves are like female characters out of The Arabian Nights.

In any case, Intelligible Cities is a distant tribute to Italo Calvino from a writer resident in Aotearoa New Zealand, a linguist and a traveller, deeply versed in things Italian.

* * *

David Groves studied at the Universities of Cambridge and London. After three years as English Lector at Genoa University, he was appointed Head of the Italian Department at the Polytechnic of Central London, and became an examining Fellow of the Institute of Linguists. He then moved to Aotearoa New Zealand as Senior Lecturer in Italian Language and Literature at the Victoria University of Wellington. In 2004 he was nominated Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana for services fostering Italian-New Zealand relations. Since retiring from academia, he has worked as a freelance translator.

Foreword

In October 1960 I caught a train from Milan Central station to Genoa Principe. At the Milan station bookshop I bought a book to read on the train, Italo Calvino’s Il cavaliere inesistente, which Einaudi had published the year before.

A lot of the pages were blank. Ah, very clever, I thought, a non-existent knight in a partly non-existent book. I struggled to make sense of it with my imperfect Italian, and only later did I discover that mine was a faulty copy – the printer had omitted to ink some sheets before they were cut and bound.

Afterwards, whenever I read books by Calvino, I always had the uneasy feeling that something was missing, that the book required a supplement.

Twelve years later, Einaudi published Calvino’s Le città invisibili, imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.

The following pages are a tribute to Calvino on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Le città invisibili, and provide the necessary supplement. They record further conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, this time on the subject of language difference and translation, which Calvino chose not to include because they did not fit into his scheme of things.

Abenaa

When Messer Marco Polo was ushered into the presence of Kublai Khan, he bowed, the two men, now old, touched hands, and the Emperor gestured to Marco Polo to be seated.

They sat for a long while in silence. Although they were used to gaps in their conversation, many more years than usual had passed since the last time they had been together.

‘I have missed our talks. And our silences,’ said the Emperor.

Marco Polo nodded in acquiescence.

‘I am informed that you have been a prisoner of the Genoese.’

‘That is true,’ said Marco Polo. He paused. ‘To pass the time in prison, I recounted in writing many things concerning my travels.’

‘In writing?’ said the Emperor and smiled. ‘A merchant writes,’ mused the Emperor, and he looked at Marco Polo’s scarred and knobbly fingers.

‘My words were recorded with cold fingers by another.’

‘Ah. In what language did you recount?’

‘I recounted in the language of my old life and a book was made.’

‘A language that you had almost forgotten,’ observed the Emperor.

‘Almost,’ admitted Marco Polo.

‘Was the book an estimable success?’ asked the Emperor.

‘It has travelled the world,’ said Marco Polo.

There was a long pause, and all that could be heard was the click of the automated fan and the squawk of a single bird in the bright green shrubbery outside.

‘How do we communicate, my friend?’ asked the Emperor.

‘We understand each other.’ Silence confirmed the truth of this.

***

The next day the Great Khan and Messer Marco Polo sat together beneath the tall shingan trees, and gazed out across the Jinshui River.

‘The sight of water moving almost does our thinking for us,’ said Marco Polo.

‘Almost but not quite perhaps,’ murmured the Emperor. ‘It does help us remember, however. Diomira, Zima, Isaura. I have not forgotten the names of the cities, you see.’

Marco Polo finally drew his eyes away from the river to look at his companion the Emperor. ‘Just as I once described to you those cities of memory, cities of desire and cities of signs, will you allow me, Sire, to tell you now of the methods used by the inhabitants of various cities to cope with the differences between their language and the languages of strangers?’

‘Do they too use silence to communicate?’ asked the Emperor as he looked at the wind from the way the tops of the trees swayed.

‘Some of them do,’ said Marco Polo. ‘Some of them talk too much.’

‘And writing?’ said the Emperor smiling, before giving his consent. ‘Yes, Messer Marco, indeed you may.’

‘The fine city of Abenaa stands in the centre of a fertile country with many rivers, each of which has a special virtue. When a stranger arrives at the border they are taken to the river that seems most appropriate.’

‘How is that judged?’ asked the Emperor.

‘The welcoming committee of Abenaa has a repertoire of phrases accompanied by gestures which inevitably elicit a few words from the visitor, and the quality of the gutturals and of consonants pronounced with the tip of the tongue and the lips, and also the rough and smooth breathing, are assessed,’ answered Marco Polo. ‘At the appointed river the stranger is invited to take off their clothes and swim across. When they reach the other bank, they clamber out and are dried and dressed in fine new clothes in the style of Abenaa by those waiting on the other side.’

‘And can speak the language of Abenaa I suppose,’ said the Emperor.

‘Exactly.’

‘What if they cannot swim?’

‘Then they are towed across behind a rowing boat. That is not so effective, and the results can be unpredictable. But cities sending ambassadors and knowing this practice choose their strongest swimmers. Some countries of course have no lakes or rivers, and their citizens cannot swim.’

‘I see,’ said the Emperor. ‘And what if the stranger is an ambassador bearing a written message?’

‘The message is placed in a special container made of translucent miliqua, and held in the hand of the swimmer or person being towed. When the message is eventually taken out, the ideograms or signs or letters of one language have been changed to the written language of Abenaa.’

‘Abenaa has a written language?’

‘Yes,’ said Marco Polo.

The Emperor thought for a long while. ‘That seems a perfect system,’ he said. ‘But it depends on having the right rivers.’

‘It does,’ said Marco Polo. ‘There are inconveniences however,’ he continued. ‘The rivers must be fast flowing to be effective. The swimmers or boats have to swim or be rowed upstream as fast as possible against the current near to the bank, and only then strike out and be swept to the correct point on the other bank, diametrically opposite. Occasionally, the swimmer or person being towed is carried too far downstream and very occasionally is lost altogether.’

‘If they do not land at the exact spot across the river, does that affect the translation?’

‘It can,’ admitted Marco Polo. ‘The landing place should ideally be parallel. And the swimmer can get very cold.’

‘And what if the stranger does not wish to be seen naked?’

‘Then they cannot cross the river, and are escorted with all courtesy to the border.’

‘You swim?’ asked the Emperor.

‘I do,’ said Marco Polo.