7367, of Paris Library), it is, in the correctness of the proper
names, and the intelligible exhibition of the itineraries, much superior
to any form of the Work previously published.
The language is very peculiar. We are obliged to call it French, but it is
not "Frenche of Paris." "Its style," says Paulin Paris, "is about as like
that of good French authors of the age, as in our day the natural accent
of a German, an Englishman, or an Italian, is like that of a citizen of
Paris or Blois." The author is at war with all the practices of French
grammar; subject and object, numbers, moods, and tenses, are in consummate
confusion. Even readers of his own day must at times have been fain to
guess his meaning. Italian words are constantly introduced, either quite
in the crude or rudely Gallicized.[5] And words also, we may add,
sometimes slip in which appear to be purely Oriental, just as is apt to
happen with Anglo-Indians in these days.[6] All this is perfectly
consistent with the supposition that we have in this MS. a copy at least
of the original words as written down by Rusticiano a Tuscan, from the
dictation of Marco an Orientalized Venetian, in French, a language foreign
to both.
But the character of the language as French is not its only peculiarity.
There is in the style, apart from grammar or vocabulary, a rude
angularity, a rough dramatism like that of oral narrative; there is a want
of proportion in the style of different parts, now over curt, now diffuse
and wordy, with at times even a hammering reiteration; a constant
recurrence of pet colloquial phrases (in which, however, other literary
works of the age partake); a frequent change in the spelling of the same
proper names, even when recurring within a few lines, as if caught by ear
only; a literal following to and fro of the hesitations of the narrator; a
more general use of the third person in speaking of the Traveller, but an
occasional lapse into the first. All these characteristics are strikingly
indicative of the unrevised product of dictation, and many of them would
necessarily disappear either in translation or in a revised copy.
Of changes in representing the same proper name, take as an example that
of the Kaan of Persia whom Polo calls Quiacatu (Kaikhatu), but also
Acatu, Catu, and the like.
As an example of the literal following of dictation take the following: -
"Let us leave Rosia, and I will tell you about the Great Sea (the
Euxine), and what provinces and nations lie round about it, all in
detail; and we will begin with Constantinople - First, however, I should
tell you about a province, etc.... There is nothing more worth
mentioning, so I will speak of other subjects, - but there is one thing
more to tell you about Rosia that I had forgotten.... Now then let us
speak of the Great Sea as I was about to do.
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