It is
true that many of the passages peculiar to the Ramusian version, and
indeed the whole version, show a freer utterance and more of a literary
faculty than we should attribute to Polo, judging from the earlier texts.
It is possible, however, that this may be almost, if not entirely, due to
the fact that the version is the result of a double translation, and
probably of an editorial fusion of several documents; processes in which
angularities of expression would be dissolved.[16]
[Sidenote: Hypothesis of the sources of the Ramusian Version.]
63. Though difficulties will certainly remain,[17] the most probable
explanation of the origin of this text seems to me to be some such
hypothesis as the following: - I suppose that Polo in his latter years
added with his own hand supplementary notes and reminiscences, marginally
or otherwise, to a copy of his book; that these, perhaps in his lifetime,
more probably after his death, were digested and translated into
Latin;[18] and that Ramusio, or some friend of his, in retranslating and
fusing them with Pipino's version for the Navigationi, made those minor
modifications in names and other matters which we have already noticed.
The mere facts of digestion from memoranda and double translation would
account for a good deal of unintentional corruption.
That more than one version was employed in the composition of Ramusio's
edition we have curious proof in at least one passage of the latter. We
have pointed out at p. 410 of this volume a curious example of
misunderstanding of the old French Text, a passage in which the term Roi
des Pelaines, or "King of Furs," is applied to the Sable, and which in
the Crusca has been converted into an imaginary Tartar phrase Leroide
pelame, or as Pipino makes it Rondes (another indication that Pipino's
Version and the Crusca passed through a common medium). But Ramusio
exhibits both the true reading and the perversion: "E li Tartari la
chiamano Regina delle pelli" (there is the true reading), "E gli animali
si chiamano Rondes" (and there the perverted one).
We may further remark that Ramusio's version betrays indications that one
of its bases either was in the Venetian dialect, or had passed through
that dialect; for a good many of the names appear in Venetian forms, e.g.,
substituting the z for the sound of ch, j, or soft g, as in Goza,
Zorzania, Zagatay, Gonza (for Giogiu), Quenzanfu, Coiganzu, Tapinzu,
Zipangu, Ziamba.
[Sidenote: Summary in regard to Text of Polo.]
64. To sum up. It is, I think, beyond reasonable dispute that we have, in
what we call the Geographic Text, as nearly as may be an exact transcript
of the Traveller's words as originally taken down in the prison of Genoa.
We have again in the MSS.
