[고전 이야기] The Travels of Marco Polo《동방견문록》 - 17년간 원나라 머물며 여러 나라 답사… 동양의 문명

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[고전 이야기] The Travels of Marco Polo《동방견문록》

17년간 원나라 머물며 여러 나라 답사… 동양의 문명 기록해 서양에 알렸어요

입력 : 2022.11.15 03:30 조선일보

동방견문록

▲ 동방견문록의 한 페이지. /위키피디아

그곳(지팡구·Zipangu)에서는 헤아릴 수도 없이 많은 금이 난다. 그러나 아무도 그 섬에서 금을 가지고 나오지 못하는데, 그것은 어떤 상인도 어떤 사람도 대륙에서 그곳으로 가지 않기 때문이다.

14세기 초반 출간된 마르코 폴로(1254~1324)의 '동방견문록'은 서양에 동양을 알린 최초의 기록물 중 하나로 평가받는 작품이에요. 제목 '동방견문록(東方見聞錄)'은 일본에서 붙여진 이름을 그대로 가져온 것이고, 본래 제목은 '세계의 서술(Divisament dou monde)'이에요. 수많은 필사본이 유럽 사회에 퍼지면서 '성서' 다음으로 많이 읽혔다고 전해지죠.

마르코 폴로는 이탈리아 베네치아 출신으로, 상인인 아버지와 삼촌을 따라 1271년 여행을 시작해요. 그 여행은 1295년까지 이어졌는데, 유럽은 물론 서아시아와 중앙아시아, 중국과 인도를 거쳐 무려 25년이나 계속됐어요. 그 가운데 17년은 몽골제국의 황제(칸) 쿠빌라이가 통치하는 원나라에 머물면서 칸의 특사 자격으로 여러 나라를 답사했죠. 그는 당시 기독교만 유일한 종교로 인정했던 유럽과 달리, 원나라는 어떤 종교도 강제하지 않는다는 사실에 놀랐다고 해요.

카스피해 근처에서 석유가 솟아나는 광경을 목격한 마르코 폴로는 석유에 대해 이렇게 기록했어요. "이 기름은 먹기에는 적합하지 않지만 불이 잘 붙을 뿐 아니라 사람과 낙타의 가려움증과 부스럼을 치료하는 연고로도 쓰인다." 2개월 이상 강행군을 하며 넘은 해발 4500m 정도의 파미르 고원에 대해서는 "높이와 추위 때문에 새 한 마리 날지 못한다. (…) 불을 피워도 잘 타지 않고 평소처럼 열을 내뿜지도 못하며 음식을 요리하기도 힘들다"라고 적었어요.

물의 도시로 불리는 베네치아 출신인 마르코 폴로는 항저우를 방문하고 깜짝 놀랐다고 해요. 베네치아 역시 운하의 도시였지만, 항저우의 운하가 규모 면에서 압도적으로 컸기 때문이죠. 당시 유럽 사람들은 적대적 관계에 있던 이슬람권만 하나의 문명으로 인식하고 있었는데, 중국을 중심으로 주목할 만한 문명이 동양에 있다는 사실에 마르코 폴로는 적잖은 충격을 받아요. 거대한 도시들이 곳곳에 있었고, 가는 곳마다 큰 건축물은 물론 많은 보물도 있었거든요.

이 책을 통해 유럽 사회의 권력자들과 상인들은 동양이라는 새로운 시장과 영토를 개척할 수도 있다는 꿈을 꾸게 됐어요. 한편으로는 마르코 폴로의 다소 과장된 표현 때문에 '허풍과도 같은 이야기'라고 치부하는 사람도 많았다고 해요.

하지만 이어 역사적 기록이 하나둘 발견되면서 이 책에 등장한 표현이 적확하지는 않지만 기록으로 충분한 가치가 있다는 게 밝혀졌어요. '동방견문록'은 동양과 서양의 만남을 주선한 셈이에요.

장동석 출판도시문화재단 사무처장

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동방견문록<The Travels of Marco Polo>

동방견문록의 한 페이지

원제 《백만가지 이야기》, 《세계 불가사의의 서(世界 不可思議의 書)》(이탈리아어: Il Milione, 프랑스어: Livres des merveilles du monde 또는 갈리시아어: Le Divisament dou monde)는 1298년 루스티켈로 다 피사가 마르코 폴로의 아시아 여행담을 기록한 책으로, 흔히 《동방견문록(東方見聞錄)》으로 불린다.

설명

Delle meravigliose cose del mondo, 1496

기록

현대 역사학자들은 《동방견문록》의 신빙성에 대해 의심을 품고 있다. 일설에 따르면 이 책은 마르코 폴로가 직접 체험한 것을 쓴 것이 아니라, 다른 여행자들의 말을 듣고 기록한 것에 불과하다고 한다. 사실 이 책을 집필한 사람은 당대의 전기소설 작가였던 루스티켈로 다 피사였다. 전승에 의하면 루스티켈로는 아직 마르코 폴로가 자신과 함께 전쟁 포로 수용소 감옥에 있었을 때 그의 구술과 발언을 기초로 이 책을 썼다고 한다.

내용

《동방견문록》은 마르코가 여행한 지역의 방위와 거리, 주민의 언어, 종교, 산물, 동물과 식물 등을 하나씩 기록한 탐사 보고서의 성격을 갖고 있다. 1권은 서아시아와 중앙 아시아, 2권은 쿠빌라이 칸 치하의 원나라, 3권은 일본·동남아시아·남아시아·아프리카에 대한 내용이다.

비평

하지만, 내용의 진정성에 대한 비판도 있다. 예를 들면, 중국의 문화인 한자(漢字), 차(茶)에 대한 언급이 없다. 또한 칼리프가 바그다드의 그리스도인을 학살하려고 했다면서 이슬람이 마치 다른 종교를 탄압한 종교인 양 헐뜯고 있다. 하지만 실제 역사 속의 이슬람은 인두세만 낸다면 종교의 자유를 허용했으며, 기독교는 유대교와 더불어 성지인 예루살렘에서 태어났다고 하여 존중받았다고 주장하는 이들도 있다. 일본에 대한 언급도 “지팡구”는 황금으로 가득한 땅이라고 기술하였는데, 이는 당시 서구 상인들의 입맛을 자극하기에 충분하였다. 또한 당시 아랍인에게 황금향으로 알려진 나라는 지팡구가 아닌 “실라”(아마도 신라)라는 점에서 비판을 받기도 한다. 즉, 동방견문록은 서구인들에게 동방에 대하여 자세하게 언급한 긍정적인 역할은 했지만, 편견과 허구도 있다는 점에서 비평을 받는 것이다.

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The Travels of Marco Polo《동방견문록》

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Travels" redirects here. For Ibn Battuta's work, see The Rihla.

Book of the Travels of Marco Polo

A page of The Travels of Marco Polo
Authors	Rustichello da Pisa and Marco Polo
Original title	Livres des Merveilles du Monde
Translator	John Frampton
Country	Republic of Venice
Language	Franco-Venetian
Genre	Travel literature
Publication date	c. 1300
Dewey Decimal	915.042

Book of the Marvels of the World (Italian: Il Milione, lit. 'The Million', deriving from Polo's nickname "Emilione"), in English commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo. It describes Polo's travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.

The book was written by romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, who worked from accounts which he had heard from Marco Polo when they were imprisoned together in Genoa. Rustichello wrote it in Franco-Venetian, a cultural language widespread in northern Italy between the subalpine belt and the lower Po between the 13th and 15th centuries. It was originally known as Livre des Merveilles du Monde or Devisement du Monde ("Description of the World"). The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost, and their reconstruction is a matter of textual criticism. A total of about 150 copies in various languages are known to exist, including in French, Tuscan, two versions in Venetian, and two different versions in Latin.

From the beginning, there has been incredulity over Polo's sometimes fabulous stories, as well as a scholarly debate in recent times. Some have questioned whether Marco had actually travelled to China or was just repeating stories that he had heard from other travellers. Economic historian Mark Elvin concludes that recent work "demonstrates by specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability of the broad authenticity" of Polo's account, and that the book is, "in essence, authentic, and, when used with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious though obviously not always final, witness."]

Contents

• 1History
• 1.1Role of Rustichello
• 1.2Role of the Dominican Order
• 2Contents
• 3Legacy
• 4Subsequent versions
• 4.1Version in Franco-Venetian
• 4.2Version in Old French
• 4.3Version in Tuscan
• 4.4Version in Venetian
• 4.5Versions in Latin
• 4.6Critical editions
• 5Authenticity and veracity
• 6Other travellers
• 7Footnotes
• 8Further reading
• 9External links

History

The route Polo describes.

The probable view of Marco Polo's own geography (drawn by Henry Yule, 1871).

Further information: Niccolò and Maffeo Polo

The source of the title Il Milione is debated. One view is it comes from the Polo family's use of the name Emilione to distinguish themselves from the numerous other Venetian families bearing the name Polo. A more common view is that the name refers to medieval reception of the travelog, namely that it was full of "a million" lies.

Modern assessments of the text usually consider it to be the record of an observant rather than imaginative or analytical traveller. Marco Polo emerges as being curious and tolerant, and devoted to Kublai Khan and the dynasty that he served for two decades. The book is Polo's account of his travels to China, which he calls Cathay (north China) and Manji (south China). The Polo party left Venice in 1271. The journey took three years after which they arrived in Cathay as it was then called and met the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan. They left China in late 1290 or early 1291 and were back in Venice in 1295. The tradition is that Polo dictated the book to a romance writer, Rustichello da Pisa, while in prison in Genoa between 1298 and 1299. Rustichello may have worked up his first Franco-Italian version from Marco's notes. The book was then named Devisement du Monde and Livres des Merveilles du Monde in French, and De Mirabilibus Mundi in Latin.

Role of Rustichello

The British scholar Ronald Latham has pointed out that The Book of Marvels was in fact a collaboration written in 1298–1299 between Polo and a professional writer of romances, Rustichello of Pisa.[17] It is believed that Polo related his memoirs orally to Rustichello da Pisa while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde in Franco-Venetian language.

Latham also argued that Rustichello may have glamorised Polo's accounts, and added fantastic and romantic elements that made the book a bestseller. The Italian scholar Luigi Foscolo Benedetto had previously demonstrated that the book was written in the same "leisurely, conversational style" that characterised Rustichello's other works, and that some passages in the book were taken verbatim or with minimal modifications from other writings by Rustichello. For example, the opening introduction in The Book of Marvels to "emperors and kings, dukes and marquises" was lifted straight out of an Arthurian romance Rustichello had written several years earlier, and the account of the second meeting between Polo and Kublai Khan at the latter's court is almost the same as that of the arrival of Tristan at the court of King Arthur at Camelot in that same book. Latham believed that many elements of the book, such as legends of the Middle East and mentions of exotic marvels, may have been the work of Rustichello who was giving what medieval European readers expected to find in a travel book.

Role of the Dominican Order

Apparently, from the very beginning Marco's story aroused contrasting reactions, as it was received by some with a certain disbelief. The Dominican father Francesco Pipino [it] was the author of a translation into Latin, Iter Marci Pauli Veneti in 1302, just a few years after Marco's return to Venice. Francesco Pipino solemnly affirmed the truthfulness of the book and defined Marco as a "prudent, honoured and faithful man". In his writings, the Dominican brother Jacopo d'Acqui explains why his contemporaries were skeptical about the content of the book. He also relates that before dying, Marco Polo insisted that "he had told only a half of the things he had seen".

According to some recent research of the Italian scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship that Marco Polo cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that local fathers collaborated with him for a Latin version of the book, which means that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order.

Since Dominican fathers had among their missions that of evangelizing foreign peoples (cf. the role of Dominican missionaries in China and in the Indies), it is reasonable to think that they considered Marco's book as a trustworthy piece of information for missions in the East. The diplomatic communications between Pope Innocent IV and Pope Gregory X with the Mongols were probably another reason for this endorsement. At the time, there was open discussion of a possible Christian-Mongol alliance with an anti-Islamic function. In fact, a Mongol delegate was solemnly baptised at the Second Council of Lyon. At the council, Pope Gregory X promulgated a new Crusade to start in 1278 in liaison with the Mongols.

Contents

The Travels is divided into four books. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, and the east coast of Africa. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers.

Legacy

The Travels was a rare popular success in an era before printing.

The impact of Polo's book on cartography was delayed: the first map in which some names mentioned by Polo appear was in the Catalan Atlas of Charles V (1375), which included thirty names in China and a number of other Asian toponyms. In the mid-fifteenth century the cartographer of Murano, Fra Mauro, meticulously included all of Polo's toponyms in his 1450 map of the world.

A heavily annotated copy of Polo's book was among the belongings of Columbus.

Subsequent versions

French "Livre des merveilles" front page[31]

Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on the Latin edition of Marco Polo's Le livre des merveilles.

Marco Polo was accompanied on his trips by his father and uncle (both of whom had been to China previously), though neither of them published any known works about their journeys. The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost. A total of about 150 copies in various languages are known to exist. During copying and translating many errors were made, so there are many differences between the various copies.

According to the French philologist Philippe Ménard, there are six main versions of the book: the version closest to the original, in Franco-Venetian; a version in Old French; a version in Tuscan; two versions in Venetian; two different versions in Latin.

Version in Franco-Venetian

The oldest surviving Polo manuscript is in Franco-Venetian, which was a variety of Old French heavily flavoured with Venetian dialect, spread in Northern Italy in the 13th century; for Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, this "F" text is the basic original text, which he corrected by comparing it with the somewhat more detailed Italian of Ramusio, together with a Latin manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Version in Old French

A version written in Old French, titled Le Livre des merveilles (The Book of Marvels).

This version counts 18 manuscripts, whose most famous is the Code Fr. 2810. Famous for its miniatures, the Code 2810 is in the French National Library. Another Old French Polo manuscript, dating to around 1350, is held by the National Library of Sweden. A critical edition of this version was edited in the 2000s by Philippe Ménard.

Version in Tuscan

A version in Tuscan (Italian language) titled Navigazione di messer Marco Polo was written in Florence by Michele Ormanni. It is found in the Italian National Library in Florence. Other early important sources are the manuscript "R" (Ramusio's Italian translation first printed in 1559).

Version in Venetian

The version in Venetian dialect is full of mistakes and is not considered trustworthy.

Versions in Latin

• One of the early manuscripts, Iter Marci Pauli Veneti, was a translation into Latin made by the Dominican brother Francesco Pipino in 1302, only three years after Marco's return to Venice. This testifies the deep interest the Dominican Order had in the book. According to recent research by the Italian scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship Marco Polo cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order, which had among its missions that of evangelizing foreign peoples (cf. the role of Dominican missionaries in China and in the Indies). This Latin version is conserved by 70 manuscripts.

• Another Latin version called "Z" is conserved only by one manuscript, which is to be found in Toledo, Spain. This version contains about 300 small curious additional facts about religion and ethnography in the Far East. Experts wondered whether these additions were from Marco Polo himself.

Critical editions

The first attempt to collate manuscripts and provide a critical edition was in a volume of collected travel narratives printed at Venice in 1559.

The editor, Giovan Battista Ramusio, collated manuscripts from the first part of the fourteenth century, which he considered to be "perfettamente corretto" ("perfectly correct"). The edition of Benedetto, Marco Polo, Il Milione, under the patronage of the Comitato Geografico Nazionale Italiano (Florence: Olschki, 1928), collated sixty additional manuscript sources, in addition to some eighty that had been collected by Henry Yule, for his 1871 edition. It was Benedetto who identified Rustichello da Pisa, as the original compiler or amanuensis, and his established text has provided the basis for many modern translations: his own in Italian (1932), and Aldo Ricci's The Travels of Marco Polo (London, 1931).

The first English translation is the Elizabethan version by John Frampton published in 1579, The most noble and famous travels of Marco Polo, based on Santaella's Castilian translation of 1503 (the first version in that language).

A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot published a translation under the title Description of the World that uses manuscript F as its base and attempts to combine the several versions of the text into one continuous narrative while at the same time indicating the source for each section (London, 1938). ISBN 4871873080

An introduction to Marco Polo is Leonard Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia: An Introduction to His "Description of the World" Called "Il Milione", translated by John A. Scott (Berkeley: University of California) 1960; it had its origins in the celebrations of the seven hundredth anniversary of Marco Polo's birth.

Authenticity and veracity

Le livre des merveilles, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 2810, Tav. 84r "Qui hae sì gran caldo che a pena vi si puote sofferire (...). Questa gente sono tutti neri, maschi e femmine, e vanno tutti ignudi, se non se tanto ch'egliono ricuoprono loro natura con un panno molto bianco. Costoro non hanno per peccato veruna lussuria"[43]

Since its publication, many have viewed the book with skepticism. Some in the Middle Ages viewed the book simply as a romance or fable, largely because of the sharp difference of its descriptions of a sophisticated civilisation in China to other early accounts by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and William of Rubruck who portrayed the Mongols as "barbarians" who appeared to belong to "some other world". Doubts have also been raised in later centuries about Marco Polo's narrative of his travels in China, for example for his failure to mention a number of things and practices commonly associated with China, such as the Chinese characters, tea, chopsticks, and footbinding. In particular, his failure to mention the Great Wall of China had been noted as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. In addition, the difficulties in identifying many of the place names he used also raised suspicion about Polo's accounts. Many have questioned whether or not he had visited the places he mentioned in his itinerary, or he had appropriated the accounts of his father and uncle or other travelers, or doubted that he even reached China and that, if he did, perhaps never went beyond Khanbaliq (Beijing).

Historian Stephen G. Haw however argued that many of the "omissions" could be explained. For example, none of the other Western travelers to Yuan dynasty China at that time, such as Giovanni de' Marignolli and Odoric of Pordenone, mentioned the Great Wall, and that while remnants of the Wall would have existed at that time, it would not have been significant or noteworthy as it had not been maintained for a long time. The Great Walls were built to keep out northern invaders, whereas the ruling dynasty during Marco Polo's visit were those very northern invaders. The Mongol rulers whom Polo served also controlled territories both north and south of today's wall, and would have no reasons to maintain any fortifications that may have remained there from the earlier dynasties. He noted the Great Wall familiar to us today is a Ming structure built some two centuries after Marco Polo's travels. The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta did mention the Great Wall, but when he asked about the wall while in China during the Yuan dynasty, he could find no one who had either seen it or knew of anyone who had seen it. Haw also argued that practices such as footbinding were not common even among Chinese during Polo's time and almost unknown among the Mongols. While the Italian missionary Odoric of Pordenone who visited Yuan China mentioned footbinding (it is however unclear whether he was only relaying something he heard as his description is inaccurate), no other foreign visitors to Yuan China mentioned the practice, perhaps an indication that the footbinding was not widespread or was not practiced in an extreme form at that time. Marco Polo himself noted (in the Toledo manuscript) the dainty walk of Chinese women who took very short steps.

It has also been pointed out that Polo's accounts are more accurate and detailed than other accounts of the periods. Polo had at times denied the "marvelous" fables and legends given in other European accounts, and also omitted descriptions of strange races of people then believed to inhabit eastern Asia and given in such accounts. For example, Odoric of Pordenone said that the Yangtze river flows through the land of pygmies only three spans high and gave other fanciful tales, while Giovanni da Pian del Carpine spoke of "wild men, who do not speak at all and have no joints in their legs", monsters who looked like women but whose menfolk were dogs, and other equally fantastic accounts. Despite a few exaggerations and errors, Polo's accounts are relatively free of the descriptions of irrational marvels, and in many cases where present (mostly given in the first part before he reached China), he made a clear distinction that they are what he had heard rather than what he had seen. It is also largely free of the gross errors in other accounts such as those given by the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta who had confused the Yellow River with the Grand Canal and other waterways, and believed that porcelain was made from coal.

Many of the details in Polo's accounts have been verified. For example, when visiting Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, China, Marco Polo noted that a large number of Christian churches had been built there. His claim is confirmed by a Chinese text of the 14th century explaining how a Sogdian named Mar-Sargis from Samarkand founded six Nestorian Christian churches there in addition to one in Hangzhou during the second half of the 13th century. Nestorian Christianity had existed in China since the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) when a Persian monk named Alopen came to the capital Chang'an in 653 to proselytize, as described in a dual Chinese and Syriac language inscription from Chang'an (modern Xi'an) dated to the year 781.

In 2012, the University of Tübingen sinologist and historian Hans Ulrich Vogel released a detailed analysis of Polo's description of currencies, salt production and revenues, and argued that the evidence supports his presence in China because he included details which he could not have otherwise known. Vogel noted that no other Western, Arab, or Persian sources have given such accurate and unique details about the currencies of China, for example, the shape and size of the paper, the use of seals, the various denominations of paper money as well as variations in currency usage in different regions of China, such as the use of cowry shells in Yunnan, details supported by archaeological evidence and Chinese sources compiled long after Polo's had left China. His accounts of salt production and revenues from the salt monopoly are also accurate, and accord with Chinese documents of the Yuan era. Economic historian Mark Elvin, in his preface to Vogel's 2013 monograph, concludes that Vogel "demonstrates by specific example after specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability of the broad authenticity" of Polo's account. Many problems were caused by the oral transmission of the original text and the proliferation of significantly different hand-copied manuscripts. For instance, did Polo exert "political authority" (seignora) in Yangzhou or merely "sojourn" (sejourna) there? Elvin concludes that "those who doubted, although mistaken, were not always being casual or foolish", but "the case as a whole had now been closed": the book is, "in essence, authentic, and, when used with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious though obviously not always final, witness".

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Other travellers

Further information: Europeans in Medieval China and John of Montecorvino

City of Ayas visited by Marco Polo in 1271, from Le Livre des Merveilles

Although Marco Polo was certainly the most famous, he was not the only nor the first European traveller to the Mongol Empire who subsequently wrote an account of his experiences. Earlier thirteenth-century European travellers who journeyed to the court of the Great Khan were André de Longjumeau, William of Rubruck and Giovanni da Pian del Carpine with Benedykt Polak. None of them however reached China itself. Later travelers such as Odoric of Pordenone and Giovanni de' Marignolli reached China during the Yuan dynasty and wrote accounts of their travels.

The Moroccan merchant Ibn Battuta travelled through the Golden Horde and China subsequently in the early-to-mid-14th century. The 14th-century author John Mandeville wrote an account of journeys in the East, but this was probably based on second-hand information and contains much apocryphal information.

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