nogoodnik quoted Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities …
[T]he emperor is he who is a foreigner to each of his subjects, and only through foreign eyes and ears could the empire manifest its existence to the Kublai. In languages incomprehensible to the Khan, the envoys related information heard in languages incomprehensible to them...Newly arrived and totally ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco Polo could express himself only with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and of horror, animal barkings or hootings, or with objects he took from his knapsacks - ostrich plumes, pea-shooters, quartzes - which he arranged in front of him like chessmen.
reading Invisible Cities just after A Memory Called Empire, with modern-sf conceptions of empire fresh in my mind, really brings out passages like this. absolutely /loving/ the richness of Calvino's prose and his imagination of the fantastical. and besides, cultural contact, meaning, and the challenge of communication are all themes I adore