Invisible Cities

Kublai Khan’s maps and chess sets are a motif that demonstrates his attempt to control the lands he has conquered by trying out ruling strategies from a distance. One of Khan’s atlases depicts “the terrestrial globe all at once and continent by continent, the borders of the most distant realms, the ships’ routes […] the maps of the most illustrious metropolises and of the most opulent ports” (124). In addition to giving an exhaustive account of the world known at the historic time of Polo and Khan’s meeting, it also shows cities of future civilizations “which neither Marco nor the geographers know exist” (124). Still, Polo opines that Khan’s atlas “preserves the differences intact,” which runs counter to experience of travel, whereby “differences are lost: each city takes to resembling other cities,” and their significance and hierarchy shifts in a cloud-like manner (124). The theoretical nature of the map is a metaphor for Khan’s empire and for the centralizing forces that would seek to control meaning. Instead, Polo’s journey makes nonsense of the empirical quest to define lands and borders.

While maps are a symbol of Khan’s wish to gauge the extent of his territory, the game of chess, with its pieces representative of courtiers and intricate rules, indicates his desire to find a formula for ruling.