文档介绍：Invisible Cities Chapter One
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Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions(探险\远征), but the emperor(皇帝,君主) of the Tartars(鞑靼人(蒙古人和突厥人)does continue listening to the young ian(威尼斯人) with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless(无限的;无边无际的) extension(延长;延期;扩大;伸展;电话分机) of the territories(地区;领土;边疆区(territory的复数) we have conquered(vt. 战胜,征服;攻克,攻取vi. 胜利;得胜, and the melancholy(忧郁的;使人悲伤的;n. 忧郁;悲哀;愁思) and relief(n. 救济;减轻,解除;安慰) of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness es over us at ev
ening, with the odo(气味;名声)r of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.
Cities and Memory 1.
Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden co