This suggests that Polo feels an obligation to tell his readers, with whom he shares a common sympathy and culture, about the strangeness and wonders of the Orient, prioritizing the strange above the ordinary. Also it implies that these tales seem strange and magic on their surfaces. This hyperawareness of strangeness, in contrast with making strangeness have a veneer of normalcy when talking about different people and places to the 'other' Khan, is obviously not shared with the Marco Polo of Invisible Cities.

The Calvino cities seem to hover in thin air, normal or not, as Polo weaves his web of stories that may or may not be true. There is no urgent 'must' of convincing the reader or Kublai Khan, rather the cities are conjured up through the genius of the author, and the artful nature of storytelling, although Marco Polo's memory is not trustworthy even while "things can...
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