Heteronym
New Member
During the Napoleonic Wars, a French officer participating in the conquest of Saragossa finds a diary. Shortly afterwards he’s captured. However one of the Spanish officers notices the diary and identifies himself as one of the descendents of the diary’s owner. He saves the Frenchman for having rescued such a precious artefact and proceeds to read the diary to him.
What the diary narrates is the 66-day journey of young Alphonse Van Worden to Madrid, to take his place as captain of the Walloon Guard. Making his way through the myserious Sierra Morena region, he mysteriously loses his servants and meets a vast cast of fascinating characters, including Muslim princesses, the ghosts of hanged highway robbers, an astrologist, a geometer, the Holy Inquisition, a gipsy chief, the Wandering Jew, holy men, a hermit and a possessed man.
Alphonse believes the Muslim princesses are trying to lead him away from his religion and seduce him into embracing Islam for sinister reasons he can’t understand. Supernatural events surround their coming and going and Alphonse’s journey out of Sierra Morena is constantly delayed by adventures.
Furthermore every time he meets someone in his path they proceed to tell the story of their lives. This novel is not of easy description because this is the ultimate stories-within-stories novel. Characters tell stories about other characters who tell about other characters before returning to their own, until you’re lost and nothing makes sense anymore. Sometimes this is fascinating, sometimes it's dull.
Eventually Alphonse’s own story is overwhelmed by the others. This novel has the same inconvenience of a short-story collection: you never know whether you’ll like the next story. Every genre is present here, from Gothic to erotic, from picaresque to comic, from adventurous to moral and philosophical. Some stories are exciting, others are unbearable. I can say my favourite narrative concerned the life of the Wandering Jew, which is sadly but deliberately left incomplete.
When Alphonse’s narrative returns to the forefront I’d almost forgotten what it was about and then the author deals it with in a logical, if rushed, epilogue. Conspiracy nuts are fond of the expression ‘everything is connected’. The author gives it a whole new dimension in this novel.
Written between 1805 and 1915, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is an experimental novel, playing around with the structure of the novel, which by the time it was written, wasn’t as rigid as it is today. But I don’t think it was a successful experiment. Interesting narratives didn’t have enough pages; others of little interest went on for hundreds of pages. Count Jan Potocki was an eccentric man and poured his fascination with philosophy, exotic places, secret societies, The Arabian Nights and the supernatural into the novel. I expected a more interesting result.
What the diary narrates is the 66-day journey of young Alphonse Van Worden to Madrid, to take his place as captain of the Walloon Guard. Making his way through the myserious Sierra Morena region, he mysteriously loses his servants and meets a vast cast of fascinating characters, including Muslim princesses, the ghosts of hanged highway robbers, an astrologist, a geometer, the Holy Inquisition, a gipsy chief, the Wandering Jew, holy men, a hermit and a possessed man.
Alphonse believes the Muslim princesses are trying to lead him away from his religion and seduce him into embracing Islam for sinister reasons he can’t understand. Supernatural events surround their coming and going and Alphonse’s journey out of Sierra Morena is constantly delayed by adventures.
Furthermore every time he meets someone in his path they proceed to tell the story of their lives. This novel is not of easy description because this is the ultimate stories-within-stories novel. Characters tell stories about other characters who tell about other characters before returning to their own, until you’re lost and nothing makes sense anymore. Sometimes this is fascinating, sometimes it's dull.
Eventually Alphonse’s own story is overwhelmed by the others. This novel has the same inconvenience of a short-story collection: you never know whether you’ll like the next story. Every genre is present here, from Gothic to erotic, from picaresque to comic, from adventurous to moral and philosophical. Some stories are exciting, others are unbearable. I can say my favourite narrative concerned the life of the Wandering Jew, which is sadly but deliberately left incomplete.
When Alphonse’s narrative returns to the forefront I’d almost forgotten what it was about and then the author deals it with in a logical, if rushed, epilogue. Conspiracy nuts are fond of the expression ‘everything is connected’. The author gives it a whole new dimension in this novel.
Written between 1805 and 1915, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is an experimental novel, playing around with the structure of the novel, which by the time it was written, wasn’t as rigid as it is today. But I don’t think it was a successful experiment. Interesting narratives didn’t have enough pages; others of little interest went on for hundreds of pages. Count Jan Potocki was an eccentric man and poured his fascination with philosophy, exotic places, secret societies, The Arabian Nights and the supernatural into the novel. I expected a more interesting result.