by Jan Potocki
What is the novel about? At a simple level, it is a novel of frames; the preface, supposedly written in 1809, encapsulates the narrative of Alphonse van Worden, a young Walloon officer about to join the Spanish army, who for two months in 1739 is diverted from his journey to Madrid, and obliged to spend this time in the company of the Muslims, cabbalists, Spanish noblemen, thieves and gypsies whose stories are recorded by him as they are told to him. These story-tellers adopt the first person not only to tell their own tales, but also to relate stories they have heard from others: at one point even, the gypsy chief Avadoro (or Pandesowna, as he is also known) tells a story within a story within a story within a story, much to the annoyance of one of the more literal-minded members of his audience. These stories are loosely linked to events in European history between about 1700 and 1740, although it is not necessary to know about the historical background to understand them. An epilogue, also written by Alphonse van Worden in about 1769, closes the novel and ties up the loose ends. All this self-conscious and often highly sophisticated story-telling may suggest that the book is demanding, even difficult to read, in the way that modern experimental fiction can be: but this is not the case. It cannot be denied that by the middle of the novel there are several different stories being related at the same time, and that their enmeshment is such that the characters in the novel themselves are made to complain about its complexity. But, this fact apart, Potocki’s novel has much in common with other epics of entertaining story-telling such as Boccaccio’s Decameron or The Thousand and One Nights, with which its first readers compared it. Like those works, each story is complete in itself, even though there is an overall design which enhances the pleasure of reading by the many coincidences, patterns and recurrent figures which help bind the whole text together.
Potocki seems at one time to have thought of his work in terms of the Gothic novel (‘à la Radcliffe’, as he said in a letter to a friend), and indeed there is no shortage of macabre, sinister, ghastly and horrific events; but it also has affinities with many other literary modes: the picaresque, in the story of Avadoro-Pandesowna’s semi-criminal youth; the adventure story, in its evocation of inexhaustible gold-mines and grand international conspiracies; the pastoral, in its disabused portrayal of court life and its celebration of the beauties of nature; the libertine novel, in its imaginative exploration of the erotic; the conte philosophique, in the dry satirical tone of much of the text and its moral, political, religious and scientific discussions; the fantastic, in its intermingling of the supernatural and the ordinary (although how much remains supernatural at the end is for the reader to decide); the Bildungsroman, in the process by which the naïve Alphonse van Worden is brought to maturity. These affinities have led critics to compare it to Don Quixote, Gil Blas, even Nathan der Weise; but as well as all of this, it is a novel of portraits, a veritable gallery of eccentrics, boors, wits, fools, pedants, philosophers, tricksters, boon companions, cowards and brave men, coquettes and (more rarely) virtuous women. Some of these portraits are just vignettes, others are extensive and profound; some add their colourful voices to the rich texture of the novel, others are no more than the objects of picturesque description.
Leitmotifs run through the work, adding to its pleasure. There are erotic encounters involving sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four participants, some told naively, some urbanely, some with a tortured conscience; authoritarian fathers (van Worden, Velásquez, Soarez) repeatedly appear to imprint on their sons their own strange philosophies of life; characters are metamorphosed or transform themselves from Christians into Muslims or Jews, from men into women, from beautiful girls into hideous corpses. Dreadful scourges in the shape of implacable persecutors (the principino, Sedekias, Busqueros) haunt the lives of the protagonists. There is a great deal of impersonation and acting, of illusion and delusion, throughout the novel: much of this has to do with strange, convoluted, even barbaric and cruel rites of initiation, which the major characters – Alphonse van Worden, Juan Avadoro-Pandesowna, the Great Sheikh of the Gomelez – all undergo. Other, more mysterious, patterns can be traced, not only in the succession and balance of the stories, but also in the recurrent tableaux, which, as some scholars have pointed out, seem to have affinities with the tarot pack. These motifs are there to be enjoyed, whatever significance may be attached to them by critics.
Does the book have a message? Certain commentators have seen in it an answer to Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme, a sort of Enlightenment celebration of reason and toleration. Others have opted for the rationalism implicit in the younger Velásquez’s mathem-atization of the human being; yet others for the materialism to which the elder Hervas turns in despair at the end of his life. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa could be seen as a novel of social and political conservatism, or a savage indictment of the social order and of all political activity, or a plea for pragmatism and liberalism. In a certain sense, all of these apparently contradictory views are true, for different parts of the text can be used to support different theories about it. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the contrast between the heartfelt confession of Enrique de Velásquez, the proponent of selflessness, and the measured Mephistophelian speeches of Don Belial, who propounds a philosophy based on egoism. A recurrent moral theme is that of honour: various versions are explored, and all are subtly and mercilessly satirized. There is the lunatic delicacy of the Walloon officer Juan van Worden, who will fight any number of duels to satisfy a nightmare punctiliousness about aristocratic honour which is almost never shared by his reluctant adversaries; we encounter the bandit Zoto, whose scrupulous and much-praised observance of the niceties of brigandry and murder perplexes Juan’s naïve son; Pedro de Velásquez’s obsession with science and mathematics spills over into his bizarre courtship of the person known as Rebecca de Uzeda; the sanguinary fanaticism of the Gomelez family contrasts with the Uzedas’ readiness to submit to any requirements of outward observance, in a spirit akin to that of the Vicar of Bray; yet more relaxed ethical postures can be detected in such figures as the Knight of Toledo and Señora Uscariz. Do all these value systems have a single root, in the same way that the novel suggests (at certain points) that all religions spring indifferently from one source? Do they constitute the bundle of contradictions – integrity and duplicity, flesh and spirit, rigidity and suppleness, youth and maturity, indulgence and asceticism, prolixity and silence, folly and wisdom – which go to make up the human being? Could this be the hidden message of the book?
Every reader will no doubt find certain passages or aspects more significant than others. There are moments when a reader may detect a lyrical or passionate note breaking through Potocki’s characteristically witty, detached, satirical prose, which is dominated by the humane, worldly-wise, ironic voice of Avadoro-Pandesowna. On two occasions, it seems to me, his tone changes: once, towards the end of his life story, when he speaks of the loves of a young man, in which the individual figures of his mistresses merge into a composite evocation of the tenderness, excitement, adventure and pleasures of love; the other occasion, and to my mind the more telling, when he describes a specifically Spanish mode of social intercourse. The French had at this time, as is well known, the reputation for brilliant, flirtatious, urbane conversation between social equals of different sexes in the context of the salon (Carlos de Velásquez practises it in this novel); at the same time, the Spaniards were known for their taciturnity. Avadoro’s father, the implausible progenitor of the articulate figure whose narrative voice dominates the novel, scarcely utters a single word in the whole of his adult life; his granddaughter, the mysterious elfin Ondina, is almost as uncommunicative. But between these zones of silence, the gypsy chief himself revels in speech, both his own and that of others, which he relays to his motley band of listeners. This celebration of polyphony, of unfettered human intercourse, has been linked to the enlightened, tolerant exchanges of freemasonry, but Avadoro-Pandesowna offers it as a specifically Spanish experience, arising
from the institution of the highway inn, which makes no distinction of class, is not bound by the stiff etiquette of Spanish polite society, brings together all sexes and ages, is unpredictable, jolly, communal; if Potocki’s novel has a message, this seems to me to be it. It is to this that Avadoro-Pandesowna gives expression in his nostalgic description of the Spanish hostelry on the twelfth day:
The beasts were at the rack in the stables and the travellers were at the other end in the kitchen, separated from the stable by two stone steps. At that time, this was the normal arrangement in nearly all Spanish inns. The whole building was but one long room of which the greater part was occupied by the mules and the lesser by the humans. But it was all the merrier for that. As the zagal (muleteer) saw to the pack animals, he kept up a steady stream of repartee with the innkeeper’s wife, who replied with all the liveliness of her sex and station until the more serious-minded innkeeper came between them and interrupted the exchanges. They soon started up again, however. The inn rang to the sound of the castanets played by the maids, who danced to the raucous singing of a goatherd. Travellers made each other’s acquaintance and invited each other to supper. Everyone gathered round the stove, said who they were, where they were going and sometimes told stories. Those were the good old days; now our inns are more comfortable, but the boisterous social life which the travellers of those days led had a charm I cannot describe to you.
Not just here, but for much of the novel, we are vicariously transported into the atmosphere of an early-eighteenth-century Spanish hostelry (or, if we abandon the fictional framework, an inn in 1780, when Potocki visited Spain), listening to the stories of men and women, some rich, some poor, some law-abiding, some criminal, some naïve, some worldly-wise; how can such a cornucopia of narratives be brought to an end? Some critics have said that the resolution of this particular novel is disappointing, but it may be that no novel of this sort can resolve the problem of an ending which must be indefinitely deferred if the entertainment is to continue: for when the voices are stilled and the party breaks up, silence, solitude, absence, even a sort of death supervenes. But for as long as the book remains open, inviting the reader into the imaginary hostelry of its pages, it can prove itself to be the most lively and entertaining of companions.
Translator’s Note
Potocki’s text poses a number of problems in respect of the titles of address and courtesy, which are rendered by Potocki from an original language (usually Spanish) into French (e.g. ‘Señor caballero’ becomes ‘Seigneur cavalier’). I have thought it appropriate to revert to the original, rather than find an English equivalent for the French, and to leave foreign titles of nobility in the most usual form, depending on the context. In some cases, this leads to mixed usage (e.g. both ‘Duque’ and ‘Duke’); in others the use of the lower case (in referring to characters by title). I have not translated the many terms for different currencies (pieces of eight, darics, piastres, piastres fortes, sequins, pistoles, reals, and others besides); their context makes their value clear enough. I have also left the various horse-driven modes of transport (carrosses, chaises, chaises roulantes, Utters, calèches, etc.) in their original form for the most part. I have provided footnotes for the foreign words and phrases which Potocki left in his text, and have also noted historical events where it seemed to me to be enlightening; but not all of Radrizzani’s own notes have been reproduced, nor has his critical apparatus (variant readings, alternative versions of days, etc.) been included. The occasional textual inconsistencies or errors have also been recorded in footnotes.
It gives me great pleasure to place on record the debts I owe to Pauline, my wife, and to Paul Foote, for having read whole drafts of the translation, to Roger Pearson, for his astute advice about the Introduction, and to Peter Southwell, Ron Truman, John Rutherford, Peter Neumann, Peter Robbins, John Baines and Peter Miller for guidance on specific points of the text. Siegbert Prawer generously lent me invaluable books to which I was able to refer while undertaking this translation; but his advice and encouragement over many years has been more valuable still, and it gives me particular pleasure to record it here. Jan Lewendon and Fleur Walsh put up with my presence in their office for long periods of time with more good humour than was my due, and generously provided me with liquid sustenance and technical advice. Pat Lloyd heroically typed a first draft from a scratchy dictaphone; without her help, my manuscript would perhaps never have seen the light of day.
A Note on the Geographical Location
Potocki refers to a number of places and geographical features in Andalusia in the course of his story: a brief glance at a map will reveal that he has deliberately mixed up his locations. The Venta de Cárdenas is indeed the most northerly inn in the Sierra Morena on the road to Madrid; but the Venta Quemada is a fiction, perhaps suggested by the village of Aldeaquemada, which is west of the Venta de Cárdenas. The settlement called La Carlota is not north of Andújar, but more than sixty miles to the south-west, on the other side of Córdoba; the river Guadalquivir does indeed rush down from the mountains in the way described by Potocki, but only in the spring, and not in the Sierra Morena, but the Sierra de Cazorla, far to the east of the place where he situates it. Although in the book there is a lake of volcanic origin called La Frita, there does not seem to be one at all in the region; but Potocki’s description of the countryside north of Andújar corresponds quite well to what is to be found there today. In the spring there is a profusion of wild flowers, aromatic herbs and flowering shrubs in a landscape of bizarrely shaped and weathered rocks and some caves; certainly attractive enough to engender the feelings of Rousseauistic enthusiasm for natural beauty which are attributed to Alphonse van Worden. Further south, however, in the putative site of the Baetican gold mine, the scrubby uplands are less appealing; for the most part they have been reclaimed for use as extensive olive plantations, a feature of the whole region today.
Glossary
Only those words which recur in the text have been included in this list: in other cases, a footnote gives the meaning.
agour!, good day! (an invention of Potocki’s)
alcalde, mayor
alguazil, policeman
barigel, gaoler
contador, comptroller of accounts
corregidor, senior official of the crown, with legal and administrative functions
fray, brother
gonilla, Spanish ruff
hidalgo, gentleman
oidor, judge
olla, pot
olla podrida, stew
pelota, outdoor ball game
presepe, crib
quinta, farm
sbiro, policeman appointed by the community or government
seguidilla, a Spanish song form
tirana, ancient Spanish song form
venta, inn
virreina, wife of viceroy
zagal, muleteer
A Guide to the Stories
For those who may wish to follow particular stories without having to engage with the full complexity of Potocki’s interwoven narrations, the following index is a guide to the principal stories, with page references:
Ahasuerus, see the Wandering Jew
Athenagoras the philosopher 125–7
Avadoro, Juan, see the Gypsy Chief
Busqueros, Don Roque 387–91
Cabbalist, the, see Uzeda, Pedro de
Cassar Gomelez 18–21
Cerella, Laura (see also Paduli, Marchesa) 441–7
Cornádez, Señor (see also Salero, Frasqueta) 484–6, 534
Emina (see also Zubeida) 15–18
Fair Maiden of the castle of Sombre, the 115–21
Gomelez, Great Sheikh of the 600–625
Gypsy Chief, the 131–40, 171–3, 194–7, 201–2, 231–7, 294–7, 330–34, 345–51, 355–7, 476–81, 483–4, 536–96
Hermosito 297–303, 323–6
Hervas, Blas 499–525, 534
Hervas, Diego 481–505
La Jacquière, Thibaud de 112–2
1
Landulpho of Ferrara 46–8
Medina Sidonia, Duquesa de 297–326
Menippus of Lycia 123–4
Monte Salerno, Principessa di 150–54
Pacheco the demoniac 27–33, 94–6
Paduli, Marchesa, see Laura Cerella
Pandesowna, see the Gypsy Chief
Peña Vélez, Conde de 202–11
Rebecca, see Uzeda, Rebecca de
Reprobate pilgrim, the, see Blas Hervas
Ricardi, Monsignor 441–7
Salero, Frasqueta (see also Cornádez) 391–9
Soarez, house of 359–62
Soarez, Lope 357–9, 366–70, 375–8, 384–7, 400
Toralva, Commander 525–33
Torres, Maria de 173–9, 181–90, 192–3
Torres Rovellas, Marqués de 435–41, 448–67
