The book of the Pole Jacek Dukay "Other Songs" offers the reader a complex multifaceted world, as different as possible from ours, the real one.
Jacek Dukaj is one of Poland’s most interesting contemporary prose writers, whose books are always eagerly anticipated events. Dukaj studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. He successfully debuted at the age of 16 with a short story Złota Galera (Golden Galley). He is known for the complexity of his books, and it is often said that a single short story of Dukaj contains more ideas than many other writers put into their books in their lifetime. Popular themes in his works include the technological singularity, nanotechnology and virtual reality, and because of this his books often can be classified as hard science fiction.
According to Aristotle, the world consists of four primordial matters - earth (ge), water (gidora), fire (pyros), air (aera), and the fifth, responsible for their interaction - ether. Matter by its nature is formless and inert, and in order for it to take a certain form, an effort of the spirit is required - only he is able to give it tangible, visible and conscious features. These ideas, set forth in the first place in the darkest and most mysterious of Aristotle's books, Metaphysics, formed the basis of the novel by Jacek Dukaj, perhaps the main science fiction writer of modern Poland.
The concept of "formed the basis" should be understood not metaphorically, but quite literally. The world created by Dukai demonstrates the absolute Aristotelian primacy of spirit over matter, and each person is the bearer of this very spirit to one degree or another. Those who are subject to the elements are called demiurges; their higher-ranking counterparts, capable of giving stable forms to empty matter or "keros" (Greek for "wax"), are called teknites. Ares, strategos and Nimrods are all endowed in one way or another with a special gift of war on land or sea. But the highest step in the hierarchy is occupied by kratistos - special beings-rulers capable of transforming, filling entire countries and continents with light (or, on the contrary, darkness) of their own personality. Thus, the world of "Other Songs" is extremely heterogeneous, fluid and changeable: everything is subject to morphing under the influence of the spirit - from the human body to the weather and from biological species to landscape features.
If at this point you are already a little confused, then you should prepare for the worst in advance: Jacek Dukaj's novel requires a very, very high entrance qualification and, on first impression, is as unfriendly to the reader as possible. Unfamiliar words and concepts (mostly, but not exclusively of ancient Greek origin) will rain down on him without a break and without the slightest comment, and in order to orient himself, to establish parallels between the world of "Other Songs" and our own, and most importantly, in general, at least somehow to understand what is actually happening, it will take at least a hundred pages.
At about the same point, a plot will begin to emerge from a bizarre chaos of details that are difficult to interpret. Hieronymus Berbelek, formerly a great strategos, now ekes out a colorless existence as a merchant in one of the wealthy cities of northern Europe. In the past, he suffered a catastrophic defeat from the powerful cratistos Maxim Rog, nicknamed the Warlock, who spreads his dark influence wider and wider, and now Jerome's form is distorted: he has become weaker, smaller, and the fire of the spirit no longer burns in him with the same strength. However, the measured and empty life of the hero comes to an end when the half-forgotten ex-wife sends their common teenage children, sixteen-year-old Abel and fourteen-year-old Alite, to Berbelek, and the mysterious high-born beauty - either a spy of the Warlock, or, on the contrary, his mortal enemy - invites Jerome to hunt on impossible, contrary to all the laws of even this unsteady world of creatures, suddenly and from nowhere appeared in equatorial Africa.
Berbelek and the children arrive in Alexandria, from where they begin their journey into the very "heart of darkness" (yes, the analogy with another great Pole, Joseph Conrad, in this case is not at all accidental). First, with interest, and then with horror, the hero will have to watch how the madness of the spirit that has gripped these lands morphs the surrounding reality, and then tries to take root in his own soul. And, of course, in what is happening, Berbelek cannot but feel the invisible, but powerful presence of his old enemy - the Warlock.
The start given by Dukai - a defeated warrior of light, darkness threatening the world, a journey into the center of evil - sets a certain horizon of reader's expectations. Keep in mind: none of them will come true. Despite some formal similarities, the world of “Other Songs” is not our world or even the world of alternative history, it is based on fundamentally different principles, which means that the plot clichés familiar to us are also invalid here. Having drawn the playing field once, Jacek Dukaj impeccably follows his own rules in the future - even where it comes into direct conflict with the reader's requests. Empathic involvement, empathy with the characters, joyful recognition of newly-served narrative patterns - none of this interests the author: with inexorable mathematical rigor, he builds the contours of a story that is completely inhuman and decidedly impossible within the framework of our ordinary experience. “Other Songs” really turn out to be extremely, unimaginably different, as if born on the other side of the borders of the familiar world.
As you might guess, there are pluses and minuses in such writer's maximalism. By uncompromisingly ignoring the reader's comfort and as if deliberately refusing any tools of emotional influence, Dukay risks scaring away a significant part of his potential audience. However, if we see the meaning of science fiction as such in constructing worlds radically different from ours, in going beyond the limits of humanism and creating a fundamentally new optics, then we must admit that Dukay has advanced very far along this path - as far as possible, given the limitations imposed by on a person by his physical and mental constitution.
This article was sponsored by Daniel Yusim
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