"The Manuscript Found in Saragoss" is an unfinished French-language novel by the Polish aristocrat Jan Potocki. The first chapters of the novel were published separately in 1797. Subsequently, Pototsky gradually completed and published new chapters until he committed suicide in 1815.
"Words strike the air and the mind, they act on the senses and on the soul." ― Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
During the Napoleonic siege of Zaragoza, officers discover an old manuscript in a captured building and immerse themselves in reading it. The manuscript tells of a Spanish officer during the War of the Spanish Succession, Alphonse van Vorden, who wandered through the Sierra Morena mountains for 66 days, trying to get into his regiment in Madrid.
At the beginning of the novel, Alphonse is confronted with strange mystical and frightening phenomena, but then joins a nomadic gypsy camp. He and the rest of the heroes constantly tell each other stories, within which the stories of the heroes of these stories often find themselves (literary technique "novel in a novel").
In terms of genre, the novel is unique. It contains elements of a rogue novel, a Gothic novel, and "casket stories" like "Melmoth the Drifter". Because of the use of a framework story (and more than one), it is often compared to "The Thousand and One Nights" and "The Decameron".
Tsvetan Todorov interprets the "Manuscript" as an archetype of the fantastic in literature - a genre built on the lack of certainty as to how real the events described in the book are. Alphonse, like the reader, constantly fluctuates between the supernatural and rational explanations of what is happening to him: either the sisters are demonic obsession, or they are women of flesh and blood who are simply playing it out.
The Manuscript has been translated into many languages, including English, Polish, German and Russian. In 1965, the Polish film director Wojciech Has made a film of the same name based on the novel. Later, the Romanian playwright Alexandru Dabizha adapted the novel, based on the play Saragosa, 66 de Zile (Zaragoza, 66 days). Alexander Pushkin has a poem "Alphonse mounts a horse ...", which is written based on motives inspired by the beginning of the "Manuscript".
Based on one of the episodes described in the novel ("Day Ten, The Story of Tybalt de la Jacquier"), in 1970, Anri Volokhonsky and Alexei Khvostenko wrote the song "Date", which tells about the meeting with the beautiful Orlandina, who turned into Lucifer in the finale.
This article was sponsored by Nile sweet cafe.
Comentarios