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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The Manuscript Found at Saragossa

17:33 / 07.12.06

Has anyone read this book? I've seen the Polish movie version from 1965 (highly recommended), and I just signed up to read this, Melmoth the Wanderer, and the first English translation of the Arabian Nights for an independent study graduate course next semester where I'll be looking at nested narratives.

Anyway, the book is about a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars who finds a manuscript about a Walloon Guard, who is trying to travel to Madrid, but who gets sidetracked, first by a haunted inn, and then by listening to a Gypsy king tell stories about his youth in which many other people told him their own stories (sometimes with further layers within). The author was one of the first balloonists, a freemason, possibly a secret agent, and killed himself with a silver bullet which had been blessed by a priest and which he himself had made from the handle to a sugar holder. I just started reading it, and it looks fabulous. Curious if there are any other fans.

01:23 / 08.12.06

Not sure how useful a contribution this is, but I'm definitely a fan of the film version, in case anyone was waiting around for a second to that recommendation. Does anyone know anything about the rest of Wojcieck Has's filmography?

I've never read the original myself. Apparently my neighbor managed to study Polish lit in undergrad w/o ever reading it, either. I'd be interested to hear about it.

Sounds like an interesting course you've designed for yourself, Dusto.

03:25 / 08.12.06

By first English translation, do you mean Burton's? I've heard that his bizarre and inaccurate end notes are some of the most colorful parts of the work; guess that was a little off-topic, sorry.

12:36 / 08.12.06

Actually, I originally suggested Burton's translation to my professor (since I already own an abridged version, at least), and she pointed out (quite logically) that since his translation wasn't the one that influenced so many writers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (having only been published in the 1890's), that I should probably go back and read the translation from 1704, which until Burton's was the only available English version. I'm not sure who the translator was off the top of my head, but he didn't translate it from Arabic but rather from a French version translated from Arabic by Antoine Galland. Should be interesting.

And Raw Norton, I've never seen any other Has films, but I'm definitely intrigued considering how great The Saragossa Manuscript is.

Janean Patience

13:25 / 08.12.06

Read this years ago, based on having read Neil Gaiman in the Guardian claiming he wished he'd written it. That's put everyone off, uh? It sounded fascinating from his description and it is, though the story-within-story-within-story structure goes up its own arse sometimes as you'd expect.

I can't remember one brass thing about the plot, though. The Wandering Jew turns up, as does some King of the Gypsies, and everyone yarns on. I imagine Italo Calvino was a big fan because it reminds me of his stuff - the structure comes first and the narrative comes second. Which sounds bad but it's a really impressive structure.

17:50 / 16.04.07

just noticed that this was adapted into a Romanian-language play ("Saragossa, 66 Days") by Alexandru Dabija. Possibly collected here?

Anyone familiar with this? I'd be interested in seeing how you'd do this on the stage.

15:28 / 18.04.07

I finished this recently. It was a great read. The ending tied everything together very neatly. My only complaint was that the worldwide conspiracy wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped it would be. Now I'm reading melmoth the Wanderer.

21:29 / 19.04.07

I hate the ending. Hate it. There's an attempt to explain it away in the intro of the version I've got - or had, because now I look for it I'll be demned if I can find it, so good work me - which doesn't manage to be anything more than an apology. Something like how *any* ending would be a disappointment after all the twists and turns, the imagination and sheer daftness of the meat of the novel. But that's a load of rubbish - you know, as soon as you've put the book down, that Potocki suddenly realised he had absolutely no idea how to round it all off and just threw out whatever dumb excuse popped into his head first. It's little better than "and then I woke up, and discovered that it had all been a dream".

Which just about sums the whole novel up, for me: fantastic dream, shame about the waking up.

21:32 / 19.04.07

Oh, and it loses all sense of pace when the mathematician (?) starts reeling off his story and Potocki swaps between his narration and that of the gypsy chief, with the Wandering Jew sticking his oar in whenever either of them pause for breath. The magic just gets sucked right out of it.

01:54 / 20.04.07

I actually liked the parts where the geometer and the Wandering Jew each told bits of their story on the same day. I thought it was a nice contrast between the Jew's religious observations and the geometer's attempts at empiricism. With regard to the end [SPOILERS FOLLOW], I really liked the fact that all of the stories were tied into a lineage that would result in the napoleonic general from the frame story (he said the book was about his ancestor, and we think he means Alphonse, but really almost everyone in the book is his ancestor). However, I was disappointed in the secret of the Gomelez. Potocki sets them up as this amazingly extensive cabal with half of Europe in its power, but they don't manage to do anything. I really wanted some big revelation, like they had somehow engineered the war that the frame narrator was fighting in, which wouldn't have been that big of a stretch. But as it was they just had a bunch of gold and didn't do anything with it. A little lame, but considering how great everything was that came before, i hardly cared.

16:00 / 20.04.07

It's the Wandering Jew stuff, specifically, that makes that whole section drag for me. The historical guff isn't as interesting as the fantastical tale the geometer is telling, nor the way that he's telling it.

The ending... yeah, it's the fact that everything that's gone before is tied together so neatly, passed off as a test, with the wonderful characters suddenly turned into actors playing parts that annoys me. It's such a let down. Far better previously, when Potocki allows there to be mystery and magic in his world, things that seem to (and should continue to) defy rational explanation.

17:02 / 20.04.07

The ending of the movie is far more ambiguous. Basically they claim it was all a test, and then something happens to make him doubt that explanation.

02:39 / 08.06.07

I started reading this last fall/winter, but had to take an extended hiatus. I picked it up again and I had forgotten how much I really enjoyed it. I'm about halfway through.

I can't say there's any one story I enjoy as much as all of them together.

Is everyone reading the Ian Maclean translation (penguin edition)? Very clear and rolling prose, I wonder if this is Potocki's or the translation's fault.

02:41 / 08.06.07

Yeah, I read the Penguin translation. The prose is nice. I imagine it's a mix of a good writer and a good translator.