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Jean Potocki - Oeuvres IV.1 (La Republique Des Lettres)
Dans ce volume IV, 1 des Oeuvres de Jean Potocki (1761-1815) est publie le texte du Manuscrit trouve a Saragosse dans la version achevee telle qu'elle a ete reellement ecrite par son auteur, version dite de 1810. Celle-ci differe sensiblement de celle - dite de 1804 - qu'il avait elaboree precedemment, sans toutefois la conduire a son terme. La version de 1804 est editee dans le vol. IV, 2 de la presente serie. Ces deux etats du roman-culte de Potocki presentent deux conceptions esthetiques tres differentes appliquees a une meme matiere narrative. Bien que l'une d'elles soit demeuree inachevee, il sera desormais necessaire, pour se faire une idee pleine de ce chef-d'oeuvre, de prendre connaissance de ces deux versions. On dispose ainsi pour la premiere fois d'une edition integrale et fiable, etablie sur la base de toutes les sources disponibles, dont une partie etait restee inconnue a ce jour.
590 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2006
3 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Jan Potocki
75 books115 followersJan Potocki was born into the Potocki family, an aristocratic family, that owned vast estates in Poland. He was educated in Geneva and Lausanne, served twice in the Polish Army as a captain of engineers, and spent some time on a galley as a novice Knight of Malta. He was probably a Freemason and had a strong interest in the occult.
Potocki's colorful life took him across Europe, Asia and North Africa, where he embroiled himself in political intrigues, flirted with secret societies, contributed to the birth of ethnology — he was one of the first to study the precursors of the Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical standpoint.
In 1790 he became the first person in Poland to fly in a hot air balloon when he made an ascent over Warsaw with the aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, an exploit that earned him great public acclaim. He also established in 1788 in Warsaw a publishing house named Drukarnia Wolna (Free Press) as well as the city's first free reading room.
Potocki's wealth enabled him to travel extensively about Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia, visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, France, England, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and even Mongolia. He was also one of the first travel writers of the modern era, penning lively accounts of many of his journeys, during which he also undertook extensive historical, linguistic and ethnographic studies. As well as his many scholarly and travel writings, he also wrote a play, a series of sketches and a novel.
Potocki married twice and had five children. His first marriage ended in divorce, and both marriages were the subject of scandalous rumors. In 1812, disillusioned and in poor health, he retired to his estate at Uladowka in Podolia, suffering from "melancholia" (which today would probably be diagnosed as depression), and during the last few years of his life he completed his novel.
Potocki committed suicide in December 1815 at the age of 54, though the exact date is uncertain — possibly November 20, December 2 or December 11. There are also several versions of the circumstances of his death; the best-known story is that he shot himself in the head with a silver bullet — fashioned from the strawberry-shaped knob of a sugar bowl given to him by his mother — which he first had blessed by his castle priest. One version of Potocki's suicide suggests that he gradually filed the knob off the lid, a little every morning.
Potocki's most famous work is The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Originally written in French as Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, it is a frame tale which he wrote to entertain his wife. On account of its rich interlocking structure and telescoping story sequences, the novel has drawn comparisons to such celebrated works as the Decameron and the Arabian Nights.
Potocki's colorful life took him across Europe, Asia and North Africa, where he embroiled himself in political intrigues, flirted with secret societies, contributed to the birth of ethnology — he was one of the first to study the precursors of the Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical standpoint.
In 1790 he became the first person in Poland to fly in a hot air balloon when he made an ascent over Warsaw with the aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, an exploit that earned him great public acclaim. He also established in 1788 in Warsaw a publishing house named Drukarnia Wolna (Free Press) as well as the city's first free reading room.
Potocki's wealth enabled him to travel extensively about Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia, visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, France, England, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and even Mongolia. He was also one of the first travel writers of the modern era, penning lively accounts of many of his journeys, during which he also undertook extensive historical, linguistic and ethnographic studies. As well as his many scholarly and travel writings, he also wrote a play, a series of sketches and a novel.
Potocki married twice and had five children. His first marriage ended in divorce, and both marriages were the subject of scandalous rumors. In 1812, disillusioned and in poor health, he retired to his estate at Uladowka in Podolia, suffering from "melancholia" (which today would probably be diagnosed as depression), and during the last few years of his life he completed his novel.
Potocki committed suicide in December 1815 at the age of 54, though the exact date is uncertain — possibly November 20, December 2 or December 11. There are also several versions of the circumstances of his death; the best-known story is that he shot himself in the head with a silver bullet — fashioned from the strawberry-shaped knob of a sugar bowl given to him by his mother — which he first had blessed by his castle priest. One version of Potocki's suicide suggests that he gradually filed the knob off the lid, a little every morning.
Potocki's most famous work is The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Originally written in French as Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, it is a frame tale which he wrote to entertain his wife. On account of its rich interlocking structure and telescoping story sequences, the novel has drawn comparisons to such celebrated works as the Decameron and the Arabian Nights.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 8, 2019
This is an overrated picaresque 'classic' from very early in the nineteenth century. It has its moments of genuine surprise and horror - indeed eroticism - but it is also overwrought, messy and confused.
Brian Stableford has produced a solid piece of academic background for this edition. We are really not very sure of the book's origin. Is it Polish or French and, if Polish, which Potocki wrote it?
There have been great cultural claims for this book - including claims of it holding secret qabbalistic meaning - but it strikes me as the plaything of a bored aristocrat trying to work out his demons on paper.
The most striking aspect of this quasi-Gothic tale is the underlying eroticism of what amount to mysterious and dream-like 'threesomes' that only get dignified with their qabbalistic coating towards the end.
And, of course, we have our old nineteenth century neurotic friend - the linkage of sex and death. We find ourselves in the picaresque tale-telling world of one era and the decadent necro-sexuality of another.
I am not sure about these claims at all. It seems to me that our mysterious nobleman was trying to cope with his sexual fantasies and then finding a way to give them erotic meaning through the esoteric.
That may sound cynical until you consider how much libertine, homo-erotic and ephebophiliac sentiment was usefully hidden under neo-pagan cover right up until very recent times.
In a Christian culture of aristocratic licence and religious reaction, the worlds of myth and the esoteric have both been tailor made for turning 'base' desires and urges into something 'magical' and 'other'.
But the artistic output of sexual desire can be done well or badly. This book is so inconclusive that there is a danger of thinking its incompleteness hides some intended subtlety. I do not think it does.
What might be said, though, is that 'Potocki' straddles the world of eighteenth century aristocratic licentiousness and what would become the bourgeois decadence of the era of Huysmans in a very peculiar way.
The peculiarity of this is taken unwarrantedly for sophistication. What we have instead is an acute magpie mind, taking a number of literary influences and throwing them into what amounts to a dream novel.
The tension between the honour codes of Alphonse Van Worden and the desire to be saved from eternal damnation is also a tension between fleshly pleasures and the desire for meaning.
It could be said that the confusion and lack of completion in the book mirrors these tensions quite well but that is not enough.
The 'manuscript' deserves its place in history (for study) but it is not a great book for all that.
July 26, 2014
650 pages d un roman du 18eme siècle ou on trouve des phrases comme "l emotion fut tellement forte que l on craignait pour sa vie".. etc. c est une farandole de sentiments et d amour et d honneur.. au debut ce roman est un plaisir car c est une succession d histoires dans le vrai sens du therme d ailleurs appelle' un roman a tiroirs (des histoires qui s enchevêtrent)- des faits, des histoires mais au bout de 150 pages on a toujours la meme chose jusque a 650! j avoue que j en ai saute' pas mal. L histoire du manuscrit est intéressant, il date environ de 1765 et a été découvert en 1809 - genre Mille et une nuits. Contente d avoir lu un classique, je ne le recommencerai pas. Offert par Amelie Mourgue. Juillet 2014
December 24, 2020
A fascinating book in the form of 65 tales of 17th-century cabalists, ghosts, and so on. It takes place largely in Spain, though there are digressions in the Middle East - like the story of the Wandering Jews. The original was written in French at the turn of the 18-19th centuries, French being the language of the Polish aristocracy of that time.
I put off reading this, thinking it would be too turgid and involved, not to mention the 600+ pages, but I really enjoyed it. Potocki was an erudite man, and the translation I read (a British edition) did him justice. Not for everyone, but I liked it.
I put off reading this, thinking it would be too turgid and involved, not to mention the 600+ pages, but I really enjoyed it. Potocki was an erudite man, and the translation I read (a British edition) did him justice. Not for everyone, but I liked it.
February 20, 2021
Ce n'est pas la bonne édition. J'ai lu l'édition complète de 1992 par M. Simonin, Le livre de poche classique. Avant, j'avais lu le même livre en allemand, en polonais et en russe. Et je le relirai encore une fois plus tard.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews