Volume 42, Number 19 · November 30, 1995
Extravaganza in Progress
By John Weightman
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
by Jan Potocki, translated by Ian Maclean
Viking, 631 pp., $27.95
This is a new book in the sense that it has never appeared in this form in English before, but it is also an old book with a curious history. The author or presumed author—the attribution has been contested, but no doubt wrongly—belonged to a very famous and wealthy Polish aristocratic family. Count Jan Potocki, born in 1761, was a well-known figure in his day, an indefatigable traveler, a privileged guest in the various capitals of Europe from Madrid to St. Petersburg, and a gentleman-scholar with a keen interest in social history and contemporary politics. Writing in French, he began the Manuscript, his only novel and his major achievement, in 1797, and continued it at intervals until 1815, at which date he committed suicide, apparently for a combination of reasons. He had been suffering from some chronic indisposition, the symptoms of which—alternations of manic excitement and deep depression—sound suspiciously like those of syphilis. Also, as a Polish nationalist, he deplored the post-Napoleonic peace settlement, which had handed over Poland to Russia.
Review, 4099 words
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