The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
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The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (original French title: Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse; known in English as The Saragossa Manuscript, and in Polish as Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie), by the Polish author Jan Potocki (1761-1815), is a frame-tale novel from before the Napoleonic Wars.
The novel was adapted as a 1965 Polish-language film by director Wojciech Has, and later as a Romanian-language play, Saragosa, 66 de Zile (Saragossa, 66 Days) written and directed by Alexandru Dabija.
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[edit] Plot summary
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa collects intertwining stories, all of them set in whole or in part in Spain, with a large and colorful cast of Gypsies, thieves, inquisitors, a cabbalist, a geometer, the cabbalist's beautiful sister, two Moorish princesses (Emina and Zibelda), and others that the brave, perhaps foolhardy, Walloon Guard Alphonse van Worden meets, imagines, or reads about in the Sierra Morena mountains of 18th century Spain, while en route to Madrid. Recounted to the narrator over the course of sixty-six days, the novel's stories quickly overshadow van Worden's frame story, and the bulk of the novel's stories revolve around the gypsy chief Avadoro, whose story becomes a frame story itself; eventually the narrative focus moves again towards van Worden's frame story and a conspiracy involving an underground — or perhaps entirely hallucinated — Muslim society, revealing the connections and correspondences between the hundred or so stories told over the novel's sixty-six days.
The stories cover a wide range of genres and subjects, including the gothic, the picaresque, the erotic, the historical, the moral, and the philosophic; and as a whole the novel reflects Potocki's far-reaching interests, but especially his deep fascination with secret societies, the supernatural, and so-called Oriental cultures. The stories-within-stories of the novel sometimes reach several levels of depth, and characters and themes — a few prominent themes being honor, disguise, metamorphosis, and conspiracy — recur and change shape throughout. Because of this rich interlocking structure, the novel has drawn favorable comparisons to such celebrated works as the Decameron and the Arabian Nights.
[edit] Textual history
The first several 'days' of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa were initially published apart from the rest of the novel in 1805, while the stories comprising the Gypsy chief's tale were added later; the novel was written incrementally, left in its final form (although never exactly completed) at the time of the author's suicide in 1815. The novel as a whole was written in French, but sections of the original text have been lost. The integral version of the work, based on several manuscripts, is published by renowned French publishing house José Corti. Existing translations of the novel are based on a Polish translation of the original French novel. The current English-language edition is published by Penguin Books and was translated by Ian MacLean. Christine Mary Dunford adapted an English-language stage version from Ian Maclean's translation of the novel. [1]
The most recent and complete version to date was published by François Rosset and Dominique Triaire in 2006 in Louvain (Belgium) as a part of a critical and scientific edition of the Complete Works of Potocki. They identified two versions of the novel, one, unfinished, published in 1804 and the full version of 1810, which appears to have been completely redesigned and rethought in comparison to the 1804 version : whereas the first version has a lighter, more sceptical tone, the second one tends towards a darker and more religious mood. Unlike Radrizzani's 1989 edition of the Manuscript found in Saragossa, Rosset and Triaire's one has been solely established on French language manuscripts from Potocki, found in several libraries in France, Poland (in particular unknown autograph pieces they discovered in Poznań), Spain or Russia, as well as in the private collection of Potocki's heirs. Considering the large differences between them, the 1804 and 1810 versions have been published as two separate books. A paperback edition of the book has been issued in early 2008.
[edit] Film, TV, theater
In 1965, director Wojciech Has adapted the novel into a Polish-language black-and-white film The Saragossa Manuscript (Polish title: Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie), starring Zbigniew Cybulski. The film was released in a full-length Polish version (180 minutes) and in shortened versions in other countries (152 minutes in the US, and 125 in the UK).
The film was admired by many 1960s counterculture figures, notably Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who financed a complete print, as well as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Neil Gaiman has referenced the book and film, in passing, in at least three different works. The film was shot near Częstochowa, and in Wrocław, Poland.
[edit] Characters
- Alphonse van Worden, the narrator
- The Sheikh Gomelez, mysterious focus of conspiracy
- The twin sisters Emina and Zubeida
- The hermit
- Pacheco, demoniac servant of the hermit
- Don Pedro Uzeda, a cabbalist
- Donna Rebecca Uzeda, the cabbalist's sister
- Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew
- Don Pedro Velasquez, a geometer
- Don Avadoro, a gypsy chief
- Don Toledo, an amorous knight
- Busqueros, a nuisance
- Zoto's brothers, a pair of bandits hanging from the gallows. Zoto himself is hiding somewhere in the nearby mountains.
[edit] Further reading
Comparative Criticism, Volume 24. Part II. Jan Potocki and The Manuscript Found in Sarragossa: novel and film. Ed. E.S. Shaffer. 2003. ISBN:0521818699.
