Jan Potocki (1761–1815)

El conde polaco Jean Potocki, justamente celebrado por El manuscrito encontrado en Zaragoza, esa especie de serpentín fantástico que hace del tiempo y del espacio una verdadera fiesta para el lector, fue también un esforzado viajero por toda Europa, China y el norte de Africa. Fruto de uno de ellos es este Viaje al Imperio de Marruecos, de 1791, donde acusa el interés etnográfico de su autor y trasciende lo puramente paisajístico y anecdótico, para constituirse en documento insólito, pero ajustado, de la realidad del mundo árabe, servido todo ello con la sobria elegancia de una prosa de la que el siglo XVIII sigue poseyendo el secreto.… (mais)

Count Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa has somewhat of a cult following amongst fans of Gothic fiction. It consists of a collection of supernatural tales linked together by a complex series of frame stories, as in a nightmarish hall of mirrors. It has been called a "black Decameron". This is a really apt description, considering that practically all Gothic tropes are represented in the convoluted text: from ghosts to vampires, secret societies to violent bandits, underground passages to haunted castles. A bonus for Melitensia enthusiasts – one of the stories features a Knight of Malta who murders a rival in Strait Street, Valletta just up the road from where I earn my daily bread (in decidedly more mundane environs).… (mais)

There's a moment, about a halfway through, in which the recursive flashbacks interacted to reveal the narrator's own faulty perceptions that I thought this might be the most brilliant book ever written.

The difficulty, though, is that the narratives only overlap for short periods, and nothing ever ties together as tightly as is promised. As with Maturin's [b:Melmoth the Wanderer|207313|Melmoth the Wanderer|Charles Maturin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1373051517l/207313._SY75_.jpg|200656], I'm not 100% certain if the reader ever even gets cleanly back to the framing device. It feels as though at some point the frames within frames within frames became lost enough that one could never make it all the way home.

I like that Maturin book more than I like this one, which might be a prose issue, or might be because I found Maturin's British version of Christian and Hebrew mythologies and fairytales more interesting than the Spanish ones featured here. I'm still glad I read both, but I'm not sure who I'd push Zaragosa on.

Warning about the Amazon Kindle version: it was scanned (and perhaps translated?) by computer with no human interaction. Paragraphs repeat several times, and sex-based pronouns (him, his, her, hers) switch randomly enough to cause confusion.… (mais)