A Swiss exhibition revisits the strange case of Jan Potocki and his labyrinthine novel
A new show explores The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, the encyclopedic Enlightenment novel whose author was reputed to believe he was a werewolf, and whose admirers have included Salman Rushdie and Jerry Garcia.
A new exhibition in Switzerland is devoted to Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, one of the least-known great novels of the European canon, according to the Guardian. The curators argue that the book's global humanism makes it newly relevant, the paper reports.
The novel, written more than two centuries ago, follows a young Walloon officer, Alphonse van Worden, as he crosses the Sierra Morena on his way to join the Spanish army in Madrid. Along the way, per the Guardian's summary, he has an erotic encounter with two demonic Moorish sisters, is confronted by shape-shifting apparitions, and is tested by a Jewish Kabbalist attempting to use mystical formulas to decipher the universe and control spirits. The result is an encyclopedic roman-monde that defies easy classification.
Potocki's own story is as strange as his fiction: the Guardian notes an outlandish origin story around the book, and describes him as a man reputed to have believed himself a werewolf. The novel has nonetheless drawn a devoted following over the decades, counting Salman Rushdie and the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia among its admirers, the paper says.
The Guardian gives no further detail on the exhibition's venue, dates or contents beyond describing it as newly opened in Switzerland.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.