A Swiss exhibition unlocks the secrets of Potocki's 'Manuscript Found in Saragossa'
In Montricher, an exhibition traces for the first time in detail the writing and editorial history of one of world literature's most mysterious novels.
An exhibition in Montricher, Switzerland, is offering what Le Temps describes as the first detailed account of the genesis and editorial life of the Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, the picaresque novel written in French by the Polish count Jean Potocki between 1794 and 1815.
Potocki (1761-1815), an eccentric Polish nobleman, composed the book across the Ukrainian plains of Podolia and Spain, according to Le Temps. The novel, long considered one of the most secret and unsettling masterpieces of world literature, has acquired a reputation for its tangled textual history and its hold on later writers.
Le Temps cites two admirers to measure that hold. Salman Rushdie has written of the Manuscrit that it "reads like the most brilliant of modern novels, as if it had been written yesterday." Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk counts it among what she calls her "little literary pharmacy," saying: "The whole force of literature is there, in its pure state."
The exhibition promises to address the spectres and mirages that run through the book's reception as much as through its plot, per Le Temps, though the newspaper's account gives no further detail on what documents or objects are on display.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
