JEAN POTÓCKI

Jean Potócki (1761-1815) was a Polish author, traveller, soldier, diplomat, and scientist, who wrote in French. He was born into an aristocratic family in Píkow and educated in Geneva and Lausanne. He led an adventurous life as a soldier and later as a traveller through Europe, Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Mongolia. In 1790 he famously undertook a balloon flight over Warsaw. After spending some time in France, het started writing and publishing in Poland and founded a publishing house in 1788. He became an advocate of the foundation of the Russian Academy of Science, after French model. In 1815 he committed suicide with a silver bullet. Potócki’s most well-known work is the novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse which he began in 1790 and completed in 1810. Versions of the work circulated in St Petersburg and Paris during Potócki’s life, but only one version was published in 1805.

The fragments:

Throughout his life Potócki was fascinated by the Thousand and one nights and its concept of storytelling. In his travelogues we find references to the Nights and during his stay in Morocco he unsuccessfully tried to obtain a manuscript of the text. His novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse can be considered an effort to create a European equivalent of he Thousand and one nights. The story consists of a frame, in which the circumstances of the story’s compilation and discovery is explained. A second frame consists of the story of Alphonse van Worden, a nobleman travelling to Madrid to join the Spanish court. In the Sierra Nevada he is held up by what seems to be a strange curse and for sixty days he stays with a company of rogues and travellers, who tell him all kinds of tales, ranging from romances to scientific exposés. In the end it turns out that the whole intrigue was concocted by the shaykh of the Gomelèz family, the last scion of a Shiite sect hiding in Spain, with whom Alphons appears to be related from his mother’s side. He hoped to seduce Alphonse to assume the leadership of the family to ensure its continuation. The story is divided into sixty days, after the example of the Thousand and one nights, covering Alphonse’s sojourn in the ‘enchanted’ mountains. The novel reflects the concerns of the Enlightenment, such as the fascination with scientific knowledge, rationality, and the nature of supernatural phenomena. It also shows glimpses of the trend of Gothic literature, with the concept of the conspiracy, supernatural interventions and mystery. The fragment contains the episode of the two nieces Emine and Zibbedee, trying to seduce Alphonse and telling him the story of his family, which is reminiscent of the story of Shahrzad and Shahriyar in the Thousand and one nights.

Potócki, Jean, Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (version de 1810), edition établie par François Rosset et Dominique Triaire, GF Flammarion, Paris 2008, pp. 57-85.