Jan Potocki

Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki (March 8, 1761 - December, 1815) was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army captain of engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and author whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland, although he is chiefly known outside Poland for his novel "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa".

Biography

Jan Potocki (pronounced 'Pototski') was born in 1761 into the great Potocki family, an old aristocratic family which owned vast estates in Poland. He was educated in Geneva and Lausanne, served twice in the Polish Army as a captain of engineers and spent some time on a galley as a novice Knight of Malta. He was probably a Freemason and had a strong interest in the occult.

Potocki's colorful life took him across Europe, Asia and North Africa, where he embroiled himself in political intrigues, flirted with secret societies, contributed to the birth of ethnology — he was one of the first to study the precursors of the Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical standpoint.

In 1790 he became the first person in Poland to fly in a hot air balloon when he made an ascent over Warsaw with the aeronaut [http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/blanchard/DI10.htm Jean Blanchard] , an exploit that earned him great public acclaim. He also established in 1788 in Warsaw a publishing house named "Drukarnia Wolna" (Free Press) as well as the city's first free reading room.

Potocki's wealth enabled him to travel very extensively around Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia, visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, The Netherlands, Germany, France, England, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and even Mongolia. He was also one of the first travel writers of the modern era, penning lively accounts of many of his journeys, during which he also undertook extensive historical, linguistic and ethnographic studies. As well as his many scholarly and travel writings, he also wrote a play, a series of sketches and a novel.

Potocki married twice and had five children, but his first marriage ended in divorce and both marriages were the subject of scandalous rumors. In 1812, disillusioned and in poor health, he retired to his estate at Uladowka in Podolia, suffering from "melancholia" (which today would probably be diagnosed as depression) and during the last few years of his life he completed his novel.

Potocki committed suicide in December 1815 at the age of 54, although the exact date is uncertain — possibly 20 November, 2 December or 11 December. There are also several different versions of the circumstances of his death, but the best known story is that he shot himself in the head with a silver bullet — fashioned from the strawberry-shaped knob of a sugar bowl given to him by his mother — which he first had blessed by his castle priest. One version of Potocki's suicide suggests that he gradually filed the knob off the lid, a little every morning.

Works

"The Manuscript Found in Saragossa"

Potocki's most famous work is "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa". Originally written in French under the title "Manuscrit Trouvé á Saragosse", it is a frame tale which he wrote to entertain his wife. On account of its rich interlocking structure and telescoping story sequences, the novel has drawn comparisons to such celebrated works as the "Decameron" and the "Arabian Nights".

The book's title is explained in the foreword, which is narrated by an unnamed French officer who describes his fortuitous discovery of an intriguing Spanish manuscript during the sack of the city of Saragossa in 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars. The French officer is captured by the Spanish soon after and stripped of his possessions, but one of the Spanish officers recognizes the manuscript's importance and over the course of the French officer's captivity the Spaniard translates it into French for him.

The manuscript has been written by a young officer of the Walloon Guard, Alphonse van Worden. In 1739, while en route to Madrid to serve with the Spanish army, he is diverted into the rugged Sierra Morena region of Spain and there, over a period of sixty-six days, he encounters a varied group characters including Muslim princesses, Gypsies, outlaws and cabbalists, who tell him an intertwining series of bizarre, amusing and fantastic tales which he records in his diary.

The sixty-six stories cover a wide range of themes, subjects and styles including gothic horror, picaresque adventures and comic, erotic and moral tales. The stories reflect Potocki's strong interest in secret societies, the supernatural, and oriental cultures, and they are illustrated with his detailed observations of 18th-century European manners and customs, particularly those of upper class Spanish society.

Many of the locations described in the tales are real places and regions which Potocki would have visited during his travels, while others are fictionalized versions of actual places.

It is now generally accepted that the book was indeed written by Potocki, although there is still some dispute over its authorship. He began writing it in the 1790s and completed it in 1814, a year before his death, although the structure is thought to have been fully mapped out by 1805.

The novel was never published in its entirety during Potocki's lifetime. A proof edition of the first ten 'days' was circulated in St Petersburg in 1805 and a second extract was published in Paris in 1813, almost certainly with Potocki's permission. A third publication, combining both earlier extracts, was issued in 1814, but it appears at the time of his death Potocki had not yet decided the final form of the book.

Potocki composed the book entirely in French, but portions of the original manuscripts were later lost, although these sections fortunately survived thanks to a Polish translation made by Edmund Chojecki in 1847 from a complete French copy (now also lost).

The most recent and complete version to date was published by François Rosset and Dominique Triaire in 2006 in Leuven (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: whereas the first version has a lighter, more sceptical tone, the second one tends towards a darker and more religious mood. Unlike Radrizzani's edition of the "Manuscript found in Saragossa", Rosset and Triaire's version 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 two volumes has been issued in early 2008.

The first English-language edition was a translation of Radrizzani's edition by Oxford scholar Ian Maclean, which was published in 1995.

Film adaptation

Potocki's novel became more widely known in the West via the stylish black-and-white film adaptation made in Poland in 1965 under the title " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059643/ The Saragossa Manuscript] " ("Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie").

It was directed by renowned film-maker Wojciech Has and starred Zbigniew Cybulski as Alphonse van Worden. Cybulski was one of the biggest stars in Polish cinema in the 1960s and because of his good looks, rebellious image (and his premature death) he is often described as "the Polish James Dean".

elected travel writings

*"Histoire Primitive des Peuples de la Russie avec une Exposition complete de Toutes les Nations, locales, nationales et traditionelles, necessaires a l'intelligence du quatrieme livre d'Herodote" (St. Petersbourg: Imprime A L'Academie Imperiale Des Sciences, 1802)
*"Voyage dans les steppes d'Astrakhan et du Caucase" (Paris, 1829).
*"Voyage en Turquie et en Egipte" (1788; Polish translation by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, "Podróz do Turek i Egiptu", 1789).
*"Voyage dans l’Empire de Maroc" (1792)

Modern editions have appeared as follows:
*"Voyages en Turquie et en Egypte, en Hollande, au Maroc" (Paris: Fayard, 1980; new edition, Phébus, 1991)
*"Voyage au Caucase et en Chine" (Paris: Fayard, 1980)

ee also

*List of Egyptologists

References and further reading

Maclean, Ian
Introduction to "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa"
(Penguin Books, London, 1995)

[http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Hoop/4390/history1.htm History of Ballooning 1] - includes image of Polish stamp commemorating Potocki's flight
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20020811153132/http://forteantimes.com/articles/140_potocki.shtml The Mystical Count Potocki]
* [http://www.acampbell.ukfsn.org/bookreviews/r/potocki.html "The Saragossa Manuscript"] - book review by Anthony Campbell