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About the Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse

19 novembre 1989
03m 39s
Ref. 00166

Information

Summary :

An interview with Rene Radrizzani, responsible for the first complete edition of the famous novel Le Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse published by with Corti, written by the Polish Jean Potocki.

Media type :
Vidéo
Broadcast date :
19 novembre 1989
Source :
France 3 (Collection: Océaniques le magazine )
Personnalité(s) :
René Radrizzani / Jan Potocki / Roger Caillois
Themes :
Places :

Context

Jan Potocki was born in Poland in 1761, to a very powerful and rich family which gave him French as his maternal language. Very early on, he travelled, visiting countries one after another: Italy, Spain, Sicily, the Netherlands, Germany, England, Russia, Siberia, Morocco, Tunisia, Malta, Constantinople and even Egypt. These discoveries were an occasion for him to tell numerous travel stories, while paying particular attention to Slavic people, which are one of his recurring interests. He participated in Polish politics as a deputy in Diete (Poland's parliament) and a minister of education.

He was also a writer, thanks to the publishing of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, a masterpiece of fantasy literature. This novel-survey is considered by Roger Caillois and the surrealists to be a forerunner of fantasy. He was influenced by features of gothic literature and apprenticeship novels, which are libertine, philosophical, and picaresque, thereby creating a novel about novels. Many lost or scattered manuscripts caused its publication to be delayed, and the choice of publishing houses was questionable: the novel, written in French, was translated into German, then Polish, before being translated back into French for its first run. Sick and suffering from depression, Potocki commited suicide in 1815. It wasn't until 2006 that a serious version based on the different versions of the story were published in France.

Aurélia Caton

Transcription

Interviewer
So now, how have you, who are responsible for this first complete edition, how did you discover this book? How did you decide to devote yourself to it?
René Radrizzani
It is the Austrian novelist Klaus [Hoff] who made attentive to this work that I first read in German. Which was lucky because the German version is a complete translated edition after the Polish translation of [Hoietski]. Therefore I was fortunate to have the entire work before my eyes. That is what convinced me and made me enthusiastic. I am not sure that the Roger Caillois version would have convinced me to this point. It is too partial and truncated. Therefore, having read this German version, I realized that the original was French.
Interviewer
The book was written in French, is that right?
René Radrizzani
Yes, isn't that the original? And French, Potocki never wrote in any other language but French. Even though he is Slavic, his trips, well, everything that he did was written in French. So I became preoccupied with obtaining the partial Caillois edition, but then, I went to the source. Finally, by chance, by my research or information that came to me, I was able to obtain everything that had been published during Potocki's lifetime. That is, the thirteen placards, the Petersburg placards, the first thirteen days that were never commerci And the two fragmentary editions of Avadoro and the Ten Days of the Life of Alphonse van Worden. Then, the existing manuscripts, but there is not one left that is complete. But there are a number of drafts scattered throughout Europe, autographed copies or copies by script secretaries. It is reconstituting a puzzle, but where the Polish translation by [Hoietski] guides us and gives us the narrative content, and the story line, no. And so, evidently, based on these story lines, it is a question of placing the different fragments that one has and most of all determining which of the texts is the most definitive.
Interviewer
How do you do that?
René Radrizzani
Well, you compare, you look at mistaken words, at restituted words, you can see the history of the manuscripts. And you realize what, among the manuscripts we obtained, represents the final stages. And that is what we will take for a base manuscript, but seeing as none of the manuscripts was truly perfect, you must still keep the others in mind. And you must include the passages that have fallen in the base manuscript.
Interviewer
You say that you can still find manuscripts or manuscript fragments.
René Radrizzani
Certainly. Since I published this work, an inheritor of Potocki, a direct inheritor, the count Marek Potocki, contacted me and has given me three fragments that will be integrated into a future edition of the book. But what is interesting is that it is the confirmation of what I have just told you, that the narrative content does not change at all. They are simply textual variants.