The directory «Plots»

Potocki Jan Nepomucen
(1761—1815)

Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki was a Polish nobleman (szlachcic), capitan, engineer of the Crown Army, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, and author. His colorful life led 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 relationship of the Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical point of view), and even rode the first hot air balloon in Poland.

He is said to have killed himself with a bullet fashioned from the strawberry-shaped silver knob of a sugar bowl that he had blessed by a priest. It is most likely that he was driven to suicide by manic depression (itself a likely symptom of syphilis), but some rather far-fetched accounts suggest that Potocki believed himself to be a werewolf.

Potocki is most famous for his novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, (written in French, original title: Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse) a frame tale that collects the intertwining stories of a cast of gypsies, thieves, cabbalists, and others that the Walloon Guard Alphonse van Worden meets in the Sierra Morena of 18th century Spain while en route to Madrid. Recounted to the narrator over the course of sixty-six days, the novel's stories cover a wide range of themes and subjects — from the gothic to the picaresque to the erotic to the moral — but as a whole the novel reflects the author's interest in secret societies, the supernatural, and so-called Oriental cultures. Because of its rich interlocking structure, the novel has drawn comparisons to such celebrated works as the Decameron and the Arabian Nights.

Poland, 1984, Jan Potocki's Flight on Balloon