Jan Potocki

Ethnologist, aeroanut, political intriguist, occultist and historian, Jan Potocki was a man of his times, and place. Born into Polish Ariscracy in 1761, he was fluent in many languages. He studied in Geneva and Lausanne, and served time in the army. Traveling widely, he has been credited as a pioneering ethnologist, treating the cultures and people he studied with respect and an open mind, unlike many, later ethnologists. His travels lead him through The Balkans, the Caucsus, China, and the Mediterranean. And also, into the air. He was on of the first people to rise in a hot air balloon, ascending with the ballonist Blanchard over the city of Warsaw. Somehow, he also found time to be a 'Novice-King of Malta' The Knight Templars people can research that one....

He married twice, and had five children. Forced by ill-health, perhaps syphillis, he returned to his estates in 1812. In 1815 he killed himself with a bullet to the head. Apparantely he'd smelted a silver bullet from his mothers sugar-bowl and blessed by the chaplain of the castle.

Or sio the story goes. But with Potocki, there are stories within stories, which is what his

Manuscript found in Saragossa (1831) is constructed of. A tale epic in its inwardness, a read not unlike diving into Alice's Rabbit Hole. Vistas open up, narratives jump of at tangent points into spiraling narratives. From ghosts and gallows in Spain, to hidden castles of the Moors and cities in Africa, Manuscript touchs on all things supernatural. The Kabbala, geomancy, geometry, and magics in and far between. A unique work from a unique individual, Manuscript was made into a film in 1963 by Polish Film Director Wojciech Has, and recently preserved and re-released in a brand new print under the auspices of Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, Penguin 1995. Translated by Ian Maclean