The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (60 page)
Read The Manuscript Found in Saragossa Online
Authors: Jan Potocki
Here Frasqueta ended her story, and the duke spoke up and said, âSeñor Busqueros, it is not by chance that you have been taken into our confidence. It is important to hasten Cornádez's journey. We
even want him not to stick to a simple pilgrimage but to decide to do penance in some pious retreat. For this I shall need you and the four students at your disposal. I'll explain my plan to you.'
As Busqueros reached this point in his story, I noticed that the sun was on the point of setting, and the thought crossed my horrified mind that I might miss the rendezvous that charming Inés had given me. So I interrupted the storyteller and begged him to postpone to the next day the account of the Duke of Arcos's intentions. Busqueros replied with his customary insolence, but I was beside myself with anger and said to him, âBusqueros, you loathsome man, prepare to rob me of the days, days which you fill with bitterness, or prepare to defend your own.' At the same time I drew my sword and made him draw his.
As my father had never let me handle a foil I didn't know what to do with my sword. So I twirled it round and round in the air, which seemed to amaze my adversary. But then he feinted somehow and ran through my arm, and his point even wounded me in the shoulder.
My sword fell from my hands and I was instantly bathed in my own blood. But the most distressing thing was that I was failing to keep my rendezvous and would not be able to discover the things that dear Inés wanted to tell me.
As the gypsy reached this point in his story someone came to call him away. After he had gone, Velásquez said, âI was right to foresee that the stories of the gypsy would get entangled one with another. Frasqueta Salero has just told her story to Busqueros, who told it to Lope Soarez, who told it to the gypsy. I hope that the gypsy will tell us what became of fair Inés. But if he interpolates yet another story, I'll fall out with him just as Soarez fell out with Busqueros. Meanwhile I don't believe that our storyteller will be coming back this evening.'
And indeed the gypsy did not reappear, and we all went to bed.
We set off again. The Wandering Jew soon joined us and continued his story as follows:
   THE WANDERING JEW'S STORY CONTINUED   The lessons of wise Chæremon had much greater scope than the sort of résumé I have given of them. Their gist was that a prophet called Bytis had demonstrated in his works that God and angels exist, and that another prophet, called Thoth, had enveloped his ideas in very obscure and at the same time even more sublime-sounding metaphysics.
In this theology God, who is called the father, was only praised in silence. However, when one wished to express to what degree He was self-sufficient one said, âHe is his own father, He is his own son.' He was also thought of in terms of son, and then He was called âReason of God' or Thoth, which in Egyptian means persuasion.
Finally, as nature was thought to consist of spirit and matter, the spirit was looked upon as an emanation of God and He was represented as floating on mud, as I have told you elsewhere. The inventor of this metaphysics was called Thrice Great. Plato, who spent eighteen years in Egypt, took the doctrine of the Word back to the Greeks, which won him from them the epithet âdivine'.
Chæremon claimed that all this wasn't entirely in the spirit of the ancient Egyptian religion, that it had changed and that all religions were bound to change. This opinion of his was shortly confirmed by what happened in the synagogue of Alexandria.
I had not been the only Jew to study Egyptian theology. Others had developed a taste for it. They had been particularly attracted to the enigmatic spirit which pervaded all Egyptian literature and which probably had its origin in hieroglyphic writing and in the Egyptian
precept never to dwell on the emblem but on the hidden sense it contained.
Our rabbis in Alexandria also wanted enigmas to interpret. They took pleasure in supposing that although they told the story of facts and real events, the works of Moses were none the less written with such sublime skill that besides their historical sense they concealed another hidden and allegorical one. Some of our scholars worked out this hidden sense with a subtlety which brought them much honour at the time. But of all the rabbis none was better at this than Philo.
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Long study of Plato had trained him in spreading false ideas, using the obscurity of metaphysics. So for this reason he was called âthe Plato of the synagogue'. The first work of Philo dealt with the creation of the world and especially with the properties of the number seven. In this work God is called Father, which is very much in the spirit of Egyptian theology but not at all in the style of the Bible. It also says that the serpent is an allegory of sensual pleasure and that the story of the woman created from the rib of man is also allegorical.
The same Philo wrote a work on dreams, in which he says that God has two temples; one of these temples is the world and the high priest of that temple is the word of God. The other temple is the rational soul whose high priest is man. In his work on Abraham, Philo expresses himself in a style even more Egyptian, for he declares, âHe whom our sacred writings call a being, or He who is, is He who is the father of all. On each side He is flanked by the oldest and most intrinsic powers of the Great Being: the Creator Power and the Guardian Power. One is called God and the other Lord. So that the Great Being who is always accompanied by these two powers is present sometimes as a simple form, sometimes as a triple form: the former when the completely purified soul rises above all numbers and even the binary, which is so close to the one, and reaches at last the sublime and simple abstract image; the latter, which is triple, presents itself to the soul which is not entirely initiated into the great mysteries.'
This Philo, who could platonize as far as the eye and mind could
see, is the same Philo who was subsequently a delegate sent to the Emperor Claudius. He was held in high esteem in Alexandria and the beauty of his style and the love of novelty which is found in all men helped to win nearly all hellenizing Jews over to his opinion. Soon they were Jews in name only, as it were. For them the books of Moses were no more than a sort of canvas on which they sketched their allegories and mysteries at will, especially that of the triple form.
At this time the Essenes had already formed their bizarre fellowship. They did not take wives and all their goods were held in common. In short, new religions were emerging on all sides, mixtures of Judaism, magism, sabeism
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and Platonism, and everywhere a great deal of astrology. The old religions were collapsing on every side.
As the Wandering Jew reached this point in his story we came close to our resting-place; the sad wanderer left us and was soon lost to sight in the mountains. Towards evening the gypsy, having nothing else to do, took up the thread of his story again:
   THE GYPSY CHIEF'S STORY CONTINUED   Young Soarez, having told me the story of his duel with Busqueros, seemed to want to rest. I let him surrender his senses to sleep, and when I asked him the next day to continue his story he went on as follows:
   LOPE SOAREZ'S STORY CONTINUED   