The Palimpsests by Aleksandra Lun, translated by Elizabeth Bryer
Published by David R. Godine, 2019
From the publisher:
Czeslaw Przęśnicki is an Eastern-European immigrant writer who survived the long toilet paper lines of communist Poland, the loss of his lover Ernest Hemingway following a passionate affair, and the beatings of the Antarctic literary community for his forays into novel-writing in their native tongue. In The Palimpsests, we find him languishing in a Belgium asylum (a country, we are persistently reminded, that has had no government for the past year), undergoing Bartlebian therapy to strip away his knowledge of any language that is not Polish, his native tongue. The Palimpsests (originally written in Spanish by Polish writer Aleksandra Lun) is characterized by an unquestionable timeliness, relevant to today’s discussions on immigration, senses of cultural belonging and ownership, and personal relationships to language, complicated and simple, adopted and native. Peppered with appearances by Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and of course, Przęśnicki’s former lover Ernest Hemingway, it is the perfect book for lovers of the art of writing.
From reviews: • Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
The Palimpsests is a big small novel. It’s almost musical arrangement, with the repetitions and small variations, make for a deceptively quick and easy read, but there are layers to unpack here. Form impressively serves content, and the novel works on several levels – it is good fun simply in its (bizarre) story, but also an interesting exercise in considering exophonic writing. Well worthwhile.
• Maria A. Prio, America Reads Spanish
An assortment of authors who also wrote in their “stepmother tongue” – Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Jerzy Kosinski, Joseph Conrad (né Korzeniowki), Karen Blixen, Emil Cioran, Eugene Ionesco – all make an appearance, and have something to say. A Pole, Witold Gombrowicz, who wrote articles in Spanish, would send all authors abroad, “far from their own language and their own verbal ornaments and filigrees, to see what would be left of them.” That theme is a springboard for insights into the broader issues of literary creation, including the motives of creators (among them, ambition, anxiety, arrogance and fear of death) and the nature of their readers (“innocent and generous beings who pay out of their own pockets to gift us several hours of their lives”). But like the palimpsests of the title, additional themes lie beneath the surface, including the pervasiveness of human intolerance and xenophobia, and the need to organize experience in the face of the randomness of existence. Such themes have been addressed many times before, but not always with such economy and humor.
• Théophile de Proyart, Le Figaro
The big question that Aleksandra Lun raises through the meeting of a failed artist and eternal geniuses is whether we can take men struck by madness seriously. The answer tends towards the affirmative as the reader immerses himself in the novel. Nabokov, Beckett, Conrad and Ionesco each waltz around Czeslaw Przecnicki in their own way to help him write his second novel. The resonance of all these dialogues with the main character rings true and makes the plot well constructed and balanced.
• Leonor Ruiz, Las Criticas
From beginning to end, the absurd serves the tragicomedy in The Palimpsests , bordering on the irrational and the grotesque. A current of humor perhaps intended to cushion the protagonist’s suffering. «The satirical record was something that also developed naturally. There are issues that are too important to talk about seriously,” says Lun. A comical game that works and that poses very precise questions for which everyone must find their answers. Literary anarchy, is that what you want? And where would the homeland of each writer be? How would books be classified in libraries? Do you think they (natives) know better what our mother tongue is? Do you think that by ordering us they order their own world? The concept of the mother tongue is worn out! If I wrote in my native language, what I write would become particular. “You don’t know that the mother tongue always carries the weight of automatism.”
