This novel purports to be a fragmentary chronicle, assembled from scraps of parchment, recording the journey taken by the eponymous John, a pupil of the Franciscan monk Roger Bacon, with two other young monks Andrew and Bernard, to carry Bacon's Great Work to Pope Clement IV.
It's a historical novel. Bacon (c 1219 - c 1292), a proto-scientist who studied, amongst many other things, lenses and gunpowder, really did send his Opus Maior to Clement in either 1267 or 1268. Other characters are also historical, including nobleman Cavalcante de Cavalcanti and his son Guido who was a part-time poet and a friend of Dante Aligheri. Other characters are fictional.
The book attempts to add verisimilitude with a 'Note on the Text' at the start, describing how the chronicle was discovered, reassembled and translated, and endnotes which, inter alia, cast doubt on some aspects of the text (is it a contemporary diary or was it written later, or worse ...). For example, on p52 (St Hubert's Day) John states "In such a way did we affect our first escape from Simeon the Palmer"; had this been written at the time he would not have known it would be the first escape.
The main text starts with an ellipsis as though the text is incomplete; this is repeated at times. Many of the sections give a potted biography of the saint on whose days they were written, a conceit I found a little wearisome as it was repeatedly repeated.
It is structured as a Hero's Journey. John, who is clever, travels with Andrew who is beautiful and Bernard who is strong. They encounter temptations (alcohol, women, a garden paradise) and dangers. They are befriended and betrayed. Bandits try to steal their possessions, including the book. Like all good heroes on their journey, they have to use their gifts in order to overcome these trials.
There is a huge amount of historical research which makes it interesting for a student of that period. As the endnotes point out: "All historical novels are failures or, at best, metaphors, dressing up the present day in anachronistic disguise." (p 212)
It is a triumph of re-creation. But, in the end, it stands and falls as a novel on whether you empathise with John and his mates and you like the buddy-journey sort of tale.
Selected quotes:
- "Brother Bernard ... is always suspicious, he would interrogate the motives on an angel" (St Hubert's Day, p 43)
- "Beauty speaks to beauty." (St Edgar's Day, p 62)
- "The Devil tempts only the very good and the very bad." (St Ephrem's Day, p 70)
- "They had a kind of priest among them, a man with a wildness about him, as if he had stared for too long into a consuming fire." (St Silverius's Day, p 79)
- "To go to Rome, much labour, little profit." (St Bartholomew's Day, p 85)
- "Lines rounden, loop, droop, curve." (St John the Baptist's Day, p 88)
- "You are the seal of the image of God, full of wisdom and perefect in beauty." (St Swithin's Day, p 96)
- "Hunger is too hard a stepmother to learning." (St Swithin's Day, p 97)
- "We walked towards the mountains and it was as if they refused us. They grew no larger, although it appeared to me that we were getting smaller." (St Thomas of Canterbury's Day, p 100)
- "Pope Clement, in a larger voice than I would have thought his body could contain, invited me to stand." (St Tiburtius's Day, p 188)
- "My master has enumerated some of the accidents [Flusfeder uses words in their mediaeval meaning] of old age, grey hair and pallor and wrinkled skin and excess mucus and stinking stool, the sickly bleariness of eyes, low blood and low spirits, crabbiness and absent-mindedness, and Pope Clement seems to exhibit them all." (St Tiburtius's Day, p 196)
- "Pope Clement's voice, profound and wise, stepping out the words like a traveller choosing where to place the stones to make a path over the river." (St Tiburtius's Day, p 197)
Synopsis (spoiler alerts)
John and his companions beautiful Andrew and strong Bernard are sent by Roger Bacon to walk from Oxford to Viterbus in Italy carrying Bacon's book to the Pope. On the way they are waylaid by a 'pilgrim for hire' whose attempt to steal the book is confounded, firstly by John demonstrating a burning glass and secondly by the gunpowder in a decoy box exploding. Other temptations include Bernard getting drunk in Paris and Andrew being bedded by a serving wench. John is tempted by Father Gabriel, a wise priest who has a paradisaical garden and uses herbs to help the sick; he urges John to stay. The trio fall out among themselves: John is upset when Andrew and Bernard reveal they have read his 'diary'; they are upset he hasn't been upfront about their task, Bernard steals ink and parchment in order to do drawings of mythical beasts. Finally they become the guests of a Guelph nobleman who sets John up as a healer and Bernard as a jeweller. Only John and Andrew leave. They then encounter Daniel, another friar from their monastery, who has been sent by Bacon with a smaller version of the Great Work; Daniel is martyred by bandits which enables John to escape. Finally, all alone, he comes to Rome and meets the Pope. The burning lens demonstration fails to work but Clement is delighted when he discovers the lens can be used to correct his failing eyesight and help him to read again. Finally, John decides not to hand the book over.
David Flusfeder has also written Something Might Fall
First published by Fourth Estate in 2014
My paperback edition was issued in 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment