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Jan Potocki und das alte Ägypten im universalgeschichtlichen Denken um 1800

2009; De Gruyter; Volume: 136; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1524/zaes.2009.0007

2196-713X

Sylvia Peuckert,

Central European Literary Studies

This article investigates the role Egypt plays in the works of the Polish historian and writer Jan Potocki (1761–1815). Potocki’s fame rested on his novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, but he considered himself an historian, first and foremost. His role as a precursor of the “universal” approach to writing history and his research on chronology, which led him to study the works of Manetho, reveal Potocki to occupy a position of his own between the Enlightenment – a movement which he embodied as a representative of the European “Republic of Letters” – and the scientific approach of the Nineteenth Century. In his Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, one of the narrators is the “Wandering Jew” who reports on his youth in Alexandria during the 1st Centruy A.D. Potocki drew upon the characterization of Egypt in the Interpretatio Graeca with which his research had made him familiar – not with the intention to picture an esoteric Egypt, but to illustrate his theory that religions reflect the religious and philosophical ideas of humankind, rather than divine revelation. Thus tolerance is seen to result from knowledge.