![]() It's only later, when Avadoro is riding in a gilded litter, disguised as the bride-to-be, that he gets a good look at the viceroy, a fierce and intimidating man, and starts having second thoughts. What does eleven-year-old Avadoro do? Dress up in the girl's clothes to meet the viceroy in her place, so the two young lovers can escape, of course! The young couple want to get married, but the girl is supposed to marry the Conde de Peña Vélez, a rich and powerful man who has recently been made the viceroy of Mexico. Later, when Avadoro and his aunt are traveling to another city, they stop at an inn and meet a young pair of love-struck teenagers. Dressed up spiffy by his doting aunt for a long-delayed reunion with his father, the boy Avadoro thinks it would be funny to climb up on top of the tall cabinet in his father's room he slips and falls into his father's giant vat of ink, almost drowning before the aunt can rescue him by smashing the ink jar. What I enjoy most about Juan Avadoro is that, at least in his youth, he seems to tackle life head-on, with boundless enthusiasm and no regard for the consequences. ![]() Yves Citton, " Potocki and the spectre of the postmodern," p. It reaches its high point in Avadoro's endless metamorphoses across genders and social status, from Elvire, a 'future vice-queen,' to a nameless beggar, to the Marquis Castelli, a courtier plotting among the highest spheres of wealth and power. The story runs on (and off, as he is frequently interrupted) for some 200 pages, interweaving tales of childish mischief, ill-fated romance, mistaken identity, violent jealousy, and improbable coincidence.įrench scholar Yves Citton identified a mode of "carnivalization" in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, with unlikely people being brought together and interacting eccentric behavior being indulged in without consequences high culture mixing with low the sacred and the profane becoming jumbled together. The gypsy chief's narrative begins with his being born Juan Avadoro, son of a retiring gentleman in Madrid. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, Day 12Įither Pandesowna is playfully messing with Alphonse (and us), or his definition of "humdrum events" is very different than mine. As for the rest of my life, however, it comprises quite humdrum events, in which all that is remarkable is the infatuation I showed for experiencing different forms of life, though without embracing any one of them for more than a year or two at a time." "Señor caballero, I have indeed seen some extraordinary things since I have lived in these remote parts. Once on their way, Alphonse asks the gypsy chief about himself and comments that he must have had many strange adventures in his life of wandering.
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