I lived in Vienna, Austria, for three and half years. One day, while bookhunting on the Kärntner Ring, I discovered a first edition of a work by the Bohemian writer Josef Popper-Lynkeus (d. 1921). The book is a collection of magical realist tales called Phantasien eines Realisten (“Fantasies of a Realist”).
Popper-Lynkeus is not really well known these days, but in his time he was an inventor, a respected social theorist, and a “fabulist”—a term once used to refer to writers who wrote the kinds of stories he wrote, very short fables (often no more than 250 words). Popper-Lynkeus was also, incidentally, the uncle of the philosopher Karl Popper, who wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies (also a good book).
Phantasien eines Realisten has not been translated into English. About five years ago, I set out to do this, but I only made it a fifth of the way through before I got sidetracked. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to that project. I’m the quintessential dilettante and if I put something down and a year or more goes by, I very rarely pick it up again.
One of the things that annoys me when I tell people that I write magical realism is that they tend to regard this genre as an exclusively Latin American phenomenon. A cursory reading of Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Nose” or Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” should disabuse anyone of that silly notion. But the misconception persists and many people assume I’m setting out to imitate Borges, Rulfo, or García Márquez. And don’t get me wrong, I love those writers. But, no, I’m not trying to imitate them—anymore than Calvino, Pavić, Yourcenar, or Rushdie are.
Magico-mystical fables and fairytales that are geared more towards adults than children are not new and they did not suddenly appear in the early 20th century in Mexico or South America. For example, last night I read an ancient novel called A True Story, written by the 2nd century Graeco-Roman orator Lucian of Samosata, which, among other things, includes a journey to the moon and the sun, a trip into the belly of a whale where the souls of the dead are staying in lieu of the underworld, and a brief visit to a City of Dreams. The themes in the novel are for mature audiences and the imagery is at times evocative, lyrical, and just as rich as anything you might find in the aforementioned Latin American fabulists.
Any scholar who would assert that magical realism—or “magic realism” as it’s also called—was “founded by” (per Wikipedia) Latin American authors either has a muddled understanding of literary history or is more interested in logomachy and word games than storytelling. Putting all that aside, I thought I’d share one of the tales from Phantasien eines Realisten, which, if it had been written today, would be considered a specimen of “flash fiction”—yet another vague contemporary category that people like to bandy about as if it has any real meaning. (Is “The Parable of the Talents” a flash fiction? Is “Before the Gate of the Law” from Kafka’s The Trial a flash fiction?)
Ibn Rushd
(by Josef Popper-Lynkeus, translation by Daniel Davison)
The philosopher Ibn Rushd (whom the Occidentals call Averroës) felt great pain in his final days whenever he attempted to sit up. One night, as he lay crumpled in his bed, wide-eyed and in agony, the door creaked open and disclosed a grisly head. The face peered around the dim chamber, then turned to the bed and stared fixedly at Ibn Rushd. It remained motionless for some time, then nodded in grave satisfaction, as if if Ibn Rushd all along had been what it sought. The head withdrew, and the door closed. Suddenly the door burst open with a crash. The Angel of Death floated in and stood over the bed. Its eyes flashed fire and in its right hand, which was raised in the air, the blade of a scimitar glinted in the candlelight.
"Ibn Rushd!" said the Angel of Death.
"Yes," the feeble man replied. “It is I.”
"On which side of the scale lies heaviest your heart?"
"On yours," Ibn Rushd exclaimed and raised himself in agony, extending his arms lovingly toward the angel.
The Angel of Death sheathed his sword, lifted Ibn Rushd gently from the bed, nestled his head against his shoulder, and bore him away into the unbounded night.
Daniel, this was a great piece. Thank you for sharing the bit that you translated. I enjoyed learning more about fabulism in the various cultures. I hope you’ll write more pieces like this in the future.
"On which side of the scale lies heaviest your heart?" O, that question!