This was a beautiful book, purportedly by an anonymous author around 1535, about the adventures of a certain Rupprecht, who following a campaign in Italy and years in "New Spain" returns to the Old World and meets all manner of historical (and otherwise) figures in his adventures about Germany, including Agrippa of Nettesheim, Iohann Weier, Doctor Faustus, Mephistopheles, amongst many others.
It is beautifully written (criticisms would include: although I noted, on the second reading, a few clumsy turns of phrase that could be better addressed or corrected in a new edition, without affecting the quality of prose or style, and translations for the Italian, German and Latin would be appreciated, footnotes or an appendix to seperate the invention of the author from real people, places and events -eg. the many hostels he names, personages he references, etc, etc. While I knew quite a few it is presumptive to expect the reader know them all. And perhaps a map to guide us on his travels.).
IN any event it tells of the various adventures of our narrator, Rupprecht, who exists in a sort of spiritual limbo, accepting at once the Catholic Faith, A humanist who while denouncing the Inquisition yet himself attempts to subdue demons, who believes in a Kind, Just and Merciful God yet bears witness to and narrates the most improbable and impossible of miracles, all narrated as if these were the most ordinary things in the world...
And this is the trick, to provide the reader with a variety of ways to interpret his story - and no one solution, which - in a nutshell, captures his ambiguity about everything that he experiences.
Formidably well researched, Briusov has taken great pains to explore the struggle of the protagonist, this person exists, or existed in the character of the author himself, the tortuous romantic triangle depicting reflecting his own relationship with Andrei Bely and their shared lover, the nineteen-year-old Nina Petrovskaya.
It reminds me of nothing so much as one of those more contemporary war movies, where it becomes impossible to sort out the heroes from the villains and you follow an inadvertent spectator or participant through a perpetually shifting moral and spiritual landscape. Liminal Spaces.
In finishing it - even upon the second reading, I am cast into the slough of despond, afflicted with a profound melancholy. It is odd that it is so out of print, and doubly odd that the translation available has not been better proofed. Still a masterpiece, one that directly inspired "The Master and Margarita", and completely up my alley. A great book that recommends me to a thousand others...
And a happenstance, a lucky find at "The Wee Book Inn" on Whyte in Edmonton.