Triptych

by Mojmir Drvota

"Triptych takes its title from the fact that it alternates three surreal narratives in each chapter. One of these concerns a sculptor and the unpredictable universe he inhabits; another concerns a medieval kingdom that also resembles another planet; and the third narrative follows a hermit and a speaking shadow through an endless desert... How these apparently unrelated narratives are drawn together is the central mystery and myth of the novel."

- Howard Schwartz

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

...a hermit, a shadow, and a madman travel across a strange desert on a strange journey. near the end of his journey, the hermit will be tempted by a mysterious woman. along the way, the shadow decides he wants to become a man and so is instructed by his master the hermit to observe one: he chooses to observe a sculptor...

a sculptor crosses rooftops to be with a mysterious woman who lives in a strange room, its walls covered by pinned and dying butterflies. near the end of his journey, he becomes convinced that this mysterious woman is betraying him with the moon. by day he sculpts a statue of a young king; by night he dreams of this conquering king...

a young king conquers death and then all of the world; he becomes known as the Moon King and will eventually fight his last battle with a dragon who guards a strange gate. near the end of his journey, a mysterious temple handmaiden comes to him and he will try to ravish her. at night he dreams of strange figures, crossing a strange desert...



Alfie, what's it all about?

i dunno, not really. i was reminded of the film The Saragossa Manuscript (sadly, i have not read the book). stories expanding and then folding in on themselves. a möbius strip, an ouroboros. the separate tales connect in strange and mysterious ways, both figuratively and literally. they come together, they come apart, they come back together. the stories talk to each other. the hermit, the sculptor, and the king all leave their worlds. for what? for enlightenment, in search of a higher love and a greater desire, maybe to conquer all. the material world is simply a place of furniture and refuse; striving towards a higher plane is the only true goal - but even that can be corrupted. it will always be corrupted.

just ask the freckle-faced boy with the runny nose... he tells his tribe about this new second sun and what they should do about it, what new goals they should strive towards. they respond by stoning him to death. later, they raise him up as their martyred Great Seer and use his words as a basis to conquer all. in time mankind will fear his very name. huh? yes.

the shadow is my favorite. winsome & earnest & chilling & amusingly deadpan.

Mojmir Drvota is a Czech writer, apparently living in the U.S. at the time of Triptych's publication by The Cauldron Press in 1980. he wrote an earlier novel called Solitaire. both are real obscurities and i could find pretty much no information on either one. alas!

the author has genuine skill in creating dreamscapes, in mining archetypes and in using the logic of dreams to expand upon those archetypes. his prose is masterful, moving easily from stark fable to enchanting fantasy to absurd anachronism to arch pedantry (the last appears in the penultimate chapter - a tongue-in-cheek thesis on various characters and a statue from the preceding "narrative").

here is the opening and closing of the novel's Prologue:

Through the dark forest toiled a pack of beings. They advanced with the faltering steps of the blind. Their backs were laden with massive burdens the size of original sin or stone tumuli...

They plodded on in silence, for there were no words, there was nothing to name and there was nobody to speak to - there was no other. The pack was a single body with a multitude of heads and limbs. Hence no one walked in front as the first among them all. Only the body of the pack wound its way through the labyrinth of darkness.

And the forest itself was nothing but a turmoil of writhing masses which enveloped one another, bit into one another, then slowly and insensibly swallowed one another, and so mutually maintained themselves in a balanced state of cold ebullition. Lost in the depths of this havoc, the pack of beings toiled on, staggering under the weight of their burdens.

there are some scissors. these scissors will stop a king from ravishing a handmaiden; they will be used by a sculptor to murder his mistress; they will be found plunged in a hermit's heart.

trippy, man, trippy. i tripped out on Triptych.

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most mindbendingly unique novels I've read lately, so thanks go out to Mark Monday for his excellent review. As Mark mentions, there are three separate storylines that alternate periodically. In the first, we follow a roof-hopping sculptor in what seems to be modern times as he sets out to create a statue of a young king. In the second, a young, newly-crowned king, along with his merry band, set out to conquer the entire world in order to create a new one. At night the king dreams of three people crossing an endless desert. In the third story, a hermit, a crazy guy, and a shadow wander across a quicksand-filled desert in search of...something. The shadow wants to be a real person, and so imagines himself as a sculptor, one who's creating a statue of a king, a king who dreams of three figures wandering a desert, one of which dreams of being a sculptor...and so on.

Besides being completely tripped-out, this book was hilarious as well. Much of the dialogue is made up of non sequitors, but very well done, reminding me a little of Monty Python at times. The characters are all memorable, and the dreamlike imagery throughout is as good as anything I've ever read. There's a fine line between interesting and sleep-inducing when it comes to "dream novels," and never once was I bored while reading this, even when I didn't know what the hell was going on (i.e. the last 30 pages or so).

I've already got Drvota's only other English-translated novel, Solitaire, ready to go. If it's anywhere near as captivating as this one, I'll be lobbying to get the rest of his work translated. Or else I'll have to learn Czech. Maybe my Czech-born grandmother will read them to me.

5 Stars.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) There is a lot going on in this short tripartite novel. Perhaps a bit too much, to be honest. Drvota mischieviously tinkers with the power and signficance of art, myth, and legend—interleaving three surreal narratives, gradually propelling their respective 'heroes' closer toward a common end. That we are on uncertain ground here is about all that is certain (though a passing knowledge of Bohemian mythology would likely be useful, e.g., Mnata is not one of Drvota's own constructs). Having laid out his mysterious triptych Drvota then slyly mocks academia through a closing fictional treatise examining various figures and motifs present in the novel, complete with amusing bibliographical footnotes. I suppose what made this less than a full four-star read for me was: (1) the sparseness of Drvota's wry and absurdist humor, which when it did appear aligned well with my own taste in that department—I just would have appreciated more of it; and (2) the muddiness of the novel's closing chapters, where I felt Drvota set off in too many directions after having set the stage for what could have been a cleaner, more satisfying conclusion. But perhaps this was in part his point.

[Mir]

My library has this. But not in English.

I did learn while looking it up that the author taught at Ohio State, and also made films.