What do you think?
Rate this book
Trylogia rzymska #3
Tiberius Caesar
A great work of literature and a profound reflection on state terror from a man who spent forty years fighting one.
Tiberius Caesar--a free standing work in its own right--completes Bocheński's Notorious Roman Trilogy --probably the most important literary work to come out of Eastern Europe since World War II.
After the picaresque volume 1, Divine Julius (how to overthrow a republic in four easy steps) and the poetic volume 2, Naso the Poet (how, under tyranny, poetry can get you into trouble), comes volume three, Tiberius Caesar : a horrifying tale of the second emperor of the man who normalized political terror. A moral, intellectual, emotional zero whose only skill in life was to grab power and hang onto it. At any cost.
Tiberius Caesar is, on the one hand, a vertigo-inducing look into the great echo chamber of fear, an insight into the mediocrity who ruled, terrorized, and murdered all his betters because he could and because they made him do it .
But the book is also a brilliant work of literature, with deeply moving passages of beautiful prose, many of which would stand as independent If you enjoy the rich prose of writers like Kazuo Ishiguro or Orhan Pamuk or Gabriel García Márquez, the style of this book will astonish and delight you with its many pleasures.
And if, in your pleasant and secure life in a Western, constitutional democracy you have grown complacent and bored with all the freedoms you take for granted--you should read this as a warning. Because you should be afraid. You should be very afraid. If you lose your democracy, this is what you will have.
This is a very beautiful and a very important book. Don't miss it. Pick up your copy today.
Jacek Bocheński (b. 1926) is the leading literary figure of modern Poland, a prolific author, classicist scholar, former president of the Polish PEN Club, former president of the Polish Authors’ Society (SLP), former president of the Intellectual Property Association (ZAIKS), former member of The Citizen’s Committee serving the office of President Lech Wałęsa, a highly-regarded and much-decorated freedom fighter, banned by communist censorship, interned during the Martial Law in Poland (1981-1983), and today widely honored as the Nestor of Polish literature.
Tiberius Caesar--a free standing work in its own right--completes Bocheński's Notorious Roman Trilogy --probably the most important literary work to come out of Eastern Europe since World War II.
After the picaresque volume 1, Divine Julius (how to overthrow a republic in four easy steps) and the poetic volume 2, Naso the Poet (how, under tyranny, poetry can get you into trouble), comes volume three, Tiberius Caesar : a horrifying tale of the second emperor of the man who normalized political terror. A moral, intellectual, emotional zero whose only skill in life was to grab power and hang onto it. At any cost.
Tiberius Caesar is, on the one hand, a vertigo-inducing look into the great echo chamber of fear, an insight into the mediocrity who ruled, terrorized, and murdered all his betters because he could and because they made him do it .
But the book is also a brilliant work of literature, with deeply moving passages of beautiful prose, many of which would stand as independent If you enjoy the rich prose of writers like Kazuo Ishiguro or Orhan Pamuk or Gabriel García Márquez, the style of this book will astonish and delight you with its many pleasures.
And if, in your pleasant and secure life in a Western, constitutional democracy you have grown complacent and bored with all the freedoms you take for granted--you should read this as a warning. Because you should be afraid. You should be very afraid. If you lose your democracy, this is what you will have.
This is a very beautiful and a very important book. Don't miss it. Pick up your copy today.
Jacek Bocheński (b. 1926) is the leading literary figure of modern Poland, a prolific author, classicist scholar, former president of the Polish PEN Club, former president of the Polish Authors’ Society (SLP), former president of the Intellectual Property Association (ZAIKS), former member of The Citizen’s Committee serving the office of President Lech Wałęsa, a highly-regarded and much-decorated freedom fighter, banned by communist censorship, interned during the Martial Law in Poland (1981-1983), and today widely honored as the Nestor of Polish literature.
316 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
7 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 21, 2023
I hesitated a long time over the rating for this final part of the trilogy, because I felt conflicted and torn inside. Is his writing as beautiful as we are used to? No, it is like a diamond (ultimately a lapis, ladies and gentlemen!) lost in the mud, hidden in the pig pen and shrouded in brutal language, but I have to admit that the author warns about it from the very beginning:
"The territory of Tacitus is full of hills and cliffs, steps, turns, slopes, crevices. One cannot be certain what the grammatical or logical twists in the text conceal, left to the reader’s guesswork in places, for example, a missing subject of a sentence. One cannot be sure of the meaning of the abbreviations, or of the discreet, unannounced jumps from topic to topic, or be sure what begins where and where it ends, or what is associated with what and what is not. And then, somehow, we are already talking about something else, or someone else, but who? And then suddenly—the end: a cliff, a leap over the precipice, there is no protection. There is always something missing in this rude, stylistic economy, lapidarian conciseness, that is, in etymological terms, a stone (lapis means stone, ladies and gentlemen). Naked, sharp, stony language, this is how you walk through Tacitus. Yet the narrative does have a certain flow."
But in the end, after much struggle, I just had no choice but to bow again to his genius and admit that, if his purpose was a wake-up call to prevent ugly history from repeating itself, he had to quake us readers from the escapism of the daily lives. Because not much has changed in these 2000 years, it seems, and that's acceptable as long as it doesn't happen to us, and as long as we choose our own historical truth as we wish.
There's a lot to say if we really think to desiccate this book, the way power and fear formed a closed system. Fear of losing the power birthed a brutal system. For example:
"Of course, denunciation has existed ever since man acquired speech and became capable of conveying malicious stories concerning others. Though perhaps before the development of language, body language was sufficient for such purposes. It is possible that informant is the other oldest profession, along with prostitution (and both probably existed in the deep Paleolithic). However, it is only now, in Rome, that informants acquire the so-called legal legitimacy and become a political institution. They do not provide secondary services as they had until now—in the private or criminal sphere or, at most, in the fiscal sphere, but begin to perform a basic systemic function in the political apparatus. And they are well-paid. For their services, they receive a commission: for example, according to a certain new law, a quarter of the property of a person condemned to death. Thus, any enterprising person who makes a proper selection of his targets and is sufficiently effective can become very rich very quickly. On the other hand, the victim of a denunciation can save his property from confiscation if he acts reasonably in the face of the imminent sentence. Forfeiture of property applies only to people convicted and executed as a result of the conviction but not to suicides who take their lives beforehand."
or
"And there is, of course, a switch: going into the religious mode. We just have to believe in the religiosity of the act. This is a necessary condition. Otherwise, scruples can get in the way. Taboos, ladies and gentlemen, still oblige. However, religion in all ages and cultures sanctifies everything that happens in the name of the divine. Justifies, moralizes, and elevates all vitia, debauchery, barbarity, even crimes and cruelties , when they are performed as an act of piety. Inadmissible deeds miraculously turn into glorious ones."
How can I not admire the way Bochensky reveals timeless truths so cleverly? Like:
"In the meantime, they tell me something about the growing dissatisfaction among the masses because it is said that prices are high. Widespread discontent, they say, because of the shortage of bread. I don’t know if it’s really widespread. For where did those Campanians come from, for example, who stood everywhere along the shore the last time I passed that way and greeted me with ovations? They didn’t look unhappy . More corn is now being brought from Egypt to Italy than ever was under Augustus. There’s no reason for food to be expensive. But now they inform me that there were some riots, manifestations in the theater, antics of adventurers. Okay, there were such things. But if so, where were the city officials who were supposed to keep order? What did the Senate do? Of course, nothing. The Fathers-Senators were too busy kicking each other’s asses and talking trash. On the other hand, given the mood of the people, this is probably not the best time to risk revealing my plan of evolutionary reforms before the people in Rome. The people, already excited, as the people usually are, when one loosens up instead of tightening the screws, they can lose their measure and fall into absolute licentiousness. Hence, rather a message before the Senate? I do not know. This defeats my purpose again and reduces the whole thing to absurdity."
Is there a definite conclusion? Are we sure who Tiberius was?
No. But we are sure of what he might have been - the same duality of the world is reflected in two sides of the same coin.
Yes, I've decided: this book is necessary to make us slow down in this dizzying race our lives have evolved into and ponder on that saying that "the sleep of the nation breeds monsters". So much information and so scarce time...
Five stars from me.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
"The territory of Tacitus is full of hills and cliffs, steps, turns, slopes, crevices. One cannot be certain what the grammatical or logical twists in the text conceal, left to the reader’s guesswork in places, for example, a missing subject of a sentence. One cannot be sure of the meaning of the abbreviations, or of the discreet, unannounced jumps from topic to topic, or be sure what begins where and where it ends, or what is associated with what and what is not. And then, somehow, we are already talking about something else, or someone else, but who? And then suddenly—the end: a cliff, a leap over the precipice, there is no protection. There is always something missing in this rude, stylistic economy, lapidarian conciseness, that is, in etymological terms, a stone (lapis means stone, ladies and gentlemen). Naked, sharp, stony language, this is how you walk through Tacitus. Yet the narrative does have a certain flow."
But in the end, after much struggle, I just had no choice but to bow again to his genius and admit that, if his purpose was a wake-up call to prevent ugly history from repeating itself, he had to quake us readers from the escapism of the daily lives. Because not much has changed in these 2000 years, it seems, and that's acceptable as long as it doesn't happen to us, and as long as we choose our own historical truth as we wish.
There's a lot to say if we really think to desiccate this book, the way power and fear formed a closed system. Fear of losing the power birthed a brutal system. For example:
"Of course, denunciation has existed ever since man acquired speech and became capable of conveying malicious stories concerning others. Though perhaps before the development of language, body language was sufficient for such purposes. It is possible that informant is the other oldest profession, along with prostitution (and both probably existed in the deep Paleolithic). However, it is only now, in Rome, that informants acquire the so-called legal legitimacy and become a political institution. They do not provide secondary services as they had until now—in the private or criminal sphere or, at most, in the fiscal sphere, but begin to perform a basic systemic function in the political apparatus. And they are well-paid. For their services, they receive a commission: for example, according to a certain new law, a quarter of the property of a person condemned to death. Thus, any enterprising person who makes a proper selection of his targets and is sufficiently effective can become very rich very quickly. On the other hand, the victim of a denunciation can save his property from confiscation if he acts reasonably in the face of the imminent sentence. Forfeiture of property applies only to people convicted and executed as a result of the conviction but not to suicides who take their lives beforehand."
or
"And there is, of course, a switch: going into the religious mode. We just have to believe in the religiosity of the act. This is a necessary condition. Otherwise, scruples can get in the way. Taboos, ladies and gentlemen, still oblige. However, religion in all ages and cultures sanctifies everything that happens in the name of the divine. Justifies, moralizes, and elevates all vitia, debauchery, barbarity, even crimes and cruelties , when they are performed as an act of piety. Inadmissible deeds miraculously turn into glorious ones."
How can I not admire the way Bochensky reveals timeless truths so cleverly? Like:
"In the meantime, they tell me something about the growing dissatisfaction among the masses because it is said that prices are high. Widespread discontent, they say, because of the shortage of bread. I don’t know if it’s really widespread. For where did those Campanians come from, for example, who stood everywhere along the shore the last time I passed that way and greeted me with ovations? They didn’t look unhappy . More corn is now being brought from Egypt to Italy than ever was under Augustus. There’s no reason for food to be expensive. But now they inform me that there were some riots, manifestations in the theater, antics of adventurers. Okay, there were such things. But if so, where were the city officials who were supposed to keep order? What did the Senate do? Of course, nothing. The Fathers-Senators were too busy kicking each other’s asses and talking trash. On the other hand, given the mood of the people, this is probably not the best time to risk revealing my plan of evolutionary reforms before the people in Rome. The people, already excited, as the people usually are, when one loosens up instead of tightening the screws, they can lose their measure and fall into absolute licentiousness. Hence, rather a message before the Senate? I do not know. This defeats my purpose again and reduces the whole thing to absurdity."
Is there a definite conclusion? Are we sure who Tiberius was?
No. But we are sure of what he might have been - the same duality of the world is reflected in two sides of the same coin.
Yes, I've decided: this book is necessary to make us slow down in this dizzying race our lives have evolved into and ponder on that saying that "the sleep of the nation breeds monsters". So much information and so scarce time...
Five stars from me.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Displaying 1 of 1 review