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    Voltaire’s Calligrapher
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    Voltaire’s Calligrapher
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    Voltaire’s Calligrapher
    Ebook171 pages2 hours

    Voltaire’s Calligrapher

    By Pablo de Santis

    3/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    An elegant and atmospheric literary thriller that will delight fans of The Interpretation of Murder and The Shadow of the Wind

    Eighteenth century France: the Age of Enlightenment.

    Dalessius is 20 when he takes a job as the philosopher Voltaire's messenger and spy. Soon he's entangled in a web of secrets and intrigue, leading from the courts and scaffolds of Toulouse to Paris, and a mysterious fortified monastery where Abbot Mazy guards a horrific secret.

    Assisted by an executioner and the beautiful, marble-like daughter of an automaton maker, Dalessius faces sinister clergymen, inventive henchmen and poisonous fish in his quest to uncover the truth behind the Abbot's machinations. It will take amazing courage on Dalessius's part – as well as Voltaire's unique cunning and wit – if they are to survive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateSep 30, 2010
    ISBN9780007412259
    Unavailable
    Voltaire’s Calligrapher
    Author

    Pablo de Santis

    Pablo De Santis was born in Buenos Aires, studied Literature at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and subsequently worked as a journalist and comic-strip creator, becoming Editor-in-Chief of one of Argentina’s leading comics magazines, Fierro. De Santis is also the author of a number of books for young adults. He lives in Buenos Aires.

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    Reviews for Voltaire’s Calligrapher

    3/5

    34 ratings3 reviews

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    • 2/5
      A postmodern historical novel, set in Enlightenment France and full of playful reflections on philosophy, history, and aesthetics, this is the sort of thing I normally really enjoy, but somehow it never really clicked for me. Maybe it was the translation, which felt a little bit flat and lacking in linguistic bounce, maybe it was the rather over-busy plot, which seemed to be bursting out of the slim, novella-length package in all directions, not giving the characters any real chance to develop and solidify. I believe De Santis is a major figure in graphic-novel circles, and perhaps that has something do with it: the story often felt as though it would have benefited from pictures. A graphic novel format might also have fitted in better with the way the border between history and fantasy is about 90% of the way over to the fantasy side. The general idea is that the narrator, Dalessius, trained in calligraphy and employed as a copyist by the Sage of Ferney, finds himself acting as a kind of secret agent in a power-struggle between his boss and the Dominicans, who are (of course) plotting world-domination. There are also exploding sexbots, poison-pens, time-delay inks, a program-controlled bishop, and an overnight corpse delivery service involved in the story, inter alia. A silly quibble that disturbed me throughout was the use of the word "calligrapher" as job-description for Dalessius. This word first appeared in English in the mid-18th century in line with the rise of interest in orientalism, and it was initially only used to describe artists producing decorative versions of handwritten texts for religious or display purposes in Islamic and Far Eastern cultures. The same applies to French calligraphe — unfortunately I haven't got a historical dictionary of Spanish to hand to check the history of calígrafo, but I assume it will be similar to French. The term calligraphy goes back about a century earlier.The main action of the book is set between the Jean Calas case in 1762 and Voltaire's death in 1778. At that time, someone like Dalessius, whose job was the old-established one of making accurate, high-quality copies of legal and business manuscripts, would have used a term like clerk, copyist (both early-renaissance), scribe or scrivener (medieval). Obviously, there's no law against using an anachronistic word in a historical novel, particularly a non-realist one, but I find it odd when a writer — who presumably knows what he's doing — puts a word like that in the centre of the foreground and doesn't trouble to tell us why he is doing so.
    • 4/5
      Written by Argentine author Pablo de Santis, this book is the story of a young man named Dalessius in 1700's France. From a young age, he is trained as a calligrapher, which later earns him a job working for the eccentric Voltaire.This book was beautiful and intellectual. It is a book that you must pay attention to, and read carefully, as there are countless little details on every page that you would miss if only skimming. Essentially, these little details were what made this book so fascinating for me.De Santis is a skillful, intricate writer who masterfully creates a vivid world by using a curious method. He gives the reader a strong impression that other lives and stories, besides the one that he is writing, are going on all around it. Little descriptors given for an unimportant individual, or a place, or an object, hint at there being so much more under the surface - other, unrelated stories that sound intriguing, but that he doesn't have time to go into.The result is a very realistic, artful sense of setting that does not rely so much on a place as it does on the realistic presence of the people who inhabit it.I just loved all of these little details and eccentricities, which were scattered over nearly every page. Most were unimportant to the story, but they added so much to it. They were the minuscule moments in the book that contributed beauty and a sense of cinematic-style art. Dalessius accidentally glimpses the face of a beautiful corpse in her coffin, a man tells us that he carries a withered enemies hand about with him wherever he goes. Kolm tells a story of accidentally executing his estranged father and giving up his job as a hangman afterward, students whisper rumors of an unspecified "cursed" word that they will punished for happening to write down. A man accidentally uses disappearing ink when writing a woman's execution document, so that when it is opened and found blank, the people take it as a sign from God, and she is let go. An actor becomes so well known for playing his role of a notorious local villain that he becomes hated himself. A man who lost three fingers setting off fireworks tells the tale with nostalgia, likening it to an honorable sort of battle wound. A traveler sees a woman on her deathbed and takes it as a sign, returning home to his wife and never leaving her side again. A maid is given a candlestick but is forbidden to light it, lest she waste her master's hoarded money. A sculptor finally finds his paragon model, a beautiful girl who can sit deathly still, but she disappears the next day, resulting in only a half finished sculpted head and his eventual suicide. A man writes using the blood of his enemies as ink....And there were so very many more. None took up more than a few lines, which actually made them seem all the more realistic, allowing the reader to fill in extra details in their imaginations.Another thing that I absolutely adored about this book was Dalessius' view on his trade as a calligrapher.I think that what gave this book its literary, intellectual texture was the way that our main character looks upon his career. To him, it is more than just copying words in pretty handwriting.He experiments with it and becomes obsessed by it, both hating and loving his trade all at once. He develops finesse and sophistication, even strategies that have to do with his techniques, his paper, his quills, and most importantly, his inks. He describes to us different methods, comparing some calligraphers to stonemasons. He uses describing words like "laceration" or "flow" for his writings. As the book progresses, calligraphy becomes less of a study and more of an art to Dalessius, and finally, a philosophy.He develops theories concerning his calligraphy, entertains deep-thinking notions and musings, all related to us with a light sort of sincerity.I loved de Santis for what he created here. Truly, nearly any topic can be twisted into something intellectual if given the precision and philosophical, artful manner than he conjured up here.The above is the essence of what I got out of this book and enjoyed about it. If none of that sounds like your type of story, you will probably not enjoy this book.It does not have a specific outline of a plot, and yet neither is it a character-driven story. In fact, it would be a bit difficult to pinpoint exactly what the purpose and main story would be.True to the title, Dalessius does work as a calligrapher and assistant to Voltaire, but not for a long enough time to be considered the main plotline. I loved the depiction of Voltaire as an eccentric, messy, quirky old man and wish that he had been focused on more.Dalessius is in Toulouse for quite some portion of the book, which makes a less than favorable impression upon him (he stays in a filthy inn room and spends most of his time delving into the lives of hangmen, stories of grisly executions, and local tales of murders that are later glorified in plays).Later in the story, he meets the fascinating clockmaker and mechanic von Knepper and his beautiful daughter Clarissa. Von Knepper's life's works are his life-size mechanic dolls, fashioned after Clarissa herself.My one small complaint about this book would be that the author, or publisher, or someone really ought to included some actual calligraphy in this book! Even a pretty beginning letter at the start of each chapter would have been a lovely and relevant touch. Dalessius and de Santis make calligraphy sound gorgeous, and I wanted to see some examples! A few typical squiggles underneath the chapter numbers were included, but that was all.All in all, this is a book as intricate and calculatingly artistic as Dalessius' calligraphy or as von Knepper's mechanical art. Though it was extremely short at only 150 pages, the author's shading of the story with detail and back-stories make it seem like a very long, complex book. This is a perfect example of beautiful, thoughtful writing.
    • 2/5
      Dalessius is a 20-year-old calligrapher who ends up working for the philosopher Voltaire in France during the Enlightenment. Interesting enough premise, but the plot never found its pace for me. It felt disjointed and confusing. There are automatons, secret messages written on naked women, a heart in a jar and other intriguing concepts, but they never mesh into a cohesive story. The book is only 150 pages and yet it felt like it was much longer. I found myself never wanting to pick it up and I can’t help but wonder if something was lost in translation. Maybe the plot makes more sense in its native language. I did really enjoy some of Santis’ descriptions of the people Dalessius meets on his journeys. Here’s one description of a watchmaker… “Her many years around clocks had given her words a regular beat, as if each syllable corresponded exactly to a fraction of time.”