A Mass for Arras [Hardcover]

Andrzej Szczypiorski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1993

In 1461, Jan enthusiastically participates in the persecution of the Jews and witches blamed for an outbreak of plague and famine, but the burgeoning violence threatens Jan himself as he faces choices that have allegorical links to contemporary issues.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A medieval outbreak of witch-burning and anti-Semitism provides the basis for Polish novelist Szczypiorski's ( The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman ) stunning political allegory of the ever-present danger of totalitarianism. In 1461, after losing a fifth of its population to plague and famine, the French town of Arras descends into barbarism. Lechery, looting and book-burning give way to greater violence as the townspeople find scapegoats in Jews and women, slaughtering the former as agents of Satan, the latter as witches. The PEN Club Award-winning author depicts this historical episode through the eyes of the guilt-ridden Jan, a Christian intellectual who participates in the mass hysteria but later escapes the herd mentality after he finds himself suspected of heresy. Jan recoils from his mentor, Father Albert, a proto-fascist demagogue, but when his other role model, David, Bishop of Utrecht, absolves all citizens of their sins, Jan recognizes the horrifying consequences of unquestioning acceptance of authority. This resonant story is a timely meditation on crimes committed in the name of religion and on the misplaced faith the ruled place in their rulers. The translation preserves the pungent medieval atmosphere, evoking a mindset that, the author implies, is very much alive today.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Szczypiorski (The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, 1990) reaches back to an anti-Semitic persecution in 15th-century Brabant for this allegory, first published in Poland in 1970, of the seductive appeal of totalitarianism. Three years after a plague in 1458 wiped out a fifth of its inhabitants, the Burgundian town of Arras is plunged into political frenzy by the death of a horse after its owner was allegedly cursed by his Jewish neighbor Tselus. Arrested and interrogated, Tselus kills himself before charges can be preferred, but the townspeople, seized by rabid anti-Semitism, proceed to rob, exile, and kill not only the local Jews but anyone who expresses sympathy for them, offers criticism of the new orthodoxy of hysteria, or, finally, shows any threateningly aberrant behavior: feeding Jewish citizens, debauchery, conducting scientific dissections. The parallels with the rise of Fascism are obvious, but Szczypiorski, who's after something more subtle, focuses on the running debate between Albert, the holy elder who argues first that purging the town's Jewish presence doesn't purge its evil inclinations--and then, on his deathbed, that he sought to lead the town to freedom through an experience of ``the bitterness of evil''--and the royal bastard Prince David, the absentee Bishop of Utrecht, who begins by speaking for rationality but ends by declaring a ``Sunday of Forgiveness, Cancellation, and Forgetting'' that will render the whole ugly episode null and void. The fulcrum of this debate is a lordly, sensitive student named Jan, who's torn between his loyalty to both Albert and David. Only after he himself is arrested on trumped-up charges does he find his concern for his own and the town's welfare colliding with the need for collective memory, however much in conflict it is with individual experience. But don't be put off by such an abstract summary: this is really a dramatic fable that looks back to Kafka's allegories, and behind them to Dostoyevsky's ``Grand Inquisitor.'' -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 188 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; 1st English-language ed edition (July 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802111734
• ISBN-13: 978-0802111739
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,403,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meditation on freedom and community, May 26, 1999

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Mass for Arras (Andrze Szczypiorski) (Paperback)

A Mass for Arras is a quiet book that sneaks up and mesmerizes you. For the first few pages I anticipated a heavy, philsophical book. A few more pages and I was hooked. Yes, the book is "philosophical" but in the manner of a great novel - it shows concretely how changing beliefs effect daily life. The book reconstructs history in a believable manner while clearly critizing the contemporary world - a book that works on many levels. Add it to your must read list.

5.0 out of 5 stars An historic parable of power and corruption, October 4, 2011

By 

Darrell Delamaide "Author of The Grand Mirage" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Mass for Arras (Andrze Szczypiorski) (Paperback)

This book, the most widely known work of Polish author Andrzej Szczypiorski, is both depressing and disquieting. The medieval tale of faith versus reason, perception as reality and runaway mass hysteria, a story of corruption and damnation, is far too close to our current situation with the intolerant right-wing "Christians" for comfort.

There are no heroes in this novel. The narrator, Jan, is temporizing and profoundly corrupt. His mentor, Father Albert, who imposes a reign of terror on Arras, is mad with zeal -- but a cynical, knowing zeal -- and much too reminiscent of some of the ultra-right-wing Catholic governors like Scott Walker and Chris Christie, who now are imposing their crazy ideology on a captive citizenry. Bishop David, the bastard son of the Duke of Burgundy and a benefactor of the narrator, is cynical, agnostic and capricious.

Szczypiorski first portrayed Arras in the grip of the plague, a frightening descent into cannibalism and licentiousness. But worse was to come. The plague, in fact, unhinged the populace and led to a new frenzy of anti-Semitism and witch hunting, which resulted the executions of an dozens of citizens in an escalation of terror (ironically, even the executioner was executed after he accepted a bribe from one of his victims to kill him cleanly and quickly).

It culminates with Father Albert dying a slow and ugly death of dropsy, and David arriving in time to stay the execution of the narrator and then consign Arras to oblivion by forgiving the perpetrators and telling them "this never happened."

It is in part a philosophical novel with long and passionate arguments about faith and reason and integrity that probably bear more careful reading than I gave them as I barreled along in dismay following the terrible course of the narrative. But that is part of what makes the novel depressing, because Jan's lofty sentiments are undermined by his own lack of integrity.

Arras is a town in what is today northern France and historically is part of Flanders, which in turn was at this time part of the Duchy of Burgundy, a civilization now almost as lost as Atlantis. Originating in Burgundy, the French region that gives its name to the wine, it extended as a patchwork of fiefdoms in an arc through the Low Countries, incorporating much of what is today Belgium. At its zenith in the 15th century, which is when the action of this novel takes place, it was a prosperous region with a reputation for high living. To this day, a Belgian who enjoys his food and wine is called a "true Burgundian."

It is the very prosperity and success of these rich areas -- Arras was a prime center for tapestries -- that makes the city's descent into a faith-driven savagery so frightening. The wealth and sophistication of the city did not prevent its enslavement to ignorance and fanaticism. Once the fanatics seized the levers of power, not even the urbane Count de Saxe with all his wealth was safe from the town's fury. But he at least showed the integrity of a genuine secular humanism and went courageously to his death, unlike the craven narrator, who understood his own cowardice and was able to live with it.

The narrator of this novel speaks of Ghent and Utrecht; he relates his tale after settling in Bruges, that Flemish gem of city. It is a corner of Europe that should have been safe from the horrors described in this book. But it wasn't, and that's the message Szczypiorski, who took part in the Warsaw Uprising and survived Sachsenhausen to become a successful writer in Communist Poland, drives home. No one can say "It can't happen here" with any degree of certainty.