FICTION

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG APE by Michael Butor, translated from the French by Dominic Di Bernardi. (Dalkey Archive Press: $19.95; 123 pp.) A castle, a text. A woman running from a castle holding a text. A vampire. Alchemy and the recipes of Paracelsus. A certain Dr. H--. The text? “The Philosophic Abodes” by Fulcanelli, or maybe “Joseph in Egypt” by Thomas Mann.

A young Frenchman, a student, is invited, sometime after World War II, to the castle of a certain Count W. in Franconia. From here, the novel, first published in France in 1967, becomes a book of clues set in parallel universes; an Easter-egg hunt in the Black Forest. The punctuation and much of the writing resembles a well-used card catalogue. Characters have eyes that are orange, yellow and azure; they wear citrine robes and drink the Hungarian wine, Tokay. At night, the student dreams he meets the mistress of a vampire, imprisoned in the castle. He incurs the jealousy of the vampire Orfanik, son of the daughter of Nosferatu, who turns him into an ape. In his waking life, the student is given a pamphlet on the castle describing the execution in 1666 of Eva Erber, for “sundry adulteries. . . .” The student’s name? Butor. The reigning metaphor? The development of the writer. Please go away now, I feel so very tired.