Dictionary of the Khazars - Right on the title page prospective readers are informed there are two, nearly identical, editions of this book – MALE and FEMALE (authors caps). We are also alerted, warned even, that ONE PARAGRAPH (again, author's caps) is critically different in each edition. As both editions are now available in English, Serbian author Milorad Pavić and/or his publisher conclude this mini preamble with these words: “The choice is yours.”
Quizzically quaint in that I see not only one but three choices a reader can make: 1) which edition to read; 2) to search or not to search for that ONE PARAGRAPH; 3) once found or not found, the amount of importance ascribed to said single paragraph (this “lexicon novel” is well over three hundred pages). Additionally, many more choices could unravel depending upon a reader's decisions.
What does all this bring to mind? The children's gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, or, perhaps Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinths or Umberto Eco’s literary puzzles or Italo Calvino’s direct references to how we read a book? If intrigued, even slightly, please read on. If not, you can stop right here. The choice is yours.
Preceding the reconstructed and revised second edition of The Khazar Dictionary, that is, the Milorad Pavić novel, there are more than a dozen pages of Preliminary Notes. Here’s the very first sentence: “The author assures the reader that he will not have to die if he reads this book, as did the user of the 1691 edition, when The Khazar Dictionary still had its first scribe.” Always encouraging words, especially for a book reviewer like myself who would like to continue reading and reviewing more books after I’m done with this one.
And who were the Khazars, you may well ask? Answer: a powerful people whose kingdom ruled lands at crossroads along the Silk Road between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea from the 7th to 10th century, a people who preached their own faith, a faith that continues to remain unknown to us moderns. Their conversion to one of the Western monotheistic religions -Judaism, Christianity, Islam - lead to the downfall of their empire at the hands of the Russians. The fact we do not know which one of the three religions is a central theme of the Dictionary of the Khazars.
What we do know is the ruler of the Khazars, the kaghan, invited a rabbi and a monk and a dervish to his palace to compete in a contest to provide the best interpretation of a powerful, significant, fateful dream he had. The kaghan proclaimed that he and his people would convert to the winner's religion. Since no definitive record from the period has survived, in later years, each religion claimed victory. Ah, religion - what else is new?
The Preliminary Notes provide all sorts of remarkable detail, such as eyewitness reports that in the years following the demolition of the Khazar capital at the mouth of the Caspian Sea by the conquering Russians, shadows of the city’s houses held their outlines long after the buildings were destroyed. Leads me to believe, as a consequence of the Khazar defeat, the opium trade along the Silk Road must have been booming.
Also, how one 17th century chronicler explained his own day’s awakened interest in various writings and documents revolving around the competition for that distant kaghan’s kingdom: “Each of us promenades his thought, like a monkey on a leash. When you read, you always have two such monkeys: your own and the one belonging to someone else. Or, even worse, a monkey and a hyena. Now, consider what you will feed them. For the hyena does not eat the same thing as a monkey . . . .”
Say what? Not exactly the quote one would use to encourage young people to develop a love for books and reading. It would be interesting to know what stake the chronicler had in the Khazar debate. Was he himself an jaded reader? Maybe just another disgruntled author who couldn’t find a publisher for his own writing.
And there was funny business aplenty with that first edition of the Dictionary published at the end of the 17th century: two copies survived the Inquisition, one printed with a poisoned dye. Whoever opened the book soon grew numb and the reader would drop dead on the ninth page. At some point, the poisoned copy was destroyed. (Maybe not a bad thing). The other copy was also destroyed, this time by an old man who would tear out one page at a time to dip in his soup so as to skim off the fat. Thus, the second edition was put together, piece by piece, drawing on various sources through times both medieval and modern and lands, near and far and far out.
I’ll conclude my observations on the Preliminary Notes by citing how the author encourages us to read the book in such a way that we can rearrange the parts much like a Rubik's cube and put it together as if playing a game of dominoes or cards. And, “as with a mirror, he will get out of this dictionary as much as he puts into it, for, as is written on one of the pages of this lexicon, you cannot get more out of the truth than what you put into it. After all, this book need never be read in its entirety; one can take half or only a part and stop there, as one often does with dictionaries.”
The bulk of Milorad Pavić’s novel is composed of: The Red Book, The Green Book, The Yellow Book, that is, three dictionaries on the Khazar question compiled by three sources: Christian (Red), Islamic (Green) and Hebrew (Yellow). Contained therein are tales and tales within tales - a maze, a web, a jumble, a literary stew of states of consciousness, deadly alphabets, a princess with multiple faces, human immortality, fast and slow mirrors, inheritances based on the color of one’s beard, bones made of gold, learning the Khazar language from a parrot, a sealed chest of hashish, glass fingernails, dreams of a multicolored moustache, an illness serving as a pair of eyes. And that’s only from the first pages of The Red Book! It gets better. It gets wilder and wilder and wilder.
As by way of example, here are brief notes on the first two entries: Ateh, a 9th century princess, played a decisive role in the conversion of the Khazars. While asleep, the princess protected herself from her enemies by writing a single letter on each of her eyelids. The princess’s star-studded entry covers four glorious pages.
Brankovich Avram of the 17th century was among the authors of the book who could not speak one language for more than a minute at a time. While in conversation, Brankovich switched back and forth from Hungarian to Turkish to Walachian to Khazar and spoke Spanish in his sleep. His entry goes on for more than twenty pages (all in English).
This is a novel for lovers of storytelling, lovers who are willing to open the book as if picking up a Rubik's cube and delighting in each rotation. Who knows, such a lover might reach states of bliss unknown even to Khazar mystics and dreamers. The choice is yours.
Milorad Pavić, 1929-2009 - Serbian novelist, poet and literary historian
"Overall, he became a handsome and educated young man, and only occasionally did he exhibit barely noticeable signs that he was unlike others. For example, on Monday evenings he could take a different day from his future and use it the following morning, in place of Tuesday. When he came to the day he had taken, he would use the skipped Tuesday in its place, thereby adjusting the total. Under these conditions, of course, the connecting seams of the days could not fit together properly, and cracks appeared in time, but this matter only gladdened Petkutin." - Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars
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