Jacek Bocheński

Tiberius Caesar

This novel about Tiberius completes Jacek Bocheński’s Roman trilogy. The first part, "Divine Juliu"s (1961) and the second, "Naso the Poet" (1967), were read as examples of “Aesopian” literature, which escapes into the language of allusion and the metaphor of historical costume as a way of smuggling unprintable truths past the censor. In the character of Julius Caesar the figure of Joseph Stalin could be seen, and the novel about Ovid seemed to be describing the fate of the exiled poet Joseph Brodsky. "Tiberius Caesar" bids us look at those novels in a new light. In telling the story of a great ruler, a man who wanted to change the world but was ill-starred and had the historians against him, Bocheński writes about age-old human passions, fears and desires, terror and courage, the nature of power, and the role of necessity and chance in our life. He also considers what is historical truth, what is cruelty and what is sexuality, and asks the question: “what does it mean to be oneself?” Like the earlier ones, this novel too teaches the lesson that human nature never changes. But thanks to this message this novel about Tiberius, which Bocheński started writing in 1970 and abandoned for several decades when even his friends found his descriptions of Roman decadence too extreme and sexually bold, is also about our modern era. As the narrator of his novel Bocheński has a tour guide (in "Divine Julius" it was an antiquarian, and in "Naso the Poet" it was a compère and an investigator). Timescales mix, so do the voices of ancient historians and characters in the novel, and also those of the people taking part in the tourist trip. Bocheński’s narrator conducts a polemic with the ancient and modern Italian Marxists who ended up as the spiritual mentors of the Red Brigades (Bocheński is also the author of "Blood-Red Italian Sweetmeats", an excellent book about terrorism). This expedition to ancient Rome and its provinces is a journey deep into the soul of modern-day man, the heir to Tiberius and his equal.

Marek Zaleski

Jacek Bocheński (born 1926) is an eminent essayist and journalist, as well as a novelist and translator from German and Latin. From 1997-99 he was president of the Polish PEN Club.