Rarely, I think, has the article ‘a’ played such an important role in a book’s title than in Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island. If that ‘a’ were ‘the,’ this would be a very different book—and a much less interesting one, for this is the story of many histories told together, variously contradicting and supporting each other. None can be left out; they are a tapestry of tales, not one of which contains the full truth but which, woven together, by grace becomes a beautiful mantle around truth’s shoulders. And it all begins with that little ‘a.’
As every child knows, there is no more difficult question, no question more likely to provoke tears or stubborn silence, than that simplest one: What happened? Today, this question can feel impossible to answer. In our discourse, whether local, national, or international, it is ever more difficult to determine what is actually happening; rivalling sets of so-called ‘facts’ lay claim to our emotions and demand a swift response, but as calls for action become louder and fiercer, many of us feel paralyzed rather than galvanized. Our paralysis is the paralysis of a tightrope walker struck through with the sudden fear; it is the terror of realizing that there is no ground beneath our feet. We cannot move, because we do not stand on solid ground.
A History of the Island is a symbolic exploration of the difficulty we have today with history. As Prince Parfeny, the hero of the novel, says, “The longer Ksenia and I live, the more surprised we are at how what’s true in the world is interwoven with what’s not true.” History is a story that is at once true and false, a story in which truth sometimes requires us to record a falsehood, if only so we do not forget that a falsehood was once told.
Vodolazkin is a master of narrative games; each of his previous novels includes some storytelling twist that signals to the reader that not all is as it seems. In Brisbane, the narrator is unreliable; in Laurus, the narration slips in and out of time and recounts miracles as matter-of-factly as a grocery list. In The Aviator, the main character has lost his memory and is trying to piece together who he is through conversation with people who know his story but will not reveal what he cannot discover. In A History of the Island, Vodolazkin combines each of these techniques to create layer upon layer of ambiguity, an ambiguity that makes possible a great clarity.
The book is presented as the amassed chronicles of a small island kingdom that is now perched on the brink of disaster. The chronicles span centuries; as the years pass, the chroniclers change, and with them the tone and emphasis shifts. As rulers rise and fall, regimes change, and wars begin, end, and begin again, the keepers of the Island’s story must exert all their wiles to preserve the Island’s story for the generations to come. And, sometimes, that preservation is a negative preservation; one of the chroniclers has cut out a page of the book containing a prophecy and hidden it. From being hidden, the prophecy only gains power, for in lying times what is not said can be the realest tale, and silence becomes a vessel for truth.
In case all this is not intriguing enough, A History of the Island is not the original draft of the chronicle. It is annotated by the last prince and princess of the Island, Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia. These royals, pledged to each other in marriage as children and now living their 347th year on earth, add the accumulated memories of their miraculously long lives to the chronicle in hopes of saving the Island from its doom.
For almost any other contemporary writer, the complexities of this narrative style would be too much; the temptation to explain, to overdo it, would prove irresistible. But Vodolazkin is a contemporary writer only as by accident of time; as anyone who has read Laurus realizes, Vodolazkin is more of a medieval than a modern, and many of the paradoxes that perplex us today are, in his hands, playthings. He juggles his symbols dexterously, weaving an airborne pattern that we thrill to follow, and then just when we begin to feel rather clever for seeing what he is doing, he slips in a line gently mocking us.
For example, the novel contains a tale-within-a-tale (within-a-tale, actually) element, as Parfeny and Ksenia’s annotations on the chronicle recount the efforts of Jean Leclerc, a contemporary French filmmaker, to tell the Island’s story in movie form. Leclerc is a modern struggling to overcome his modern limitations; despite his best efforts, he brings modern conceits to bear upon the story of Parfeny and Ksenia, the last two medievals, with painful results. Leclerc struggles against miracles; he resists divine interventions. Even where he senses grace in the story he is trying to tell, he tries to make it purely symbolic; he does not let that grace permeate actual human history. (Curiously, he shares a name with a 17th-century French Protestant scholar who wrote heretical commentaries on Scripture denying divine authorship of various Old Testament books.)
I was tempted to feel smarter than Leclerc, to see him as a stand-in for the Modern that I strive not to be. But even in that, Vodolazkin outpaced me. Near the end of the book, Parfeny writes, “Leclerc considers the narrative about the Island as a metaphor for the history of the state in general. Maybe even for world history.” This is, of course, was the very conclusion I was feeling rather clever about coming to myself, and now there it was, spelled out for anyone to read. In this book of secrets, there was another layer, one whose existence I had not even guessed at.
The guiding question of A History of the Island is “how should a history be told?” From that little ‘a’ in the title to the final word, the novel seeks an answer to that question that avoids the twin pitfalls of didacticism and relativism. On the one hand, a story cannot dictate the truth; that is not its function. A story is a series of symbols; it must light the truth from within, not shine a spotlight on it. On the other hand, there are such things as truths and lies. Some stories are false; some symbols are diabolical. How do we walk this ridge between historical didacticism and deadly relativism?
A History of the Island offers not a sweeping theory or argument, but a tale of a life lived well. Really it offers two lives, but two lives lived in an attempt to become one through the mediation of time. The marriage of Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia is a sign of how, through perfect (or as perfect as two people can make it) love, competing histories can become a single thread, one that can catch an entire people and bear its weight. Only love can thresh the past and separate the truth from the lies.
“One time refuses to understand another. And modernity won’t look in history’s mirror if it doesn’t see its reflection,” Leclerc says at one point, showing his own practical wisdom. History, in other words, is a hopeless muddle of ages competing with each other, demanding to be understood without trying to understand.
But truly seeking to understand the other is not a natural act; it is a supernatural one. This supernatural act of giving, rather than more common natural acts, forms the foundation of Parfeny and Ksenia’s marriage. They have chosen to participate in divine love, and that opens up a great truth to them: it doesn’t really matter what others believe. We are each responsible to love as God loves. The Prince and Princess turn divine virtue towards each other and towards their people. When their kingdom is taken from them, they live simply and humbly in a shared apartment. Every time their people call upon them for help, they come, and are content to be spurned again shortly after. They are truly long-suffering; their centuries-long lives give them supernatural opportunities to reveal love.
Leclerc struggles to tell the story of the Island as a history, or a romance, or an epic. Ultimately, his film finds life once he shifts from trying to tell a great and sweeping tale to simply trying to depict Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia’s lives truly. By focusing on the story of two people who have dedicated themselves to understanding each other, to becoming the reflection of the other instead of demanding to see their own face in the mirror, Leclerc at last is able to film his historical epic.
To the end, A History of the Island keeps its secret. What really happens in the final pages? We don’t know. There are many possible explanations; Leclerc knows what he believes. I know what I believe. We see what Parfeny and Ksenia do. We see what happens next. What is the causal relationship between the two? To put it differently, how exactly does love change history? Vodolazkin knows better than to say, for that is really the last mystery, one that demands our whole lives to find out.
