Grazia Dei Rossi sequel is rich in atmosphere

The Legacy of Grazia Dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park, House of Anansi Press

 

Toronto-based writer Jacqueline Park is currently at work on the third panel of a formidable historical literary triptych. 

The Legacy of Grazia Dei Rossi is the second instalment of the wide-reaching trilogy that depicts the storied, fictional lives of a remarkable woman, Grazia dei Rossi, whom we met in the introductory volume, and her son, Danilo, whose bold, adventure-soaked life unfolds in volume two.

Volume one, The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi, begins at the start of 16th century Italy. Part two, Legacy, picks up the story near the midpoint of the century after Grazia’s death. Fate – or rather, the creative exigencies of Park’s literary imperative – casts young Danilo back to the sheltering home of his father, the renowned physician Judah Del Medigo. 

No longer in Italy, father and son are now living in Istanbul, the beating heart of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, they are at the very epicentre of the empire, for Del Medigo is the sultan’s personal physician. The Great Suleiman effectively conscripted Del Medigo to his service. And one did not generally refuse the Sultan’s summons. 

Del Medigo would prefer to leave the Sultan’s employ to dedicate his time to raising and educating his son. The Sultan, however, is unwilling to release his physician-adviser-philosopher. This is especially the case since the Sultan insists Del Medigo be his “in-house-always-at-his-side” doctor on the military campaign the Sultan is planning  to undertake to capture Vienna.

In his father’s absence, young Danilo is placed in the harem school for royal children with the Sultan’s mother serving as the boy’s guardian. 

Thus, Park puts in place the literary pieces that ultimately form a beguiling fiction that is equal part youthful, hotheaded romance and meticulous, detailed history.

At his new school, Danilo meets and befriends the Sultan’s daughter, Saida. Not surprisingly, the friendship evolves into love, at first immature and innocent then inevitably, as it must, into something far more sophisticated and more urgent. 

But the love between the two is forbidden: She is Muslim. He is a Jew. She is royalty. He is not. Their feelings must be hidden and furtive, a secret they can share with no one. 

How the love affair survives amid the jealousies and intrigues of the Sultan’s court and how it will resolve while Danilo himself is away with the Sultan on an arduous military effort to capture Baghdad, inform the dramatic tension that carries the reader to the end of story. There is, however, a great deal more to the story than the answer to the question: Will Danilo and Saida wind up together?

Indeed, the relationship between the young couple is merely the creative pretext for Park to write a broad, thoughtful exploration of the history, mores, customs and traditions of the Ottoman Empire and more particularly, of the severely controlled life within the Ottoman court. 

The research underpinning the work is impressive. It touches upon various disciplines: historical, social, cultural, political and military.

For example, Park describes the education of future “civil servants” in the context of the uniquely Ottoman nature of rule and governmental organization, particularly in contradistinction to the system in Christian Europe. 

“It was all work and very little play for the Sultan’s pages. Seen through the eyes of someone like the Venetian bailo (emissary), the investment of thought, time, energy and money needed to keep this training school running seemed prodigious. But to the Ottoman sultans, this school was the bedrock of what foreigners called the Ruling Institution and what their subjects simply called the Sultan’s cul, a governing caste of slaves who owed allegiance strictly to him. This cul was the unique invention that had enabled an obscure mongrel nomadic tribe to conquer, hold, and expand a sphere of influence exceeding the Roman Empire in less than 100 years.

“The speed of that transformation boggled the European imagination. Observing it from the west, it seemed as if one day the Osman tribe was a ragged band of ghazi march warriors and overnight became the scourge of Christian Europe. Having converted early on to Islam and changed their name from Osman to Ottoman, they attributed their remarkable rise to the beneficence of Allah. They saw their mission as a jihad against infidels. But they went at it with a stony pragmatism that owed more to Sun Tzu than to Mohammed. And like their Oriental forbears they seemed to have a gift for recognizing problems early and solving them without delay, often using methods borrowed from others, in particular their enemies.”

The book is a feast of concentrated, eye-opening detail. And the author is exceptionally qualified to make such exacting detail the centerpiece of her work. For Park is the founding chairman of the dramatic writing program and professor emerita at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She undertook this magnum literary opus in her later life, which to this stage has reached its 89th year.

Like she did in The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi, Park here adopts a hybrid writing style combining straight narrative and the exchange of correspondence. The story itself is rich in atmosphere and context: perhaps even too rich. There could have been more swashbuckling and more intrigue, more life-threatening predicaments and life-saving action. The story would have benefited by more plot development involving Danilo, his father and the evil characters pitted against them. 

The Legacy of Grazia Dei Rossi concludes with the introduction of a new character who mentions the real-life, strong and compelling figure of Dona Grazia Nasi. Park intrigues us with the suggestion that the continuation of Danilo’s story in the final instalment of the trilogy might relate to the philanthropic and other achievements of the famous Nasi family. We can only hope, wait, and see.

 

See interview with Park