"The real hero of this book is not power, but the myth of power, the situation of a person - any one of us - cast out into 'the world of tyranny and exploitation'..."
"Przybylski's new book," writes Michał Paweł Markowski, "is a fable about power. The subject may seem surprising. Przybylski the essayist writing about power? A classic tackling tyranny? But on the other hand, as so many books have been written about the phenomenon of power already, is it worth returning to the subject yet again? The answer lies in the subject itself, since what Przybylski is really writing about is the tyrant Sardanapalus, who in fact never existed and was transformed into a 'fact extricated out of the void' only thanks to the imagination of the poets and painters."
"The real hero of this book is not power, but the myth of power, the situation of a person - any one of us - cast out into 'the world of tyranny and exploitation'. Przybylski's game with power and tyranny is - as always in his books - a game with a world which has no exit, a world forsaken by transcendence."
Ryszard Przybylski (b. 1928) eminent essayist, historian of Polish and Russian literature, Professor Emeritus of Institute for Literary Research (IBL) at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
- Ryszard Przybylski
Sardanapalus. The Story of Tyranny. A Farawell to a Hideous Century / Sardanapal. Opowieść o tyranii. Na pożegnanie ohydnego stulecia
Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warszawa 2001
translation rights: Ryszard Przybylski, rights available
130 x 202, 167 pages, hardcover
ISBN 83-86056-90-8