Notes on Reading Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Paviç

Notes by Nick Montfort for Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative

I began by reading the Preliminary Notes, then read the Arabic, Jewish, and Christian entries on "Khazars" in that order.

As I read I felt as if studying some issue in an encyclopedia, but with the important different that I did not know what central issue I was considering. On one level, it might be the race the Khazars, on another, the Khazar polemic (which I suppose at this point to be the central event of the novel, although that view may require revision), on another, the text "Dictionary of the Khazars" and the earlier works about the Khazars themselves. Obviously if one consults the Encyclopedia Britannica it matters a great deal whether one is intereted in learning mainly about Romans of the Republic, mainly about the assasination of Julius Caesar, or mainly about the rhetorical nature of the Britannica itself. Just as clearly, one has to know at least bit about each of these in order to understand anything about one of the others. In my reading of Dictionary of the Khazars, I have decided to try to remain concious of at least these three perspectives.

An important different is that one goes to a novel to read, to be led by an author along a narrative to a conclusion initally unknown. When consulting an actual encyclopedia, one goes to consult, to gather information (or particular perspectives - scholarly ones, for instance) in the service of some need external to the text. This creates one of the many important tensions in Dictionary of the Khazars, which is both a novel and an encyclopedia.

The inclusion of three different volumes, each with a different persepctive, is anathemic to the idea of an encyclopedia "presenting truth," as Charles Van Doren was quoted as saying it did in Rosanne Stone's latest book. Ironically, even the Van Doren's Britannica (with its divisions between Macropaedia, Micropaedia, and Propaedia) does present three different viewpoints, although divided in different ways.

Rich elements from fable - images of fantastic, distant landscapes from Herodotous; numerological refereces to sevens, two, and three; resonance with religious works of all three faiths - are intervowen in the description of the Khazars. Culturally, the importance of salt, change, blurring, and opposition is evident. A few of the more explicit metafictional elements include the stress on the importance of words (God impregnates Mary in a dream by uttering a word, in the Khazar religious tradition), the image of "the Great Parchment" in which a people's history is tattoed on an envoy, and the presence of a sub-entry on the Khazar Dictionary within the Yellow Book's entry on the Khazars.

After reading these three entries, I went to my Atlas to look at the locales described and get a rough geographical idea of where the Khazar state was situated, according to the (sometimes conflicting) entries. The area suggested includes the area between the Caspian and Black Seas - the Bol'soj Kavkaz Caucasus where a portion of Russia now is, along with Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Obviously the borders of the state are left indistinct by the text, and the entries collaborate in describing how the boundary-blurring Khazars themselves merged with other surrounding cultures. The center of the state - like the exact time of the Polemic, the central passage of the text, or the central cultural feature of the Khazars - is left unclear.

I continued by consulting outside sources to orient the Khazar race approximently in time. The three books mention different years and none place the Khazar empire's height at a specific century or within a definite time frame. Werner Stein's Kulturfahrplan notes that in 600 CE "The Khazars form an empire between the lower Volga and the lower Don." Around this time the Checks, Slovaks, and Yugoslavs are settling in Eastern Europe and the barbarian invasions in the west are ending. Mohammed is alive. In 637 Jerusalem is conquered by the Arabs, and within a few years the Eastern Roman Empire will be eroded by further Arab conquests. Justinian II (mentioned in the Chrisitan book) is deposed in 695, as Arab conquests continue in Armenia and Carthage. The Byzantine Empire is in 730 divided by Pope Gregory II from Catholocism by his excommunication of the emporer ... and so on.

My next reading of an encyclopedia entry on the Khazars came from the Britannica. "... the most striking characteristic of the Khazars was the apparant adoption of Judiasm by the khagan [ruler] and the greater part of the ruling class in about 740. The circumstances of the conversion remain obscure ... but the fact itself is undisputed and unparalleled in central Eurasian history." According to the Britannica, Justinian II and Constantine V each had a Khazar wife. The Britannica entry ends on a rather poetic note: "Despite the relatively high level of Khazar civilization and the wealth of data about the Khazars that is preserved in Byzantine and Arab sources, not a single line of the Khazar language has survived."

I then moved from a study of the historical and geographical world to concious consideration of the form of the text. I began reading Robert Coover's review of the book, and at mention of "future time" and "time past," paused to read T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton," to which these phrases refer. In reading the poem, I didn't know the word "eructation," so I looked it up in the dictionary. I returned to the review. In reading, I noted Coover's review is not included in its entirity - the end and a middle segment are missing - and I wondered whether this was done with deliberate irony or accidentally. So I moved on to the other more negative review by Michiko Kakutani. Then I returned to the Dictionary of the Khazars itself and read the appendices to the book, the closing note, and the index of entries.

I was very interested in the way the closing note made an explicit connection between the book and the world - although it was a bit corny.

I was speaking about the book to my friend Martin, who has a deep interest in geneology and comes from a Jewish family that emigrated from Eastern Europe to Argentina. He told me that there is speculation that Eastern European Jews are decendants of the Khazars, but also that suggesting someone is potentially a decendant of the Khazars is politically loaded, because some in Israel argue that Khazar decendants - not being a part of the ten tribes - are not entitled to citizenship in Israel.

I read other entries in the book - one at random, then the three on Ateh. I continued sampling entries, then read the three on the Khazar Polemic. I finished this particular reading by reading the entry on Dr. Dorothea Schultz in the Yellow Book. The concept of a correspondence to one's younger self was very appealing as a ltierary device, but becuase this entry was a lot longer than the others (although short compared to a traditional novel's chapter) it was a bit tedious to read. I had established a standard length for the lexia as I read, I think, and this one being much longer disrupted what I expected.