These days the inside of dust jackets mostly feature a quote from the book or from the New York Times Book Review. But I always appreciate when the dust jacket actually has a summary of the plot, as older books often do, because then I can judge the book before I even reach the first page. In the edition of The Trumpeter of Krakow I read, printed by MacMillan and illustrated by Janina Domanska in 1966, the flap says, "out of his great love of Poland and its history, Mr. Kelly painted a vivid picture of the political and social life of Krakow in the early Renaissance." To a large extent, this summary is accurate. The story opens with a historical moment. An earlier trumpeter of Krakow, sworn to trumpet on the hour from the balcony of the Church of Our Lady Mary, is shot down by invading forces before he can finish the last few notes of the Heynal. When the current story takes place years later, with Pan Andrew and his family hiding from their enemies in Krakow, he and his son become the new trumpeters of Krakow. They learn that it is now tradition to cut the Heynal short in honor of that trumpeter's bravery. To this extent, the story has a strong current of patriotism and pride in the quality and character of Poland.
But the reason for Pan Andrew's family's migration is what really interested me in this story. Their house is burnt to the ground and looted, forcing them to flee through the night. Joseph (the main character) gradually discovers that his father is responsible for hiding a great treasure, the Tarnov Crystal. This crystal is said to have occult powers. The narrator explains that "men were then but beginning to see the folly of many superstitions and cruelties that had been prevalent since the Dark Ages; they believed that certain persons had malign powers such as could transform others into strange animals; they thought that by magic, men could work out their spite upon others in horribly malicious ways." Indeed, with all of the astrologers and alchemists living in the university section of the city, the characters often have a hard time judging the thin line between scientific explorations and the dark arts.
At first, the Tarnov Crystal seems like it might be a tool for these dark arts, possibly even the key to the Philosopher's Stone. But by the end of the book we discover that when people are entranced by the beauty of the Crystal, it's not the devil's secrets that they see in its depths, but the secrets of their own minds. For instance, when the alchemist goes into a trance and thinks he has found a way into the Devil's workshop, we are told that in fact "the information he had during the trance came from his own fund of learning." This is a theme throughout the book, that mystical things turn out to be products of the human imagination. The Alchemist knows this better than anyone because he uses a costume, phosphorescent chemicals, and explosive powders to frighten robbers who come to steal the Crystal. Even though there's a scientific explanation for this apparition, the robbers' imaginations supply the terror.
Throughout the whole book, these powers of the human mind take on a darkness, especially in contrast to the innocence of the Pan Andrew family, who are blessedly unaware of the inner workings of their own subconscious. The Alchemist, on the other hand, knows that the Crystal's powers are terrible, which knowledge compels him to fling the Crystal into the river at the end in order to prevent any more disasters from occurring. Possibly I exaggerate the prevalence of this theme ... I've had "the mind" on the mind for a while, anticipating A.S. Byatt's new book, which she said is going to be about some of Freud's disciples/patients, a group who rather famously suffered at the hands of psychological over-investigation. Read it and decide for yourself, I guess.
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