The Enchantress of Florence

Salman Rushdie’s most recent novel, The Enchantress of Florence, shares quite some similarities with The Satanic Verses. For instance, like Gibreel in The Satanic Verses, one of the protagonists from The Enchantress of Florence is “left to question his memory and wonder how much of his waking life had been infected by dreams” (The Enchantress of Florence, p.147).

On top of this, Rushdie again uses the story of Hind and how “Hind of Mecca on the battlefield of Uhud had eaten the heart of the fallen Hamza, the Prophet’s uncle” (The Enchantress of Florence, p.87). However more importantly, The Satanic Verses, like The Enchantress of Florence, is primarily occupied with religion and even more importantly with the collision between East and West. In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie focuses on the migration from East to West, and what this means for the migrant’s identity. This leads to his notion of hybridity. This notion of hybridity entails that there is a big discrepancy between East and West and that the immigrant’s identity consists of, at least, two different components. In The Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie takes a different approach. He is no longer concerned with newness but travels back in history and searches for a common denominator to show that Eastern and Western cultures might not be as diametrically opposed as is generally assumed, or as the cart driver says to himself while he is transporting the eccentric ‘Mogor dell’Amore’: [p]erhaps [the Mogor dell’Amore is] someone to be reckoned with. If he had a fault, it was that of ostentation, of seeking to be not only himself but a performance of himself as well, and, the driver thought, around here everybody is a little bit that way too, so maybe this man is not so foreign to us after all (The Enchantress of Florence, p.7, emphasis added).However, before an in depth analysis can commence of such a complex work, a short summary of the novel and its structure will now follow to make reading the remainder of this chapter easier.The novel does away with the prevailing East-West dichotomy by comparing a high point of European culture, Renaissance Italy, with a similar period in Indian history, namely the reign of the Grand Mughal Akhbar. It is an intricate story in which a story narrated by the protagonist, who gives himself multiple names, one of which is Mogor dell’Amore, weaves together these two cultures. This Mogor dell’Amore travels to India as a stowaway on a Scottish ship to narrate the story of his ancestry in order to show to the emperor that he is his relative, his uncle to be more precise. Being a cunning conjuror, he is able to trick and charm the ship’s captain, and by doing so, he is able to steal many of the captain’s precious artefacts, as well as a letter directed to the Grand Mughal from the English Queen Elizabeth. Thisenables him to enter the Grand Mughal’s court and to disclose his secret to the Grand Mughal, namely that he is his uncle and son of a lost Mughal princess named Qara Köz. Qara Köz was a victim of strive and warfare and finally found her way to Florence. This is where part one of the novel ends. Part two brings the reader to Renaissance Florence where the story enfolds further. This narrative is regularly interrupted by the emperor Akbar, or by a passage that tells the reader of what is happening in the emperor’s city during the narration of the Mogor’s story. In this part, the reader learns of three young Florentines: Niccoló il Machia (Niccoló Machiavelli), Agostino Verspucci and Antonino Argalia. Argalia is the one who, after his parents die from the plague, leaves Florence to become a soldier of fortune. He is the one who wins Qara Köz’s love. The final part can be seen as the denouement. The story is finished by the Mogor and he narrates how Argalia returns home to Florence with Qara Köz, and how after his death she flees with Agostino Verspucci, relative of Amerigo Verspucci, to the New World, where she becomes pregnant of the Mogor dell’Amore.