In the early morning of October 16, 1943, there was a roundup of Jews in Rome carried out by SS troops. The capital had been occupied by the Nazis a month earlier in retaliation for the deposition of Mussolini and the surrender of the Italian government to the Allies.
One of the Jews threatened by persecution was the Austrian Ludwig Pollak, a renowned archaeologist and antiquarian, advisor to major collectors, who had been director of the Barracco Museum of Ancient Sculpture and had achieved great renown by discovering in 1906 the lost right arm of the Laocoön. , the famous Hellenistic sculpture group preserved in the Vatican.
The historian Hans von Trotha recreates in Pollak’s Arm the scholar’s last night before the raid. The novel, the result of the study of the antiquarian’s archives and diaries, is articulated through a long conversation between Pollak and a professor sent by the Vatican to warn him of the danger he is in and transfer him and his family to the Holy See, where he can take refuge. Far from rushing, Pollak, an elderly man, decides to delay his escape and, with disconcerting calm, tell the professor the story of his life.
Von Trotha handles the narration of this waiting rhythm with great literary skill. He manages to convey in an extraordinary way the tension between the sense of urgency due to imminent danger and the fascination that the story of Pollak’s life exerts on the professor. Memories dotted with juicy anecdotes and brilliant reflections on art and archaeology, which are the expression of a deep knowledge and love for classical European culture, represented by the figure of Goethe, the great intellectual reference of antiquarianism.
The highlight of the conversation is the story of the discovery of the arm of Laocoön and the significance of that sculpture in the history of art. The author draws a parallel between the extreme suffering expressed by the figure of the Trojan priest in Greek mythology, condemned to die by the gods by sending him two sea serpents, and the tragic fate of Pollak, a modern Laocoön resigned to die from the bites of the sea serpents. snakes of barbarism and unreason.
