Lieutenant Kije Young Vitushishnikov (Eridanos Library, No. 20) - Hardcover

Tynyanov, Yury

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0941419363 ISBN 13: 9780941419369

Publisher: Marsilio Pub, 1991

Synopsis

two novellas, tr & intro by Mirra Ginsburg

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Two glittering novellas from a Russian master (1894-1943) satirize the abuses of 18th- and 19th-century czarist regimes, none too obliquely implicating Stalin himself, in full power when both were written ("I'll show them," says a ruler here, "that Autocracy is still alive in Russia"). "Lieutenant Kije," the inspiration for the suite by Prokofiev, is a triumph of grotesquerie: at the court of mad Emperor Paul I, terror reigns, with courtiers in such fear of the czar that none dares to emend an officially approved memorandum that erroneously declares one officer dead and, through another slip, creates a nonexistent lieutenant. With magisterial modulation, Tynyanov recounts the psychic disintegration of the first and the splendid rise of the second: the latter is exiled to Siberia and recalled, gains a flesh-and-blood wife and son, but ultimately suffers a fatal illness just as he is to be named a general. Similar absurdities mark "Young Vitushishnikov," which juggles a larger cast, at the court of Paul's son Emperor Nicholas I, but drolly delineates each member: "He had a lively understanding of people," Tynyanov says of one, "and the notion of 'human frailty' did not exist for him. Everything was only 'a matter of habit.' " In these works laughter and despair are inseparable.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marsilio Pub
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0941419363
• ISBN 13: 9780941419369
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 137