Lieutenant Kijé; Young Vitushishnikov: Two Novellas

The first of these two novellas is a wicked satire on bureaucracy set during the reign of Czar Paul I (1754-1801), son of Catherine the Great. In addition to ridiculing the czar himself, Tynyanov updates an old story: the czar’s bureaucrats are in such fear of him that no one dares to correct an officially approved memorandum erroneously declaring one officer dead and inventing another one. The novella is straight out of Gogol and tracks the fortunes of the two men concerned. The nonexistent soldier (Lieutenant Kijé) begins life with a “real” flogging and exile to Siberia followed by his recall and steady rise through the ranks. This fictional Kijé owes his very success to his equally fictional qualities: he doesn’t offend show more anyone, he commits no errors, makes no mistakes, and does nothing foolish. He succeeds by doing nothing—hardly a challenge for someone who isn’t there. Indeed, the Czar promotes this literal nonentity, thus beginning his meteoric rise. Predictably, Kijé becomes so famous that the Czar commands that Kijé appear before him. The officer mistakenly declared dead, on the other hand, takes the clerical error seriously—it was official so it must be true—and soon succumbs to doubt, despair and, inevitably, death. The second novella features a larger cast and is set at the court of Paul's son, Nicholas I. A young boy performs a minor service to the czar; the act is absurdly overblown as imperial courtiers compete to outdo one another in glorifying their narcissistic ruler. I thought the second story less effective than the first, though still bitterly humorous. Under the humor, of course, lies Tynyanov’s virulent criticism of mindless rule-followers, a dangerous critique to have published under Stalin. Or, say, an orange-haired, carrot-complexioned blowhard. I find it most remarkable that although he first published this in 1928, he in fact died in 1943 (at the age of 49) from natural causes…multiple sclerosis. show less