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This Extended Edition of Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar provides the fascinating and invaluable background to one of the greatest novels of the Soviet Era. Susan Causey spent seven years researching and translating Tynianov’s masterpiece. The Extended Edition brings all that work together.
Her Introduction places Tynianov at the midst of the creative storm in the early years of the Soviet Union and shows how his novel, set soon after the Decembrist uprising, reflects back on his own time. Her Explanatory Notes uncover the references which make Tynianov’s text such a breathtaking panorama of Russian literature, politics, history and society in its era. The Bibliography opens many avenuse for further research and shows that Death of the Vazir Mukhtar has now been translated into a least seven languages.
Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar tells the story of the last year in the life of Alexander Griboyedov, a diplomat and playwright in the Russia of Tsar Nicholas I. The novel takes him from being feted in St Petersburg in March 1828, as the successful negotiator of a peace treaty with Persia, through his return to Persia as the tsar’s Vazir-Mukhtar (Minister Plenipotentiary) and his death at the hands of a Tehran mob in January 1829.
On this simple arc Yuri Tynianov hangs a rich, multilayered exploration of Griboyedov’s interior life and Russian society. Allusions, metaphors and meditations mix with dreams, dinner parties, affairs and negotiations to create a whirling, immersive experience. Tynianov uses the techniques he developed as a leader of the Formalist school of literary criticism to make his story vivid, unexpected and forward driving.
