Full Description
The poet Wilhelm Küchelbecker, Pushkin's school-friend, suffered twenty years of imprisonment and Siberian exile for his part in the ill-fated Decembrist rising of 1825 against the Russian autocracy. His largely forgotten life and work are vividly recreated in Küchlya (1925), a pioneering historical novel by the eminent literary scholar and Formalist theorist Yury Tynyanov. Writing at a time when Stalin was tightening his grip on Soviet culture and society, Tynyanov implicitly brings together the disquieting experiences of the 1820s and the 1920s. In a lively, innovative style, his gripping and moving narrative, here translated for the first time, evokes the childhood, youth, beliefs and often absurd adventures of a Quixotic, idealistic protagonist against the richly complex backdrop of post-Napoleonic Russian society.
Contents
Introduction
The Characters
Küchlya: Decembrist Poet: A Novel
Willie
The Bechelkückeriad
Europe
Caucasus
In the Country
Sons of the Fatherland
December
Peter's Square
Escape
Fortress
The End
Some Poems by Wilhelm Küchelbecker
Endnotes
