The death of the vizier-mukhtar
The Death of Vizier-Muchtar ( Russian Смерть Вазир-Мухтара , Smert Wasir-Muchtara ) is a historical novel by the Soviet writer Yuri Tynyanov , which was preprinted in 1927 and 1928 in twelve issues of the monthly Leningrad literary magazine Zvezda ( The Star ). The first book edition was published in 1929 by the Leningrad publishing house Priboi ( The Breakwater ).
overview
Wesir-Muchtar is a title and stands for ambassador in Persian . Tynyanow writes about the last year 1828/29 in the life of the ambitious, hard-working Russian diplomat and playwright Alexander Griboyedov , Russian ambassador to Persia .
About the history: From 1812 the Russian Griboyedov, born in Moscow in 1795, voluntarily took part in the fight against Napoleon , quit military service in 1815, went to Saint Petersburg , entered the diplomatic service there in 1817 and fled to Georgia in late autumn 1817 because of an honorary trade . From 1818 the young diplomat worked in Persia and from 1822 worked under General Jermolow in Tbilisi . Meanwhile active in Moscow and Petersburg, Griboyedov was arrested after the Decembrist uprising , got off scot-free and continued his service in Tbilisi in September 1826. In February 1828 Griboyedov acting under Ivan Paskevich with the Persians the Treaty of Turkmantschai out.
content
The action of the novel begins in mid-March 1828 in Petersburg when Griboyedov delivers the above-mentioned treaty to the tsar . Griboyedov, actually a versesmith - for example, the poet of the comedy Verstand creates Leiden , which is neither listed nor printed - wants to please his widowed, almost bankrupt mother Nastassja Feodorovna and torments himself as Paskevich's appendage through the unpopular diplomatic service. Griboyedov did not want to go to Persia at all, but that treaty, negotiated in Tabriz , is half of Griboyedov's work. Before there was an audience with the Tsar, Griboyedov sought out all kinds of personalities in the hated Petersburg. On such an occasion he received good advice from General Yermolov: avoid the English who are also present in Persia and do not do Paskevich's work, because Paskevitsch would first squeeze Griboyedov and then throw it away. Foreign Minister Graf von Nesselrode , “a gray-faced dwarf”, thanks his visitor for the contract, but considers the young man to be one of those super clever ones. Gribojedow is decorated by the Vice Chancellor von Nesselrode with the Saint Anne's Order of the Second Degree with diamonds and receives the four thousand Chervonzen requested by him . The money goes to the mother immediately. This immediately pays off their debts. Actually, Gribojedow wanted to implement his project at von Nesselrode - the industrialization of the Russian Caucasus within a Russian- Trans- Caucasian manufacturing company - but he falls on deaf ears.
Griboyedov also visits friends. Tschaadajew wants to pump the diplomat, but the college council is not in the money. Faddej Bulgarin falls on the newcomer's neck and Pushkin simply shakes his hand.
Griboyedov has to overcome his dislike for Pavel Vasilyevich Golenistschew-Kutuzov during a gentleman's dinner. He had ordered the execution of the five Decembrists by hanging , of whom Griboyedov had known three well. Benckendorff is also sitting at the dining table . Because Griboyedov is aware of the forthcoming private audience with the Tsar, Griboyedov asks for a medal for his brother.
In the one-on-one conversation, the ruler expresses himself disparagingly about those Decembrists who, as a punishment, have to fight the non-Russian mountain peoples in the Caucasus.
The events in Persia followed Griboyedov as far as Petersburg. He received a threatening letter from Samson Chan alias Samson Makinzew. This is a sergeant from the Nizhny Novgorod dragoon regiment who defected to the Persian war opponent years ago.
Von Nesselrode speaks clearly: Russia needs money for its war against the Turks . Contributions are to be collected in Persia. The "gray-faced dwarf" makes Griboyedov a Council of State, sends him to Tehran as the Plenipotentiary Minister of Russia , that is, as ambassador, and gives him Ivan Malzow as First Secretary. Griboyedov deploys Dr. Karl Fjodorowitsch Adelung by. Before leaving for the dreaded Persia, during a meal at Faddej Bulgarin, there was another meeting with Pushkin in the presence of Krylov . Griboyedov had made mistakes in Petersburg. One of them: For permission to perform his above-mentioned comedy, he had turned to the chief censor and had been dismissed. First the trip leads to Griboyedov's second home, Tbilisi. He would like to become director of the above-mentioned project under Paskevich. In Yekaterinograd , Maltsov met his new boss.
In Tbilisi, Griboyedov wants to marry 15-year-old, “extraordinarily beautiful”, plump Nina Alexandrovna Chavchavadze, daughter of Prince General Chavchavadze. The girl owns a winery in Zinondali . That is where Griboyedov would like to retreat and write poetry.
Because Griboyedov wants to avoid his service in Tehran, he makes his way to brother-in-law Paskevich on the Russian-Turkish front in Akhalkalaki . For Paskevitsch, exiles wage war. Griboyedov meets the Decembrists Ivan Grigoryevich Burzew and Mikhail Ivanovich Pushchin. The general Paskewitsch is practically directed by state criminals. Burzew ridiculed Griboyedov's idea of the trading company as a "wonderful poem". Burzew wants to duel with the diplomat because he covered the name Ryleev with fine mockery in the dispute. Griboyedov avoids the duel. He wants to persuade his brother-in-law that as a diplomat he can achieve more in Tbilisi than in Tehran. In Persia, he will only be a hostage. Paskevich replies that Griboyedov should hold out in Tehran for a month. Then he would have enforced the return to Tbilisi with Nesselrode.
The departure to Tehran is delayed. Griboyedov falls ill. Doctor Adelung suspects the plague that is rampant in Georgia . Nina stays at the bed of the feverish patient. During the convalescence, the very highest order comes: Griboyedov is sent to Persia. Before that, he got married to Nina on August 22nd, 1828. Griboyedov left Tbilisi on September 9th and arrived in Tabriz on October 7th with the pregnant Nina, the secretaries and some Cossacks at Prince Abbas Mirza , the son of the ruling Fath Ali Shah . The representative of the victorious power finds a ruined country. General Abbas Mirza has exhausted his means. Griboyedov found himself unable to squeeze out the contributions, he wrote to Petersburg. The answer from the Neva metropolis: Persia is a rich country.
The gifts for the Shah got stuck in Astrakhan . Griboyedov - commander in chief and hostage at the same time - sets off on the "ordered official trip" to Tehran. The audience with the Shah brought no significant result, just a feeling: the Persians want to pay. Griboyedov's servant Saschka, a man in the civil service, is beaten up in the bazaar. A number of incidents bring the Tehran population against the representatives of the Russian victorious power. For example, an Armenian and a German woman from the Alajar Chans harem flee to the Russian embassy in Tehran. Alajar Chan, the First Minister, is a relative of the Shah. The embassy is solidly built. Griboyedov does not comply with the extradition request. When the ambassador wants to leave, the Russian Samson repeats the threatening gesture mentioned above. His defected Russian guardsmen ridicule Griboyedov; bring him a farewell serenade. The ambassador demands the extradition of the provocateur; postpones the departure. The Shah lets Griboyedov know that he has refused to extradite Samson. In addition, the eunuch Hodscha Mirsa Jakub, actually Jakub Markarjan from Yerevan , has gone under the protection of the Russian legation. Griboyedov does not publish this Armenian either. That is too much for Mirsa Massi from the spiritual court, because the refugee is the property of the Shah. The Mulla Msech speaks to the people in the Imam Sumeh Mosque . Tynyanov does not tell the reader what the mulla said against the kafir Griboyedov. The narrator simply sums up: "The kafir was to blame for the wars, the hunger, the pressures of the mighty, the bad harvest." The First Secretary Malzow, a coward and slanderer of his employer, is the only one to survive the retaliation.
Decembrists
Tynyanov has a problem. Griboyedov is one of the few Russians who, despite their closeness to the Decembrists, climbed the career ladder soon after 1825. The solution to the problem: In Tbilisi, the newly appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of Russia is watching a parade from the stands, in which Captain Arkady Ivanovich Maibroda, Pestel's informer , appears. Tynyanow now changes the narrative perspective: the Russian Caucasus forces are teeming with former Decembrists. These are officers demoted to common ground. Two of them, Nil Pawlowitsch Koschewnikow and Alexander Karlowitsch Berstel, followed Griboyedov's presence in the stands with a critical eye and are now secretly verbally abusing the ambitious man.
Film adaptations
- 1969, Leningrad: The death of Vizier-Muchtar . TV film by Vladimir Rezepter.
- 2010, Russia: The death of the Vizier-Muchtar. The love and life of Griboyedov . TV film by Sergei Vinokurov.
reception
- On March 24, 1929, in a letter to Tynyanov , Gorky praised the book and expressed his astonishment at the author's thorough knowledge of history. The "artist of the word" Tynjanow had drawn Bulgarin, Senkowski and Samson exactly. Griboyedov is shown credibly.
- 1970, Krempien writes, Gribojedow "was considered a scandal, and it was the novel The Death of Vizier-Muchtar that made a person's tragic fate visible."
- 1975, Mierau points to a new perspective that Tynjanow offers with his novel: Gribojedow - a proven "revolutionary of Russian drama as a tsarist diplomat". Griboyedov's project for a Russian East-Indian company in Transcaucasia near the port of Batumi was answered by the short-sighted Petersburg government by exiling the reformer to Persia. A former Decembrist (Burzew, see above) rejects the early capitalist project as hostile to the peasantry. Mierau describes the death of Griboyedov with a precision that can hardly be surpassed "as a way through the pack of parvenus , whose chief is the Tsar himself and as Griboyedov himself by his new colleagues, who are the judges and executioners of his friends."
- 1977, Levin goes into the depths of the description of the poet triumvirate Pushkin-Gribojedow-Bulgarin in the novel.
literature
Used edition
- Yuri Tynyanow: The death of the Vizier-Muchtar. Historical novel. Translation and revisions by Thomas Reschke . With a foreword by Ralf Schröder . 535 pages. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1974 (1st edition)
Secondary literature
- Yuri Tynyanow: Second Lieutenant Saber. The guard. The minor W. With an afterword by Herbert Krempien . 292 pages. Publishing house culture and progress, Berlin 1970 (1st edition)
- Fritz Mierau (Ed.): Juri Tynjanow: The monkey and the bell. Stories. Drama. Essays. 624 pages. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1975 (1st edition)
- Wladimir Lewin: Scientist and Artist , pp. 358–382 in Juri Tynjanow: Wilhelm Küchelbecker, poet and rebel. A historical novel. Translated from the Russian by Maria Einstein . 400 pages. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1977 (2nd edition)
Web links
- The text online in Lib.ru (Russian)
- Reference in the laboratory of fantasy (Russian)
Remarks
- ↑ Gribojedow means mushroom eater in German.
- ↑ Gribojedow's Moscow cousin Elisa is married to Paskewitsch (edition used, p. 221, 4th Zvu and p. 222, 11th Zvo).
- ↑ Gribojedow thinks back to that summer in Kiev in 1825 , when he met Burzew, Sergei Muravjow-Apostol and Mikhail Bestuschew-Ryumin (edition used, p. 307).
- ↑ The professor of Arabic literature Senkowski, an all-round man, appears, for example, in the eighth and ninth sections of the second of the thirteen chapters of the novel.
- ↑ Tynyanov tells the story of Samson's desertion on p. 252 of the edition used (in the sixteenth section of the fourth chapter).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 35, 2. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 442 below
- ↑ Edition used, p. 356, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 324
- ↑ Schröder in the foreword of the edition used, p. 10, 15. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 49, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 170, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 291
- ↑ Edition used, p. 376 above
- ↑ Edition used, p. 482, 13. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 237
- ↑ Gorki, quoted in Schröder in the foreword of the edition used, p. 9.5. Zvu
- ^ Krempien, p. 282, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Mierau, p. 570, 8th Zvu
- ↑ Mierau, p. 578, center.
- ↑ Mierau, p. 579, 9. Zvo
- ^ Lewin, p. 370, 14. Zvo