William's Reviews > A Gentleman in Moscow

5 Stars

A truly magical experience, with every page a delight. Charming, wonderful, fascinating and full of the joy of life. Beautiful characters of good will true friendship, beautiful prose and pacing, sophisticated and literate and humane.

A joy, a masterpiece, a friend forever.

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

Ladies, you will fall deeply in love with the dashing and charming Alexander, and men, you will look on in admiration and with respect for the Count, a timeless and True Gentleman.

Gold Catherine coins

Full size image here

Notes:
7%
Delightful, literate and sublime.

20%
The warmth, civility and genuine comradeship that develops between the Count and his young friend, Nina, is truly wonderful. A joy to behold.

25%
Ahhhh, delicious Anna Urbanova, a medley of beauty, of unexpected culinary skills, and of the passionate interlude of a full-lipped kiss of joy and appreciation for our beloved Count, the subsequent slipping of her blouse to the floor, a soft sigh of promises to come. Who would not be smitten forever?

And our Anna proves to carry a far stranger sorceress than we might imagine, and is bedevilled by it, and it bedevils the Count in moments of social invisibility.

35%
A very interesting discussion about "exile" versus "internal exile" invented by the Bolsheviks.

As early as the eighteenth century, the Tsars stopped kicking their enemies out of the country, opting instead to send them to Siberia. Why? Because they had determined that to exile a man from Russia as God had exiled Adam from Eden was insufficient as a punishment; for in another country, a man might immerse himself in his labors, build a house, raise a family. That is, he might begin his life anew. But when you exile a man into his own country, there is no beginning anew. For the exile at home—whether he be sent to Siberia or subject to the Minus Six—the love for his country will not become vague or shrouded by the mists of time.


The old Metropole Hotel, Moscow

Full size image here


This "small selection" of quotes provides a far better review of this masterpiece than I could ever conjure.

“A king fortifles himself with a castle,” observed the Count, “a gentleman with a desk.”
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What a marvel it had been to discover the table that folded away without a trace; and the drawers built into the base of the bed; and the wall-mounted lamps just large enough to illuminate a page. This efficiency of design was music to the young mind. It attested to a precision of purpose and the promise of adventure. Por such would have been the quarters of Captain Nemo when he journeyed twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea. And wouldn’t any young boy with the slightest gumption gladly trade a hundred nights in a palace for one aboard the Nautilus?
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The three of them exhibited the same bewildered gaze that the Count had noticed on the faces of Arkady and Valentina a few hours before, and finally it struck him: When he had been carted off that morning [to the Kremlin secret police HQ], they had all assumed that he would never return. He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an aviator from the wreckage of a crash.
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On the Grand Duke’s desk stood a champagne flute and a brandy snifter. With the lean uprightness of the former looking down upon the squat rotundity of the latter, one could not help but think of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the plains of the Sierra Morena. Or of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck in the shadows of Sherwood Forest. Or of Prince Hal and Falstaff before the gates of- ...
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“I wasn’t referring to me, Nina. After all, I am practically a youth like yourself. No, by ‘elders,’ I meant the gray haired.”

Nina nodded to express her understanding. “You mean the grand dukes and grand duchesses.”

“Well, yes. Certainly them. But I mean elders of every social class. The shopkeepers and milkmaids, blacksmiths and peasants.”

Never hesitant to express her sentiments with facial expressions, Nina frowned.

The Count elaborated. “The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacriflces on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”
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Our first sighting of Anna Urbanova

A tall woman in her midtwenties with arched eyebrows and auburn hair, she was indisputably striking. And as she approached the front desk, she walked with a breezy sureness as seemingly unaware of the feathers projecting from her hat as of the bellhops dragging her luggage behind her. But what guaranteed her position as the natural center of attention were the two borzois she had on leash.
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The Count took another look at the sheet in his hands with a heightened sense of respect. After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion.
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I’ll have you know, dear sister, that careless seating has torn asunder the best of marriages and led to the collapse of the longest-standing détentes. In fact, if Paris had not been seated next to Helen when he dined in the court of Menelaus, there never would have been a Trojan War.”
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But for the Count, his philosophical leanings had always been essentially meteorological. Specifically, he believed in the inevitable influence of clement and inclement weathers. He believed in the influence of early frosts and lingering summers, of ominous clouds and delicate rains, of fog and sunshine and snowfall. And he believed, most especially, in the reshaping of destinies by the slightest change in the thermometer.
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The Count and the handyman both looked toward the roof's edge where the bees, having traveled over a hundred miles and applied themselves in willing industry, now wheeled above their hives as pinpoints of blackness, like the inverse of stars.
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Mishka would pine for Katerina the rest of his life! Never again would he walk Nevsky Prospekt, however they chose to rename it, without feeling an unbearable sense of loss. And that is just how it should be. That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.
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“Do you know that back in '30, when they announced the mandatory collectivization of farming, half our peasants slaughtered their own livestock rather than give them up to the cooperatives? Fourteen million head of cattle left to the buzzards and flies.”
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“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”
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The musicals were “pastries designed to placate the impoverished with daydreams of unattainable bliss.” The horror movies were “sleights of hand in which the fears of the workingman have been displaced by those of pretty girls.” The vaudevillian comedies were “preposterous narcotics.” And the westerns? They were the most devious propaganda of all: fables in which evil is represented by collectives who rustle and rob; while virtue is a lone individual who risks his life to defend the sanctity of someone else’s private property. In sum? “Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”
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“As a younger man, I used to feel the same way about my sister. Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”
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“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka-and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
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the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice. The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.
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The very notion of helping a young artist discover her talent was a fantasy that Viktor had long since abandoned; and to experience it so unexpectedly was beyond description.
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... in the suite directly below the Count’s that Yakov Sverdlov, the first chairman of the All-Russian Executive Committee, had locked the constitutional drafting committee-vowing he would not turn the key again until they had completed their work. Thus did the typewriters clack through the night, until that historic document had been crafted which guaranteed for all Russians freedom of conscience (Article 13), freedom of expression (Article 14), freedom of assembly (Article 15), and freedom to have any of these rights revoked should they be “utilised to the detriment of the socialist revolution” (Article 23)!
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*Established in 1923, the OGPU replaced the Cheka as Russia’s cental organ of the secret police. In 1934, the OGPU would be replaced by the NKVD, which in turn would be replaced by the MGB in 1943 and the KGB in 1954. On the surface, this may seem confusing. But the good news is that unlike political parties, artistic movements, or schools of fashion-which go through such sweeping reinventions-the methodologies and intentions of the secret police never change. So you should feel no need to distinguish one acronym from the next.
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*While many of the young loyalists who joined the udarniks in the countryside would have their faith in the Party tested by what they witnessed, most of Russia, and for that matter the world, would be spared the spectacle of this man-made disaster.

For just as peasants from the countryside were forbidden to enter the cities, journalists from the cities were forbidden to enter the countryside; delivery of personal mail was suspended; and the windows of passenger trains were blackened. In fact, so successful was the campaign to contain awareness of the crisis, when word leaked out that millions were starving in Ukraine, Walter Duranty, the lead correspondent for The New York Times in Russia (and one of the ringleaders in the Shalyapin Bar), would report that these rumors of famine were grossly exaggerated and had probably originated with anti-Soviet propagandists.

Thus, the world would shrug. And even as the crime unfolded, Duranty would win the Pulitzer Prize.


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Update: I am very much enjoying the TV adaptation with Ewan McGregor