Eric's Reviews > The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar

[Legrandin] was one of those men who, quite apart from a career in science in which they have been so brilliantly successful, possess an entirely different culture, one that is literary, artistic, which their professional specialization does not make use of...[those men] imagine that the life they are leading is not the one that really suits them and they bring to their actual occupations either an indifference mingled with whimsy, or an application that is sustained and haughty, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.

Griboyedov, officially a diplomat, privately the author of the unpublished masterpiece Woe from Wit, moves through Tynyanov's novel in the sequence of Proust's description - indifferent and whimsical in the listless bureaus of Petersburg, he's haughty and scornful once he reaches Tehran, where he applies the harshest terms of the Treaty of Turkmenchay - the release of Christian captives from the Shah’s and other harems - with a sustained conscientiousness that offends elites and provokes the canaille to jihad.

It is trite to praise a historical novel for its “grand” or “epic” “sweep” – but I’ll use those clichés here. Following Griboyedov's fateful journey, you read a bitter Petersburg tale (nothing spectral like "The Bronze Horseman" or “The Queen of Spades” or “The Overcoat,” but still frightful, a monologue of regret and resentment, muttered over a wasted life); a tremendous evocation of Georgia, festive and sensuous, like an early Stravinsky score; then Tehran, hot, tense, with Shia penitents slashing themselves in mourning of Muharram, and desperate Russian deserters scheming the chaos by which they hope to evade repatriation.