Byzantium Endures

Michael Moorcock

Description

Meet Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, also known as Pyat. Tsarist rebel, Nazi thug, continental conman, and reactionary counterspy: the dark and dangerous anti-hero of Michael Moorcock’s most controversial work

Published in 1981 to great critical acclaim—then condemned to the shadows and unavailable in the U.S. for thirty years—Byzantium Endures, the first of the Pyat Quartet, is not a book for the faint-hearted. It’s the story of a cocaine addict, sexual adventurer, and obsessive anti-Semite whose epic journey from Leningrad to London connects him with scoundrels and heroes from Trotsky to Makhno, and whose career echoes that of the 20th century’s descent into Fascism and total war.

This is Moorcock at his audacious, iconoclastic best: a grand sweeping overview of the events of the last century, as revealed in the secret journals of modern literature’s most proudly unredeemable outlaw. This authoritative U.S. edition presents the author’s final cut, restoring previously forbidden passages and deleted scenes

Sujets

• Controversia
• Philosophy
• Erudition
• Intellectual
• 20th century

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604867237
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Winner of the Nebula and World Fantasy awards August Derleth Fantasy Award British Fantasy Award Guardian Fiction Award Prix Utopiales Bram Stoker Award John W. Campbell Award SFWA Grand Master Member, Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
Praise for Michael Moorcock and Byzantium Endures
‘Historical picaresque on the grand scale, a vast … chronicle of tall tales, brief encounters and expert twitches on the thread of destiny.’
D.J. Taylor, The Guardian
‘I much admire Michael Moorcock’s blazing energy…. The narrative carries its enormous weight of detail ever forward like a stiff Byzantine costume, loaded down with jewels. Old ranting Colonel Pyat is a grand creation…. Altogether an opulent and steaming story, built on the scale of Hagia Sophia itself.’
Brian Aldiss
‘The master of fantastic realism has fabulously enlarged Ladbroke Grove to take in the world of Dostoevsky and the Urals.’
Angus Wilson, The Observer
‘Michael Moorcock … has moved into a new field with great adroitness and credibility with Byzantium Endures … Pyat is a mysterious source of light with which to illuminate the catastrophic events of his early life … the effect is compelling.’
Mary Gordon, The Times
‘One of the the features of this novel is the splendid way Moorcock makes us aware of the essence of his settings … all this in a tremendous rush of incidents and action. I look forward to the next volumes.’
W.J. Nesbitt, Northern Echo
‘Clearly the foundation on which a gigantic literary edifice will, in due course, be erected. While others build fictional molehills, Mr Moorcock makes plans for great shimmering pyramids. But the footings of this particular edifice are intriguing and audacious enough to leave one hungry for more.’
John Naughton, Listener
‘There are those of us who have buttonholed strangers on the Underground and raved about Moorcock’s masterpieces Byzantium Endures and The Laughter of Carthage’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A master craftsman at the height of his powers. He has the energy of a Golden Age author.’
Iain Sinclair, New Statesman
‘Moorcock is perhaps the most imposing landmark left upon the British literary landscape, once one ventures past the neatly-tended suburbs of Booker-approved civilisation and into the lurid, surprisingly healthy pulp wilderness beyond.’
Alan Moore
‘Moorcock seemed to be a kind of twentieth century Alexander Dumas a man with a huge gift for simple storytelling … Now in Byzantium Endures, he extends his range still further … a long, wonderfully detailed, lovingly reconstructed picture of a particular society and an individual sensibility … puts Michael Moorcock straight into the front rank of contemporary English novelists.’
Robert Nye, Guardian
‘I think about the loopy ancien fascist Pyat as the ultimate comedic character, a literary anti-Charlie Chaplin.’
Andrea Dworkin
‘A writer of rare goodness and sanity.’
The Sun
‘Moorcock is elegant and aggressive, consistently entertaining, and frequently wise and generous.’
Spectator (UK)

Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet
Michael Moorcock
© 2012 by Michael Moorcock
This edition © 2012 PM Press
Introduction © 2012 by Alan Wall
ISBN: 978-1-60486-491-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011927976
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
Bibliography reprinted with the kind permission of Moorcock’s Miscellany ( www.multiverse.org )
Project editor: Allan Kausch
Copy editor: Gregory Nipper
Cover by John Yates/ www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
Copyright © Michael Moorcock 1981
Cover photo by Linda Steele
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
P.O. Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
PMPress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Dedicated to the memory of Babel and Mandelstam. For Ernst, a father, and for Josef, a brother
FOR JILL
A facsimile page from Pyat’s manuscript (see p. 3 )
Contents
MAP
LIST OF DRAMATIS PERSONAE
INTRODUCTION BY ALAN WALL
INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Byzantium Endures
APPENDIX A: The Manuscripts of Colonel Pyat
APPENDIX B: A Brief Account of the Russian Civil War
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MAPS
Dramatis Personae
MAXIM ARTUROVITCH PYATNITSKI (DIMITRI MITROFANOVITCH KRYSCHEFF) Narrator
YELISAVETA FILIPOVNA His mother
CAPTAIN BROWN A Scottish engineer
ESMÉ LOUKIANOFF A friend
ZOYEA A gypsy girl
PROFESSOR LUSTGARTEN A schoolmaster
FRAU LUSTGARTEN His wife
SARKIS MIHAILOVITCH KOUYOUMDJIAN An Armenian engineer
ALEXANDER (‘SHURA’) Maxim’s cousin
EVGENIA MIHAILOVNA (AUNT GENIA) Maxim’s great-aunt
WANDA Her poor relation
SEMYON JOSEFOVITCH (UNCLE SEMYA) Maxim’s great-uncle
ESAU Slobodka tavern-keeper
MISHA THE JAP Slobodka gangster
VICTOR THE FIDDLER
ISAAC JACOBOVITCH
LITTLE GRANIA
BORIS THE ACCOUNTANT LYOVA Denizens of Esau’s tavern
M . SAVITSKY A drug-trafficker
KATYA A young whore
KATYA’S MOTHER A whore
H . CORNELIUS A dentist
HONORIA CORNELIUS An English adventuress
‘SO-SO’ A Georgian revolutionary
NIKITA THE GREEK Maxim’s friend
MR FINCH An Irish sailor
SERGEI ANDREYOVITCH TSIPLIAKOV (‘SERYOZHA’) A ballet dancer
MARYA VARVOROVNA VOROTINSKY A student
MISS BUCHANAN Her ‘nanyana’
MR GREEN Uncle Semya’s agent in St Petersburg
MR PARROT His assistant
MADAME ZINOVIEFF Maxim’s landlady in St Petersburg
OLGA AND VERA Her daughters
DR MATZNEFF Tutor at the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute
PROFESSOR MERKULOFF Another tutor
HIPPOLYTE A catamite
COUNT NICHOLAI FEODOROVITCH
PETROFF (‘KOLYA’) A Petersburg bohemian
LUNARCHARSKY A Bolshevik
MAYAKOVSKI A poet
‘LOLLY’ LEONOVNA PETROFF Kolya’s cousin
ALEXEI LEONOVITCH PETROFF Her brother
ELENA ANDREYOVNA VLASENKOVA (‘LENA’) Marya’s flat-mate
PROFESSOR VORSIN Head of the Polytechnic
HETMAN PAVLO SKOROPADSKYA A puppet dictator
ATAMAN SEMYON PETLYURA Effective leader of Ukrainian Nationalists
GENERAL KONOVALETS Commander of the ‘Sich Riflemen’
VINNICHENKO Ukrainian Nationalist leader
POTOAKI Ukrainian Bolshevik
MARUSIA KIRILLOVNA Ukrainian Bolshevik
SOTNIK (CAPTAIN) GRISHENKO Hrihorieff officer (Cossack)
SOTNIK (CAPTAIN) YERMELOFF The same
STOICHKO Cossack officer
BRODMANN Socialist ‘liaison officer’
NESTOR MAKHNO Anarchist leader
CAPTAIN KULOMSIN A White infantry officer
CAPTAIN WALLACE Australian tank commander
MAJOR PEREZHAROFF A White commander
AJEWISH JOURNALIST In Arcadia
MADAME ZOYEA An hotelier
CAPTAIN YOSETROFF White Intelligence officer
MAJOR SOLDATOFF Maxim’s CO
CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE RIO CRUZ A fellow spirit
OTHER CHARACTERS INCLUDE
KORYLENKO (a postman); CAPTAIN BIKADOROV (a Cossack); whores and entertainers in Odessa; whores, entertainers and artists in St Petersburg; revolutionaries in St Petersburg; Cossacks (Red, Black, White); policemen, Chekists, naval officers, army officers, ‘Haidamaki’ soldiers, beggars, a drunken couple, the Jews of a shtetl near Hulyai-Polye, the inhabitants of a village in the Ukrainian steppe, and, off-stage, LEON TROTSKY, DENIKEN, KRASSNOFF, ULYANSKI, PRINCE LVOV, KERENSKI, PUTILOV, JOSEF STALIN, STOLYPIN, LENIN, ANTONOV, SIKORSKI, SAVINKOFF, CATHERINE CORNELIUS, H.G . WELLS.
Introduction to Byzantium Endures
Pyat
At the beginning of Dombey and Son, Dickens informs us that Paul Dombey Senior is forty-eight years old, and Paul Dombey Junior forty-eight minutes. The book was published in 1848. Dickens was telling us that we were looking at the progress of the century, witnessing its signature both big and little, majuscule and minuscule. This was the last moment of time. It always is, of course. The most ambitious novelists try to tell us what it might mean to be here, at the most recent moment experienced on earth, perched on the bleb of our temporal glacier. The writer and artist constantly remind us: we are positioned at the meeting-point between all preceding millennia and the future we are stepping into, at this very second, even as we write, even as we read. Right now.
Colonel Pyat, Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, we are informed at the beginning of Byzantium Endures, was born at the same instant as the twentieth century. His function, we soon realise, is to be that century in singular human form. He witnesses and endures its wars and revolutions, its persecutions and atrocities, even its frequently opprobrious states of peace. Pyat is twinned with the century at the moment of his nativity, and accompanies it year by year on its egregious itinerary, until he drops dead in 1977. But even here a query arises, and we are forced to note something before we have turned many pages: Pyat appears able to match the century in mendacity. There