Krzhizhanovsky's Return of Munchausen

About the Book

"This volume offers a new English translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's The Return of Munchausen, accompanied by an expansive, reader-friendly commentary. In this fantastical novel, the legendary baron-master of inventive storytelling-reappears in the world and recounts his journey through an imaginative version of the early Soviet Union. His presence rekindles the creative spirit of a poet he encounters, setting the stage for a meditation on existence and reality, truth and invention. Rich in energy and narrative ingenuity, the story stands out for its philosophical depth, structural complexity, and wide-ranging allusions to literature, philosophy, religion, and science. The commentary further brings these layers to light, tracing the novel's many intertextual threads through sources both ancient and modern"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

This book provides a new translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's novel Тhe Return of Munchausen, with an extensive commentary that is accessible to any reader. In the novel the famous old baron, a virtuoso of imaginative creation who has returned to the world, tells of his visit to a fantastic early Soviet Union, and by his inspiring influence raises a poet he befriends to new poetic life. Lively and gripping, engaged with questions of existence and reality, truth and fiction, the tale is extraordinary for depth, intricacy, and manifold connections to works of literature, philosophy, religion, and science. It is illuminated in detail by the commentary, which exhibits these connections with reference to a great variety of writings, both ancient and modern.

Review Quotes

"This is not only a new translation of one of the most exciting and enigmatic works created in the USSR in the 1920s;Michael Comenetz's extensive philological and philosophical commentary to Krizhanovsky's novel reveals in the Baron's new adventures a true encyclopedia of references to European cultural heritage, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman thinkers to Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, and Einstein. Thanks to this deeply-layered commentary, Krizhizhanovsky's slim novel, with its witty puns and cerebral paradoxes, opens up as an all-encompassing philosophical critique of modernity. It is a critique of a legacy seemingly obliterated by the 'theory of improbability, ' or a new kind of history (time) detected by the wandering Baron in Soviet Russia. Seen through Michael Comenetz's commentary, Krizhizhanovsky's Munchausen emerges as a version of Benjamin's angel, blown by the hurricane of history, moving from the future. Munchausen's (or rather, Krizhizhanovsky's!) philosophic critique of modernity becomes an ironic monument to what is doomed to be eradicated. This astonishing book not only reconstructs the cultural affluence of the Soviet 1920s, but also profoundly resonates with the current moment and our new sense of destructive history."

--Dr. Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University, author of Charms of Cynical Reason

"In his shrewd, meticulously annotated new translation of Krzhizhanovsky's 1927 Munchausen tale, with commentary twice as long as the fictive text, the mathematician and polyglot Michael Comenetz treats us to erudite backstories and sidestories that would delight the Baron himself. But this edition is more than a Nabokovian conceit. Roughing up the English to reflect Krzhizhanovsky's angular, cubist prose, Comenetz offers brilliant etymologies and insights into Kant, Hegel, Quixote, Gulliver, Gogol, Kafkaesque structure, hyperbole subordinated to science--and his hero's 'ultimate failure to out-fantasticate Soviet reality.' A tour-de-force tribute to phantasms and the fertility of the printed word."

--Dr. Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

"Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is one of the most interesting Soviet-era authors to be rediscovered after 1991. This intriguing short novel, The Return of Munchausen, mixes the fantastic elements with then-contemporary Soviet reality in ways that might remind the reader of Mikhail Bulgakov's classic Master and Margarita. Translator and scholar Michael Comenetz strives to render the author's spiky writing style in English, and the abundant commentary will be useful both for teaching the original alongside the translation and for unlocking all the mysteries of the text."

--Dr. Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore College

"This new translation and intriguing commentary by Michael Comenetz enable both Munchausen and Krzhizhanovsky to leap off the page and become three-dimensional figures once more. Comenetz' meticulous research reveals the warp and woof of the complex tapestry of philosophical theories, literary references and linguistic play out of which Krzhizhanovsky wove his novella about the legendary master of prevarication. Filled with unexpected associations and discoveries, this book will both provide a guide for students of Russian to decode the quirks of Krzhizhanovsky's prose and allow the casual reader to understand why Munchausen's tale captivated Krzhizhanovsky and continues to inspire our imaginations."

--Dr. Karen Rosenflanz, The College of St. Scholastica

About the Author

Michael Comenetz is on the faculty of St. John's College in Annapolis, where he has taught mathematics, philosophy, and literature, among other things. He is the author of Calculus: The Elements, and a co-author of Valéry's Graveyard: "Le Cimetière marin" Translated, Described, and Peopled, and has published an edition of Homer's Iliad 22.