The Return of Munchausen

First inspired in the eighteenth century by the tall tales of the real Baron Hieronymus von Münchausen, the legend of Baron Münchausen—as transmitted and transformed by Rudolf Erich Raspe and Gottfried August Bürger—soon eclipsed the fame of his living counterpart and has captivated the European imagination ever since. An irrepressible cavalier and raconteur, the Baron gallivants through battle (in one episode he climbs aboard an outgoing cannonball only to change his mind halfway and hop onto another one heading in the opposite direction), scoffs at death, and inflates his own stature at every turn.

In Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s update, the Baron returns in the troubled twentieth century, where he will rediscover the place of imagination amid the tenuous peace, universal mourning, and political machinations of the aftermath of World War I. “To me,” he claims, “the debates of philosophers, grabbing the truth out of each other’s hands, [resemble] a fight among beggars over a single coin.” Transcending truth, the Baron instead revels in smoke and mist. He is a devotee of the impossible and a worshipper of “Saint Nobody.” But lost as he is in the twists of his imagination, can the Baron heal Europe through diplomacy—or at least hold a mirror up to its absurdities?

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950), the Ukrainian-born son of Polish emigrants, studied law and classical philology at Kiev University. After graduation and two summers spent exploring Europe, he was obliged to clerk for an attorney. A sinecure, the job allowed him to devote most of his time to literature and his own writing. In 1920, he began lecturing in Kiev on theater and music. The lectures continued in Moscow, where he moved in 1922, by then well known in literary circles. Lodged in a cell-like room on the Arbat, Krzhizhanovsky wrote steadily for close to two decades. His philosophical and phantasmagorical fictions ignored injunctions to portray the Soviet state in a positive light. Three separate efforts to print collections were quashed by the censors, a fourth by World War II. Not until 1989 could his work begin to be published. Like Poe, Krzhizhanovsky takes us to the edge of the abyss and forces us to look into it. “I am interested,” he said, “not in the arithmetic, but in the algebra of life.”

Joanne Turnbull has translated a number of books from the Russian, including Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse, Memories of the Future, and The Letter Killers Club (all available as NYRB Classics). She lives in Moscow.