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
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 is no way to compute these things since no machine has yet been invented with a big enough memory, but it is possible that the twentieth century was the greatest period of lies in the history of our species (so far). Lies were manufactured, along with bombs and Zyklon-B, on an industrial scale and, twentieth-century man that he indubitably is, Pyat is right up there with the most gargantuan misleaders. The literary device known as the Unreliable Narrator might have found its apotheosis here, and this begins, appropriately enough, with the data concerning his birth. No sooner have we been assured that the old rogue is Gemini-twinned with the century itself, than we immediately have doubts placed before us on this very score. We are alerted, right from the start then, that nothing here is to be taken for granted. The more vehement Pyat is in his protestations of truthful sincerity, the more we are forced to doubt him. And we might feel we are entitled to ask why Michael Moorcock has chosen this manoeuvre: what, in other words, is the function of Pyat’s unreliable narrative? What is its design upon us?
This volume begins with an introduction in which Moorcock explains how he encountered the narrator, and how he subsequently came to be in possession of his manuscript. The old boy owned a shop on the Portobello Road in Notting Hill. This frame-story device allows the author to situate the narrative within a larger overall narrative, the story of the story. And the most important single item here is the chronology. Pyat is born along with the century and dies in 1977. He is Russian, although the precise details of his genealogy remain a matter for conflict and confusion. He comes to manhood during the Great War, the October Revolution, and the Russian Civil War, and he lives the rest of his life in a world divided up between capitalist and communist blocs. It will be more than a decade after his death that the Berlin Wall falls and Soviet communism starts to collapse. Although the final volume of the Quartet was published long after the collapse of the USSR, it was something Pyat himself never lived to see, though he would have undoubtedly applauded with great vigour as the stones of that mighty edifice began to tumble down.
So he lives his life in a world divided up between two grand ideologies and his denunciation of communism and all that it represents, its distortion of the Russian soul, is uncompromising. He is born into the world of high imperialism and lives on into a world of multinational companies and global finance capital. And his attitude to it all? Well, Pyat denounces just about everything at one point or another; this is part of his undoubted fascination. His attitude to the world around him and everyone in it is opportunistic. He exploits his various environments and ecologies with Darwinian vigour. He has turned being unprincipled into a matter of principle, and grandly justifies everything he does, however atrocious his behaviour might actually be.
The Form of the Novel
When T.S. Eliot reviewed James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1923, he said that the traditional novelistic form was dead; that the chaotic and shapeless quality of modern life meant that the anticipated narrative bagginess of the novel could no longer suffice as a means of approaching and describing it. He recommended instead Joyce’s ‘mythical method’, in which a form was borrowed from antiquity and applied to contemporary urban experience. This was the modernist manoeuvre. Yet Byzantium Endures represents the survival, in novelistic form, of the nineteenth century into the twentieth. Iain Sinclair has spoken of ‘the dynamism of a nineteenth-century master’ and the word picaresque has been used more than once to describe Moorcock’s method. Let us pause for a moment and consider precisely what is being said here.
It is fair to say that Moorcock shows no real interest in formal innovations in fiction. So great is his commitment to narrative and characterisation, and so monumental is his appetite for global data, that he simply leaves the form of the pre-modernist narrative in place. Had he found any of the formal questions of fiction seriously problematical, then he could not have produced his vast output. You can’t agonise over voicing or the philosophical implications of the free-indirect style and still produce fifteen thousand words a day. So our author leaves the old structures in place and trusts that they will be sufficient for his purpose, which they turn out triumphantly to be. It’s probably the case that more contemporary authors now stand with him on this than stand with James Joyce and the fissiparous text. The obvious comparison might be two great ni
neteenth-century writers: Flaubert and Balzac. Flaubert tormented himself over the meaning of style, and finally published six books; Balzac charged on, gathering historical data and storylines the way a magnet gathers iron filings, and ended up with a bibliography whose size bears respectable comparison with Moorcock’s own.
So what about the picaresque? Well, appropriately enough, picaro is the Spanish word for rogue. And the picaresque novel traditionally follows a socially deviant figure through a series of episodes in which realistic technique is employed and in which the only unifying factor is the presence and character of the protagonist. That does not seem like a bad way of describing the Pyat Quartet. Don Quixote might be the single best-known example of this mode. The old Don is patently off his rocker, though there is a certain grandeur to his delusion that he is pursuing both honour and romance as he mistakes the world once more. So what of Pyat?
Why Pyat?
Let us put the matter bluntly and at its most troublesome. Why create a figure so morally murky, so intellectually dubious, so devious, mendacious and self-serving and then let him romp across the twentieth century for four sizeable volumes? Why create a character who, after the Holocaust, still denies his Jewish identity? Before or during it, such a denial might be understandable as a practical response to worldly advancement; a deceitful variation on the manoeuvre by which Disraeli’s family had themselves baptised— a smart move at the time if you were planning on becoming prime minister. But after Auschwitz? Why is Pyat so virulent in his denial of Jewish identity in an age when others have queued up to acquire a little of it, however genealogically vestigial?
Pyat is as old as the century, as we have noted, but then how do you date a century, and why? Our secular divisions announce cultural identities. The Russian Revolution happened in October, but only according to a calendar we no longer employ. An enormous amount of history takes place in the Quartet, but we can never trust Pyat to tell us the truth about it. The titles of the volumes announce the fact that he believes he sees beyond the sordidly contemporary: Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, Jerusalem Commands and The Vengeance of Rome. These titles announce long continuities, cultural genealogies stretching through centuries and millennia. And we should surely note that we are given the word God four times on page one. Pyat is never shy in appealing to the Almighty, who he seems to assume will always keep a place for him in His divine heart. So Pyat as a creation is prophetic in one respect at least: he believes in the clash of civilisations, he believes he has God’s ear, and he is utterly unscrupulous in pursuing his own ends, wherever they might lead him.