Lieutenant Kijé

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Lieutenant Kijé (Russian: Поручик Киже, translit. Poruchik Kizhe) is a novella by the Soviet author Yury Tynyanov (1894–1943) published in 1927 and premiered in film format in 1934. The plot is a satire on the bureaucracy of Emperor Paul I of Russia.

One of the emperor's servants has a lover within the court and upon having his bottom pinched shouts out loud in a way that is misinterpreted as a cry for a "guard" by the emperor. The emperor is furious and summons the court to ask who has dared to cry out "guard" within his castle. No-one can give him an answer and so the emperor remains distressed about the incident. Meanwhile the servant in question escapes the emperor's chambers to be caught by his uncle and summoned to collect the guard duties for the day. The name Kijé (and subsequent character) is based on a Russian grammatical discrepancy made by another servant who is copying out the guard duties, reading "Подпоручики же…" ("podporuchiki zhe", "the lieutenants, however…") as "Подпоручик Киже…" ("Podporuchik Kijé", "lieutenant Kijé") instead, thus creating a new name "Kijé". Upon an immediate order of receipt of the guard duties by the emperor the spelling mistake is not corrected and the servant (whose bottom was pinched) has to report the documented duties to the emperor. The servant's uncle takes the opportunity of the spelling mistake to invent a character to blame: "Kijé". The Emperor assigns Kijé to guard duty. When an advisor identifies the one who shouted "Help!" under the Emperor's window one night as Kijé, the lieutenant is flogged and marched off to Siberia. A maid-in-waiting is distressed to hear that her lover has been exiled, so the Emperor reinstates Lt. Kijé and has him marry her. They have a child, and Kijé steadily rises through the ranks. The Emperor finally summons General Kijé to receive appropriate decorations; but, before this can happen, the general is "killed in battle" and is buried with full military honors, receiving his medals posthumously.

The story was made into a film, directed by Aleksandr Faintsimmer, which is now remembered primarily for its music, which was the first instance of Prokofiev's "new simplicity".

[edit] Parallel characters

The story of Kijé — the conveniently invented fictitious war hero, who ultimately must die as a victim of his own success — is frequently referenced and parodied in popular culture.

• George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four contains a brief passage in which the protagonist, Winston Smith, a worker at the propaganda-producing Ministry of Truth, creates a fictitious hero "Comrade Ogilvy", a man dedicated to Oceania (the novel's totalitarian régime) who "dies" in the line of duty.
• Poul Anderson's 1953 novelette Sam Hall features a disgruntled bureaucrat who creates fake records about a rebel named Sam Hall (after the song) who fights against the totalitarian government.
• Lieutenant Kijé is parodied in the first season episode of M*A*S*H, Tuttle^[1], also in the war hero "Schumann" from Wag the Dog (1997), and obliquely in the Brazil (1985) opening sequence.
• In her novel, Eclipse of the Century (1999), Jan Mark presents a deserter from the Russian Army who renames himself Lieutenant Kijé, as a sign that he no longer exists.
• In the eighth season episode of Seinfeld, "The Susie" (episode #149), Elaine Benes inadvertently creates an alter ego named "Susie," whom co-workers believe is actually real. To avoid conflict, Elaine and the fictional Susie attend a conflict resolution meeting with the company president. Ultimately, Elaine rids herself of the non-existent Susie by saying she has committed suicide; a large number of guests attend Susie's funeral.
• The plot line of a full length musical comedy Kije!, subtitled a Magical Musical Fairy Tale, revolves around an imaginary hero of that name in the mythical kingdom of Wuz^[2]. The play was selected as Carnegie Mellon University's annual Spring Musical and premièred in April 1980 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The storyline was written by Arthur T. Benjamin, and music, composed by Arthur Darrell Turner, were added later, enabling the play to win the 1980 contest.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Original film Lieutenant Kizhe with English subtitles, at Google Video