The Wax Persona

by Yury Tynyanov. Translated by Colin Bearne

This book is not an easy read, in whatever language, for those unaquainted with Russian history from the time of Peter the Great, and this book is aimed precisely at Russian intellectuals who do know at least a version of this history.

The literary grouping of the 1920s and 1930s, to which Tynyanov loosely adhered, Russian Formalism, did produce some unfamiliar kinds of text of which The Wax Persona is representative. It is a somewhat disconnected narrative consisting more of a set of tableaux with echoes of grotesquerie and ornamentalism.

Objects have immense importance in the tale and in particular tactile and sensory reactions to them. The use of archaisms reflects the fact that words themselves for this writer carry an associative and iconic loading.

In some ways this is almost the screenplay for a film that was never made and this explains many of the visual techniques used.

This translation is offered as an attempt to introduce a non-Russian readership to one of Tynyanov’s undeservedly lesser known works.