The poet Wilhelm Küchelbecker, Pushkin's school-friend, suffered twenty years of imprisonment and Siberian exile for his part in the ill-fated Decembrist rising of 1825 against the Russian autocracy. His largely forgotten life and work are vividly recreated in Küchlya (1925), a pioneering historical novel by Yury Tynyanov.
Küchlya
(1925), the first novel of the great Russian formalist Yury Tynyanov gives
us a vividly written and moving recreation of the childhood, youth, beliefs and
adventures of an eccentric and idealistic young poet and friend of Pushkin,
tragically caught up in the Decembrist insurrection of 1825 against the Russian
autocracy.
