A Gentleman in Moscow

Themes

observation as an historical act

There are multiple layers of observation here – us observing Rostov, who is in turn observing history but also more narrowly life at the Metropol. There is also some highly knowledgeable narrator who peeks through in Addendums and footnotes to tell us certain things outside of the flow of the narrative. This novel functions on a few levels – Rostov is imprisoned, observing history as it passes by him.

this “spontaneous” arrangement would tell the studious observer all he needed to know about the governance of Russia for the next twenty years.

humanity

Rostov is a Former Person, but as a gentleman, he is not disposed to occupations (as he tells us at the outset of the novel in his criminal deposition). So who is Rostov? A gourmand? A well-read pedant? A cipher for Russian history through the Bolshevik revolution to Stalin’s death and Krushchev’s rise?

There is a particularly poignant scene where all the wine bottles at one of the restaurants at the Metropol have their labels ripped off in the communistic spirit of equality. As with many chapters throughout the novel, these bits of the real world are reflections of the inner life of the characters, and this one in particular reflects the Count’s fading into anonymity (the name of the chapter itself).

By the end of the novel, Rostov has found himself a family, a life, and meaning.

narrative constraints

There are three constraints used in this novel: the plot, where Rostov is confined entirely to a single hotel, the time sequences, where one day passes, then two, then four, then a week, then two weeks, all the way up to sixteen years, then it folds back in on itself, and finally, the chapter headings, which all start with the letter A. These all reflect an authorial game Towles is playing, his version of Zut where the constraint focuses the effort. In interviews, Towles has talked about the sonnet as a focusing device, and in this work, he clearly is playing with that sort of motif.

Quotes

For if serenity should be a hallmark of maturity, then impetuousness a hallmark of youth. (387)

life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve—if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew. (402)

“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”

Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbors. On the contrary, the contents of the bottle in his hand was the product of a history as unique and complex as that of a nation, or a man. In its color, aroma, and taste, it would certainly express the idiosyncratic geology and prevailing climate of its home terrain. But in addition, it would express all the natural phenomena of its vintage. In a sip, it would evoke the timing of that winter’s thaw, the extent of that summer’s rain, the prevailing winds, and the frequency of clouds.

Yes, a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself. Yet here it was, cast back into the sea of anonymity, that realm of averages and unknowns.

“It is the business of the times to change, Mr. Halecki. And it is the business of gentlemen to change with them.”

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim. (388)