(The
postings of my wife’s essay on Bulgakov now continue with the chapter on The Dark-Violet Knight. See her previous
postings running from September 14th through September 21st,
2013.)
Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.
The Dark-Violet Knight.
No happiness in life, but
there is rest and freedom.
I’ve long been dreaming of one
enviable lot,
A tired slave, I’ve long been
plotting my escape
To a faraway retreat of toils
and purest pleasures.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
I beg your pardon, but was it
you who sent me the cable?, asked Maximilian Andreevich, painstakingly
wondering who might be this amazing crybaby.
Bulgakov’s Master and
Margarita.
“Magician, regent, wizard, translator, or the devil knows who in
reality, in other words, Koroviev.”
He
appears in the novel from the first pages.---
“And then the balmy air thickened before him, and woven out of this
air appeared a most strange, transparent citizen. A jockey cap upon his small
head, a checkered stumpy jacket, also made out of air… This long see-through citizen
was dangling in front of him right and left without touching the ground. Then
horror overtook Berlioz, and the checkered one disappeared, together with the
blunt needle previously piercing his heart.”
The
first thing we learn about him is that the checkered one instills horror. Even
before his actual appearance, Berlioz “was seized by an unfounded but so strong
a fear that he immediately wanted to bolt from the Patriarch Ponds without ever looking back.”
From
this moment on, he will be often referred to as “The Checkered One” throughout the book. However, this character has
many other names: Regent, Lead Singer, Fagot, Koroviev, Knight. We shall examine all these
names.
In
the Russian language the word “kletka”
has multiple meanings not present in English or other languages. Bulgakov makes
use of this word in at least two of these meanings. Without mentioning the
others, for which the reader may consult a dictionary, here are the key ones.
“The Checkered One” refers to the checkerboard-patterned
fabric. Russian circus clowns traditionally wear checkered-patterned clothes,
thus this pattern instantly implies that things are not what they seem to be.
But
the most important meaning has to do with the chessboard: kletka=chess square, and with a chess game as such, as this is
precisely the kind of game Bulgakov is playing with the reader from the
beginning of the book. He wants to make the reader interested in “The Checkered One,” so that the reader
would want to know who he is. Bulgakov makes it known that this is a very
strange personality, who receives an array of different names throughout the
novel, thus turning him into the main object of our attention.
Sending
Berlioz to his death at the tourniquet, he asks him for “vodka money” for his
services, calling himself “Regent.”
(More of this will be said later in this chapter.)
When
we meet “The Checkered One,” alias “Regent,” next, he is being asked his
name.
“My name, well, let us say,
Koroviev,” replied the citizen.
“Koroviev” is an artificial last name.
Such a name, curiously, does not exist in the Russian language, and it does not
appear in usage. Bulgakov makes it up the way it is in order to associate this
name with “krov’,” blood. This connection is conspicuous
and unmistakable. Bulgakov makes sure that, like krov’, the name Koroviev
would contain the special letter of the Russian alphabet called the “soft sign.” Taking this into account,
the striking deliberate similarity between Korov’ev
and Krov’ cannot be missed by a
Russian reader.
The
word “krov’” is a very important one
in Bulgakov’s lexicon. It comes off as a leitmotif not just in Master and Margarita, but in many of his
other major works. Let us take this passage, for instance:
“She was pounded by a roar of trumpets, and the soaring wave (vzmyv) of the violins showered her body as though by blood. The
orchestra, some one-hundred-fifty strong, was playing a Polonaise.”
This
is how the ball starts for Margarita. Isn’t it strange that the “King of Waltzes,” Johann Strauss conducts
not a waltz, but a polonaise? Bulgakov does not even bother to write whose polonaise it was! It is all clear
anyway that for him, Bulgakov, there is just one polonaise: from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin…
One more riddle?...
When
Satan (Woland) gives his performance at the Variety
Theater, he calls The Checkered
One-Regent-Koroviev by a different name: Fagot:
“What do you say, Fagot,
hasn’t the population of Moscow changed quite significantly?”
“Precisely so, messire,”
replied Fagot-Koroviev.
Now,
before we get to the meaning of the name Fagot,
here is a perfectly leading and immensely important question: What nationality
is this character? Why is Woland asking him this particular question, that only
a person well familiar with Moscow can answer with some authority. Furthermore,
judging by the ease, with which Fagot-Koroviev so floridly juggles and molds
Russian slang words, only an authentic Russian could be capable of such a feat.
And so, here is my perfectly fitting answer: Koroviev must be Russian, of course!
Incidentally, mark the language of other characters who all speak a more or
less formal Russian. Indeed, in this linguistic aspect, Koroviev is quite
unique…
(To be continued...))
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