GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXV.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

A mountain gave birth to a mouse;

A mare gave birth to a cat…

 

Anonymous.

 

 In my mind, I built a different world,

Giving existence to a different set of images;

And tying them together by a chain…

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 

So, where does this Koshkin clan, which had given Russia the Romanov dynasty, come from? Once again I am turning to Klyuchevsky.---

 During the reign of Ivan Kalita (14^th century), there went to Moscow from the Prussian lands a nobleman, who in Moscow was given the name of Kobyla [mare], Andrei Ivanovich. From his fifth son Fedor Koshka [cat], took its origin the Koshkin clan. [He must have been given such a feline nickname due to an uncommon agility of his mind, as the Koshkins were able to keep themselves in the first rank (of four) of the Boyars, being the only ones left untouched among the titled nobility [dukes, or princes]…

At the beginning of the 16^th century, very prominent at the royal Court was the Boyar Roman Yurievich Zakharyin, scion of Koshka’s grandson Zakhary. It was he [Roman], who became the originator of the new branch, the Romanovs [obviously, by lending his first name to the subsequent family].

 

The first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, was a descendant of Ivan Grozny, by virtue of being the nephew of his son Fedor Ioannovich. This was the main reason why the Don Ataman of the Cossacks submitted a petition to the Boyar Council, selecting Russia’s new tsar in 1613,  in favor of the “natural tsar Mikhail Fedorovich.” Curiously, it was this Cossack Ataman who “settled the matter” in that momentous decision. Incidentally, the first Romanov’s selection to the throne of Russia was the underlying theme in the first Russian opera, Glinka’s 1836 A Life for the Tsar.

(Once we have touched upon the subject of the Cossacks, for anyone decently familiar with Russian history it would not come as a revelation that the Cossacks in Russia frequently had a “decisive voice” in national affairs. The tsar himself wore the Cossack uniform, and his personal guard were all Cossacks.)

 

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Bulgakov’s idol, had been inspired by the “Koshkin clan,” in the writing of his Lukomorye. This peculiar poem, dear to every Russian, was written as a preamble to Pushkin’s romantic long poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, which, in turn, served as an inspiration for the already mentioned earlier, in connection with his wonderful first opera (I consider it among the best operas ever written) A Life for the Tsar, great Russian composer Glinka, in the writing of his revolutionary in the musical sense (even today!), 1846 opera Ruslan and Lyudmila.

 

There’s a green oak by the Lukomorye,

A golden chain is on that oak.

Both day and night, a learned cat

Walks all around along that chain.

When right he walks, a song he’s singing;

When left, a fairytale he tells,

There’s magic, there’s wood spirit wandering,

A water-maiden’s sitting in the tree…

There, on the never fancied trails,

The footprints of unfathomed beast,

A cabin there, on chicken legs,

Stands without windows and no doors.

A princess, pining in a dungeon,

Has a red wolf as loyal servant…

A mortar, with a Baba-Yaga in it

Walks and wanders all by itself.

There Tsar Kashchey rots over his riches,

There is a Russian smell there, it smells of Russia…

Here in Lukomorye, Pushkin shows himself in a dual function. He is both the storyteller and the learned Cat telling fairytales to the storyteller.

In his Reminiscences, namely in the section Beginnings of an Autobiography, Pushkin explains that because of the Decembrist affair, “at the end of 1825, after the wretched plot had been exposed, I was forced to burn those notes, that is, my biography, which I had started back in 1821…”

Here is a very curious passage from Pushkin’s Beginnings of an Autobiography, having a direct bearing on our subject.---

 

“We [the Pushkins] trace our origin to a certain arrival from Prussia, by the name of Radsha or Racha, an honest man, as our annals say, that is, a propertied nobleman, coming to Russia during the Princely tenure of Saint Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky [in whose honor Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin got his first name]. He became the progenitor of the Musins, the Bobrishchevs, the Myatlevs, the Povodovs, the Kamenskys, the Buturlins, the Kologrivovs, the Sherefedinovs, and the Tovarkovs. The name of my ancestors can be encountered all throughout Russian history.”

 

This is of utmost interest as the ancestors of both the Romanovs and the Pushkins came out of Prussia. This is what Koroviev-Pushkin must have in mind when he talks to Margarita-Romanova about “blood.”

 

Klyuchevsky writes that “in those times they were thinking not in terms of ideas but in terms of images, symbols, rites, legends.” “Apparently the following legend may have originated in early 16^th century. Right before his death, Augustus, the Caesar of Rome, installed his brother Prussus on the banks of the Vistula all the way to the banks of the Neman river, which is why up to now this land is known as Prussia.” And here is the conclusion made in the old annals of the time:

“…And from Prussus, the fourteenth generation was the great sovereign Rurik. ” (Who was the progenitor of the first, Rurikovichi dynasty of Russia, preceding the Romanovs.)

...Why would Bulgakov be so much interested in Russian history in general and in the reign of Ivan Grozny in particular?

The first question is very easy. Each citizen is supposed to be interested in and to actually know the history of his or her nation, and how it relates to other nations and states. Moreover, during his relatively short life Bulgakov lived through direct experiences of World War I [he served as a military surgeon], the two Revolutions of 1917, and the Russian Civil War, which could not fail to affect his interests and literary works.

The second question is also easy. During the Soviet times, directly on Bulgakov’s watch, a major reassessment was taking place of the historical significance of Ivan Grozny. The persona of Ivan Grozny and his whole reign were then represented in a far more positive light than before.

Bulgakov wrote two plays with Ivan Grozny in them as a character: Bliss and Ivan Vasilievich. Thus, it should come as no surprise that he was keen on introducing Russian history into his works. He clearly sees Pushkin’s Lukomorye as an allegory. The gold chain in the hand of his dark-violet knight has deep roots, as in Russian history the gold chain is an attribute of the Tsar’s, that is, supreme power. Pushkin on a stallion and holding the gold chain in his hands is the symbol of Pushkin’s supremacy.

To sum this up, the golden chain, as well as the hat of Monomach, and the sardonyx cup, from which the great Sovereign of the Universe Augustus Emperor of Rome allegedly drank according to the legend recorded in the Russian annals of the year 1547, in which year Tsar Ivan Grozny wedded the Russian Tsardom --- had been given to Vladimir Monomach of Russia by his grandfather the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire Constantine Monomach.

This was all devised in order to provide special solemnity to the introduction of the title of Tsar and Autocrat. The main thrust of the legend was to convey the preeminent importance of the rulers of Moscow as the ecclesiastic and political inheritors of the Byzantine Emperors, based on the joint rule of the Greek and the Russian autocrats over the whole Orthodox Christian world, as established in the reign of Vladimir Monomach in the late 11^th-early 12^th century.

The monk Philotheus hardly expressed an original idea of his when he wrote to Ivan Grozny’s father that---

1.      all Christian kingdoms converged in one, his own;

2.      in the whole world he was the sole Orthodox Sovereign;

3.      that Moscow was the Third [after Rome and Constantinople] Rome. Sic!

 

(To be continued tomorrow…)