Diaboliada.
“Alone,
among the human din,
I
grew up under alien shield,
And
proudly creative thought
Was
ripening inside my heart.”
M. Yu. Lermontov.
I am closing the chapter on Nature with Bulgakov’s Diaboliada,
where he raises the question of psychological warfare, which, in fact, is a
legitimate and integral part of any military strategy, long preceding military
engagement per se, and frequently preventing a war.
In order to understand Bulgakov’s thinking, we must
get acquainted with his preparation for Master
and Margarita, which is precisely what we will continue to be doing, as it
was this idea to write a novel about Satan which made Bulgakov the physician a
writer. This idea came first, which explains his “Satanic pride” even at the
time when he was living at home among his family. Diaboliada presents convincing proof of it.
Having been an eyewitness and participant of the Civil
War, Bulgakov decided to frame all his creative life work between his immortal
novel White Guard (which alone
secures his place among the outstanding writers of all times and nations) and
that fascinating three-headed fantasy which would become known as Master and Margarita.
Already in White
Guard, Bulgakov introduces a strong supernatural element revealed as the
two dreams of his hero Alexei Turbin.
The two works written right after White Guard: Diaboliada, 1923 (dealing with psychological warfare),
and Fateful Eggs, 1924 (dealing with
biological warfare), are already saturated with the supernatural, which becomes
a mask for Russian history, making them great fun to read in their own right,
but also a veritable gem to research, as they already contain many ideas that
would later become part of Master and
Margarita, namely, the idea of splitting the devil, the idea of lost
identity, Bulgakov’s first depiction of the devil in the flesh and his first
attempt at portraying the devil’s physical appearance, the idea of the main
character’s “chase” after the devil, the duality of the main character, the
introduction of the precursors of the regent and Begemot, the idea of the meeting
of Master and Margarita, and many others.
What strikes me in Bulgakov’s creative work is its
currency for our time, the hand of genius. I was tremendously interested in Diaboliada not only because, like all
his other works, it serves as a preparation for Master and Margarita, and it is so interesting to follow the
development of the different characters and situations, but also because of its
theme, which will interest mankind in all times, which is the loss of a person’s
identity and a fight for human dignity.
However, in the process of my discovery of Diaboliada I came to the amazing
conclusion that this novella is in fact a further development of the novel White Guard, very skillfully masked by
the master.
Diaboliada provides the key to the understanding of Bulgakov’s
whole body of creative work, because being the first “fantastic” creation of
his, it bears directly on his crown achievement, which is Master and Margarita. Bulgakov was disingenuous when he said before
his death that after Master and Margarita,
he wouldn’t know what else to write. He had plenty to write, with his sharp eye
for material. What he did not have at his disposal was time. He was in fact a
working man, who had to work for his living, including literary potboilers and
even odd jobs at the theater, and that was taking a lot of his time. But he
didn’t have to worry about writing something inadequate vis-à-vis Master and Margarita, which, being his
favorite brainchild would always be the concluding piece of work anyway.
Diaboliada and the 1925 horror story Tarakan [Cockroach], give a strong indication that Bulgakov was
seriously entertaining the idea of writing a macabre novel, truly noir, which
would contain no redemption: what awaits Russia without Christ. And even in
this case Bulgakov’s creative work would still be beautifully framed between
the two immortals: White Guard and Master and Margarita, to form a wondrous
landscape [“landschaftik”] with
feathered and naked-skinned gads strolling in it, something like that painting
which his beloved Begemot steals from the burning Writers’ House.---
“But this time the fatso had no primus
with him, but he was loaded with other objects. Thus, under his arm he was
carrying a small landschaftik in a golden frame; over his arm hung a chef’s
half-burned robe, while in his other hand he was holding a whole salmon with
its skin and the tail intact.”
What Bulgakov allegorically calls “a small landschaftik [but] in a golden frame” is naturally the
creative work of M. Yu. Lermontov (Begemot)
[who incidentally was a good landscape painter]. The “chef’s robe” naturally points to the fact that Lermontov was a
master in what he was doing, that is, a great writer. Doesn’t Bulgakov portray
the great poet V. V. Mayakovsky as “himself
frying cotelettes over a primus”?
With regard to the “whole salmon with its skin and the tail intact,” it represents the works
which Lermontov would never be able to write, because of his early death.
As for the allegory of the landschaftik, it was so
important to Bulgakov that he uses it twice. Begemot to Woland:
“…Yes-s,
here’s this landschaftik. It was impossible to carry anything else out of the
hall, the flames hit me in the face. I ran into the larder and saved this
salmon. I ran into the kitchen and saved this robe. I move that I did all I
could…”
Diaboliada is a multilayered cake. In it, not only does the personage
of Kalsoner make an appearance, looking like Azazello, but he splits into twins:
the bearded one and the shaven one. This is an interesting thing, as in Master and Margarita the devil is also
split into Woland (Lucifer) and Azazello (the goat-legged Pan Azazel). Woland
appears as a pleasant Beardo in the scene of the satanic “baptism” of
Ivanushka. Even more interesting is the fact that in Diaboliada the two satanic twins are called by the same name
Kalsoner (derived from the French word caleçons,
underpants), which is the reason for the secretary Lidochka to give him the
nickname Bald Underpants. Curiously,
in Master and Margarita Woland (the
pleasant Beardo) leaves Ivanushka instead of his clothes with a Tolstovka shirt
plus a pair of caleçons plus a box of
matches (sic!).
Diaboliada begins in a dramatic fashion: instead of their
monetary wages, the employees of the company Spimat, an outlet of the match
products industry, where the hero of the novella works as the senior office
clerk, receive quantities of boxes of matches,
which they are supposed to sell on their own, in order to make a living. As if
this calamity alone were not enough, the company gets a new boss, a certain
Kalsoner, who starts his tenure at the helm by firing the whole staff.
The time has come for us to meet our hero, V. P.
Korotkov, who during his ordeal comes across a remarkable cast of characters:
Jan Sobiesky, a “pale youth,” and a certain “lustrine little old man,” among
others. The firings notwithstanding, Korotkov may stay, but in a lesser job of
an assistant, because his old job has been given already to Kalsoner’s brother,
also going by the name of Kalsoner. (In this fashion Bulgakov raises the
question of nepotism, which becomes the subject of his sketch Secrets of the Court at Madrid, and many
others.) There is a catch to the new
job, though. The condition of our hero’s staying even in this lesser job is to
be called from now on by a different name, that of Vasili Pavlovich Kolobkov, who--
what a surprise!—happens to be the thief who had stolen Korotkov’s identity
papers!
Here Bulgakov poses a twofold riddle to the reader:
1.
If our hero
should consent to Kalsoner’s job offer on this condition and agrees to sign up
for the new identity, he will surely end up in jail. Bulgakov explains this in
the words of the mysterious “lustrine little old man.”--- “And the paper to sign, that I will sneak in, just like
that: Clap! You sign any of them, there you go to the dock!”
2.
Secondly. Not
only does Bulgakov hint about his next work Fateful
Eggs by describing Kalsoner’s egg-shaped head, but this personage
will travel to the next novella (Fateful
Eggs) under a new identity: that of Alexander Semyonovich Rokk, who
through sheer ignorance breeds giant snakes instead of chicken from the eggs
received from the West…
To be continued tomorrow…
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