GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXXXIV.

Diaboliada Continues.

“He is filled with all that only the poison of the passions

Has been so terrible and sweet to people’s hearts…

So, who is he?...”

 

M. Yu. Lermontov. Night III.

Meanwhile, our hero, from a “mild, taciturn, naïve, nervous, shortsighted, embarrassed” man, all because of his firing and his dignity being insulted, turns into a brave and even reckless man who decides to stand up for himself and pursues the departing Kalsoner, getting himself straight into the whirlpool of dirty mind games.

“Korotkov was lucky… Hope was searing his heart. The motorcycle was for some reason delayed and was now rattling right in front of the tram… For about five minutes Korotkov was being pummeled and pressed near the exit area… Korotkov finally tore himself off the tram, fell down, hurt his knee, picked up his cap… Kalsoner was climbing up with a strange unnatural speed… and Korotkov’s heart was squeezed at the thought that he might lose him. And that’s what happened…”

This whole passage closely reminds me of the Chase chapter in Master and Margarita, where Ivanushka, in pursuit of the demonic threesome, is left one on one with Woland in a test of wills. By the same token the words appear odd that “the motorcycle was for some reason delayed,” until we remember that Woland too was for some reason “delayed,” out of the whole supernatural trio, since the regent “slipped away” on a bus, and the cat on a tram.

Which means that both Kalsoner versus Korotkov and Woland versus Ivanushka are playing their own game. If Woland in Master and Margarita is not entirely a fantastic figure (I am writing about this in the chapter The Spy Novel of Master and Margarita), then Kalsoner too is merely covered by the fantastic element in Diaboliada, as Bulgakov is superbly using the supernatural to cover up Korotkov’s real story, as well as the nature of the work he is performing. (More on this later in this chapter.)

As for the tram, it too travels from Diaboliada to Master and Margarita.---

“’…Cats are not allowed! Scram!’ Neither the tram operator nor the passengers seemed to have been impressed by the crux of the matter: not that the cat was trying to get into the tram, which would have been half the trouble, but that he was offering to pay the fare!”

Back in Diaboliada, Korotkov has been robbed on the tram. “...My wallet, the yellow one... my documents… Thoughts were spinning in a blizzard inside Korotkov’s head, and one new thought jumped out. The tram… He clearly remembered that there had been two young men pressing him in the exit area…”

What catches the eye here is the color of the wallet: yellow. Bulgakov in Master and Margarita will call it “disgusting and alarming,” the color of death. The color yellow is associated by Bulgakov with the betrayal and death of Christ. (See my posting Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov: XXVII.) In Fateful Eggs Bulgakov writes: “In front of him [Professor Persikov] were hundreds of yellow faces… and suddenly a yellow holster of a pistol flickered and disappeared somewhere behind a white column.” The yellow holster belongs to none other than A. S. Rokk, on account of whose folly V. I. Persikov perishes.

Likewise in Diaboliada, where Korotkov plucks his valerian-induced courage and confronts “the fat and pink man in a top hat, coming to arrest him: ‘How can you arrest me when instead of documents I have a fig? What if I am a Hohenzollern?’ ‘God have mercy,’ said the fat man, crossed himself with a trembling hand, and turned from pink to yellow.”

The “strange, unnatural speed” of the dwarfish Kalsoner (he reaches up to Korotkov’s waist in height), which stunned Korotkov, also travels to the “chase” in Master and Margarita:

“No matter how upset Ivan was, he could not help being stunned by that supernatural speed, which characterized the chase…”

Also, exactly like Korotkov, Ivanushka “fell down and hurt his knee,” which points to the fact of the use of scare tactic and intimidation against both characters.

Korotkov’s second chase, this time after the “bearded Kalsoner” is also purely allegorical. If in Ivanushka’s case in Master and Margarita his visions appear under the influence of the drugs he is given at the psychiatric clinic---

(“Before the investigator’s visit, Ivanushka was dozing off, while lying down, and before him certain visions were appearing. Thus he saw a city, strange, incomprehensible, nonexistent, with slabs of marble, with a palace on the Western hill, with bronze statues flaming in the sunset…”)

----then, under the influence of sulphur, Korotkov had his visions while wide awake. Both his visions were connected to historical personalities: Napoleon and the Polish king Jan Sobiesky.

“Korotkov saw how from the stage behind the columns a massive figure of a man in a white [military] coat descended by heavy steps…”

In this manner Korotkov meets Jan Sobiesky, whom the Bishop of Rome awarded the title of Savior of European Christendom. The fact that Korotkov knows who he is, and also his whistling of the Overture to Bizet’s Carmen, shows that he is an educated man.

Still by using such words as “a marble face,” “rolling up white eyes,” “a  lifeless gypsum smile,” Bulgakov shows us that Korotkov continues to be under the influence of sulphur, as five minutes later, when Korotkov once again “ran into the hall, he saw the host, who was standing on his pedestal already without a smile, but with an offended expression on his face… The host was standing there without an ear and the nose, and his left arm had been broken off.”

And this could have been explained away as a mere “illusion of the intellect,” but for the fact that “Jan Sobiesky” had introduced Korotkov to his secretary, sitting behind the typewriter, Henrietta Potapovna Persimfans. Even if we admit that Jan Sobiesky on the second round in five minutes turned into a broken statue, then where did the woman disappear to?---

“The hall was empty. Only the typewriter was silently grinning on the desk, showing white teeth.”

Here Bulgakov shows the reader that someone has been playing dirty mind games with his hero.

Once again we feel the influence of M. Yu. Lermontov, who has a poem Night. III.---

“It’s dark. Everything sleeps…

And when the moon rose up among the heavens…

He’s here. Standing. Like marble, by the window.

His shadow lying black against the wall.

The unmoving glance is raised, but not up to the moon;

He is filled with all that only the poison of the passions

Has been so terrible and sweet to people’s hearts…

So, who is he? Who’s he, this intruder in the dream?

What fills this rebellious breast?

Oh, if only could you guess it in his eyes

What he is anxious to hide!

Oh, if at least one poor friend could

Alleviate the ailment of his soul!”

Yet again we see Bulgakov splitting M. Yu. Lermontov’s image in two: Jan Sobiesky (He’s here. Standing. Like marble, by the window.) and Korotkov. Lermontov’s last words (Oh, if at least one poor friend could Alleviate the ailment of his soul!) relate to our ill-starred hero, whereas the idea of comparing a person to marble translates in Bulgakov into the marble statue of the Polish king. As for Korotkov’s ailment, this is easy. It is the ailment of many people across generations, nationalities, continents,--- it is the struggle for human dignity.

In that same chapter Bulgakov introduces another historical personality.---

“The fire of Moscow was noisy and thunderous,

The smoke was creeping along the river,

And on the walls of the gates of the Kremlin

He was standing, dressed in a gray coat…”

He is Napoleon… Thus, with his unique sense of humor, Bulgakov is musing how in 1693, in recognition of his accomplishments in the Battle of Vienna against the Turks, the Polish king Jan Sobiesky received the title of Savior of the European Christendom, and how in 1812, Europe, free under Napoleon, went to war against the Orthodox Russia, and was stopped by Tsar Nature, by fire and ice. This theme, this idea travels into Bulgakov’s next work Fateful Eggs, where bare-skinned gads (anacondas and crocodiles) are being stopped by fires and the “Frost God.” (In Lermontov, Nature is Tsar.)

“…Wretched is the world!

Each person in it is forgotten and lonely amidst the crowd;

And people all rush toward nonentity,---

But even though Nature despises them,

She has her favorites among them, as with other kings.

And he who has her mark upon himself,

Must not complain about his lot,

So that no one, no one would ever say

That she had nursed a snake at her breast.

M. Yu. Lermontov. Glistening, Run the Clouds.

Thus, Bulgakov takes from Lermontov’s poem Glistening, Run the Clouds the idea of Nature as created by God, choosing the Orthodox Russia as her favorite. And as an organ with an enormous crooked and black handle, behind which the “bearded Kalsoner” disappears, Bulgakov shows Europe.

To be continued tomorrow…