Diaboliada
Continues.
“The clock of fate has struck…
The poet silently drops the pistol…”
A. S. Pushkin.
Lermontov’s poem 1830
May 16th with its famous opening: “I’m not afraid of death! Oh no! I am afraid of disappearing altogether…”
also points to the strong possibility that Bulgakov’s “pale youth” may
be M. Yu. Lermontov. The word “pale” is a frequent occurrence in Lermontov’s poems:
“Two lives we have in us till death,
A fearsome spirit, alien to reason;
Love, hope, sorrow, and revenge,
All of them are subjected to it…
I trusted it, and what was there?
Look at my brow,
Peer into my eyes, see my color of paleness:
My face could never tell you
That I am fifteen years old.”
And
also this:
“And pale were the cheeks of the
dead man,
How pale the faces of his enemies
would become
When he appeared
Alone among their ranks.”
These
two poems did in fact inspire Bulgakov to present Lermontov in Diaboliada as a “pale youth.” There are
many others as well.
“So why am I now, wretched and sad, living
Without friendship, without hopes, without
thoughts, without strength,
Paler than the beam of the feelingless moon,
When through the window it glides along the
wall.”
“He is silent,
But his chest would rise from time to time,
But his pale countenance would
frequently change color…”
“Like marble, he stood there, pale
and silent…”
“…Though young, his cheeks by paleness
were already covered…”
It
goes without saying that Lermontov uses the word “youth” extensively as well.
“I saw a youth; he was
Upon a gray fast horse, and galloped…”
“…And it was not at her the youth
was looking,’
Although at none but her he thought away
from her…”
There
is no question that the phrase “pale youth,” which he likes to describe himself
by, poetically, can be ascribed to him by Bulgakov as well.
…Whose
“emeritorial fund for the month of May” was stolen by Lermontov is also clear.
A. S. Pushkin was born on May 24, 1799. (Old Style,
which was in effect in Russia until 1918. His birthday is celebrated on June 6,
which is New Style. Curiously, the Russian Church still uses the old style for
its calendar, which is why the Orthodox Christmas celebration, properly falling
on December 25, Old Style, takes place on January 7, New Style.)
And
although the name of Pushkin was just as sacred to Bulgakov as to every
Russian, it was specifically under the influence of Lermontov that he became a
writer. (We will be talking about this in my later chapter Two Bears.) The question why it is Lermontov whom Korotkov sees and
hears in his valerian-induced delirium, also becomes clear: Same as Lermontov,
Korotkov was an officer of the Russian Army, too.
Bulgakov
shows us M. Yu. Lermontov as Korotkov’s “vision,” pointing out that we
are dealing with a dead man here, with a “metallic voice,” the paleness
of the youth, and taking into account the whole surrealistic situation. If
Dyrkin is “fearful,” the “pale youth” is fearless, calling him a scoundrel and
hitting him on the ear with his attaché case. Inspired by the “pale youth,”
Korotkov himself becomes fearless. And it is to Lermontov that Korotkov’s
inflamed brain has its recourse at the moment of despair.
Now
we can understand the words “Better death
than dishonor.”
Korotkov
was deprived of his documents and fired from work, in order to send him either
to Irkutsk or to Poltava to work there as a snitch, a rat among the White Guard “formers,” who had chosen to
remain in Russia, or had become returnees. Korotkov would have none of that.
Inspired by Lermontov’s [“pale youth’s”] example, and being under strong
influence of valerian tincture, he imagines an invitation coming from the
“terrible and fearsome” Dyrkin himself:
“‘…Hit Dyrkin, hit him… Maybe
it hurts your hand? Then take the candlestick.’ And Dyrkin temptingly
offered his puffy cheeks… Korotkov glanced sideways with a shy smile,
took the candlestick, and with a cracking sound hit Dyrkin’s head with its
candles. Blood started dripping from the nose of the other down on the desk
cloth…”
After
this exploit, Korotkov breaks the clock with the same candlestick. He imagines
that---
“Kalsoner popped out of the clock…” Korotkov’s words: “We are attacking Kalsoner, he is on the offensive…” prove
once more that Korotkov is a Russian officer of the White Guard, who had
received proper loyalty assessment for the new government, and given the
shortage of educated operatives, was accepted for a job with the GPU, but was
judged insufficiently aggressive.
We
have to note here how interestingly Bulgakov uses Lermontov’s poem Vision, which opens with the following words:
“I saw a youth; he was
Upon a gray fast horse, and galloped…”
In
the second half of this poem we find out that it was all a dream:
“My dream changed of a sudden:
I saw a room…”
What
Bulgakov shows in Diaboliada are
Korotkov’s visions, and they are not in a dream. The “pale youth” whom
Korotkov sees in Dyrkin’s office is a Russian officer who comes to his aid at a
difficult moment (same as in White Guard the
sentry guarding an armored train “sees” his long-dead neighbor Zhilin, who
descends from Heaven to save his life, when he is about to freeze to death [see
my chapter Man and the People, posted
segment LXIV]), and Korotkov’s helper is none other than M. Yu. Lermontov.
Incidentally,
the fact that Korotkov smashes the clock in Dyrkin’s office with a candlestick
in Diaboliada echoes Master and Margarita’s Kot Begemot
shooting from two guns at once, killing an owl and smashing the mantelpiece
clock.
The
theme of the clock in Bulgakov can be traced back to his first novel White Guard.---
“…The clock played a gavotte… In response to the bronze one with the
gavotte… Striking time in the dining room with a clock-tower chime was the
black wall-mounted one… If it were to disappear from the wall, it would be sad,
like a voice of kin had died… But fortunately the clock is utterly immortal…”
It
turns out that the clock theme in Bulgakov naturally turns into the theme of
immortality. (See my Chapters Kot Begemot
Segment XIX and Birds/Owl Segment
LI.) Quite obviously, death and immortality walk hand in hand, for, as they
say, you can only conquer death by dying.
In
Fateful Eggs, written in 1924,
Professor Persikov, “inspired and lonely, crowned by
an unexpected fame, pushed through, toward the fiery clock near the Manezh. Here…
absorbed in his thoughts, he stumbled upon an old-fashioned man, painfully
sticking his fingers into the wooden case of a revolver, hanging from the man’s
belt.”
This
fateful meeting is an omen of Professor Persikov’s death. Incidentally, the man’s
name happens to be Alexander Semyonovich Rock, whose precursor ,Kalsoner (who
has just jumped out of the clock, as we remember), our hero V. P. Korotkov has
to deal with in Diaboliada. And as we
also very well remember, Korotkov, just like Persikov, dies at the end of the
story.
So
does Margarita of Master and Margarita,
at the end of her story, and once
again a watch serves as an omen of her rapidly approaching death.---
“A gold bracelet with a small watch on it was lying right in front
of Margarita Nikolaevna near the box received from Azazello, and Margarita
never took her eyes off the watch’s face. At times she was beginning to imagine
that the watch had broken and the hands were not moving. But they did move,
albeit too slowly, as if sticking [to the face], and finally the long hand fell
upon the twenty-ninth minute past nine o’clock… Having made several rubbings
[of Azazello’s cream], Margarita glanced at the mirror and dropped the box
right on the glass of the watch, which caused it to crack…”
…Korotkov
has to “gallop” out of Dyrkin’s office. Having been chased, he runs for his
life.
Before
we move on to the last chapter of Diaboliada,
let me ask the reader: Who is Dyrkin?
Bulgakov makes this episodic character very interesting, as he endows three
characters in Diaboliada with
different attributes of one historical personality. Kalsoner receives his “beard”; Dyrkin, “awesome and fearsome,” gets his “puffy cheeks”; and the “meek”
Korotkov gets his “alternation of states”:
meekness and rage…
To
be continued tomorrow…
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