Diaboliada
Continues.
“…Independence and self-respect alone can elevate us over
the trivialities of life and over the storms of fate.”
A. S. Pushkin. Voltaire.
…Bulgakov
gives the reader four clues as to who the lustrine little old man is.---
1. “The little old man took out a large
handkerchief… started crying and blowing his nose.”
“The little old man all shook and burst
into tears.”
“The little old man flowed in wild
weeping…”
What we’ve
read so far strongly points in the direction of Koroviev, in Master and Margarita. Compare these:
“Koroviev
pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket, pushed his nose into it and started
weeping.”
“Tears
flowed from under the pince-nez in torrents.”
“Being
unable to contain himself, Koroviev started convulsing in sobbing.”
“Having
wept to capacity…”
All of this is taking place in the episode with
Berlioz’s Kievan uncle, as Koroviev relates to him the details of his being
crushed by a tram, but withholding the information that it was Koroviev himself
who sent Berlioz there, to his death.
2. “A black cape weaved out of the air
and dragged alongside Korotkov, with a cry thin and long.” We already know that the “cape” is the lustrine little
old man:
“Like a black bird [raven?!], the cape
shut off the light, the little old man started whispering in an alarmed voice…”
“The cape embraced Korotkov and
pulled him along, whispering and giggling…”
“The cape flittered to the side…”
The “cape” merely shows that Bulgakov poses a riddle
for the reader, as to who this is. The coat of this type, we know, was an
attribute of Sherlock Holmes. But our main clue here is a different one: “weaved out of the air,” as in Master and Margarita the regent [alias
Koroviev] appears similarly on the second page of the novel:
“And then the balmy air thickened before
him [Berlioz], and, woven out of this air, appeared a most strange, transparent
citizen... This long see-through citizen was dangling in front of him right and
left, without touching the ground…”
3. Although the “lustrine little old man” calls himself
an “old dog,” he is much better
suited by the description of “ghost”:
“Don’t
go in, mumbled the lustrine little old man, and flew through the air
waving the wings of his cape… I am
not going in, not going in…”
“…And
as for the paper, I’ll still sneak it in. You sign any, there you go to the
dock.”
“He pulled a stack of papers out of his
wide black sleeve.”
Note also his words concerning the psych-ops: “Oh yes, I’ve done
them such a service, what I’ve sprinkled on their desks should earn each of
them at least five years, with a defeat on the battlefield.”
The words “you
sign any” also belong to Koroviev in Master
and Margarita, in the scene with Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the
housing cooperative:
“Koroviev with the greatest speed and
agility drew up a contract in two copies. In
cursive, in cursive, Nikanor Ivanovich!.. thousands of rubles…” And we all know of course what happened to Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy: “…The tenants of the building saw how
the chairman, in the company of two more persons, proceeded straight to the
gate. Nikanor Ivanovich had no face on him… he was shaking, walking like a
drunk, and mumbling something to himself…” In other words, Comrade Bosoy
was arrested.
4. And finally, the blue lunettes of the lustrine
little old man (incidentally, matching the color of the psych-ops’ suits) turn
into Koroviev’s pince-nez in Master and
Margarita:
“Now the regent [Koroviev] fixed upon his
nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, which had one glass missing entirely
and the other one was cracked. Because of this, the checkered citizen became
even more repulsive than when he had been showing Berlioz the way to the
rails.” And at the ball the pince-nez is
replaced by a monocle: “The flickering light was
reflected not in that cracked pince-nez which had long deserved being thrown
out as trash, but in a monocle, also cracked, to tell the truth. The small
moustache on his face was curled and pomaded.”
The question arises: why is Bulgakov showing us his
idol as such an unbecoming sight?..
It is very hard to believe, in spite of all aggregate
proof, that we are looking at Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. By showing us the
appearance and behavior of Koroviev in this fashion (the same goes for the lustrine
little old man), Bulgakov emphasizes vice in mankind, and makes the reader
think about what is in fact going on in everyday reality.
In order to understand it the way it is, we need to
read A. S. Pushkin himself. In his diary of 1821, Alexander Sergeevich writes:
“It is not enough to be scum, one has to be
scum openly.”
I believe that this is precisely what Bulgakov was
basing his “Pushkin” characters on. A. S. Pushkin’s words above are our key to
the understanding of the characters of the “lustrine little old man” and the
“pink and fat in a top hat” in Diaboliada,
and of course those of Koroviev and the “Backenbarter” in Master and Margarita.
Koroviev wears broken glasses as an example of what
the Russians call “rubbing someone’s glasses,” meaning deceiving someone.
According to Bulgakov, the blue color of the lustrine little old man’s lunettes
reveals grief, trouble for each and every one whom he meets. Bulgakov’s blue
color is the color of deception, fraud, set-up of a man. On the other hand,
Bulgakov’s violet color is the color of glory. Only to A. S. Pushkin in Master and Margarita, and to Bogdan
Khmelnitzky in White Guard does
Bulgakov render the association with the violet color.
It
is most interesting to observe that the “pale youth” threatens Korotkov with a
“red fist.” We know that M. Yu. Lermontov wore a red military tunic with gold
embroidery seventy centimeters long. On the other hand, he, Lermontov, called
the gendarmerie (police) “blue tunics” in his poems. On a funny note, according
to Dr. Constantine Hering, under the influence of valerian, “red parts become
white.” In Bulgakov’s Diaboliada the
fist of a white man becomes red.
In
Master and Margarita Koroviev changes
his appearance twice (aside from his well-known transformation into a
dark-violet knight, at the end of the novel): into the rook-chauffeur, taking
Margarita and Master to Master’s old basement apartment (see my posted segment
L) and “some nude fat man wearing a black silken top hat” on the riverbank (see
my posted segment XLIV).
In
Diaboliada the “lustrine little old
man” also changes his appearance.
“The cape, like a black bird, shut off the light, the little old
man apprehensively whispered: ‘Now there
is only one way out: to Dyrkin in the Fifth Section. Move! Move!’” While Korotkov was going down on the elevator, “the cape flittered to the side, there was a draft of wind
and dampness from the [elevator] cage going down into the abyss.” The
“cape” came down before Korotkov did, and it was already waiting for him in
front of the elevator: “One very fat and pink in a top
hat met Korotkov with the words: ‘Well,
isn’t this lovely. Now I’m going to arrest you.’”
The
proof that this is Pushkin is the same as in the case of the Backenbarter of Master and Margarita: the top hat. It is
not only the fact that men no longer wore top hats in Russia of the 1920’s,
but, as I already wrote in my subchapter Backenbarter,
Bulgakov writes in his Notes on the Cuffs
about a shadow in a top hat, when he quotes Pushkin’s poem in the
chapter Footcloth and Black Mouse:
“Drunk with despair, I mumble: ‘Alexander
Pushkin. Lumen Coeli, Sancta Rosa, And like thunder is his threat…’ Am I
going mad, or what? The shadow from a lantern ran. I know it’s my shadow. But
it has a top hat on, whereas I sold my top hat at the market, being hungry…”
What
Bulgakov means here is a play of his which he wrote in the Caucasus and sold
for money. In other words, the top hat here is a symbol of integrity, and
Bulgakov awards Pushkin with the top hat for his integrity: A. S. Pushkin never
wrote on order. In his diary entry for 10th May, 1834, he writes,
paraphrasing the words of the great Russian scientist and poet M. V. Lomonosov:
“…But I can be a subject and even an [unwilling] slave, but a
[willing] slave and a buffoon I shall not be even to the Tsar of Heaven.”
Pushkin thus reacts to his
humiliating appointment as Kammerjunker
at the court of Tsar Nicholas I Palkin, which tied Pushkin to the despised
court.
Curiously, in his article Voltaire, A. S. Pushkin returns to this
question, writing that only personal ‘independence and self-respect
alone can elevate us over the trivialities of life and over the storms of fate.’
Bulgakov in Master and Margarita reacts to these
Pushkin’s words:
“Messire, you just need to order it!, Koroviev
responded from someplace, but not in his customary rattling voice, but very
clearly and sonorously.”
Thus he stresses that
although Koroviev serves Woland, that is, he has no personal
independence, still he keeps his self-respect. As we may remember, his “account”
is closed on Russian Orthodox Easter, when he receives his independence.
To
be continued…
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