GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXLII.

master… Continues.

“But there’s Aspasia!..

How hot is that mouth, how flaming are those speeches,

And, dark as night, those curls so casually

Fall upon the breasts,

Upon the white-marble shoulders…”

N. V. Gogol. Hans Kuchelgarten.

Bulgakov’s master has many fathers, and N. V. Gogol is just one of them, as he introduces an ironworks master of German origin and named Schiller, in his story Nevsky Prospekt. Already in his short story Outloud, Bulgakov introduces, if not a railroad master, then at least his wife, who later travels to the Theatrical Novel as simply a “master’s wife.” But it is precisely because of the wife of the ironworks master that Nevsky Prospekt is turned by Gogol from tragedy to comedy, in a most unexpected way.

It is also quite possible to envisage that even when Bulgakov was writing his sketches basing them on the actual reports from “workers’ correspondents,” he enriched this material with special details, designed to amuse his person only. (See Margarita’s Maiden Flight, posted segment XLVI.)

N. V. Gogol’s humor was bound to attract Bulgakov just as much as he was attracted by supernatural fantasy in general.

N. V. Gogol produced a huge influence on Bulgakov’s creativity, just as he was influenced by A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, both of whom were considered by Gogol “poets of the first rank.” [More on this in my chapter The Magus.] Bulgakov unites all three of his idols in his Master and Margarita, doing this, as always, with an exceptional, unique to him sense of humor.

Two “Dead Souls,” namely, Pushkin and Lermontov, arrive in Moscow to save “one master,” as Margarita calls her lover to Woland. It is master, of course, whose prototype is N. V. Gogol. As another Russian poet Vladimir Vysotsky sings,---

“Our dead are not going to abandon us in peril,

Our fallen are like our sentries…”

This aspect is very interesting. And even though I prove quite convincingly, in my chapter Who R U, Margarita?, that Margarita does not exist in at least one of the three novels contained in Master and Margarita, namely, in the psychological thriller about a man with split personality,--- Bulgakov managed to create a striking character of a young woman in love.

The fact that Bulgakov chose N. V. Gogol as master’s prototype, also supports the assertion that there was no such person as Margarita, considering that there was no woman either, in Gogol’s life.

In order to find a suitable candidate for the role of Margarita, Bulgakov, naturally, could turn to the world of the great dead. And there he found his ideal, which he valued so much in Margarita: beauty and intelligence. This woman was Gogol’s contemporary, and she was interested in Gogol as a writer. Her letters to Gogol are extant. She was indeed an extraordinary woman. Natalia Nikolayevna Pushkina was jealous of her being around her husband. M. Yu. Lermontov was reportedly in love with this woman…

And she was a woman of the world, who married not for love. Her high position in society allowed her to enter the literary circles of that society. Having lost her father early in life, she was sent away by her mother, who remarried, to an institute for noble girls, where she received a good education, judging by the results. She was endowed with natural intelligence, and she understood that she could not advance herself by beauty alone…

So, if Bulgakov’s Margarita could have a prototype, here she was: Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova nèe Rosset.

But here is the problem: although she was not averse to having lovers, Rosset was interested in Gogol only as a writer.

Shortly before his premature death, N. V. Gogol had a desire to marry, and in the spring of 1850 he proposed to a certain A. M. Vielgorskaya, receiving a rejection, despite the fact that by that time he was already established as a famous writer. No wonder. The bride’s mother was born as Princess Biron, and Mlle. Vielgorskaya herself married none other than the illustrious Prince Shakhovskoy.

 Gogol’s pride suffered a crushing blow:

“At least something should I be in respect to you. It is for a reason that God brings together people in such a wondrous way. Perhaps I ought to be with regard (to you) nothing else than a loyal dog, obligated to guard in some kind of corner the property of his owner.”

In the relationship of master and Margarita it is Margarita, who despite being married to a VIP, here plays the role of a loyal dog to master. Yes, we can definitely say that “it was for a reason that God brought together in such a wondrous way” master and Margarita. However, there was no reciprocity in Gogol’s relationship. Judging by Gogol’s lines, we can say that this is hardly a declaration of love, and even not a friendly gesture. And here one remembers another letter, written by a 20-year-old Gogol to his mother. This is a completely different kind of letter, and it is directly relevant to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, as the idea of the image of Margarita comes to Bulgakov, among other sources, from Gogol, joining together A. O. Smirnova-Rosset’s interest in Gogol’s literary work with the young Gogol’s love for a woman unknown to us. Once again, a peculiar one, but still a split…---

“No, this being was not a woman. With all the power of her charm she could not have produced such terrible, indescribable impressions,” writes the 20-year-old Gogol in 1829, that is, twenty years prior to his letter to Vielgorskaya, having undoubtedly experienced for the first time in his life the pangs of love at first sight.

With his sharp eye, Bulgakov notices the word “being,” and he starts building his heroine Margarita accordingly.

Gogol hardly expected to find such passion in himself:

“…In a fit of rage [sic!] and most horrific torments of the soul, I was yearning, boiling, to imbibe just one glance [of her]; just one single glance did I desire…”

…And apparently he did not get it. That was a cry of his soul:

“…She is too high for anyone, not just for me. I would have called her an angel, but this expression is base and out-of-place toward her…”

“Base” can be understood as “too common,” and then “out-of-place” also becomes understandable, because this word can also be found quite often in common talk. Whereas what happened to Gogol can by no means be called “common.” It happens to few. Gogol writes:

“It was a deity created by Him, a portion of His own self.”

So, this is how Gogol, smitten by perfection, expresses his feelings. And considering that this was a letter written to his mother, it is impossible to doubt the sincerity of his affections.

Bulgakov picks it up and creates the meeting of master and Margarita through the 23-year-old Ivanushka, dreaming of love. In the course of their meeting, it is Margarita, as we know, whose glance is searching for master, and it finds him.

Because of Gogol’s letter, Bulgakov endows Margarita, his “being,” with rather odd for an earthly woman qualities, characteristics, such as her low, breaking voice, and also the strange little light burning in her eyes. Bulgakov clothes his heroine in springtime [sic!] in a black coat, black stockings, black gauntlet gloves, and black shoes with snap-buckles, calling her a “witch.”

In other words, if Gogol saw “a deity created by Him, a portion of His own self,” obviously meaning God, then in Bulgakov, Margarita is turned into a witch.

Apparently, Bulgakov saw, felt, in Gogol’s words, something different, something invisible to a common eye, about which later in this chapter.

I already wrote elsewhere (The Fantastic Novel, posted segment XXXVI) that in Russia such was the attitude of the people toward Sophia Paleolog, the last Byzantine Princess, whose marriage to the grand duke Ivan III of Russia gave a special weight to the Russian claim of being the Third and Last Rome, which had effectively originated with the father of Vladimir Monomach, who had also married a Byzantine princess.

The word which was used toward Sophia Paleolog was “enchantress,” and not “witch,” used by Bulgakov toward Margarita. But the essence of these two words is basically the same.

Curiously, Sophia Paleolog has something in common with Pericles’s Aspasia. Both women were considered foreigners in the countries where their husbands ruled, which did not hinder them a bit due to their unique nature and the stature of worldly women, in ruling over their powerful husbands. Bulgakov fashions Margarita after their type. It is precisely Margarita who preyed on master’s vanity, saying “that in this novel was her life.” She “promised fame... spurred him on,” and it was then that she started calling him master.”

To be continued tomorrow…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXLI.

master… Continues.

 

“…Or nearing midnight, at a late evening hour,

He sits over a book of legends,

And turning over leaf after leaf,

He catches silent letters in them,

In which the hoary ages speak,

And a wondrous word in them resounds…”

N. V. Gogol. Hans Kuchelgarten.

 

…Aside from Nemirovich-Danchenko’s “portrait gallery,” N. V. Gogol pops up here and there, and here again in the Theatrical Novel, which ought to surprise the reader.

Bulgakov inserts N. V. Gogol into a conversation of his character S. L. Maksudov [Theatrical Novel] with an actor of the Independent Theater, Bombardov, a mysterious figure, who lets him in on the inner workings and behind-the-scenes games of the theater. Bulgakov writes:

“…Master’s wife brought in pancakes… Bombardov complimented the pancakes, looked around the room, and said: You need to get married, Sergei Leontievich. Married to some nice and tender woman or a girl… I replied: This conversation has already been described by Gogol. So, let us not be repetitious…”

Here it becomes quite clear that Bulgakov likens his hero Maksudov to N. V. Gogol.

If the editor-publisher of the only private journal Motherland Ilya Ivanovich Rudolfi, who has published part of Maksudov’s novel before fleeing to America, compared Maksudov to Tolstoy [more on this in my Bulgakov chapter, to be posted later on]: “Imitating Tolstoy?” then the administration of the Independent Theater clearly wanted to rewrite Maksudov’s play à la Gogol.

“These descriptions of southern nature… eh… starlit nights, Ukrainian… then the noisy Dnieper, eh, as Gogol said… eh… Wondrous is the Dnieper, as you remember… and what about the scent of acacia… you have it all masterfully done… Especially… eh… this description of a grove is impressive… the leaves of silvery poplars… You remember?”

Maksudov realizes that these people have not read a single page either of his novel or of his play adaptation.---

“The point is that in my novel there was none of the acacias, or the silvery poplars, or the noisy Dnieper, in a word, there was nothing of it there.”

This is already a third time that Bulgakov points us to Gogol, which is naturally nothing in itself, like there is nothing in itself in the words “you have it all masterfully done.” … Or is there?..

However, a little picture is taking shape here, which is once again pertinent to Bulgakov’s own thoughts.

As I already wrote, A. S. Pushkin can be rightly considered Bulgakov’s mentor. There is a reason why in his immortal White Guard already, Bulgakov takes his epigraph from Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter, rather than from Leo Tolstoy, which would seem more appropriate. White Guard is indeed War and Peace, although unlike Tolstoy’s Bulgakov’s novel is written by an eyewitness. Bulgakov was serving at the front of World War I, and then was a participant, with the White Movement, in Russian Civil War.

But it was from A. S. Pushkin that Bulgakov took the idea of having prototypes for his characters. [There will be more about this in my still unposted chapter The Bard.]

Bulgakov chose N. V. Gogol as the prototype of his master, because it is precisely with master, in Master and Margarita, that the fantastical side is connected, and it was none other than Gogol who brought the fantastical element in Russian literature to the level of masterfulness, using folklore, following A. S. Pushkin’s advice to Russian writers to read fairytales.

A. S. Pushkin played a major role in Gogol’s life ever since Gogol’s arrival in St. Petersburg at the age of nineteen, in 1828. And it is precisely to A. S. Pushkin [Koroviev in Master and Margarita] that Bulgakov gives the following words:

“…And a sweet eeriness reaches your heart when you think that right now, in this building [The Writer’s House], there ripens on the vine a future author of Don Quixote, or of Faust, or--- devil take me!--- of Dead Souls. Eh?”

In other words, in Bulgakov, A. S. Pushkin elevates Gogol’s Dead Souls to the same level as Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Goethe’s Faust.

As if once were not enough, Bulgakov immediately mentions Gogol a second time:

“Can you imagine what kind of brouhaha would be made if one of them, for starters, offers to the public an Inspector, or, at the very worst, a Eugene Onegin,” continued Koroviev.

Here Bulgakov clearly refers to the fact that the idea of writing The Inspector was suggested to the young writer by A. S. Pushkin himself. Ironically, Gogol’s play was forbidden by the censors, because of its unflattering portrayal of Russian society of that time, and it took the interference of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I himself (sic!), thanks to the decisive influence of Pushkin’s powerful friends, to make its theater staging possible.

This fact naturally demonstrates not only A S. Pushkin’s generous patronage of the young Gogol, but also Pushkin’s keen psychological acumen, as, having discerned Gogol’s character, he offered him an idea which was a perfect fit for his specific talent.

The Inspector also provides the reader with a bridge to Bulgakov’s first puzzle: The idea of Dead Souls, like the idea of The Inspector, was given to Gogol by A. S. Pushkin.

Here is a very interesting connection to Bulgakov himself. Pushkin called Goethe “a poet of genius” precisely because of Faust. Bulgakov, accused by his sister of a “satanic pride,” decided to become a writer precisely on account of that “satanic pride,” conceiving a novel about Satan as a subsidiary to God, specifically, to Jesus Christ, who was the manifestation of God in human form, taking upon Himself all human sufferings on earth, and dying as a human being, by the agonizing death of crucifixion.

Bulgakov accomplishes his goal by inserting the Pontius Pilate sub-novel into his already three-level novel Master and Margarita. (As I said before, the three levels are: the best spy novel ever written; the best psychological thriller about split personality; and the most accepted, because of its fantastical element, level of a love story.)

Interestingly, the sub-novel of Pontius Pilate, was so important to Bulgakov that having once been offered to have Master and Margarita published on the condition of editing out the Pontius Pilate storyline, he flatly refused, and as a result, his great novel would first be published only a long time after his death.

The idea of having prototypes for his characters (N. V. Gogol for master, while Ivanushka’s prototype will be revealed in my chapter Two Adversaries), and also to introduce two “dead souls”: A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, comes to Bulgakov from A. S. Pushkin. In his article On Byron’s Dramas Pushkin writes about Byron that after long searches, he created “a somber, powerful character, so mysterious, yet enticing.” This “principal character, appearing in all his creations… he finally assumed for himself in Childe Harold.”

With this article in mind, Bulgakov took famous Russian writers and poets as prototypes for his characters in Master and Margarita, sometimes picking certain facts from their biographies and emphasizing them, sometimes playing upon the weaknesses of these prototypes, using their sayings, alluding to certain interesting moments in their lives and above all to their works. All of these were supposedly offering numerous clues to the readers in order to guess who these characters originated from in reality. A sea of pleasure for Bulgakov, who obviously portrayed his characters tongue in cheek. (How he made fun of Byron himself belongs to my chapter The Bard.)

A.S. Pushkin writes that “Byron cast a one-sided glance at the world and the nature of mankind, then he estranged himself from it, immersing into himself. He presented to us the ghost of his own self. He [Byron] created a secondary self, now under the turban of a renegade, now in the corsair’s cloak, now as a giaour… At last he comprehended, created and described an integral character [that is, his own], that is, that ‘somber, powerful character, so mysterious, yet enticing.’ But when he started composing his tragedy, to each of its characters he would ascribe one of the composite parts of this somber and strong character, and in this manner he fragmented his majestic creation into several small and insignificant ones.”

Thus, using A. S. Pushkin’s critique of Byron, Bulgakov created the well-thought-through and integral characters of Koroviev, Begemot, Ivanushka-Azazello, and also Woland himself, as that “somber, powerful character, so mysterious, yet enticing,” at the séance of black magic. Woland is an extremely interesting character in Bulgakov. (Read about it in my Bulgakov chapter later on.)

Bulgakov did not commit Byron’s mistake. He did not fragment his characters. Each of them, even the secondary ones, like Varenukha, Rimsky, Stepa Likhodeev, etc., are carefully constructed, and have their own prototypes.

In order to introduce master into Master and Margarita, Bulgakov uses Ivanushka, that is, his “visions,” because, like many other things, master is “imagined” by Ivanushka. However, Bulgakov himself shows Gogol as a master in the Theatrical Novel, when one of the actors praises Maksudov for his depictions of nature, which he never wrote.---

“These descriptions of southern nature… eh… starlit nights, Ukrainian… then the noisy Dnieper, eh, as Gogol said… eh… Wondrous is the Dnieper, as you remember… and what about the scent of acacia… you have it all masterfully done…

As on the next page Bulgakov unequivocally states that Maksudov had written nothing of the kind, the only conclusion that can be made here is that in this paragraph Bulgakov reveals the mystery of master, namely, that master is Gogol.

Perhaps, it would be more correct to say that in order to write the personage of master, Bulgakov uses N. V. Gogol as master’s prototype.

Curiously, by using the word “masterfully,” in the previous text, Bulgakov expresses his opinion of Gogol, whose famous quotations are flippantly attributed there to Maksudov.

Thus Bulgakov himself calls N. V. Gogol “master.”

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXL.

master… Continues.

“A few words about me myself…

I am alone like the last eye in a man going to the blind.”

V. V. Mayakovsky. I.

                                                                      

As I was genuinely struck, having read the last pages of Master and Margarita, by the remarkable transformation of the loosely-knit Koroviev into the solemn dark-violet knight, I came to realize then and there that Bulgakov’s personages are generally posing puzzles to the reader. I was sure, though, that Bulgakov, being an honest writer, would not want to take these secrets to the grave with him, but would want to somehow publicly share his secrets on the pages of his works.

Of all Bulgakovian characters, master stands the closest to Maksudov, the hero of the Notes of a Dead Man, alias Theatrical Novel. For this reason I decided to reread it.

These two personages (master and Maksudov) do indeed have a lot in common. Maksudov wrote a novel Black Snow, which, although its publication in a journal had started, was never published to the end.

Next the “Independent” Theater offered him to adapt his novel into a play. And although the rehearsals of the play had started, the theater decided not to stage the play without major revisions the administration insisted upon, eventually bringing the author to suicide.

Master, as we know, was arrested because of his novel. [At least such was the official version. As we discussed elsewhere, in the Spy Novel, this was only a pretext, whereas the real reason was master’s liaison with Margarita, married to a VIP Soviet scientist.] Master had taken it to the editor of a literary journal, after which a public witch hunt of him began in the newspapers, due to its religious content. Even though the novel’s title was Pontius Pilate, the novel’s action was taking place around the image of Jesus Christ. And, as we know, master ends up in a psychiatric clinic, and dies there. (More about it in my posted segment XXXI, The Transformation of Master and Margarita.)

Master himself calls his condition a “psychiatric illness,” and not “neurasthenia,” as Maksudov calls his. Both these characters are lonely. Because of his loneliness, Maksudov picks up a homeless cat in the gates, who becomes madly interested in Maksudov’s novel: she has an urge to sit on it.

Master, on the other hand, imagines a “secret wife” for himself, a lover who is madly interested in his novel Pontius Pilate. She calls this novel “my life,” as otherwise her life is “empty.”

Very important here is the fact that Bulgakov wrote his Theatrical Novel not too long before his death, that is, not long before his final version of Master and Margarita, and it is for this reason that we can expect here, in Theatrical Novel, certain hidden clues toward the identity of master’s prototype, which I may have missed reading it the first time.

Theatrical Novel is a delightful read. But imagine my surprise when I found scattered there right in the open definite clues regarding the identity of master.

Bulgakov does it very skillfully, by playing with the reader’s mind. Knowing that Bulgakov was going to write about Moscow Arts Theater, everybody was expecting him to be settling old scores as, while working at this theater, Bulgakov had been having a very hard time with the stage directors of his plays which he was writing for the theater.

For this reason, everybody missed Bulgakov’s clue, which was buried among the “portraits” of the other famous director of the Moscow Arts Theater, namely, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Bulgakov apparently loved this director even less than K. S. Stanislavsky, as he always mockingly describes his vanity.

Bulgakov writes that the walls in front of Nemirovich-Danchenko’s office on the second floor of the theater were “loaded with photographs, daguerreotypes and pictures,” and depicted on each of the pictures or “cards” was V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko in the company of great Russian writers long dead.

“Thus, on the edge of a forest,” Nemirovich-Danchenko, even though dressed “in his town clothes: rubber shoes, coat, and top hat,” was standing side by side with I. S. Turgenev, who was “in some kind of short jacket, with a hunting bag and a double-barreled shotgun.” A clear mockery!

Also, the “two men in fur coats” standing near the restaurant Slavyansky Bazaar are Nemirovich-Danchenko and the playwright A. N. Ostrovsky. “The four at table and a pipal plant in the background” are Nemirovich-Danchenko, Pisemsky, Grigorovich, and Leskov.

And what about this one? “An old man, barefoot, in a long shirt, fitting his hands behind the belt, with eyebrows like bushes, an unkempt beard, and bald.” He could not be anyone “but Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.” Our Danchenko “was standing facing him, in a flat straw hat and a silk summer jacket.”

How witty is Bulgakov, however. How skillfully does he entertain the reader! And right here a bomb is set off, only nobody notices the explosion. Even though Bulgakov goes out of his way to draw the reader’s attention to the last picture. He writes next:

“On the next watercolor… emaciated cheeks… a manuscript on his knees, a candle in a candle holder on the table. A young man of sixteen or so years of age, not yet wearing sideburns, but with the same arrogant nose; in other words, unquestionably [Nemirovich-Danchenko] in a [sports] jacket, was standing supporting his hands on the table…”

Perhaps the reader is smitten by the following words of the secretary:

“Yes, yes. Gogol is reading to Aristarchus Platonovich [Bulgakov’s fancy name for Nemirovich-Danchenko] the second part of his Dead Souls. Hair moved on the crown of my head.”

Perhaps, on account of this macabre joke Bulgakov gets away with his revelation. The point is that Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (who, incidentally, died six years before Nemirovich-Danchenko was born!) twice burned his twice rewritten (revised) second part of Dead Souls. Not a single copy of it remains.

Thus, to add insult to injury, this boils down to the fact that Nemirovich-Danchenko could not possibly have taken pictures with any of these writers, because they were all dead. Bulgakov’s play on Gogol’s Dead Souls is another prank at the expense of Nemirovich-Danchenko.

The reader’s attention is drawn to this fact, instead of noticing a striking similarity with master, who also burned his novel Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov writes:

“…I took out of the desk drawer the manuscripts of the novel and the draft notebooks and started burning them… and I was furiously finishing them off with a poker.”

But of course the similarity between master and Gogol does not end there. Usually quite sketchy, Bulgakov nevertheless gives us a sufficient description of master’s appearance, to make further comparison:

“Cautiously peeping inside from the balcony, was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man of about 38 years of age with a sharp nose, alarmed eyes, and a tuft of hair hanging down his forehead.”

Gogol was dark-haired, but on his famous portrait his hair is neatly combed. The “hanging tuft of hair” merely points to the fact that master also had somewhat long hair, like Gogol had. The reader obviously remembers that when master leaves Moscow for his final refuge,---

“…His [Master’s] hair shone white in the moonlight, and gathered into a braid behind his back, and it was flying in the wind.”

Master’s hair “shone white” most likely because it had turned white before. The braid indicates that his hair was long enough, like Gogol’s.

Master’s sharp nose clearly corresponds to the “extra-long bird-like nose” of Gogol.

But the most important feature are the eyes! Oh, those eyes! Master has alarmed eyes, just like Gogol, whose eyes were also ill.

Although during his first meeting with Ivanushka, master speaks “wisely,” still, he realizes that he is terminally ill, that he is incurable.---

“Let us look the truth in the face… Both you and I are insane. Why deny it?..” This is what master tells Ivanushka, and I have already written that master’s behavior even during this first appearance proves that he is insane. [See my posted segment C.]

All expressions of a human face are concentrated in the eyes. And if even master himself calls himself “insane,” this definitely must be reflected in his eyes, although Bulgakov does not say that they are “ill,” like Gogol’s, but only “alarmed.”

Bulgakov presents N. V. Gogol already in his immortal early novel White Guard, endowing the younger brother of his main character Alexei Turbin, Nikolka, with certain facial features of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.---

“Stunned by the death [of his mother], Nikolka, with a tuft of hair hanging over his right eyebrow, stood at the feet of the old brown St. Nicholas [the icon]. Nikolka’s blue eyes, set on both sides of a long birdish nose, were staring perplexedly, dejectedly…”

Isn’t it true that these two personages: master and Nikolka have a certain similarity between them, and also with the famous portrait of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol?

Nikolka stands before an icon of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, in whose honor, as we know, N. V. Gogol was named, that is, St. Nicholas was Gogol’s guardian saint.

I would also like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that although Bulgakov does not give us a description of the elder brother Alexei, he mentions his patronymic “Vasilievich,” which is exactly the same as Gogol’s, when Alexei introduces himself to the “sinful woman” Yulia Alexandrovna Reise.

In other words, already in White Guard, his very first work, Bulgakov gives the younger brother of the novel’s main character Alexei Turbin not only the appearance of Gogol, but also his name and patronymic Nikolai Vasilievich. And if St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker does not save Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, he does save Nikolka in White Guard, while Bulgakov himself saves master, whose prototype in Master and Margarita is Gogol, by sending him to “Rest.”

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXXXIX.

master… Continues.

 

“…But the thought, both strong and vigorous,

Alone possesses him and torments

By the desire for doing good,

It teaches him great labors.

For these he does not spare his life,

In vain does the rabble shout,

He’s firm among these living fragments,

And all he hears is the boom

Of the blessing of the future generations.”

N. V. Gogol. A Thought. Hans Kuchelgarten.

And so, master is an unknown. Bulgakov calls him in one word: “master,” and he starts it with a lowercase letter, not the way proper nouns are written. What must strike the reader’s eye is that the whole triangle is unknown. The name of the woman who is supposed to be “master’s” “secret wife” as well as the official wife of the likewise undisclosed husband, is also unknown to us.

Bulgakov’s title for the first chapter of the second part of Master and Margarita is Margarita. As the reader understands, the name Margarita could come to Bulgakov from several sources. Some of them I have already mentioned. It is quite clear that Bulgakov’s Margarita is a personification of love, which is perfectly clear from the chapter itself, which is all about Margarita’s love.

But whatever it is, master does not divulge her name, making a characteristic gesture that he’d rather cut his throat than tell the name of his beloved.

Thus, we can conclude that the anonymity of master is somehow linked to the anonymity of his lover’s husband. As Bulgakov writes,

“The childless 30-year-old Margarita was the wife of a very prominent specialist, who happened to make a most important discovery of national significance.”

Where does this whole idea of anonymity in Bulgakov come from?

It comes from Russian history.

It is a fact that master was listed under the number 118 without any mention of his actual name in the documents. Bulgakov shows this unequivocally.---

“But I will be reported as missing in the clinic anyway!” he [master] said to Woland sheepishly.

“Now, why would they be missing you?” Koroviev comforted master, and some papers and books then appeared in his hands. “Your medical history?”
“Yes.”
Koroviev tossed [master’s] medical history into the fireplace.

Here Bulgakov points to a certain similarity of the position of master and that of the Decembrists.

I already wrote in the chapter Kot Begemot (posted segment XXX) that A. S. Pushkin burned his diaries of three years, in order not to harm his friends the Decembrists by this additional information, at the time when their arrests started. Who knows how many more Decembrists would have been hanged or condemned to hard labor had the additional information from Pushkin’s diaries become available to the authorities?

This is Bulgakov’s first similarity with A. S. Pushkin. Pushkin burned his diaries for still another reason, so that his diary comments plus the diary as a whole would not result in his arrest, even though he was not a Decembrist himself.

Master burns his unpublished novel, but he is arrested anyway, which proves yet again that the novel was only the pretext. The real reason was the conspiracy and an assassination attempt against Margarita’s husband. (See my chapter Spy Novel, segment II, etc.)

The second similarity is even more interesting. In his Articles and Notes, Pushkin writes in particular about a certain “anonymous necrologist,” praising him for his “noble warmth of style and feelings, [who has written a] necrology of the General from Cavalry N. N. Rayevsky,” dated 1829.

This “anonymous necrologist,” whom A. S. Pushkin had happened to know since the year 1817 from the literary circle Arzamas, but for some reason could not name, was the son-in-law of General Rayevsky, the hero who brought “two young sons to the fields of battles in the bloody 1812.”

The anonymity of the author of General Rayevsky’s obituary can be explained by the fact that this author, although himself not a participant of the Decembrist Revolt in 1825, had been closely connected with the Decembrists, having been one of the most celebrated military figures in Russia, and an outspoken political liberal at that.

It is remarkable that even in our time, the book Alexander Pushkin. Diaries, Reminiscences, Letters. [Moscow, ECSMO, 2008] makes a characteristic mistake in its Commentary Section.

There is a very strange omission of the initials of the necrologist, whose last name is Orlov. The name of Orlov is very well known and famous, but unfortunately it is also very common.

I already wrote that Bulgakov was interested not only in A. S. Pushkin’s work, but in his life as well. (See my chapter Dark-Violet Knight, posted segment XI.) More about the influence of A. S. Pushkin’s life on Bulgakov’s creative work in my upcoming chapter The Bard.

Bulgakov’s interest in Russian history was natural. His father taught history. The turbulent time in which Bulgakov lived had to spur that interest too. Not by accident, his first great work was the immortal White Guard, which Bulgakov himself put above Tolstoy’s War and Peace. In Master and Margarita, Bulgakov shows, although, as Woland would say, “incognito,” Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy not in a very decent way.

Bulgakov’s interest toward the Decembrists could be personal. His wife Tatyana Nikolayevna Lappa was a descendent of hereditary nobility, and their clan counted a Decembrist in their ranks, namely, Matvey Demyanovich Lappa, member of the Southern Society. Tatyana’s heredity must have played a significant role in Bulgakov’s decision to marry her against the wishes of both families. He was an ambitious man.

The fact that Bulgakov’s in-laws boasted of a Decembrist in their annals, boosted my interest in finding the correct Orlov. There are numerous bearers of this name, which makes it necessary to specify the particular Orlov by his first two initials and by other means.

My research led me to S. P. Zhikharev’s Notes of a Contemporary (1805-1817), in the priceless two-volume Academia edition of 1934, celebrated for its extensive and in-depth commentary. The Notes themselves cover the era of the Napoleonic Wars and the early Decembrist period. The rich Academia Commentary expands the coverage of that period beyond the diarist’s scope…

It was a fascinating journey. Notes of a Contemporary are so good that they were extensively used by such a celebrity as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, in his War and Peace. In fact, many scenes in Tolstoy’s monumental novel (such as, for instance, the reception given to Prince Bagration in Moscow) were copied into the novel from Zhikharev’s Notes verbatim!!!

Neither was I disappointed. I definitely found in Zhikharev what I was looking for, namely, the initials of the particular Orlov the Decembrist.

Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov came from the family of the most famous Orlovs, known for their special closeness to the Empress Catherine the Great. There were five Orlov brothers, the eldest of whom was Grigori Grigorievich Orlov, the Empress’s lover.

The Orlov family was indispensable to the rise of Catherine the Great. A brother of her lover, Alexei Grigorievich Orlov, “was the organizer of the coup of June 29^th, 1762, and of the murder of her husband Emperor Peter III. In 1774 (mind you, during the terribly dangerous Pugachev Rebellion, more about which in my upcoming chapter The Bard), he performed a great service for the Empress by capturing in Italy the Royal Pretender who mightily frightened her, Princess Vladimirskaya.” (Quoted from the Academia commentary to Zhikharev’s Notes of a Contemporary.)

Fifty years later, the namesake of Alexei Grigorievich and his nephew, Alexei Fedorovich Orlov, would become instrumental in determining the fate of his hapless brother the Decembrist Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov, by vouching for him with his own head.

Alexei and Mikhail Fedorovich were sons of a younger brother of Catherine’ lover Grigori, Fedor Grigorievich, who Zhikharev says was called in his time Russian “sound head.” Although judging from history, all the Orlovs were bright and resourceful, the two Alexei’s, one from each generation, seemed to be the brightest of the lot.

The service record of Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov was no less impressive than his pedigree.

During the Napoleonic Wars, he participated in virtually all major battles (including Austerlitz, Friedland, Smolensk, Borodino, Maloyaroslavets, Krasnoye, Shevardino, Leipzig, etc.), and at the end of the war it was none other than Mikhail Fedorovich who was given the honor of drawing the conditions for the 1814 capitulation of Paris.

On his return to Russia, he becomes one of the founders of the Order of Russian Knights, one of several secret pre-Decembrist organizations, active from 1814 to 1817. It later merged with the Union for Salvation, to form the Union for Prosperity (1818-1821). Which proves yet again that Bulgakov knew Russian history well. He obviously knew about the secret Order of Russian Knights, because he created such an order himself, as it is not only his A. S. Pushkin who turns into a knight at the end of the novel Master and Margarita, but also Azazello, appearing at the same time clad in a knight’s armor. (About this and more in the upcoming chapter The Two Adversaries.)

Because of his liberal views Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov was subjected to a secret police watch and then stripped of his command of the 16^th Division, where he had previously abolished corporal punishment for soldiers. Although on the fateful day of December 25^th, 1825 he was nowhere near Senate Square, the site of the Decembrist Rebellion, he was still arrested and imprisoned at the infamous Peter & Paul Fortress, where he was kept for six months.

Mikhail’s brother General Alexei Fedorovich Orlov had also been a distinguished participant in the wars against Napoleon, particularly at Austerlitz and Borodino, and very much unlike his brother, he was personally involved in the event on Senate Square, suppressing the Decembrist Revolt, for which service he was amply distinguished by the grateful Emperor, to become one of the principal figures of Russian government under Nicholas I. (Notably, he would become, in time, Count Benckendorff’s successor as Head of the Gendarmes and Secret Police.) In recognition of his service, and having pledged the rest of his life to the service of the Emperor, and also vouchsafing with his own life for his brother’s future non-involvement in Russian politics, Alexei pleaded for Mikhail, faced with severe punishment for his role as a bulwark of the Decembrist ideology, asking for his brother’s Imperial Pardon. As a result, Mikhail was spared execution, hard labor, or a lifelong exile to Siberia. Instead, he was exiled to his hereditary village of Milyatino of the Kaluga Governorate, where he spent five years in seclusion before being allowed to live in Moscow.

What a fascinating story about fascinating men, their unbreakable family bond, friendship and loyalty to each other!

We are not saying farewell to Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov yet. We will come back to him with an unexpected twist in the chapter Two Adversaries.

…As we know, there is no happy ending for master in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Master has no brother to save him.

Bulgakov shows unequivocally that master is arrested as a state criminal by the two simultaneous fires burning: one started by master burning his manuscript in his furnace, and the other raging at Margarita’s VIP husband’s plant. (See my chapter Who R U, Margarita?, segment XCIX.)

Having become a state criminal, master is deprived of his identity. Just like Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov was deprived of his. The author of General Rayevsky’s necrology had his work duly published, but his name being taboo, it was published anonymously.

To be continued tomorrow…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXXXVIII.

master… Continues.

 

“Blessed is that wondrous moment

When in a drive for self-knowledge,

At a time of mighty vital force,

The one chosen by Heaven has understood

The ultimate purpose of existence.

When it is not the empty shadow of his fantasies,

When it is not the gaudy glitter of fame,

But he is stirred by night and day,

Drawing him into a clamorous turbulent world…”

N. V. Gogol. A Thought.

This epigraph from Gogol’s Hans Kuchelgarten will continue in tomorrow’s posting.

 ***

…Indeed, one has to be born crazy!

That’s why out of all Bulgakovian characters master comes closest to Don Quixote from Bulgakov’s eponymous play. It is none other than Don Quixote who allows us to crack master’s most important mystery. I suspected all along that something had to be in this play, which was relevant to Master and Margarita, because it is a later work of Bulgakov. And indeed, I made two huge discoveries for myself!

I was very much interested in the triangle of Don Quixote himself, his niece Antonia, and the young bachelor of arts from Salamanca Sanson, in love with Antonia. It is this last who promises his beloved to save her uncle.---

“Haven’t I told you, illogical girl, that I want to save him, and I will! I will bring him back home forever.”

This is how I imagine Ivan’s dialogue with his wife, to whom Ivanushka promises to save master and Margarita, and to send them to “rest.”

Having learned that in case he is defeated in a one-on-one combat with an adversary, Don Quixote would accept his terms of surrender, Sanson comes up with a clever plan. Disguising himself as the Knight of the White Moon, he wins the combat and demands of Don Quixote to admit that his Lady Dulcinea of Toboso is inferior in her beauty to the nameless Lady of the Knight of the White Moon.

And here comes the real gem of Bulgakov, in the conversation between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Only now, using the words of Bulgakov himself, can I prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Margarita never existed outside master’s mind. This is my first discovery.

Having assumed a new name of Don Quixote de La Mancha, instead of the old one Alonso Quixana, nicknamed Good, the peaceful hidalgo ceases to exist. Having looked at him in moonlight, Sancho Panza dubs him Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, because of his “mournful face,” and Don Quixote “proudly accepts this appellation.”

In such a way, our “peaceful hidalgo Alonso Quixana” receives two more new names, whereas master has none, because he has rejected his first name, his last name, and his patronymic.

Having become Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, Don Quixote decides to turn “our calamitous iron age into a golden age.” And in order to achieve this noble purpose, he decides to “resurrect the glorious knights of the Round Table.”

Here is where in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita Woland comes into the picture, with his retinue of “dead souls,” in which at least two members are identified as knights: A. S. Pushkin, the “dark-violet knight,” and Azazello, clad in a knight’s shining armor.

But, generally speaking, as we shall see in our next page already, a poet is a knight by definition, in Bulgakov’s eyes, because a poet, just like a knight, sings his Lady in his poetry, likewise defending her honor by his platonic love.

The poets-knights arrive in their erstwhile homeland to avenge the “helpless and weak” master. We already know the identities of two knights.

“And because a knight without a dame of his heart can be likened to a tree without leaves, [Don Quixote chooses] as his Lady the most beautiful of all the women of the world Princess Dulcinea of Toboso.”

In Master and Margarita, only on one occasion does Woland call Margarita “a lady.” --- “You can frighten the lady,” Woland says to Kot Begemot in response to his expressed wish to make a “farewell whistle.”

Bulgakov needed at least one “lady” for his three knights. As for the prototype of Dulcinea of Toboso, “the most beautiful of all the women of the world,” it is being revealed by none other than Sancho Panza:

“She is a simple peasant woman. A charming girl… She is capable of pulling up any knight out of the mud by his beard!”

To which Don Quixote replies:

“The poet and the knight sings not the one who is made of flesh and blood, but the one who has been created by his tireless fantasy.”

This is my second discovery.

In these and the following words of Don Quixote, Bulgakov reveals to the reader master’s secret, giving away the key to the understanding of the phenomenon of Margarita in master’s life, all alone in his basement apartment:

“I love her the way she appeared to me in my dreams! I love, Oh, Sancho, my ideal!” [Sic!]

Ivanushka, the poet Ivan Bezdomny, creates the image of master in his fantasies, to which he escapes in his misery, while being confined in the psychiatric clinic. Having created this image, the poet also creates the make-believe “secret wife” of master, Margarita.

Ivanushka creates Margarita the way she appeared to him in his dreams, that’s why her portrait is so sketchy. Margarita is his ideal, and perhaps Ivan finds her in his real life and marries her, as there has to be a reason why Bulgakov does not give out the name of the real-life woman, namely the wife of Ivan.

Ivan’s Margarita is love itself. Ivan’s wife is not a “poor woman tied to a gravely sick man.” In her character Bulgakov shows the sacrificial love of a Russian woman, a real love:

“For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

This is how Bulgakov himself understood love, which is one-sided to him. This can already be seen in White Guard, where the main character Alexei Turbin is in love with a flawed woman.---

“You cannot tell what’s in those eyes. It seems there is fright, alarm, and maybe vice… Yes, vice.”

And even when Alexei learns that she is a mistress of Shpolyansky, he thinks:

“Ah, it doesn’t matter… As long as I can come here again, into this strange quiet little house, where there is a portrait in golden epaulettes…”

As for his sister Elena, Alexei expects a self-sacrificial love from her. Bulgakov deprives her of her husband (who, according to Bulgakov, flees abroad, abandoning his wife in Kiev), and does not wish Alexei’s sister to remarry, even though the suitor is his good friend.---

“And Shervinsky? Hell knows what… Broads are such a punishment. It’s a given that Elena will get involved with him, an absolute given… And what’s so good about him? One can say it’s his voice. Yes, his voice is outstanding. But, after all, if you want to listen to a good voice, you can do it without anything else, without entering into a marriage, isn’t that true?”

In other words, Bulgakov himself believed that a sister must give up her own life, in order to take care of her remaining two brothers. Bulgakov shows this self-sacrificial love in the very powerful prayer of Elena herself. ---

“Too much grief has fallen upon us, Mother-Intercessor! Thus in a single year you are finishing off our whole family. Why, for what? You have taken our mother from us, now I have no husband, and I will never have one anymore. And now you are taking away our eldest. For what? How are we going to manage the two of us with Nikolka? Mother-Intercessor, won’t you take pity on us?.. Let Sergei [Elena’s husband] never return. You take him away – take him away. But this one, do not punish him by death.”

This is vintage Bulgakov, and this is how he understands a woman’s love. In Bulgakov, a woman must choose the family where she grew up over a family she might have had. Which once again shows us that his father’s death had overturned Bulgakov’s whole world, due to the fact that his mother never refused to have her own personal life apart from the children…

…And so, Bachelor Sanson Carrasco of La Mancha, in love with the niece of Hidalgo Alonso Quixana, Antonia, has disguised himself as the Knight of the White Moon and defeated in combat the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance Don Quixote de La Mancha, now demanding from the defeated knight as the condition of his surrender to acknowledge that his nameless Lady is by far more beautiful than Dulcinea of Toboso.

Having acknowledged his defeat, Don Quixote still keeps insisting that “none is fairer than her.” But now he is overcome by fear: “Your eyes!.. Your glance is cold and cruel, and suddenly it began to seem to me that Dulcinea does not exist at all in this world! No, she does not exist!”

This confession is sufficient to the bachelor:

“Live with your dreams about Dulcinea, she does not exist in this world, and I am satisfied: My lady does exist, and at least on that account she is more beautiful than yours!”

This question is an important one. What is better: a bluebird in the sky or a sparrow in the hand? In my chapter Ivanushka I am giving several versions in response to this question. A person’s life is different from the life of a hero, and each poet is a hero. For this reason Cervantes’s immortal book is called Don Quixote, and not Bachelor Sanson Carrasco. In this question I am with Hidalgo Alonso Quixana and with master, but not with Ivanushka and Sanson Carrasco. Humanity needs heroes.

Sanson brings home to Antonia her uncle Hidalgo Alonso Quixana, but he dies there. Don Quixote, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, no longer exists. Hidalgo Alonso Quixana dies no longer a “captive of insanity.” His life had clearly been linked to serving his Fair Lady Dulcinea of Toboso. The realization that his Lady does not exist kills the hidalgo. He does not want to live anymore. Hasn’t Don Quixote lamented earlier:

“O Dulcinea… Vanished! The glistening ray has been extinguished!.. And once again I am alone, and the somber magic shadows are crowding me…”

(How can we fail to remember Woland with his “shadows” in Master and Margarita in the scene with Matthew Levi?)

And we are left to wonder, whether Bachelor Sanson Carrasco has indeed saved Alonso Quixana, and from what? Sanson’s last words to his beloved Antonia are:

“I’ve done all I could. He is dead.”

In contrast to Sanson, Ivanushka, having poisoned master, sends him to his last refuge in the company of three knights– three Russian poets. Master is riding his own horse between the “dark-violet knight” A. S. Pushkin and Begemot M. Yu. Lermontov. Azazello and Woland form the flanks, and Margarita does not exist.

The story of Don Quixote, Sanson, and Antonia is not merely similar to that of master, Ivanushka, and his wife, but it solves once and for all master’s mystery. No, he did not have “Margarita.” He was alone. And if she ever visited him, it was in dreams and visions. Like in Ivanushka’s last dream, he sees an “incredibly beautiful woman” in a stream of moonlight pulling by his hand towards Ivan “a bearded man, glancing around, frightened.”

Master’s mind has not torn itself free from the “somber shadows,” like that of Don Quixote. Master is still with his fair Margarita. Don Quixote dies because he cannot and does not wish to live without the fair Dulcinea. Master dies together with Margarita because she is an integral part of master, in Bulgakov’s psychological thriller.

Master and Margarita are one.

And so, with the help of Bulgakov’s play Don Quixote after Cervantes, we have solved the mystery of Margarita in master’s life, and now we can proceed with solving yet another mystery:

Who exactly was master’s prototype?

To be continued tomorrow…