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 29th, 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 16th Division, where
he had previously abolished corporal punishment for soldiers. Although on the
fateful day of December 25th, 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…
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