GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXLVII.

master… Concludes.

“As a Russian, tied to you by our same-blood kinship, by the very same blood, I am addressing you now…”

N. V. Gogol. Dead Souls.

What if people had wings, like birds?” muses N. V. Gogol in his enchanting story May Night.

And as we all know, from the chapter Birds, Bulgakov has all his principal characters in Master and Margarita, that is, Koroviev, Begemot, Azazello, turn into different birds. In fact, during the very first appearance of Begemot in the novel, Bulgakov divulges his design with the following words:

“The third in this company [of Woland and Koroviev] there happened to appear, as if out of nowhere, a cat, huge like a hog, pitch-black like soot or a rook…”

Furthermore, already in chapter 4, The Chase, at the beginning of the novel Master and Margarita, Bulgakov compares Begemot to a rook. And it is precisely Begemot as a rook, whom we later meet in chapter 21, The Flight. There are seventeen chapters from The Chase to The Flight.

Bulgakov’s mastery is breathtaking. Indeed, he worked on his creations like a master jeweler, refining a formless rock into an exquisite diamond.

In order to make his text more interesting, while at the same time to perplex the reader, Bulgakov introduces the word “long-nosed,” in reference to the rook. In order to make out what it is about, we need to make a trip to the Theatrical Novel, where Bulgakov leaves us a clue in the form of N. V. Gogol’s portrait “with an extremely long bird’s nose.”

Introducing the word “long-nosed” in reference to the rook, into whom Kot Begemot transforms himself [see my posted segments XLVI and L, in the chapter Birds], Bulgakov gives credit to Gogol, for the idea of introducing birds into his novel, or rather, for transforming his characters into birds.

In another Gogol tale, the hilariously funny novella Nose, he writes:

“…but without a nose a man is the devil knows what: a bird or not a bird, a citizen or not a citizen…”

That’s why in the Theatrical Novel, introducing N. V. Gogol’s portrait to the reader, Bulgakov writes: “In a shabby room, in an armchair, sat a man with an exceptionally long bird’s nose…”

By the same token, in his novel White Guard Bulgakov not only gives one of his main characters, the younger brother of Alexei Vasilievich Turbin, the name Nikolka (Nikolai Vasilievich), in honor of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, but Gogol’s nose as well: “Nikolka’s blue eyes, set on both sides of a long bird’s nose, were looking confused, distraught.”

It is precisely the Theatrical Novel, which Bulgakov wrote two years before his death, that shows us that Bulgakov certainly wanted to be “solved,” as not only does he present in it a portrait of N. V. Gogol uncannily resembling master’s portrait in Master and Margarita, but even the title itself: Theatrical Novel, must have been influenced by Gogol’s work Theatrical Departure [Departure from Theater].

The latter work by Gogol was left unfinished, and Bulgakov likewise leaves his Theatrical Novel unfinished as well, in order to point us in the direction of Gogol, in order to be understood and solved with regard to Gogol being picked by Bulgakov as master’s prototype.

Alongside his conspicuous inclination for the dark side, N. V. Gogol possesses an astonishingly acute sense of humor, which attracts Bulgakov to him even more. It is to this lighter side in the works of Gogol, and how it has affected Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, that we are getting now.

The strikingly sharp humor of both writers, Gogol and Bulgakov, brings us to a certain short anecdote told by Gogol in his story The Lame Devil, where much of the hilarity comes from the fact that Gogol deliberately uses colloquial Malorossian dialect in a single sentence.

Gogol writes that “each Malorossian is familiar with the anecdote about a soldier who, after his death, is sent to Hell for his sins, and annoys the demons there so greatly that they could not find any means of throwing him out of there. A crowd of them approached the one-eyed devil, complaining: this accursed Moskal has been painting crosses and monasteries on our walls so that a good man cannot have a normal life in Hell. (“…shcho proklyatyi moskal use pyshe po stinam hresti ta monastyri, tak shcho dobromu cheloveku ni yak ni mozhno zhiti u pekli.”) Having heard their plea, the Lame Devil, the very next day at dawn, took up a drum and struck the military dawn call right outside Hell’s gate. The soldier, having heard the summons, grabbed his military equipment and in an instant ran out of the gate. In this manner the demons got rid of such an unwelcome guest.”

Mind you, the whole anecdote with the exception of one sentence is written in regular Russian. Mixing up in a single sentence transliterated above, like so many uneducated people, the Malorossian dialect with regular Russian speech, N. V. Gogol reaches in this short anecdote an added effect, even for his uncommon humor, which unfortunately cannot be properly rendered in translation.

Hence Bulgakov takes his “good man,” which is how master calls the demon Azazello. Bulgakov’s “lame devil” is Woland, while the one-eyed demon is Azazello. “Crosses and monasteries” are transformed into Azazello’s battle cry “Will cut off your arm!” as a warning to those who cross themselves.

It is interesting to observe that in the Malorossian anecdote even the demons are afraid of the Russians [Moskals], who even in Hell keep their faith in God.

In his story The Fair at Sorochintsy, N. V. Gogol follows the same theme.

“Once, for what offence, as God is my witness, I don’t know already, but what I know is that a certain demon was thrown out of Hell.” To the question, “so what could be the offence for a demon to be thrown out of Hell?” the answer is quite unexpected: “Perhaps he had been overcome with the folly of performing some kind of good deed, well, right then and there, they must have shown him the door…”

It is amazing that already in Gogol we find this idea, coming out of popular folklore, that even demons may be capable of performing good deeds.

Thus, although Bulgakov in Master and Margarita chooses the words of the German Goethe to a similar effect as his epigraph, the idea itself is of folk origin, and Woland, Bulgakov’s Satan, is performing some good deeds in Moscow.

In his letters to friends, N. V. Gogol frequently complains about his poor health, and he writes that he suffered from it since childhood. Therefore, Gogol certainly, not being “in a perfect state of health,” and possessing an incredibly vivid imagination, could well have had his own ghosts from time to time. But imagine how we his readers profit from such an unfortunate combination in the person of Gogol, who has given world literature so many masterpieces, as well as a thoroughly unique look at the Malorossian and Russian life and history of that time!

What master also has in common with N. V. Gogol is the absence of last name.

“I don’t have a name anymore, replied the strange guest with gloomy contempt. I renounced it, like I renounced everything in life generally speaking. Forget about it.”

N. V. Gogol also renounced his second, Polish, family surname Yanovsky. Although Gogol was born and raised in Malorossia, he made his choice to write in Russian, and having renounced the Polish name Yanovsky, he claimed to be of Cossack stock. On his own, Gogol renounced his heritage and pronounced himself Russian. This decision is explained in his draft fifth chapter of the destroyed second part of Dead Souls, where Gogol gives the following words to the Governor-Prince shocked by the state of affairs in Russia:

“As a Russian, tied to you by our same-blood kinship, by the very same blood, I am addressing you now…”

This is why Bulgakov gives the following words to Woland:

“Yes, Koroviev is right… Blood!”

And then in a different place Woland says this:

“Blood is a great thing!”

Being a Russian nationalist, what blood, do you think, Bulgakov had in mind?

Paraphrasing A. S. Pushkin, Russia did not forget N. V. Gogol’s contribution to Russian culture. The most beautiful boulevard in the historical center of Moscow was named after him. Gogolevsky Boulevard is a humpy three-level marvel. It starts from the main cathedral of Orthodox Russia: Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which gets so much attention from Bulgakov in his out-of-this-world story Fateful Eggs (See my chapter Nature, posted segment LXXII). Midway, it receives the famous Sivtsev Vrazhek side street, and the adjacent area is known for having been given by Tsar Ivan Grozny as quarters for his Oprichnina, being very close to the Kremlin itself. (See Oprichnina, my posted segment XXVI. This whole area was actually Bulgakov’s favorite place in Moscow.) Gogolevsky Boulevard features the Central Chess Club, home of many world-famous chess players. In the immediate proximity is located the Russian Ministry of Defense. And right there, at the boulevard’s end, stands one of the two famous Moscow monuments to N. V. Gogol, watching from his pedestal the hustle and bustle of the celebrated Arbat Square before him.

There is a good reason why the following famous words of Gogol are still filled with resounding meaning:

“From my soul was made this address to Russia: ‘Isn’t there a place for a mighty hero in you when there is [so much] space for him to flourish?’ In Russia now one can become a mighty hero every step of the way… I heard that great endeavor which is impossible to any other nation, and only possible to the Russian nation, because only to it is open such vast expanse, and only its soul is attuned to heroism.”