Two Adversaries Continues.
“From the
passion of a cabbie and a talkative washerwoman,
An
unpresentable baby flowed out as a result.
A boy is not
trash, you cannot haul him out on a cart.
The mother
cried some, then called him: Critic.”
V. Mayakovsky. A
Hymn to the Critic.
But, nevertheless, Bulgakov introduces V. Mayakovsky in Master and Margarita in the character of
the poet Ryukhin. Bulgakov sells away the Mayakovsky store in the scene at the
A. S. Pushkin monument. This is the only place in the novel where Bulgakov is
so explicit in showing his writer’s kitchen, using both a line from Pushkin’s
poem Winter Evening (“A storm is covering
the sky with darkness”), and the specific word “white-guardsman,” referring to Pushkin’s murderer Dantes, from the
famous Mayakovsky poem Jubilee, in
which V. Mayakovsky talks to Pushkin.
Having one of the “adversaries” now, we can get down to their “dialogue,”
or rather, Ivanushka’s attack on “Mayakovsky” [Ryukhin], in order to understand
what is going on.
Bulgakov chooses none other than “Mayakovsky” to take the insane (as
everybody at the Writers’ House believes) Ivanushka to the psychiatric clinic. Judging
by the poet Ryukhin’s (the name under which Bulgakov portrays Mayakovsky)
reaction, it is quite clear that Mayakovsky is benignly disposed toward this
poet and wishes to help him. Bulgakov’s choice of words with regard to V. V.
Mayakovsky is striking, and it must immediately make the reader suspicious, to
such an extent the Ryukhin character is set in contrast to Bulgakov’s portrayal
of Mayakovsky in Lord Curzon’s Benefit.
V. Mayakovsky’s portrait is unrecognizable in Master and Margarita.---
“Ryukhin became pale, coughed, and said timidly…”
“…Ryukhin spoke in a whisper, fearfully glancing back at Ivan
Nikolayevich…”
“…Ryukhin replied with a wince…”
“Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare to raise his
eyes…”
“Ryukhin looked closely at Ivan and grew cold…”
“…Ryukhin thought, frightened…”
“Ryukhin was breathing heavily and got red in the face…”
Here we have an incredible disconnect between the text of Lord Curzon’s Benefit, where Bulgakov
portrays the real Mayakovsky in full command of the masses, and the clearly and
undoubtedly fictionalized Mayakovsky as the poet Ryukhin in Master and Margarita.
The explanation is very simple, it comes through the words of the poet
Ivan Bezdomny said about Ryukhin:
“A typical little fist [derogatory term for rich peasants,
believed to be enemies of the Soviet Power] in his psychology, and, at that, a little fist disguising
himself as a proletarian. Just look at his sour face and compare it to those
sonorous verses of his about ‘whirl upwards’ and ‘unfurl’… but if you look
inside him, as to what he is thinking in there, you’ll gasp!”
These lines are strikingly similar to what Bulgakov wrote about himself
in the Notes on the Cuffs.
Bulgakov was offered to speak as the opponent of the main speaker on the
subject of Pushkin’s Creative Work.
He did, and the speaker found himself trounced fair and square. But what followed
his triumph was something else…---
“The speaker found himself lying on both shoulder blades… But
then!! But then… I was ‘a wolf in sheep’s
clothing.’ I was a ‘mister.’ I was a ‘bourgeois toady.’ I was no longer a literary director… I was a mutt
in the attic. Sitting bent over. Somebody rings at night, I shudder.”
It is for a reason that Bulgakov raises the question of A. S. Pushkin in
his Notes on the Cuffs. Attacks on
Pushkin persisted throughout the 20th century, and malicious lies
have been smearing his glorious name even in this twenty-first century. Pushkin’s
murder cannot be explained away by his beautiful wife. A deeper reason must be
found. The root of the evil ought to be looked for in his publication of two
excerpts from the unpublished in his lifetime History of Malorossia by the Orthodox Archbishop of Belorussia
Georgi Konissky, a scion of an “ancient
schlachta family.” This publication, revealing the religious underpinnings
of the problems of Ukraine, was the real reason for the murder of the great
Russian poet, who was getting deeper and deeper into controversial historical
subjects.
The same kind of horrific atrocities are visited upon the poor Ukrainian
people today.
Not freedom, but a complete enslavement is being brought by Europe to
Ukraine. The same old unholy alliances are being built in front of our eyes. A
nuclear waste dumping ground for the decommissioned German nuclear plants,
white babies for adoption, the “most
beautiful” prostitutes for European and Middle-Eastern whorehouses, human organs for sale... The
abandonment of the old reliable system of education in favor of a 9-year, and
probably soon 7-year schooling, plus 3-year colleges will serve as a means of a
further dumbing-down of the Ukrainian population, forcing the young men and
women to sell themselves as cheap manual labor as well as to fill the ranks of
the European Union’s mercenary army.
The subject of this 1835 article by A. S. Pushkin, Works of Georgi Konissky, Archbishop of Belorussia, is so important
for the understanding of the works of M. A. Bulgakov, who happens to be a
native of the first capital of the Orthodox Russia, Kiev, that I am writing
about it in other chapters of my work: The
Flight, The Garden, Magus, to name just a few.
From this it is perfectly clear that Ivanushka’s tirade against Ryukhin
in Master and Margarita is not
Bulgakov’s attack against V. Mayakovsky, but quite the opposite. The two of
them happen to be in the same boat. (Curiously, the great Danish writer Hans
Christian Andersen has a fairytale along the same lines, about the critics.)
Both of them, Mayakovsky and Bulgakov, were subjected to hounding on the
part of the talentless wannabes, whom Bulgakov so well portrays in Master and Margarita as the critics,
that is, the nonentities incapable of writing anything original on their own,
but out to attack and organizing to hound talented writers. In Master and Margarita, using the example
of master’s hounding in the press, Bulgakov presents a remarkably clear picture
of what amounts to racketeering, and must be recognized as an illegal business
of targeted annihilation. Check out these newspaper article titles alone: An Enemy Sortie, by the critic Ahriman,
about “an effort to sneak into print an apology of Jesus Christ.” Then a
certain Latunsky calls master A Militant
Old-Believer. A carefully organized attack in various other newspapers in
the following days looks as though runners in a relay race are passing the
baton one to another. Yet another critic Mstislav Lavrovich “suggested to hit, and to hit hard, against
Pilatism and against that God-painting hack who fancied to sneak it into print.”
And so it went day after day, newspaper after newspaper.
Bulgakov clearly wrote this from his own experience. The picture which he
paints at the psychiatric clinic shows us a completely downtrodden, confused,
and depressed Mayakovsky in the character of the poet Ryukhin. Here is a very
good example of how since time immemorial in all societies, there flourish
certain unsavory characters, whose actions ought to be deemed illegal, yet who,
on the contrary, by giving each other airs, are recognized as unassailable
authorities, whose opinions one must always be taking into account, just
because they are so well organized and act in full accord with each other.
Bulgakov painted the portrait of Ryukhin already after the death of V.
Mayakovsky, who committed suicide [shot himself] in 1930. The rumors
circulating after his death are still in circulation today in the guise of some
unsavory people’s “memoirs,” and they are despicable.
Portraying Mayakovsky in such a shabby light as Ryukhin, Bulgakov perhaps
uses this occasion to propose another version of the poet’s suicide. Mayakovsky
shot himself because of the hounding he was subjected to, on account of his
views, and because of his poetry. He was accused, outrageously, of being a
“pseudorevolutionary,” and the hounding went on until the hounds succeeded.
Bulgakov in such a case takes a personal angle. He was also subjected to
hounding, but he did not lose his mind or commit suicide. It is very probable
that he owed his balance to the world of his own, which he created and in which
he dwelled with the greatest literary minds, such as A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu.
Lermontov, N. V. Gogol, etc. It was indeed incredibly interesting for him to
live in this world, where he reigned supreme.
Bulgakov writes that Ryukhin was “poisoned by a
fit of neurasthenia.” Taking advantage of the fact that he [Bulgakov]
has put Ryukhin into the back of the truck, where he was “shaken and thrown back and forth,” “staring at the dirty
shaking floor, [Ryukhin] started mumbling something, whining, gnawing at
himself.”
Being a physician, Bulgakov compares Ryukhin’s condition to a fit of
malaria. Hence his last name “Ryukhin,”
reminding of quinine, and also the word “bitterly,”
which Bulgakov uses toward Ryukhin: “That’s what he is giving me instead of thank
you, he thought bitterly.”
Here Bulgakov plays on V. Mayakovsky in the latter’s famous long poem A Cloud in Pants:
“You think
these are ravings of malaria?”
Bulgakov paints a tragic picture for us of how easy it is for a man to
lose confidence in himself, as he gives the following words to Ryukhin:
“I do not believe in
anything I write. Completely sick and even aged, the poet was stepping up
on the veranda of the Griboyedov [restaurant]
of the Writers’ House.”
Overcome by his fever, Ryukhin starts envying A. S. Pushkin for having
been killed in a duel, thus “assuring him of immortality.”
As I have written on several occasions, life was sacred to Bulgakov, and
this is the only explanation that justifies his sarcastic attitude toward
Ryukhin-Mayakovsky. By the same measure, Bulgakov could not forgive M. Yu.
Lermontov for allowing himself to be killed in a duel by making his shot high
up in the air. Even more was he unforgiving towards Mayakovsky’s suicide,
having painted Mayakovsky’s grandiose portrait of a born leader in Lord Curzon’s Benefit, while Mayakovsky
was still alive. The terrifying words: “Lucky, lucky! That white-guardsman [Dantes]
shot at him and shattered his hip, and assured him of immortality,” are
accompanied by a frightening gesture which Bulgakov assigns to Mayakovsky, who,
having encountered A. S. Pushkin’s monument, on his way from the psychiatric
clinic in the back of a truck…---
“Ryukhin stood up to his full height on the platform of the
truck and raised his arm.”
This is how Bulgakov shows Mayakovsky’s decision to shoot himself.
To be continued.
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