Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.
“PETRO
PRIMO CATHERINA SECUNDA MDCCLXXXII.”
Despite the preceding to Master and Margarita works by Bulgakov, such as the 1923 Diaboliada [see my already posted
eponymous chapter], the 1925 short story Cockroach
[see likewise], and the 1925 novella Fateful
Eggs [same thing], all of which already contain mysterious characters and
situations, the Theatrical Novel,
which Bulgakov wrote shortly before his death, contains one particular name
which refused to let go of me: Margarita
Petrovna Tavricheskaya.
Considering that Theatrical
Novel has been written about a real thing: the Moscow Arts Theater, it is
only natural that all of its personages must have real-life prototypes.
And this thought struck me hard!
It meant more thinking and more searching for me.
Aside from the question why Bulgakov would want to
have in his Theatrical Novel a
personage going under the name of his heroine in Master and Margarita who is also Margarita, I was equally
interested all along in the mystical figure of Petr Petrovich Bombardov, and,
because he was directly connected to the main character of the Theatrical Novel S. L. Maksudov, I
understood that although each fictional character may contain something of its
author (in this case Bulgakov), it was highly improbable and not at all in his
character, for Bulgakov, to bare his soul in such a manner.
With all my interest in M. A. Bulgakov, I had realized
all along that he was a thinking, therefore a cautious and secretive man,
deliberating over every single step both of his personal life and of his
creative work as well.
Therefore I suspected that even in the Maksudov
personage there had to be features of other men, most likely of certain Russian
poets, enriching the character of Maksudov by their own peculiarities.
I have already written before that Bulgakov was in the
habit of carefully picking his characters’ names: first, last, and patronymic.
I was therefore very much interested in all these three last names:
Tavricheskaya, Bombardov, and Maksudov.
It was easy with the last name of Margarita Petrovna,
an actress of the Independent Theater
in the Theatrical Novel.
Tauris. This word is known to every Russian. The honorary
title Tavrichesky was given to Catherine
the Great’s favorite [lover] Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, who
presided over the incorporation of Crimea and of other Southern Territories
into the Russian Empire in the late 18th century. Crimea had been
known as Tauris to Ancient Greeks.
What does it mean? The date! In Master and Margarita Bulgakov focuses on one and the same date in
two variations: as the year 1571 and as the sixteenth century.
In the Theatrical
Novel Bulgakov chooses to direct his reader into the eighteenth century.
It was a great century for Russia. The age of Peter
the Great. The age of Catherine the Great. The Russian War with Sweden,
culminating in the glorious Battle of Poltava, held on Russian territory, but
resulting in a complete rout of the Swedish forces and the inglorious end of the
Swedish superpower dream. Wars with the Ottoman Empire resulting in the
historic Southern expansion of the Russian Empire...
The 18th century under Catherine the Great
also boasts of the famed Pugachev Rebellion in which the adventurous Cossack Emelyan
Pugachev was passing himself off as Catherine’s husband Emperor Peter III, who
had actually died in a palace coup that brought Catherine to power.
Now, how does this period of Russian history relate to
Bulgakov and his novel Master and Margarita?
1.
First of all,
Bulgakov provides the reader with an abundance of evidence regarding Margarita’s
participation in a foreign plot to poison her husband. (See my chapter The Spy Novel of Master and Margarita.)
2.
Secondly, the
Pugachev Rebellion attracted huge interest on the part of A. S. Pushkin, who is
of course the dominant figure in Master
and Margarita, as it is through the mysterious figure of the dark-violet
knight that I started realizing, having read Bulgakov’s novel, that I had
previously understood nothing in it.
As we know, A. S. Pushkin wrote a remarkable History of the Pugachev Rebellion. For
this purpose, he engaged himself in studious research of the subject. Leaving
his family behind, he made a trip to the Urals, where he visited eyewitnesses
of the rebellion, conducting interviews with them. He also used this material
to write his fictional novella Captain’s
Daughter, in which Pugachev is portrayed as one of the characters. It is
from this Pushkin’s story that Bulgakov takes his epigraph for the novel White Guard.
As my reader already knows, Pushkin’s History of the Pugachev Rebellion caught
the attention of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who happens to be the
prototype of at least two or perhaps three characters in Master and Margarita: the poet Ivan Bezdomny, alias the historian
Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, and also the demon Azazello.
Yesenin wrote a play in verse titled Pugachev, which earned the admiration of
Maxim Gorky.
And so, identifying for the reader a very significant
epoch in Russian history, Bulgakov directs us toward two great Russian poets,
who, as we know, are playing a large role, through their works, in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. They are A. S.
Pushkin and S. A. Yesenin.
From the time of Catherine the Great we are now
returning into the first quarter of the 18th century, which is the
time of Peter the Great.
Pushkin’s great-grandfather on maternal side was a
“negro,” brought to Peter I as a gift. In 1707, in the city of Vilno [modern
Vilnius] Peter had the little Ibrahim baptized and gave him the last name of
Ganibal, as Pushkin writes in his unburnt
autobiographical notes.
Having received his military education in France,
Ganibal returned to Russia.
…Drumroll, please!..
A. S. Pushkin writes:
“The Sovereign ordered Ganibal to the Bombardist Company of the
Preobrazhensky Regiment in the rank of Lieutenant-Captain. It is known that
Peter himself was its Captain. This took place in the year 1722.”
This is where Bulgakov takes the strange last name of
Bombardov from. And where does he take the first name and patronymic of Petr
Petrovich from? This is already Bulgakov’s joke addressed to another Russian
poet…
“To
you, living through one orgy after another,
Having
a bathroom and a warm closet!
Aren’t
you ashamed of learning about St. George recipients
Exclusively
from newspaper columns?”
In this anti-Philistine, albeit antiwar [anti-world
war I] 1915 poem, titled To You!, V.
V. Mayakovsky alludes to Peter the Great, following in the footsteps of A. S.
Pushkin. And as though through Pushkin’s great-grandfather sharing in Peter’s
victories, who personally led his troops into battle…
“What
do you know, you worthless many,
Thinking
about how better to get stuffed with food?
Maybe
right now a bomb has ripped off
The
legs of Peter’s poruchik [subaltern]?”
It is precisely from the last two lines quoted above
that Bulgakov gets the idea of giving the name Petr Petrovich to his character
Bombardov. It comes from Mayakovsky’s “Peter’s
poruchik”!
In case the reader has not been convinced yet,
Mayakovsky has a terrific 1916 poem about Peter the Great, which, following
Pushkin’s advice to the Russian poets, he titled: The Last Petersburg Fairytale. ---
“Emperor
Peter the Great stands and thinks…
The
Emperor dismounted. The three bronze ones
[That
is, the Emperor, the horse, and the snake]
Get
down quietly [from the pedestal]…
Someone
absent-minded dropped: Excuse me!,
Having
accidentally stepped on the snake’s tail.
…The
Emperor, the horse, and the snake,
Have
awkwardly ordered Grenadine from the menu…
And
only when over a pack of straws
The
horse had reverted to his ancient habit…
The
crowd got unhinged, broken by its scream:
He
is chewing! Doesn’t know what [the straws] are for,
Village
ignoramus!
The
horse’s steps are wrapped in shame…
Back
down the Embankment the jeers are chasing
The
last of Petersburg’s fairytales…”
Mayakovsky stresses these words “the last of the
fairytales” as he wrote about himself: “I
am the last poet,” seeing A. S. Pushkin as the first of the Russian poets.
The Last
Fairytale ends with these words:
“And
once again the Emperor stands without a scepter.
The
snake. The horse has gloom on its muzzle.
And
no one will ever understand Peter’s angst:
A
captive, chained in his own city.”
To be continued…
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