Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita
Continues.
“…Oh,
if only could you guess it in his eyes
What
he is so anxious to hide!
Oh,
if at least one poor friend could
Alleviate
the ailment of his soul!”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Night III.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was larger than life, and he was
interested in people like himself, that is, also larger than life. People like
Peter the Great, Ganibal, and Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. There was a good
reason for him, therefore, to write in his poem Jubilee, addressed to Pushkin:
“After
death we will be standing close to each other:
You under the letter P, and I
under M…”
By the time Bulgakov was writing his Theatrical Novel, Mayakovsky had already
been dead.
A legitimate question arises: why is it always dead
people who are picked by Bulgakov as prototypes of his characters? The answer
is straightforward. It must be found in the text of Bulgakov’s works.
In the Theatrical
Novel, Bulgakov’s hapless hero S. L. Maksudov explains how he started writing
his novel Black Snow:
“[My novel] was born one night when I woke
up after a sad dream. I had dreamt of my hometown – snow, winter, the civil
war. In that dream a soundless blizzard passed before me, and then an old grand
piano appeared and near it were people who are no longer in this world. In that
dream I was struck by my loneliness, I felt pity for myself. And I woke up in
tears. I turned on the light, the dusty light bulb hanging over the table. It
threw light on my poverty – a cheap inkpot, a few books, a stack of old
newspapers. My left side was aching because of the mattress spring, fear was
gripping my heart. I felt that I was going to die right now at the table, the
wretched fear of death humiliated me to such an extent that I groaned, looked around
me in alarm seeking help and protection from death. And I found that help. The
cat whom some time ago I picked up in the gates, meowed. The animal was
worried. In a few seconds it was already sitting on the newspapers, looking at
me with round eyes, asking – what happened?”
There is a good reason why Maksudov explains to his
cat:
“This
is just an attack of neurasthenia… It is already living inside me, it will
develop and gnaw me down. But in the meantime it is still possible to live.”
Even though Bulgakov makes it clear to the reader that
Maksudov’s mental condition is not up to par, the fact that Maksudov himself
understands that, must reveal to us that this is merely a distraction maneuver
on Bulgakov’s part, directed at the reader, because Maksudov is a mystical
figure.
Thus, it becomes perfectly clear that in the Theatrical Novel, too, we are dealing
with dead souls, with “shadows of the dead.”
Bulgakov gets the idea of “dead souls,” “shadows of
the dead,” from the great Russian mystical writer N. V. Gogol. And considering
that in his letter to Stalin Bulgakov calls himself a “mystical writer,” it
comes as no surprise that starting with the 1923 Diaboliada, Bulgakov continues his mystique through the Theatrical Novel.
S. L. Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel has a lot in common with master in Master and Margarita. But Bulgakov would
not have been Bulgakov had he given them both the same prototype.
Bulgakov introduces the reader into the world of his
protagonist in a very interesting fashion: in retrospect.
First, together with Maksudov, we are going to the Independent Theater to meet with the
director of the student stage. The meeting is unpleasant. It promises nothing
good.
Next, at the very beginning of chapter 2, Bulgakov
invites the reader into Maksudov’s mystical world. It is a mystical world
because Maksudov’s Black Snow “was conceived one
night when I woke up after a sad dream. I had been dreaming of my hometown,
snow, winter, the Civil War… In that dream, a silent blizzard had passed before
my eyes, then an old grand piano had appeared, and near it had been people who
are no longer in this world…”
…This is no longer the image of master, but that of
the poet Ivan Bezdomny, who starts having dreams, or starts imagining that he
is having dreams, from the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita on, when it seems to him that he had dreamt up
a whole chapter of Pontius Pilate, as
told to him and Berlioz by Woland.
Likewise, already in the psychiatric clinic, he dreams
up the chapter The Execution, not to
mention his imaginings, such as the farewell visit to him by master and
Margarita. The novel closes with another one of Ivan’s dreams when he sees
Yeshua walking with Pontius Pilate, and then for the last time master and
Margarita coming out of the lunar stream.
And now we want to know who he is. Who is he?
Maksudov?
“My
life! Have I dreamt you up?” ---
writes Sergei Yesenin in his famous heart-stopping poem No Regrets, No Calls, No Tears.
And here is Bulgakov in the Theatrical Novel:
“…In
the dream I was struck by my loneliness, I felt sorry for myself.
And I woke up in tears…”
And also there:
“Once
a blizzard woke me up… And again, like then, I woke up in tears!
…There
was a whirlwind in my head. The world around me troubled me… as though it were
from old dreams.”
An already mentioned Maxim Gorky article about Sergei
Yesenin leads us in the same direction. S. A. Yesenin reminded Gorky of a story
about a country boy who finds himself in a big city. Not knowing the language
of the city and being unable to escape from it on his own, the boy jumps from a
bridge into the river, hoping that the river will carry him back where he
belongs, to freedom. But the fall kills him. This is precisely the kind of
death that ends the life of S. L. Maksudov in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel.
And this is how the case would have rested, had
Bulgakov not inserted a very odd association into his text:
“He
has such mournful eyes, -- I
started fantasizing, as was my sickly habit. -- Some time ago he killed a friend at a duel in Piatigorsk, -- I
thought, -- And now this friend has been
visiting him at night, nodding his head by the window under the moon.”
There is a sea of information in this short excerpt.
No doubt about it, Bulgakov’s wit here points to M.
Yu. Lermontov, mocking those who confuse Lermontov himself with his fictional
character Pechorin from the novel Hero of
Our Time.
To claim that Pechorin is Lermontov is the same as to
insist that Eugene Onegin is A. S. Pushkin. Absurd! It is true that Pechorin
indeed kills a comrade-in-arms in a duel in Princess
Mary, which is one of the sub-novels of Hero
of Our Times.
When I am done with all my basics, I will write about
the influence of Lermontov’s Hero of Our
Time on Bulgakov’s creative work.
In the earlier quoted passage from the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov is naturally
alluding not to Pechorin, but to Lermontov himself. Just like in the 1830 poem Night III Lermontov describes himself.
“It’s
dark. Everything sleeps…
And
when the moon rose up among the heavens…
No,
for the first time she is so lovely!..”
[Was it because of these Lermontov lines that V. V.
Mayakovsky, whom Bulgakov picked as the prototype of Woland, exclaimed in one
of his early poems: “Moon, my wife!”?]
“He’s
here. Standing. Like marble, by the window.
His
shadow lying black against the wall.
The
unmoving glance is raised, but not up to the moon;
He
is filled with all that only the poison of the passions
Has
been so terrible and sweet to people’s hearts…”
[Here it may seem, but no more than seem, that
Lermontov is writing about the Demon. In fact, he is writing about himself,
about his deeply suffering soul.]
“…The
candle burns, forgotten on the table,
And
its light mixes, plays
With
the moon’s beam in the glass…”
[Is it from here that Bulgakov gets the idea of the
red beam in Professor Persikov’s microscope in Fateful Eggs? There, as we know, the beam also comes from the moon.
See my posted chapter Fateful Eggs.]
“…Like
the living fire of love
[Mixes
and plays] with contempt in the blood…”
[It was not by accident that at the same time as
Professor Persikov has lost his beam, he receives a letter informing him of the
death of his wayward wife who left him a long time ago, but whom he continues
to love with all his heart and weeps mourning her loss.]
“…So,
who is he? Who’s he, this intruder in the dream?
What
fills this rebellious breast?..”
Bulgakov must have been profoundly shaken by the last
lines of the Lermontov poem. ---
“…Oh,
if only could you guess it in his eyes
What
he is so anxious to hide!
Oh,
if at least one poor friend could
Alleviate
the ailment of his soul!”
To be continued…
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