Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.
“Gold
gives the ugliest a pleasant charm.”
Jean Baptiste Moliere.
Having
found himself in totally decadent, posh, by the measure of those times,
surroundings, Maksudov contemplates:
“I wanted to say: Stage my
play! As for myself, I want nothing, except that I can come here every day, lay
down on this sofa for a couple of hours, breathing in the honeyed smell of
tobacco, listening to the chiming of the clock, and fantasizing… Fortunately,
I never said it.”
Why?
Because Bombardov had warned him: “Be
firm!”
Or
perhaps because Bulgakov gives Maksudov certain traits of M. Yu. Lermontov, who
wrote:
“I
won’t debase myself before you…”
Even
in the hardest times for him, Bulgakov cared above all about his human dignity.
And he did pass on his own traits to his fictional hero Maksudov. At no time
must anyone whosoever know how bad things are for you.
The
opulence of the Independent Theater was indeed in sharp contrast with the life
outside. I’ve been thinking all the time about the significance of the Golden
Stallion and especially of the Marquee, inside the Theater, and I subconsciously
came to the conclusion that Bulgakov decided to compare the Independent Theater
not so much to a Catherinean Palace, with its incessant intrigues and such, as
with the Golden Horde, where at stake had been the life and death of the arriving
guests. (The birth and especially the collapse of the Golden Horde makes a
fascinating political thriller. Being son of a history and theology professor,
maybe it was this exciting and intriguing period of Russian history that captured
the attention of Mikhail Bulgakov, hence his trail of clear references to this
subject in the Theatrical Novel.
Following the present posting there will be a historical excursion coming up,
which is extremely current for today’s events.)
Hence,
the word “semidarkness,” because when the Tatars and the Mongols upon their
horses used to come on their raids, there were so many of them that “darkness
fell.”
Bulgakov
describes the opulence of the place which Maksudov found himself in, in the
following manner:
“…A man opened a heavy curtain with a golden embroidered monogram IT on it. Here I found myself in a marquee.
The ceiling was covered with green silk, which was spreading radially from the
center, in which a crystal lantern was lit. The furniture inside was soft and
silken. Another curtain and a door behind it, glazed with frosted glass…
[Bulgakov
describes Maksudov’s journey through doors with heavy curtains like a journey
inside Bluebeard’s castle.]
“…I knocked on the door softly, got hold of the doorknob,
fashioned as the head of a silver eagle, and the door let me in. My face
was buried in a curtain, I got tangled in it and pushed it aside…”
The
opulence of the room Maksudov found himself in would be intimidating for anyone
who got themselves in there.
Bulgakov
describes a “desk” ---
“…that is, not a desk but a bureau, that is, not a bureau but some
kind of very complicated construction with tens of drawers… with another lamp
on a bendable silvery foot, with an electric lighter for cigars… Hellish red
light from under a rosewood table with three telephones on it… A small table
with a flat foreign-made typewriter and a fourth telephone and a pile of
gilded-edged sheets of paper with the monogram NT. Fire reflected from the ceiling.
The floor of the room was covered with cloth, not the soldiers’
coat variety, but the kind used on billiard tables, and over it lay
cherry-color rug nearly 2 in. thick. A colossal sofa with cushions and a
Turkish hookah near it… Not a single ray of light, not a single sound
penetrated the room from outside through the window heavily draped by three
layers of curtains…”
Bulgakov’s
description of the private office of Gavrila Stepanovich (in charge of the
financial department of the Independent Theater) with its “hellish light,”
paradoxically reminds me of the “hellish place for a living human being” in Master and Margarita, that is, the place
of master’s exile, which Bulgakov shows through Margarita’s dream in the
chapter Margarita of the second part
of the novel.
Maksudov
succeeds in rising above master, but his end is hardly better than master’s:
Maksudov commits suicide.
It’s
for a reason that there is a photographic portrait of Ivan Vasilievich hanging
in the study. Although Maksudov was allegedly invited to sign a contract on his
play, this is in fact only a pretext to take away his author’s rights. And also
to force him to write a play on Ivan Vasilievich’s order, or else to rewrite
the existing play to suit the taste of the theater company.
In
other words, in the person of Maksudov the theater wants to obtain for itself a
writer who will be tied to the theater by his contract and write plays-to-order
for it, having no legal right to offer his plays to any other theater.
As
we see, Maksudov’s position in the Theatrical
Novel is no better than master’s in Master
and Margarita. Neither one has his work published.
Like
master, Maksudov is mentally and physically exhausted. Both knew a better life.
Master is a historian by profession with the knowledge of six languages.
Maksudov is son of a vice governor. The Revolution has turned their lives
upside down.
What
does Maksudov want? Nothing much. In addition to his plays being staged by the
theater, he wishes to come to this particular study “daily, in order to lie down on this sofa for two hours.”
An
answer to Maksudov’s strange wish can be found early on in the book, namely, on
the second page.
When
Maksudov is invited to the Independent Theater for the first time, he is
received by another mysterious character: Xaveri Borisovich Ilchin.
It
is already here, on the second page of the novel, that Bulgakov describes the
Independent Theater as what amounts to a “hellish place for a human being.” He
writes that, just like Margarita ascends an endless staircase, following
Koroviev in Master and Margarita [we
will be discussing where this idea is coming from in my chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil],
Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel ---
“…ascending a cast-iron staircase, saw profiles of warriors in
helmets and mighty swords under them on the bas-reliefs, and ancient Dutch
ovens with exhausts, polished to golden glitter.”
Like
Margarita, Maksudov is accompanied by a man, but, unlike Koroviev, this man is
not leading the way. ---
“The man was lagging behind me, and turning my head back, I saw him
showing me silent signs of attention, devotion, respect, love, joy…”
In
reality, this was not on the occasion of Maksudov showing up, “but due to his
coming on the invitation of a highly respected man known to the guide
personally, the stage director Ilchin.”
This
respect for Ilchin was thus rubbing off on Ilchin’s invitee Maksudov. And
Maksudov understood that ---
“…although he was walking behind me, he was actually in charge
of me, leading me to where the lonely mysterious Xaveri Borisovich
Ilchin was…”
Koroviev,
on the other hand, although taking Margarita to the “lonely” Woland, finds him
in the company of associates and servants.
Bulgakov
shows that Maksudov indeed gets into a “hellish place for a human being,” using
the help of the forces of nature. ---
“And suddenly it grew dark… Darkness fell all at once --- a second
thunderstorm clattered behind the windows.”
There
are many thunderstorms in Master and
Margarita, the most important of them starting in Yerushalaim during the
execution of Yeshua.
In
this way, Bulgakov shows that thunderstorm is the wrath of God.
To
be continued…
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