GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Golden Stallion.

“…A very long time ago, perhaps in my childhood, and maybe even before I was born, I already dreamed about the stage and dimly languished after it.”

M. A. Bulgakov. Theatrical Novel.

Why am I drawing so much attention to Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov in this chapter on Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel?

Because this play is very much relevant to Bulgakov and his creative life, as it describes Russia’s so-called Time of Troubles, the time of False Dmitry, the royal impostor who was passing himself off as the slain successor to the Throne and was supported, as so often in Russian history, by foreigners.

In his works, Bulgakov also depicts Russia’s Time of Troubles, following the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, the time of revolutions and civil war, plus a series of foreign military interventions, all successfully defeated.

It is their depiction of Russia’s Times of Troubles which unites Bulgakov with Pushkin. In Bulgakov’s case, his sympathies are on the side of Russia’s educated classes, who suffered terribly in the course of those times. Bulgakov sees the Russian Intelligentsia as the leading part of Russian society, at least those of them who did not perish or emigrate abroad, but chose to tie their fates to the future of Russia.

There is one more reason why Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov is so relevant to Bulgakov. In 1907, this play was staged at Moscow Arts Theater, which Bulgakov depicts in his Theatrical Novel, calling it Independent Theater there. Adding a small detail here, one of the theater’s directors [no, not K. S. Stanislavsky, portrayed in the Theatrical Novel as Ivan Vasilievich], but V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko [also portrayed in the Theatrical Novel as Aristarch Platonovich], who was the director of Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov.

And so, the “Golden Stallion” can represent Pushkin’s monumental play Boris Godunov, staged in 1907 at Moscow Arts Theater by one of its two directors V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, whom Bulgakov knew personally, having worked there and having had his hugely popular play Days of the Turbins (his own adaptation of his immortal novel White Guard) staged there since 1925, on an express wish of I. V. Stalin who attended more than a dozen performances of it and admittedly loved it immensely.

A. S. Pushkin was Bulgakov’s idol, as he has always been of all Russian writers and poets.

***

Earlier we mentioned one of the uses of the word “golden” in Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita, in master’s phrase “the Golden Age.” There is also a second use of the word, pertaining to the sub-novel Pontius Pilate.

Giving Maksudov the vision of a “golden stallion,” Bulgakov clearly stakes his desire to write a play based on his, Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate. Indeed, for Bulgakov, it was the novel Pontius Pilate which was primary, and Master and Margarita was secondary. Not only did he categorically refuse to have Master and Margarita published without Pontius Pilate in it, but even Master and Margarita proper virtually starts with a conversation between Berlioz and Ivanushka about Jesus Christ.

In his conversation with the High Priest of the Jews Caiaphas, the Procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate calls himself by his full title, Eques Golden Spear. The reader certainly remembers that Caiaphas paid 30 tetradrachms to Judas for setting up Yeshua in Judas’s house, where the High Priest’s people had been hiding already to seize the “dangerous troublemaker” and deliver him to the Roman authorities for summary trial and execution.

When Caiaphas announces that the criminal to be released on the occasion of the Jewish Pesach, according to the Jewish tradition, is going to be the murderous thug Var-Ravan, and not the harmless preacher Yeshua, Pontius Pilate becomes livid with hidden rage, and confronts Caiaphas with the following accusation:

“In fact, the crimes of Var-Ravan and Ha-Nozri are utterly disproportionate in their weight. If the latter is obviously a madman guilty of making absurd speeches, the former’s case is far more serious. Not only did he incite mutiny, but he also killed a guard during the attempt to arrest him. Var-Ravan is far more dangerous than Ha-Nozri.”

Pilate threatens Caiaphas that he is going to bring to Judea, to restore order, some additional Roman and Arab troops, including Syrian troops.

“You must know that there will be no respite for you, High Priest, nor for your people… It is I telling you this, Pontius Pilate Eques Golden Spear. And then you’ll remember Var-Ravan whom you saved, and you’ll be sorry that you sent a philosopher with his peaceful sermon to his death!”

Thus “Pontius Pilate Eques Golden Spear” passes on from the novel Master and Margarita into the Theatrical Novel, and is transformed into the “Golden Stallion.”

There is no doubt that giving Maksudov the vision of the golden stallion on a theater stage, Bulgakov expresses his dream of seeing his prospective play Pontius Pilate performed on the stage of Moscow Arts Theater.

Only two light bulbs are burning in the light fixture over the stage, symbolizing the slightness of the dream. There is a reason why each time when Maksudov turns off the light bulb in his own shabby room, he realizes the ugliness of his existence, of his abject poverty.

This is what Bulgakov writes about his hero Maksudov already in the second chapter of the novel when he is just starting to write his work:

“The light bulb did not give light to anything, it was even revolting and intrusive. I turned it off. The disgusting room appeared to me in the light of dawn.”

In the 13^th chapter, “Bombardov turned off the light bulb, and in the ensuing blueness all objects started taking shape in all their deformity.”

Knowing that Bombardov exists exclusively in Maksudov’s imagination, this must have been the next stage of his neurasthenia setting in, in which Maksudov is not merely talking to himself, but also imagining his own interlocutor.

Homoeopathy has in its provings a number of remedies which can cause such a symptom in sensitive people. The very same remedies are healing this symptom. A person imagines that side by side with him or her another person is walking, and talks for both of them.

In order to prove yet again that Bombardov does not exist, Bulgakov resorts to the method of parallel reality, giving Maksudov words, situationally virtually identical with the words he gives to Margarita, who exists in the thirteenth chapter of Master and Margarita only in master’s reminiscences when he is telling the story of his life to the poet Ivan Bezdomny. ---

“She, however, later insisted that this was not at all how it was, that we surely had loved each other since long-long ago, without knowing each other yet, without having ever seen each other, and that she was living with another man… and I there, then… with that one, whatshername... striped dress, museum… Well, come to think of it, I don’t remember.”

The reader cannot even imagine how important these words are! That, however, will be a story in another chapter…

But returning to the Theatrical Novel and Maksudov, Bulgakov gives him the following words, in order “to convince Bombardov that as soon as [Maksudov] saw the stallion, he understood right away both the stage and all minutest details. Which means that a very long time ago, perhaps in my childhood, and maybe even before I was born, I already dreamed about the stage and dimly languished after it.

On the last page of the thirteenth chapter of the Theatrical Novel, Maksudov practically talks, and even prophesizes alone, trying to convince himself and the non-existent Bombardov, or rather, the Bombardov part of himself which has somehow retained traces of common sense:

“I am new, yelled [Maksudov]. I am new, I am inevitable, I have come!”

How could Bombardov, I wonder, had he existed, abandon Maksudov in such an overhyped state as he was in?

Bulgakov also puts in a very strange phrase at the end:

“Bombardov turned off the electric bulb.”

How come a guest should turn off the host’s light when leaving? That’s for starters. But then we have a similar situation with Margarita in Master and Margarita. This is already a second indication of similarities between Maksudov and his words and deeds, on the one hand, and Margarita’s and master’s, on the other. Clearly, if the light was switched off in Maksudov’s room, it had to be done by Maksudov himself.

***

The “golden stallion” is also connected with the corrupting temptations of the “Golden Horde,” which Bulgakov shows through the marquee with an enormous sofa and Turkish hookahs. Should Maksudov at any time succumb to the theater’s demands, everything is going to change in his life as he will become successful but at the same time lose his independence. He will be writing plays on orders from the theater, and change such places in them as the theater wants to be changed.

Bulgakov very well knew and understood the world in which he wrote. One can only marvel at his staunch resistance to compromise in his creative work, by compromising in his personal life.

I would like to hope that Bulgakov’s dream of having Pontius Pilate with Master and Margarita in it would be performed on theater stages, and then it won’t be just two measly light bulbs burning over the stage, symbolizing for Bulgakov Pontius Pilate and Master and Margarita, but the whole magnificent chandelier.

A. S. Pushkin died before his Boris Godunov would be performed on stage. Bulgakov died before his Pontius Pilate would see the limelight. Both these great men loved the theater, because the theater is a living performance, and it stirs the human soul.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLIV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

The Golden Stallion.

“With disgust am I bracing myself for the launching of my tragedy into the light of day, and although I have always been indifferent to either success or failure of my creations, still I confess that a failure of Boris Godunov would be hurtful to me, and I am almost certain that it is going to fail.”

A. S. Pushkin.

One of the most interesting in its mysteriousness chapters of the Theatrical Novel has the title The Golden Stallion. The question arises right away: Why?

This eighth chapter of the Theatrical Novel is in fact a continuation of the first chapter, in which S. L. Maksudov meets the Student Stage Director of the Independent Theater Xaveri Borisovich Ilchin. This chapter has a direct connection to Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita.

The following lines from this chapter represent some of the most poetic places in the Theatrical Novel. --

“Ilchin and I left the room and proceeded through a hall with a fireplace in it...”

[How about that! When Maksudov was sitting on a sofa in the room next door, it seemed to him as though…]

“…in the neighboring hall, dimly in the twilight, a grand piano was shaping up…”

It becomes quite clear now that when, in the novel Master and Margarita, Margarita was receiving the guests-dusts arriving for Satan’s Ball, she…

“…was at a height, and a grandiose staircase draped in carpet was running down from under her feet… Down below, so far away as though Margarita was looking through binoculars the other way, she saw an enormously wide anteroom with a totally huge fireplace in whose cold and black jaws a five-ton truck could freely get through. The anteroom and the staircase were flooded with so much bright light that it hurt the eyes…”

In other words, Margarita was receiving the guests in a theater! Thus the hall with a fireplace in the Independent Theater is transformed into the anteroom in Master and Margarita.

This thought gets corroboration in Bulgakov’s words: “as though Margarita was looking through binoculars the other way.”

It also becomes clear why Kot Begemot also had binoculars. What a marvelous deception! For, as we know, M. Yu. Lermontov, whose “dead soul” appears as Kot Begemot in Master and Margarita, had written the famous play in verse Masquerade…

The grand piano disappears, and there is no fire in the fireplace, as Maksudov is not destined to have his play Black Snow staged at the theater.

“…And then we passed some strange doors, and seeing [Maksudov’s] curiosity, Ilchin temptingly beckoned me with his finger, to get inside. Footsteps vanished, total soundlessness and complete subterranean darkness came about.”

It becomes clear that Bombardov, appearing from semidarkness and dissolving into darkness, is only a fruit of Maksudov’s imagination. And mind you, both these personages are consistent with Bulgakov’s own self. By the time the Theatrical Novel was written, all four poets: A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, S. A. Yesenin, and V. V. Mayakovsky, had been in the “subterranean darkness,” in other words, all dead.

Bulgakov splits his own self, in order to formulate his thoughts with the utmost precision through conversation, and also to make his narrative more mysterious, more interesting.

“The saving hand of my company pulled me through…”

How closely does it remind us of Margarita’s ascent accompanied by Koroviev in complete darkness, except for the dim light of the oil lamp in Koroviev’s hand…

“In the oblong fissure the darkness got somewhat lighter. That was my company opening up some other curtains, and we found ourselves in a small audience hall seating about 300…”

[Wasn’t it the same number 300 of mourners in the funeral procession of the headless Berlioz?..]

“...Under the ceiling, two electric bulbs were dimly burning in a lighting fixture. The curtain was opened and the stage was gaping. It was solemn, mysterious, and empty. Its corners were flooded by darkness, and in the middle, ever so slightly glittering, was a golden stallion rising on his hind legs… ‘This world is mine,’ I whispered not realizing that I was talking out loud.”

So does Maksudov, as is the habit of a lonely person, start talking out loud, imagining that he has an interlocutor in the person of Bombardov, and he talks for them both. Also, the use of the verbs “whisper,” “speak softly,” – Bulgakov gets away with this because the action takes place in a theater. The reader pays no attention to the fact that Maksudov’s “neurasthenia” is progressing, that not only does he talk to himself, but he has an imaginary interlocutor.

As concerns the “golden stallion,” though, it interested me immensely. The reader already knows that Bulgakov’s stallions are magical, both in Master and Margarita and in Adam and Eve. But here in the Theatrical Novel, we have an added word: “golden.” This word occurs twice in Master and Margarita.

In the 13^th chapter The Appearance of the Hero master uses the expression “The Golden Age.”

“Ach, that was the Golden Age!, whispered the storyteller [master], his eyes sparkling…”

It is perfectly clear here what Bulgakov has in mind. Being a historian by profession, master was writing a novel on a historical subject, with the title Pontius Pilate. The novel depicted Christ’s last day on earth, his execution, and the vengeance on Judas for his betrayal. The novel only has four chapters, and Bulgakov inserts them in different places throughout the novel Master and Margarita.

Master had a large library, about which he tells Ivan:

“…Books, books from the painted floor up to the sooty ceiling...”

As for poor Margarita, ---

“…Sometimes she would squat by the lower shelves or climb up a chair to reach the higher ones, and used a piece of cloth to wipe the dust off hundreds of book spines…”

We do not know what kinds of books were in master’s library, but it is impossible to imagine that it would not have in it books from the “Golden Age” of Russian literature: A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, A. S. Griboyedov, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev, A. K. Tolstoy, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoyevsky, to name just a few.

Thus, the Golden Age of Russian literature starts with A. S. Pushkin, as he was not only a poet of genius, but a writer of genius as well. Among his creations are many works on historical subjects. The extraordinary man who attracted Pushkin to Russian history spent ten years of his life writing a multivolume History of the Russian State. Pushkin was so impressed by this work that he called it a “heroic feat.”

Like Pushkin, this man was of mixed ethnic origin. His last name Karamzin was in fact a Russified version of the Tatar name Kara Murza. If we add to them the great poet Gavrila Derzhavin, also of Tatar descent, the great poet Vasili Zhukovsky, whose mother was a Turkish woman, plus many others, we will fully realize that the genius of Russia is ethnically diverse, yet all united in their Russianness by their common language: Russian, and their common religion: Russian Orthodox Christianity.

It was in Karamzin’s footsteps that Pushkin followed in his own historical pursuits, as he traveled to the Ural Mountains to collect eyewitness accounts for his History of the Pugachev Rebellion, which had taken place half-a-century before. It was in the Urals that he also wrote highly valuable Notes on the [Pugachev] Rebellion.

But even before that, in 1825, being exiled to his hereditary estate of Mikhailovskoe, because of his suspected sympathies for the participants of the Decembrist Uprising, Pushkin wrote the monumental historical drama Boris Godunov.

Instead of an epigraph, which Pushkin is in the habit of adorning his works with, here he has an elaborate dedication, giving due respect to the historian N. M. Karamzin who had admittedly inspired Pushkin and had awakened in him an acute interest in Russian history. ---

“To the precious for all Russians memory of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, this work, inspired by his genius, is dedicated with reverence and gratitude by Alexander Pushkin.”

Using Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov as his basis, the great Russian composer M. P. Mussorgsky wrote an eponymous opera, quoting Pushkin’s text virtually verbatim. This was the opera with which the famous Russian basso and actor Fedor Ivanovich Chaliapin swept European audiences off their feet.

As for Pushkin himself, he was quite anxious about the reception that his play would receive, and confessed that he was worried about the chances of its success. ---

“With disgust am I bracing myself for the launching of my tragedy [Boris Godunov] into the light of day, and although I have always been indifferent to either success or failure of my creations, still I confess that a failure of Boris Godunov would be hurtful to me, and I am almost certain that it is going to fail. Like Montaigne, I can say of my composition, C’est une oeuvre de bonne foi.”

And indeed, although after writing the play Boris Godunov Pushkin was called back from exile and invited by the Emperor to read it to him, the play was not published until 1866, long after the poet’s death, and its first production by the Mariinsky Theater took place in 1870. After that, the play Boris Godunov was staged by the renowned Maly Theater in Moscow.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLIII.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“Fill my cup, boy,

With the tipsy bitterness of the Falernian!..”

A. S. Pushkin. After a Poem by Catullus.

 

I was sometimes wondering why Bulgakov got seemingly confused, calling Woland’s gift to master and Margarita a “bottle of wine,” whereas what he brought them wasn’t really a bottle, but a “jug.”

In the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov does not focus attention on where exactly the wine, to which S. L. Maksudov was treating his guest Bombardov, was coming from. But, considering that the idea of the jug comes to Bulgakov from S. Yesenin’s poetry, it may be worthwhile to investigate this matter.

The theme of the jug materializes in Bulgakov in the last two chapters of Pontius Pilate. In chapter 25, How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from Kyriath, already on the second page, where we meet the procurator yet again. --

“[He] was lying on a coach in front of a low small table set with delicacies and wine in jugs… At the Procurator’s feet, there stretched a still unremoved red pool as though of blood, and fragments of a shattered jug were scattered there.”

As we know, the head of secret police Aphranius receives a secret personal order from the procurator to kill, or rather to slaughter, Judas of Kyriath, and as for the money that Judas had received for setting up Yeshua, to return it to the High Priest Caiaphas with the following note: “I am returning the cursed money.”

I was always interested in the following passage in the 26^th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Burial, in which Aphranius, using the services of a married Greek woman Niza, who works for him, lures Judas outside the city limits of Yerushalaim. ---

“The young man [Judas] not only noticed this woman [Niza], no, he recognized her, and, having recognized her, he quivered, stopped in bewilderment, staring at her back, and immediately went off to chase her. Having nearly knocked some passerby with a jug in his hands off his feet, the young man caught up with the woman, and, breathing heavily from excitement, called her name: Niza!”

The elusive contraposition notwithstanding of “fragments of a broken jug,” in Pilate’s case, and “some passerby with a jug in his hands” here, we are dealing with parallel situations, so greatly enjoyed by Bulgakov and so skillfully introduced by him in his works.

In Pontius Pilate, these “fragments of a broken jug” symbolize the body of the slaughtered Judas, and the “unremoved red pool as though of blood” symbolizes Judas’s profusely spilled blood.

What then is symbolized by the jug in the hands of some passerby, if not Woland, using his own words: “Oh, no, this can be confirmed by kto [someone].” We know that Woland is a witness of all historical events that are of interest to him. And, considering that the manifestation of God on earth was of tremendous interest to the devil, Bulgakov shows, in the chapter which he titles The Burial, an act of revenge only the devil could be capable of.

It is impossible here not to remember how in Master and Margarita Woland is mocking those people who believe that their fate is in their hands:

“Pardon me, in order to control, one must have some kind of precise plan for a certain decent time period. But… how can a man be in control, when not only is he utterly deprived of the possibility to make up any kind of plan, even for a ridiculously short period of time, for, say, a thousand years, but he cannot even be sure about his own tomorrow?”

It is impossible not to agree with Woland’s logic. No person can really know what will happen to him or her when tomorrow comes.

It is not by accident that Bulgakov introduces the conversation about “some kind of plan” as early as in the first chapter of his novel, titled Never Talk to Strangers.

There are twenty-five chapters in Master and Margarita between “some kind of plan” and “some passerby.”

And here it is. The current plan of Woland himself is stretched over two thousand years:

It is the jug of Falerni wine, made famous by Catullus, and further immortalized by Pushkin. Here is our English translation from the Russian rendition of Catullus by A. S. Pushkin:

“Fill my cup, boy,

With the tipsy bitterness of the Falernian!

Thus Postumia has ordered,

Who presides over the orgies.

As for you, waters, you flow away,

And give your streams, enemies of wine,

To the strict fasters, as their drink.

As for us, pure Bacchus is dear to us.”

The Falernian was the favorite wine of the Romans. It was Aphranius’ favorite as well. He was instantly aware that the wine offered to him by the procurator was not the Falernian.

But it was the Falernian wine that Azazello brought to master and Margarita in their basement. ---

“And here again I forgot! – wheezed Azazello, slapping his forehead. Too many things to do! The point is that Messire has sent you a gift,,, a bottle of wine. Please note that this is the same wine which the procurator of Judea used to drink: the Falernian wine… Out of a piece of dark coffin brocade, Azazello produced an utterly moldy jug...”

Woland’s plan of two thousand years was to reward the man who would write the most interesting novel about Christ’s last day on earth.

The idea of inserting real historical events into a work of literary fiction, for which A. S. Pushkin so much praised Walter Scott, was brilliantly implemented by Bulgakov, inserting the sub-novel of Pontius Pilate into his novel Master and Margarita.

There is a very interesting twist with regard to wine, as it is being brought to master and Margarita by Azazello, whose prototype is Sergei Yesenin. According to Maxim Gorky’s reminiscences, Yesenin, not being averse to hard liquor, detested wine. And he only drank it because of his idol A. S. Pushkin, who loved wine and sang profuse praises to it.

But it wasn’t just wine and it wasn’t so much wine that was connected in Bulgakov with Yesenin. It was most interestingly the idea of the jug. In his play in verse Pugachev, Yesenin writes:

“Pugachev:

Do you know that there is a rumor among the rabble…

That some kind of cruel guide

Brings the dead shadow of the Emperor

To the Russian expanse.

This shadow with a rope on its meatless neck,

Tugging at its dropped down jaw,

Dancing with its creaking feet,

Comes to avenge himself,

Comes to avenge upon Catherine,

Raising its arm like a yellow stake,

For the reason that she and her accomplices…”

(Those accomplices, as we remember, included Count Panin. And now, here it comes! –)

“…Having broken the white jug of his head,

Ascended the throne.”

Using this widespread popular legend, Pugachev passes himself off as the allegedly surviving Emperor Peter III himself.

The fact that Bulgakov took the idea of the jug from Yesenin is confirmed by the following lines from Yesenin’s Pugachev:

“It is hard for the heart to throw light on gnarled cups

From the chandelier of revenge. [sic!]”

And how is it in Bulgakov? Listening to Yeshua’s tale of how Judas had invited him to his house, Pontius Pilate, “mimicking the arrestee, spoke through his teeth: He lit the chandeliers? --- Yes, somewhat surprised at how much the procurator knew, continued Yeshua.”

Even Yesenin’s Pugachev understands that revenge is the prerogative of God. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

Human revenge is from the devil. Where there is revenge, the devil is there.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLII.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“I just had to marry you, because without you I would have been miserable for life!..

The responsibility of family life makes a man more moral.”

A. S. Pushkin. A Letter to his Wife.

 

But of even greater interest to us must be the question why Bulgakov would give the same words to both Maksudov and Bombardov.

Having heard Bombardov’s story about the eagle, Maksudov exclaims:

“You are a poet, may the devil take you! – I wheezed.”

To which Bombardov no longer exclaims, but whispers:

“And you, thinly smiling whispered Bombardov, are a wicked man!..”

Having repeated these words after Maksudov, Bombardov also repeats the word “miracle” when he is talking about Maksudov’s play:

“It won’t run, except by a miracle…”

Maksudov’s reaction is quite striking:

“His words stung me. I thought that I knew the man not at all, but then I immediately remembered Likospastov’s words about the wolfish grin.”

Even this recollection by Maksudov is wrong. Just 18 pages back, in the same chapter I perceive the Truth, Bulgakov gives Maksudov the following words:

“…What a voice they say you had! Hoarse, malicious, thin! – Bombardov [told him] afterwards, from the words of those present [at Maksudov’s meeting with the staff of the Independent Theater.]”

And 15 pages back in the same chapter Maksudov is talking about himself:

“Here our eyes met, and in mine the talking man read, as I believe, rage and amazement.”

Maksudov’s hoarse voice is very important because this is precisely how Maxim Gorky describes Sergei Yesenin reciting his Pugachev.

Which proves yet again that hidden by Bulgakov in Maksudov’s character are traits of Sergei Yesenin.

***

All along, I was struck by the analogy that just what Bombardov was for Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel, Margarita was for master in the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita. As soon as master feels down, Margarita appears.

This is what Bulgakov writes in the tenth chapter of the Theatrical Novel, titled Scenes in the Anteroom:

“No, I can’t do without Bombardov, I thought to myself. And Bombardov helped me a lot.”

This is it, the same picture. Maksudov feels rotten, there is something he cannot understand, send Bombardov out of nowhere to the rescue!

He can explain everything, and he does. There is a good reason why Bulgakov writes that Maksudov comes to the conclusion:

“This world enchants, but it is full of puzzles.”

What Bulgakov really wishes to tell us hereby is that his Theatrical Novel is ‘full of puzzles.’ And the character of Bombardov is one of such challenges.

Bombardov’s next appearance in the chapter I Perceive the Truth following Maksudov’s telegram is full of oddities. Not only both of them say the same words and use the same expressions, but Bombardov’s visit starts oddly and ends even oddlier.

Their conversation starts with Bombardov’s advice:

“You would do well to marry, Sergei Leontievich. Marry some nice, tender woman, or a girl.”

Maksudov’s response is way too strange. Instead of saying simply that he just had no intention of marrying, he says:

“This conversation has already been depicted by Gogol… Let us not be repetitive.”

The Gogol remark is obviously quite ostentatious and malapropos. No less awkward is the repetitive reference to smoke in the room. --

“The room became filled with smoke like with milk…”

“His eyes were flaming, the cigarette was flaming, smoke was billowing out of his nostrils…”

“Argunin, -- I heard hollowly from behind the curtain of smoke.”

It is impossible here not to be reminded of Yesenin’s lines from his poem Bryusov in Memoriam:

“We shall repeat the old rhymes some forty times.

We know how to blow Gogol and smoke.”

In other words, right from Bombardov’s “arrival” and until the end of the chapter, Bulgakov was “blowing Gogol and smoke.”

Bulgakov also shows the same thing by these words:

“[Maksudov] suddenly saw on his gray jacket a large oily spot with a piece of onion stuck to it.”

It means that the only food he had been eating were pancakes with oil and onion. No red caviar, no smoked salmon, no wine. There was just tea as a drink. Is that so?

As the fictitious wine on Maksudov’s table, Bulgakov picks the Georgian red wine Napareuli, because all four of his poets had visited the Caucasus, while V. V. Mayakovsky was even born in Georgia.

Thus it turns out that in his Theatrical Novel Bulgakov conducts a wake for the four great Russian poets assembled in Master and Margarita.

And because it was Mayakovsky who was the last to commit suicide, while Pushkin was the first one to be killed on a duel, Bombardov receives the honor to look “ through the wine at the light from the bulb, praising the wine one more time.”

It is impossible here not to be reminded of the famous scene in Master and Margarita when Azazello brings master and Margarita a gift from Messire: a bottle of wine…

“...Out of a piece of dark coffin brocade, Azazello produced an utterly moldy jug... The wine was sniffed, poured in glasses, they looked through it at the light in the window, disappearing before the approaching storm. They saw how everything was turning into the color of blood. Here’s to Woland’s health!, exclaimed Margarita, raising her glass, and all three of them put the glasses to their lips and took large gulps from them...”

In the Theatrical Novel, only Bombardov drinks the wine, “and, having emptied his glass,” only Bombardov praises it: “Beautiful wine, Napareuli!” It is also only Bombardov who looks through the wine at the light of the electric bulb.

It is clear why Bombardov looks through the wine at the light of the electric bulb. To begin with, we are looking at the same parallelism of scenes and situations that ties Bulgakov’s works together. Here is a literary device in which Bulgakov is unparalleled in world literature.

And secondly, here is our indication that Bombardov has certain traits of V. V. Mayakovsky in him. When Mayakovsky visited America, he was surprised that people in restaurants were eating food to the light of candles rather than electricity. Come on! This is the 20^th century! Mayakovsky was all for progress. So here is Bombardov admiring the color of the wine against electric light, rather than the light of candles.

I am writing about how Bulgakov used this in Master and Margarita in my chapter Woland Identity. [See my posted segment CLXXXVII.]

So this is how in one small detail Bulgakov gives his reader a hint that Bombardov carries in him certain traits of V. V. Mayakovsky.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLI.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“Caucasus is under me, alone high above

I am standing over the snows at the brink of a chasm.

An eagle flying off a distant peak

Soars motionless on the same level with me…”

A. S. Pushkin. Caucasus.

 

And so, we are moving on to a very interesting moment in the Theatrical Novel when fighting for his creative freedom against the Independent Theater Company, Maksudov finds himself on the verge of insanity.

In his appearance, Maksudov is as steady as a rock. But deep inside, judging by his telegram to Bombardov, he is a mess. ---

“Come to the wake. Losing my mind without you. I don’t understand.”

The Theatrical Novel needs to be read always asking yourself questions along the way, as Bulgakov himself recommends doing, at the end of the very first chapter.

Why the telegram? Why did the post office refuse to accept it?

If Maksudov knew Bombardov’s address, why didn’t he go to visit him at the time of despair? As we know, he visited another friend of his at least twice. The first time to steal his handgun. The second time to put it back where he had taken it from, after his unsuccessful attempt at suicide.

Right away, we get an answer to both questions. Maksudov did not know Bombardov’s address, which is why the post office could not accept his telegram. Here’s Chekhov again. In his short story Vanka a nine-year-old boy sent to work for money by his family writes a tearful letter complaining of his mistreatment by the employer and addresses it: “To Grandfather at the village.”

Being distraught, in his suicide note to the police, Maksudov writes:

“Hereby I report that the Browning, number... (I forgot the number) [How come? Don’t they put the gun number on the gun itself?] …let us say, such and such, I stole it from Parfen Ivanovich. (Wrote the last name, the street and building number, everything how it ought to be done…)” [How come? Where is the apartment number? There has to be one! In the case with the telegram it is even worse. There is the text, but no address!]

Now, why the wake? Whose wake? Is it for the play Black Snow? Is it for Maksudov himself? Having written “I don’t understand,” Bulgakov challenges the reader as to why Maksudov wished to send such a telegram at all. The key words here are obviously: “Losing my mind without you.” Here is another proof that in the personage of Bombardov there are certain traits of A. S. Pushkin, considering that it was Pushkin who wrote:

“God do not let me lose my mind.

No, --- better a beggar’s staff and bag,

Maksudov is a neurasthenic in fear of losing his mind. With all his effort he is clinging to life. In the first case he is grasping at a straw: Mephistopheles’ aria from Gounod’s opera Faust. Now, still hoping that his play Black Snow is going to be staged at the Independent Theater, he seeks reassurance, realizing that his end is near.

In this chapter, Maksudov is passionately trying to find in himself any remnants of reason, but he knows full well that his illness, which he himself calls neurasthenia, is progressing…

“I will be no more, I will be no more very soon!”

This thought terrifies him. Maksudov is still hoping for something.

That’s why, to use Lermontov’s words, Maksudov arranges for himself “a feast at an alien fest.” This feast, however, belongs to the Independent Theater. Having signed an “Agreement” with Maksudov, the Theater Company obtained all rights to his play. Ironically, every paragraph of the Agreement begins with the words: “The author has no right…”

In Bulgakov, though, the author can leave the Agreement, but only without his play.

The mysterious Bombardov is indispensable to Maksudov in convincing him that things are not as bad as they are. Bombardov comforts Maksudov first by a story about an actor of the Independent Theater diagnosed with sarcoma of the lung and sent to Switzerland for medical treatment. Now he has to go to Switzerland every year of what remains of his life, since each time after presumably curing the disease in one organ, it returns next year in another. And yet he goes on living.

It is precisely from this moment on that something very interesting begins, namely, Maksudov’s thoughts about Bombardov, which allow us to figure out these two personages.

“You are a very interesting, observant, and wicked man,  [Maksudov] thought about Bombardov, and I like you immensely, but you are cunning and secretive, and it has been your life in the theater that has made you such.”

And shortly before this:

“A miracle!, I said, and sighed for some reason.”

These words are important, and we shall return to them in a little while.

Meantime, it is necessary to note that already on page 4 of the first chapter of Master and Margarita, titled Never Talk to Strangers, Bulgakov gives Woland (whose prototype, as we remember, is V. V. Mayakovsky) the following words:

“Imagine that you start governing yourself… and others… and come to enjoy it… and then you get khe-khe-khe… sarcoma of the lung… Here the foreigner grinned sweetly, as if the thought of sarcoma of the lung gave him pleasure. -- Yes, sarcoma, -- squinting like a cat, [Woland] repeated the sonorous word. And here is the end to your governing! No one’s fate is of any interest to you, except yours…”

This passage proves that there are certain traits of V. V. Mayakovsky in Bombardov, but Bulgakov, as is his habit, wishes to make the reader think that Mayakovsky is Bombardov’s prototype, which would be wrong to assume.

In the same chapter I Perceive the Truth of the Theatrical Novel, two pages later, we hear Bombardov’s tirade on account of that same Gavrila Stepanovich who had dealt Maksudov the earlier mentioned “Agreement,” according to which Maksudov had relinquished all his authorship rights, and who had not paid Maksudov the promised 2,000 rubles.

At the same time as Maksudov wheezes: “May he be damned!,” Bombardov profusely praises Gavrila Stepanovich’s negotiating skills. ---

“Eagle, condor. He sits on a cliff and sees everything around for 40 km. and as soon as a dot appears in his view and moves, he whirls upwards and then drops down like a rock! A pitiful squeak and wheezing, and now see him whirling up into the sky and the victim is there with him…”

Certain other words also give Bombardov away here: “…His inflamed eyes flashing…”

This flashing of the eyes, as well as the story about an eagle comes to Bulgakov from A. S. Pushkin, in whose novella Captain’s Daughter both pertain to a historical figure of that time, namely, to Emelyan Pugachev, on whose account A. S. Pushkin went to the Urals to do his research, talking to eyewitnesses of the Pugachev Rebellion.

Thus we are getting additional proof that the character of Bombardov contains certain features of Pushkin.

Already in this back-and-forth between Maksudov and Bombardov, the reader ought to become suspicious. Considering that this is what Maksudov was thinking about Gavrila Stepanovich in his office during their first meeting:

“Steely, deeply set small eyes… They had iron will in them, devilish daring, unbending resolution…”

This shows that even in difficult situations Maksudov, his suicidal tendencies notwithstanding, exhibits sound judgment.

To be continued…