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 20th 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…
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