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 13th 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…
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