Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita. The Gorge
Continues.
“Here is this clay plate, and
the furniture in old red velvet, and the bed with shiny knobs, the worn-out
carpets, multi-colored and raspberry, with a falcon on the arm of [Tsar] Alexei
Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV, relaxing on the bank of a silken lake in
the garden of paradise, … the bronze lamp under the lampshade, the best in the
world bookcases with books smelling of ancient mysterious chocolate…”
M. A. Bulgakov. White Guard.
By
means of the theater sets in the Theatrical
Novel, Bulgakov is drawing the reader’s attention to his natures-mortes in Master and Margarita. The key phrase
pointing in this direction can be found in chapter 11 of the Theatrical Novel, I Get Acquainted With the Theater. ---
“Pressing myself into the oilcloth back of the sofa and closing my
eyes, I was musing: Oh, what a world! A
world of pleasure and serenity... I was imagining the apartment of this
unknown lady. For some reason, I imagined an enormous apartment. In the
colossal white anteroom there hung a painting in a golden frame on the wall. In
the rooms everywhere there were glittering parquetted floors. There was a grand
piano in the middle room. A huge carp… [Bulgakov deliberately breaks off the
last two letters of the Russian word kover,
carpet. His original has kov…,
which I am cutting to make it carp… in
English.]”
As
soon as I read this passage, I immediately identified this apartment from the Theatrical Novel as the jeweler’s
widow’s apartment in Master and Margarita.
In
order to decorate his fictional apartments, Bulgakov imagined to himself framed
paintings, and then reproduced his imaginings on the pages of Master and Margarita and in other works.
But it is precisely in the Theatrical
Novel that Bulgakov reveals his secret.
In
the last Chapter 18 of Part I of Master
and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, through the eyes of the buffet vendor Andrei
Fokich Sokov (whose identity will be revealed in my future chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries), the
reader sees the anteroom of the notorious apartment #50, that is, of the
jeweler’s widow’s apartment.
“The whole large and semi-dark anteroom was jam-packed with unusual
objects and garments. Thus a mourning-black cloak, lined with some flaming
cloth was thrown on the back of a chair. A long sword with a glittering golden
hilt was lying on the console table under the mirror. Three swords with silver
hilts were standing upright in the corner, as plainly as some umbrellas or walking
sticks. And on the stag antlers on the wall hung berets adorned with eagle
feathers.”
…Wait
a minute, you may say. But this is by no means the same anteroom that Maksudov
is describing. That one is “white,” and this one is “semi-dark.”
Such
an objection would be a mistake. Bulgakov answers this question himself in the
13th chapter of the Theatrical
Novel: I Perceive the Truth. It happens in a conversation between Maksudov
and Bombardov. ---
“…Or that the stove is black.
How must I respond to that?
That the stove is black.Then how will it look on the stage?
White with a black spot…”
The
same thing happens in Master and
Margarita. Bulgakov does not mention the color of the anteroom in the
jeweler’s widow’s apartment. It is “semi-dark,” but this is not a color. But at
the same time the “housemaid” Gella has nothing on, except for a coquettish
laced apron and a white hairclip on her head. We can safely presume that the
“coquettish laced apron” is also white. So, what do we have? Nothing less than
two white spots in a semi-dark anteroom. We can go even further, but first let
us talk about the painting.
A
nature-morte with a “mourning-black cloak, lined with some flaming cloth” plus
a “long sword with a glittering golden hilt lying on the console table under
the mirror.” Bulgakov also draws the reader’s attention to “three swords with
silver hilts standing upright in the corner” in the place where there was
supposed to be a stand for “umbrellas or walking sticks.” “And on the stag antlers
on the wall hung berets adorned with eagle feathers.”
An
immediate question comes up: where does another sword come from, the one with a
dark hilt, which Gella offers to the leaving Andrei Fokich? It wasn’t a part of
the nature-morte.
“Have you come without a sword?” – asks
Gella in mock surprise, when Sokov says: “This
isn’t mine!”
Gella’s
question, however, implies that the prototype of Andrei Fokich was a poet,
which we will further discuss in my chapter A
Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.
Before
we move on to the other two natures-mortes, let us point out that the painting
in the golden frame, hanging on the wall in the boundless white anteroom of the
unknown lady, is precisely the nature-morte with the cloak, swords and berets,
hanging in the anteroom of the jeweler’s widow’s apartment.
It
is also interesting to note the parallel pictures in Master and Margarita and the Theatrical
Novel, with that notorious sofa. More than anything else, Maksudov has been
struck by the sofa in the office of the head of the financial fund of the
Independent Theater. Among all that opulence, Maksudov was dreaming about the
sofa, for understandable reasons, as his own sofa was decrepit with a broken
spring protruding right in the middle and hurting his side, thus hampering his
sleep.
“A colossal sofa with
cushions and a Turkish hookah near it… 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!”
Unfortunately,
it was not to be, as the fantasies of Bulgakov himself placed the devil on this
sofa, in Master and Margarita.
“The astounded buffet vendor suddenly heard a heavy basso voice: Well, how can I be of assistance? Here the
buffet vendor discovered in the shade the one person he had come to see. The
black magus spread himself on some kind of enormous sofa, low and with pillows
scattered on it. The buffet vendor had an impression that the artist was wearing only black
underwear and black narrow-toe shoes.”
Not
only was the sofa the same, but Woland’s apparel well suited the Turkish hookah.
So, why is it not a painting? A man in black on a sofa…
From
the anteroom, the buffet vendor is admitted into the drawing room. And guess
how many paintings in golden frames has Bulgakov hung there!
By
the same token as Titian in a letter called his paintings “poems,” Bulgakov
calls his poetic prose – “pictures.” Here is the Theatrical Novel:
“I was rushing home, trying not to see the pictures of the sad
prose…”
When
Maksudov enters the office of the head of the theater fund, Bulgakov writes:
“Outside it was daylight, but not a single ray of light, not a
single sound penetrated the room from the outside through the window heavily
draped by three layers of curtains…”
Entering
the drawing room, Andrei Fokich, in Master
and Margarita, was struck by the windows more than by anything else. ---
“Pouring through the multicolored glass of the large windows was an
unusual light, as though in a church.”
It
is a for a reason that Bulgakov writes in the Theatrical Novel:
“…On my deathbed, I will be remembering the office where Gavrila
Stepanovich received me.”
To
be continued…
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