GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXIV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita. A Piece of Onion.

 

“Maria Grigorievna is a very attractive young lady, but to marry!.. this appeared to him so odd, so outlandish, that he could not think about it without fear. To live with a wife!.. Incomprehensible! He won’t be by himself in his room, there will have to be two of them everywhere! Sweat was breaking on his face… At last [he fell asleep]… Suddenly someone grabs his ear. Ai, who’s that!? That’s me, your wife!”

N. V. Gogol. Ivan Fedorovich Shponka And His Aunt.

 

Considering that in Bulgakov it is Ivanushka who creates the character of master and then writes his love story with a mysterious but non-existent woman, it seems most likely that Bulgakov gets the idea of master from Sergei Yesenin, because it is none other than Yesenin who serves as Ivanushka’s prototype in Master and Margarita, and to some extent as Maksudov’s in the Notes of a Dead Man [Theatrical Novel]. As we know, S. L. Maksudov ends his life by suicide, in Bulgakov, by jumping head down from a bridge. Bulgakov was obviously familiar with Gorky’s article about Yesenin, which starts with “a tale about a boy… a peasant who by some chance found himself in Krakow. He circled the streets of the city for a long time, without being able to get out into the expanse of the fields… And when he realized that the city did not wish to let him go... he prayed and jumped from the bridge into the Vistula…”

As for Yesenin, in his two-page biography written on 20^th June, 1924, that is, not long before his death, he wrote:

“My life and my creative work are still ahead of me.”

The idea of the mirror also connects Ivanushka-Azazello with S. L. Maksudov, although this idea had to travel, in Bulgakov, from Master and Margarita into the Theatrical Novel. The origin of this idea comes from H. C. Andersen’s Snow Queen. [See my posted segments LXXIII and XC.] Do you remember? A.S. Pushkin suggested that Russian writers must all read fairytales.

In Master and Margarita, Bulgakov gives us an outrageously blunt picture of Ivanushka’s (“I want to write other things!”) transformation into Azazello, the demon-assassin:

“…Right out of the console mirror, came a small but exceptionally broad-shouldered fellow, wearing a bowler hat on his head and with a fang protruding from his mouth, disfiguring his already uncommonly despicable physiognomy…”

In the Theatrical Novel, Maksudov was rehearsing his conversations with Ivan Vasilievich in front of a “small mirror.” “…And everything was going like it couldn’t be better [until] one night [Maksudov] decided to conduct a test and, without looking into the mirror, recited the full monologue, after which [he] stealthily skewed his eyes and peered into the mirror, to make sure, and was horrified…”

What follows is practically a tracing from Azazello’s description in Master and Margarita:

“…From the mirror, a face was looking at me with a wrinkled forehead, bared teeth, and eyes, in which one could read not only restlessness, but also an arriere pensée… I was good only for as long as I was looking at myself in the mirror, but as soon as I dismissed the mirror, I lost control, and my face found itself in the power of my thought, and… Ah, may the devil take me!”

In other words, in this passage Bulgakov explains his kitchen for the creation of Azazello, which of course took place a long time ago in Master and Margarita.

An absolutely amazing writer’s method! Traveling from one work into another, changing the characters and explaining one character through another one.

An uncommon mastery!

And how skillfully does Bulgakov introduce Maksudov’s “Ah, may the devil take me!” Not to mention the “arriere pensée.” For, he had all of these in Master and Margarita already. Just like the “console mirror,” just like all those ideas, the cornerstones upon which the character of Azazello was built.

Written later, the Theatrical Novel is simply explaining these ideas. Thus, the idea of Maksudov’s “arriere pensée” echoes the discovery of master in Master and Margarita.---

“He started looking at Azazello with much greater attention, and became convinced that he found in his eyes something forced, a certain thought, which he was not eager to share for the time being…”

And here again returns Maksudov’s “Ah, may the devil take me!” An exclamation not just of anybody, but of Azazello himself.

And what can we say about Azazello’s reaction to Margarita’s words: “It’s not every day that one meets the demonic force!” “Sure thing,” replied Azazello. “Had it been every day, it would have been pleasant!”

Which yet again proves that Ivanushka (“I want to write other things!”) imagines the whole scene in the basement and sees each of his characters just like Maksudov describes his little box with moving figurines in it.

Dutifully rereading his contemporaries, Bulgakov shows it in his Theatrical Novel. His main personage Maksudov “before anything else… went to the book stores and there [he] bought works of [his] contemporaries. I wanted to find out what they were writing about, how they were writing, what the magic secret of their trade was. In my purchases I spared no money, bought everything that was the best on the market.”

Maksudov was even able to recognize himself in one of the short stories, but thought that he was depicted unfairly.

“I am by no means cunning, or greedy, or sly, I am not a liar and not a careerist…”

As I wrote before, N. V. Gogol pops up here and there, and here again in the Theatrical Novel. He comes up in a conversation of his character S. L. Maksudov with the mysterious actor of the Independent Theater Bombardov, who lets him in on the inner workings and behind-the-scenes games of the theater. Bulgakov writes:

“…Master’s wife brought in pancakes… Bombardov complimented the pancakes, looked around the room, and said: You need to get married, Sergei Leontievich. Married to some nice and tender woman or a girl… I replied: This conversation has already been described by Gogol. So, let us not be repetitious…”

Here it becomes quite clear that Bulgakov likens his hero Maksudov to N. V. Gogol.

Not only is N. V. Gogol the author of the out-of-this-world comedy A Marriage, but in his early works taking St. Petersburg by storm, published under the common title Eves in a Village Near Dikanka, there is a short story Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his Aunt, written on the very same subject: marriage. It ends with the following words:

“Maria Grigorievna is a very attractive young lady, but to marry!.. this appeared to him so odd, so outlandish, that he could not think about it without fear. To live with a wife!.. Incomprehensible! He won’t be by himself in his room, there will have to be two of them everywhere! Sweat was breaking on his face… At last [he fell asleep]… Suddenly someone grabs his ear. Ai, who’s that!? That’s me, your wife, some kind of voice was talking to him noisily... Then he would imagine… his wife was sitting on a chair… Accidentally, he turns another way and sees another wife, also with a goose face. He turns elsewhere, a third wife. Behind him, yet another wife. Here he is filled with anguish... Stuffy hot. He took off his hat and sees a wife sitting in his hat too… He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief, and there’s a wife in his pocket too…”

From Bombardov’s conversation with Maksudov about marriage it becomes clear that there are traits of A. S. Pushkin in Bombardov as well. Never in his life would V. V. Mayakovsky suggest to anybody whosoever to get married, as he himself did not want to get married as a matter of principle.

Aside from the word “bard” in the last name Bombardov, which of course can be applied to any poet, but in Russia rightfully belongs to Pushkin only, it was precisely Pushkin who considered family life, as opposed to bachelor life, conducive to moral behavior. Pushkin was a family man and father of four children.

The connection of this advice to marry to N. V. Gogol, also leads us in the same direction, knowing that Pushkin, a consummately generous man, was passing around not only advice to beginning writers, but creative ideas as well. Several essential ideas in Gogol’s major works were given to Gogol by Pushkin.

There is a reason why in Master and Margarita, in the scene at the Writers’ House, Bulgakov twice drops the name of Gogol into Koroviev’s speeches, calling two of his works by name, in which Gogol developed Pushkin’s ideas: Dead Souls and The Inspector.

To be continued…