GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXXIV.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

 “I am alone here…

Sufferings are pressed inside the heart.

And I see how, obedient to fate,

Years are going by, like dreams.

And then back they come

With the same old dream, albeit gilded.

And I see a lonely coffin.

It’s waiting, why then linger above the ground?”

M. Yu. Lermontov. Loneliness.

 

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin surely understood Lermontov’s poem Night III, quoted in the previous posting, because in 1924 in Tiflis he wrote his own poem In the Caucasus. He visited the Caucasus, like Bulgakov did, following in the footsteps of A. S. Griboyedov, A. S. Pushkin, and M. Yu. Lermontov.

“And Lermontov, nursing his gloom,

Has told us about Azamat,

How that one offered for Kazbich’s horse

His own sister, instead of gold.”

[This was Yesenin’s take on Lermontov’s sub-novel Bela in his Hero of Our Time.]

And here now comes just what we need:

“For the sadness and gall in his face,

Worthy of the boiling yellow rivers,

He, as a poet and an officer,

Was put to rest by a friend’s bullet.”

Here Yesenin takes on two works by M. Yu. Lermontov. The first of them is Journalist, Reader, and Writer. Yesenin’s “For the sadness and gall in his face” clearly comes out of Lermontov’s “There is not even any acrid gall in your ink, gentlemen [says the Reader to the Writer and to the Journalist]. Just dirty water.”

How terribly current are these lines! As to the next Yesenin line: “…Worthy of the boiling yellow rivers,” this one goes back to Lermontov’s poem Valerik, where Lermontov describes the slaughter on the river Valerik [meaning “river of death”]. For this reason the water in the river Valerik is red in color. ---

“…I wanted to scoop up some water…

But the muddled wave

Was warm, was red…”

Sergei Yesenin changes the color of that water to yellow.

Bulgakov does the same thing in Fateful Eggs in the course of Professor Persikov’s report about his scientific discovery at the Tse-Ku-Bu Hall on Prechistenka Street.

“...In front of him [Professor Persikov], in the mist of breathing and fog, were hundreds of yellow faces and men’s white shirtfronts. And suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed and disappeared somewhere behind a white column…” [For more about it see my chapter Nature, posted segment LXX.]

What does Bulgakov have in mind, writing about “yellow faces” and a “yellow holster”? This is how Professor Persikov sees it, because inside him there is plenty of “gall,” and no “dirty water.” In fact, yellow is a no-good color in Bulgakov, signifying death.

What is also striking in the above-quoted passage is the name of the organization where Professor delivers his report. Tse-KUBU (Central Commission for Improving the Living Conditions of Scientists) sounds uncannily like the name of the wine Caecubum, spelled “Tsekuba” by Bulgakov, which is featured in the Pontius Pilate sub-novel of Master and Margarita.

“[The head of secret police Aphranius] having satiated himself, praised the wine. Superb grapevine, Procurator, but this is not Falerni? --- Caecubum, thirty-years-old, graciously responded the procurator.”

And then in Master and Margarita, when Azazello visits master and Margarita in their basement apartment, dispatched there by Woland to poison them, in order to send them to Rest postmortem, it is only after drinking some brandy with them that he remembers:

“And again I have completely forgotten, shouted Azazello, slapping himself on the forehead. Busy to the utmost! The point is that Messire has sent you a gift… --- Here he was addressing master in particular, --- a bottle of wine, that is. Please kindly note that this is that same wine which the Procurator of Judea was drinking. Wine Falerni.”

Returning to the last two lines of the Yesenin poem:

“…He, as a poet and an officer,

Was put to rest by a friend’s bullet.”

These are the two lines played up by Bulgakov in the Theatrical Novel. Let me repeat them again:

“He has such mournful eyes, -- I started fantasizing, as was my sickly habit. -- Some time ago he killed a friend at a duel in Piatigorsk, -- I thought, -- And now this friend has been visiting him at night, nodding his head by the window under the moon.”

And then the odd one. ---

“I liked Misha a lot.”

We will return to Misha Panin a little bit later, but I would like to observe right here that in Master and Margarita Bulgakov gives these words of Maksudov to Kot Begemot, whose prototype is the dead soul of M. Yu. Lermontov.

“...What are you saying, Azazello? – he [Kot Begemot] approached a silent Azazello. – What I am saying, snuffled the other, is that it would be nice to have you drowned. – Be merciful, Azazello, replied the cat, and do not lead my boss into such a thought. Believe me, that each night I would be appearing to you in the same moonlight glow as the poor master, and I would nod at you, and I would beckon you to follow me. How would you feel then, Azazello?”

In this excerpt, Bulgakov also supports my thought that the death of M. Yu. Lermontov made an even greater impression on S. A. Yesenin and V. V. Mayakovsky in their decision to commit suicide than the death of A. S. Pushkin. [More about it in my chapter Strangers in the Night.]

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXXIII.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“…Oh, if only could you guess it in his eyes

What he is so anxious to hide!

Oh, if at least one poor friend could

Alleviate the ailment of his soul!”

M. Yu. Lermontov. Night III.

 

Vladimir Mayakovsky was larger than life, and he was interested in people like himself, that is, also larger than life. People like Peter the Great, Ganibal, and Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. There was a good reason for him, therefore, to write in his poem Jubilee, addressed to Pushkin:

“After death we will be standing close to each other:

You under the letter P, and I under M…”

By the time Bulgakov was writing his Theatrical Novel, Mayakovsky had already been dead.

A legitimate question arises: why is it always dead people who are picked by Bulgakov as prototypes of his characters? The answer is straightforward. It must be found in the text of Bulgakov’s works.

In the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov’s hapless hero S. L. Maksudov explains how he started writing his novel Black Snow:

“[My novel] was born one night when I woke up after a sad dream. I had dreamt of my hometown – snow, winter, the civil war. In that dream a soundless blizzard passed before me, and then an old grand piano appeared and near it were people who are no longer in this world. In that dream I was struck by my loneliness, I felt pity for myself. And I woke up in tears. I turned on the light, the dusty light bulb hanging over the table. It threw light on my poverty – a cheap inkpot, a few books, a stack of old newspapers. My left side was aching because of the mattress spring, fear was gripping my heart. I felt that I was going to die right now at the table, the wretched fear of death humiliated me to such an extent that I groaned, looked around me in alarm seeking help and protection from death. And I found that help. The cat whom some time ago I picked up in the gates, meowed. The animal was worried. In a few seconds it was already sitting on the newspapers, looking at me with round eyes, asking – what happened?”

There is a good reason why Maksudov explains to his cat:

“This is just an attack of neurasthenia… It is already living inside me, it will develop and gnaw me down. But in the meantime it is still possible to live.”

Even though Bulgakov makes it clear to the reader that Maksudov’s mental condition is not up to par, the fact that Maksudov himself understands that, must reveal to us that this is merely a distraction maneuver on Bulgakov’s part, directed at the reader, because Maksudov is a mystical figure.

Thus, it becomes perfectly clear that in the Theatrical Novel, too, we are dealing with dead souls, with “shadows of the dead.”

Bulgakov gets the idea of “dead souls,” “shadows of the dead,” from the great Russian mystical writer N. V. Gogol. And considering that in his letter to Stalin Bulgakov calls himself a “mystical writer,” it comes as no surprise that starting with the 1923 Diaboliada, Bulgakov continues his mystique through the Theatrical Novel.

S. L. Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel has a lot in common with master in Master and Margarita. But Bulgakov would not have been Bulgakov had he given them both the same prototype.

Bulgakov introduces the reader into the world of his protagonist in a very interesting fashion: in retrospect.

First, together with Maksudov, we are going to the Independent Theater to meet with the director of the student stage. The meeting is unpleasant. It promises nothing good.

Next, at the very beginning of chapter 2, Bulgakov invites the reader into Maksudov’s mystical world. It is a mystical world because Maksudov’s Black Snow “was conceived one night when I woke up after a sad dream. I had been dreaming of my hometown, snow, winter, the Civil War… In that dream, a silent blizzard had passed before my eyes, then an old grand piano had appeared, and near it had been people who are no longer in this world…”

…This is no longer the image of master, but that of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, who starts having dreams, or starts imagining that he is having dreams, from the 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita on, when it seems to him that he had dreamt up a whole chapter of Pontius Pilate, as told to him and Berlioz by Woland.

Likewise, already in the psychiatric clinic, he dreams up the chapter The Execution, not to mention his imaginings, such as the farewell visit to him by master and Margarita. The novel closes with another one of Ivan’s dreams when he sees Yeshua walking with Pontius Pilate, and then for the last time master and Margarita coming out of the lunar stream.

And now we want to know who he is. Who is he? Maksudov?

“My life! Have I dreamt you up?” --- writes Sergei Yesenin in his famous heart-stopping poem No Regrets, No Calls, No Tears.

And here is Bulgakov in the Theatrical Novel:

“…In the dream I was struck by my loneliness, I felt sorry for myself. And I woke up in tears…”

And also there:

“Once a blizzard woke me up… And again, like then, I woke up in tears!

…There was a whirlwind in my head. The world around me troubled me… as though it were from old dreams.”

An already mentioned Maxim Gorky article about Sergei Yesenin leads us in the same direction. S. A. Yesenin reminded Gorky of a story about a country boy who finds himself in a big city. Not knowing the language of the city and being unable to escape from it on his own, the boy jumps from a bridge into the river, hoping that the river will carry him back where he belongs, to freedom. But the fall kills him. This is precisely the kind of death that ends the life of S. L. Maksudov in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel.

And this is how the case would have rested, had Bulgakov not inserted a very odd association into his text:

“He has such mournful eyes, -- I started fantasizing, as was my sickly habit. -- Some time ago he killed a friend at a duel in Piatigorsk, -- I thought, -- And now this friend has been visiting him at night, nodding his head by the window under the moon.”

There is a sea of information in this short excerpt.

No doubt about it, Bulgakov’s wit here points to M. Yu. Lermontov, mocking those who confuse Lermontov himself with his fictional character Pechorin from the novel Hero of Our Time.

To claim that Pechorin is Lermontov is the same as to insist that Eugene Onegin is A. S. Pushkin. Absurd! It is true that Pechorin indeed kills a comrade-in-arms in a duel in Princess Mary, which is one of the sub-novels of Hero of Our Times.

When I am done with all my basics, I will write about the influence of Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time on Bulgakov’s creative work.

In the earlier quoted passage from the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov is naturally alluding not to Pechorin, but to Lermontov himself. Just like in the 1830 poem Night III Lermontov describes himself.

“It’s dark. Everything sleeps…

And when the moon rose up among the heavens…

No, for the first time she is so lovely!..”

[Was it because of these Lermontov lines that V. V. Mayakovsky, whom Bulgakov picked as the prototype of Woland, exclaimed in one of his early poems: “Moon, my wife!”?]

“He’s here. Standing. Like marble, by the window.

His shadow lying black against the wall.

The unmoving glance is raised, but not up to the moon;

He is filled with all that only the poison of the passions

Has been so terrible and sweet to people’s hearts…”

[Here it may seem, but no more than seem, that Lermontov is writing about the Demon. In fact, he is writing about himself, about his deeply suffering soul.]

“…The candle burns, forgotten on the table,

And its light mixes, plays

With the moon’s beam in the glass…”

[Is it from here that Bulgakov gets the idea of the red beam in Professor Persikov’s microscope in Fateful Eggs? There, as we know, the beam also comes from the moon. See my posted chapter Fateful Eggs.]

“…Like the living fire of love

[Mixes and plays] with contempt in the blood…”

[It was not by accident that at the same time as Professor Persikov has lost his beam, he receives a letter informing him of the death of his wayward wife who left him a long time ago, but whom he continues to love with all his heart and weeps mourning her loss.]

“…So, who is he? Who’s he, this intruder in the dream?

What fills this rebellious breast?..”

Bulgakov must have been profoundly shaken by the last lines of the Lermontov poem. ---

“…Oh, if only could you guess it in his eyes

What he is so anxious to hide!

Oh, if at least one poor friend could

Alleviate the ailment of his soul!”

 

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXXII.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“PETRO PRIMO CATHERINA SECUNDA MDCCLXXXII.”

 

Despite the preceding to Master and Margarita works by Bulgakov, such as the 1923 Diaboliada [see my already posted eponymous chapter], the 1925 short story Cockroach [see likewise], and the 1925 novella Fateful Eggs [same thing], all of which already contain mysterious characters and situations, the Theatrical Novel, which Bulgakov wrote shortly before his death, contains one particular name which refused to let go of me: Margarita Petrovna Tavricheskaya.

Considering that Theatrical Novel has been written about a real thing: the Moscow Arts Theater, it is only natural that all of its personages must have real-life prototypes.

And this thought struck me hard!

It meant more thinking and more searching for me.

Aside from the question why Bulgakov would want to have in his Theatrical Novel a personage going under the name of his heroine in Master and Margarita who is also Margarita, I was equally interested all along in the mystical figure of Petr Petrovich Bombardov, and, because he was directly connected to the main character of the Theatrical Novel S. L. Maksudov, I understood that although each fictional character may contain something of its author (in this case Bulgakov), it was highly improbable and not at all in his character, for Bulgakov, to bare his soul in such a manner.

With all my interest in M. A. Bulgakov, I had realized all along that he was a thinking, therefore a cautious and secretive man, deliberating over every single step both of his personal life and of his creative work as well.

Therefore I suspected that even in the Maksudov personage there had to be features of other men, most likely of certain Russian poets, enriching the character of Maksudov by their own peculiarities.

I have already written before that Bulgakov was in the habit of carefully picking his characters’ names: first, last, and patronymic. I was therefore very much interested in all these three last names: Tavricheskaya, Bombardov, and Maksudov.

It was easy with the last name of Margarita Petrovna, an actress of the Independent Theater in the Theatrical Novel.

Tauris. This word is known to every Russian. The honorary title Tavrichesky was given to Catherine the Great’s favorite [lover] Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, who presided over the incorporation of Crimea and of other Southern Territories into the Russian Empire in the late 18^th century. Crimea had been known as Tauris to Ancient Greeks.

What does it mean? The date! In Master and Margarita Bulgakov focuses on one and the same date in two variations: as the year 1571 and as the sixteenth century.

In the Theatrical Novel Bulgakov chooses to direct his reader into the eighteenth century.

It was a great century for Russia. The age of Peter the Great. The age of Catherine the Great. The Russian War with Sweden, culminating in the glorious Battle of Poltava, held on Russian territory, but resulting in a complete rout of the Swedish forces and the inglorious end of the Swedish superpower dream. Wars with the Ottoman Empire resulting in the historic Southern expansion of the Russian Empire...

The 18^th century under Catherine the Great also boasts of the famed Pugachev Rebellion in which the adventurous Cossack Emelyan Pugachev was passing himself off as Catherine’s husband Emperor Peter III, who had actually died in a palace coup that brought Catherine to power.

Now, how does this period of Russian history relate to Bulgakov and his novel Master and Margarita?

1.      First of all, Bulgakov provides the reader with an abundance of evidence regarding Margarita’s participation in a foreign plot to poison her husband. (See my chapter The Spy Novel of Master and Margarita.)

2.      Secondly, the Pugachev Rebellion attracted huge interest on the part of A. S. Pushkin, who is of course the dominant figure in Master and Margarita, as it is through the mysterious figure of the dark-violet knight that I started realizing, having read Bulgakov’s novel, that I had previously understood nothing in it.

As we know, A. S. Pushkin wrote a remarkable History of the Pugachev Rebellion. For this purpose, he engaged himself in studious research of the subject. Leaving his family behind, he made a trip to the Urals, where he visited eyewitnesses of the rebellion, conducting interviews with them. He also used this material to write his fictional novella Captain’s Daughter, in which Pugachev is portrayed as one of the characters. It is from this Pushkin’s story that Bulgakov takes his epigraph for the novel White Guard.

As my reader already knows, Pushkin’s History of the Pugachev Rebellion caught the attention of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who happens to be the prototype of at least two or perhaps three characters in Master and Margarita: the poet Ivan Bezdomny, alias the historian Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, and also the demon Azazello.

Yesenin wrote a play in verse titled Pugachev, which earned the admiration of Maxim Gorky.

And so, identifying for the reader a very significant epoch in Russian history, Bulgakov directs us toward two great Russian poets, who, as we know, are playing a large role, through their works, in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. They are A. S. Pushkin and S. A. Yesenin.

From the time of Catherine the Great we are now returning into the first quarter of the 18^th century, which is the time of Peter the Great.

Pushkin’s great-grandfather on maternal side was a “negro,” brought to Peter I as a gift. In 1707, in the city of Vilno [modern Vilnius] Peter had the little Ibrahim baptized and gave him the last name of Ganibal, as Pushkin writes in his unburnt autobiographical notes.

Having received his military education in France, Ganibal returned to Russia.

…Drumroll, please!..

A. S. Pushkin writes:

“The Sovereign ordered Ganibal to the Bombardist Company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment in the rank of Lieutenant-Captain. It is known that Peter himself was its Captain. This took place in the year 1722.”

This is where Bulgakov takes the strange last name of Bombardov from. And where does he take the first name and patronymic of Petr Petrovich from? This is already Bulgakov’s joke addressed to another Russian poet…

“To you, living through one orgy after another,

Having a bathroom and a warm closet!

Aren’t you ashamed of learning about St. George recipients

Exclusively from newspaper columns?”

In this anti-Philistine, albeit antiwar [anti-world war I] 1915 poem, titled To You!, V. V. Mayakovsky alludes to Peter the Great, following in the footsteps of A. S. Pushkin. And as though through Pushkin’s great-grandfather sharing in Peter’s victories, who personally led his troops into battle…

“What do you know, you worthless many,

Thinking about how better to get stuffed with food?

Maybe right now a bomb has ripped off

The legs of Peter’s poruchik [subaltern]?”

It is precisely from the last two lines quoted above that Bulgakov gets the idea of giving the name Petr Petrovich to his character Bombardov. It comes from Mayakovsky’s “Peter’s poruchik”!

In case the reader has not been convinced yet, Mayakovsky has a terrific 1916 poem about Peter the Great, which, following Pushkin’s advice to the Russian poets, he titled: The Last Petersburg Fairytale. ---

“Emperor Peter the Great stands and thinks…

The Emperor dismounted. The three bronze ones

[That is, the Emperor, the horse, and the snake]

Get down quietly [from the pedestal]…

Someone absent-minded dropped: Excuse me!,

Having accidentally stepped on the snake’s tail.

…The Emperor, the horse, and the snake,

Have awkwardly ordered Grenadine from the menu…

And only when over a pack of straws

The horse had reverted to his ancient habit…

The crowd got unhinged, broken by its scream:

He is chewing! Doesn’t know what [the straws] are for,

Village ignoramus!

The horse’s steps are wrapped in shame…

Back down the Embankment the jeers are chasing

The last of Petersburg’s fairytales…”

Mayakovsky stresses these words “the last of the fairytales” as he wrote about himself: “I am the last poet,” seeing A. S. Pushkin as the first of the Russian poets.

The Last Fairytale ends with these words:

“And once again the Emperor stands without a scepter.

The snake. The horse has gloom on its muzzle.

And no one will ever understand Peter’s angst:

A captive, chained in his own city.”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXXXI.

Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.

 

“Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan,

Let me introduce to you

The hero of my novel,

Without preliminaries, right away.”

A. S. Pushkin.

 

Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel is being interpreted as an autobiographical novel. But it is studded with gems which would enable the reader to figure out quite a few difficult puzzles in Master and Margarita.

The most important thing which ought to catch the eye of the reader in the Theatrical Novel is the following excerpt from chapter 2: A Fit of Neurasthenia. In it, the hero of the novel, Sergei Leontievich Maksudov, has invited journalists and littérateurs to the reading of his work. And when all of them attacked his language, “an aging man, who had been around, and who had turned out at closer range to be a terrible piece of scum, exclaimed:

‘To hell with the language! The language is not the point. The old man has written a bad novel, albeit an entertaining one. You, bastard, have some discernment in you!.’”

And here comes the clincher:

“I wonder where all of this is coming from!..”

The last phrase is indeed the most important one. I’d like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that instead of a normal question mark, Bulgakov turns it into an exclamation.

So this will be the subject under our consideration in this chapter, as from under the theatrical sets of the Theatrical Novel, we will be digging up Master and Margarita. For, it wasn’t exactly on account of the Theatrical Novel that Bulgakov wrote:

“All of the listeners as one concurred that the novel could not possibly be published, for the reason that it would not be cleared by censorship.”

What I fail to understand is how the reader could miss the deliberate existence of two Margaritas, namely, Margarita Petrovna Tavricheskaya in the Theatrical Novel, and Margarita Nikolayevna No-Last-Name in Master and Margarita. The name Tavricheskaya clearly indicates that its bearer was an imperious woman, as this word is associated with Empress Catherine the Great via her lover Prince Potemkin Tavrichesky, that is, the Conqueror of Crimea, considering that Crimea used to be known as Tauris to the Ancient Greeks.

The reason why Margarita Nikolayevna in Master and Margarita has no last name is because her husband, a nationally important scientist, is classified as secret.

Now, what was it that Bulgakov wished to tell us by selecting those particular first and last name and the patronymic? The coincidence of the first names is striking.

Margarita appears in the Theatrical Novel already after Bulgakov in his drafts of the novel Master and Margarita had named his heroine, and the whole novel to boot, with this distinctive name.

What is striking next, is the choice of the patronymic. In the Theatrical Novel, it’s Margarita Petrovna, while in Master and Margarita it’s Margarita Nikolayevna.

If “Petrovna” points to the glorious period of Russian history during the reign of Peter the Great, then “Nikolayevna” implies the inglorious end of that same Romanov dynasty.

It so happens that only foreigners have no patronymic in Russia. Thus, by letting the reader know that Margarita in Master and Margarita has a patronymic, Bulgakov tells the reader that she is not a “foreigner,” but a Russian woman.

Let us not forget that the first mention that Margarita Nikolayevna is a “French queen” comes from her housemaid Natasha. It is an amazing thing that Bulgakov, introducing A. S. Pushkin as Koroviev, turning out to be a mysterious “dark-violet knight,” gives Margarita’s maid the name of Pushkin’s wife. Because of the circumstances of Pushkin’s death, Natalia Goncharova would become the most famous woman in Russia.

One more puzzle for the reader to solve. Why does Bulgakov give the name Natasha to Margarita Nikolayevna’s housemaid?

A few pages later, in the same chapter The Flight, it is already the naked fat man in a top hat [that is, A. S. Pushkin, about which see my chapter Backenbarter] calls Margarita “Luminous Queen Margot.”

And Koroviev, meeting Margarita at the foot of the staircase, “chirps” to her that her great-great-great-great grandmother had been a French queen of the 16^th century.

Forget France! This points to the Rurik dynasty in Russia, which was still in full swing in the 16^th century, with Ivan Grozny as its apotheosis.

Yet another puzzle?

***

The most mysterious personage in the Theatrical Novel is the enigmatic figure of Petr Petrovich Bombardov, who appears out of “semi-darkness” and gets “diffused in semi-obscurity.”

But before we get to Bombardov, we need to figure out the character of S. L. Maksudov.

It was Bulgakov himself who wrote:

“This world enchants, but it is filled with mysteries.”

He is talking not so much about theater as such, as about his own Theatrical Novel.

Indeed, how are we supposed to understand the main character of the Theatrical Novel Maksudov who has come to the theater to a discussion of his play Black Snow, into which he had decided to convert his eponymous novel.

“We were going up… I was starting to have the impression that running around me were shadows of the dead.”

And also:

“Here a hallucination came upon me that out of the frames in the portrait gallery the portraits came out and moved on me.”

Once again, homoeopathy to the rescue! This is a familiar mental symptom in a patient, known as “as if in a dream.”

So here we are not dealing merely with a person’s vivid imagination. This is a display of a certain mental disorder. And immediately a question begs to be asked: Is it himself that Bulgakov portrays in the character of S. L. Maksudov?

Inserting again the “portrait gallery” [see my chapter master], Bulgakov may yet again, to use S. A. Yesenin’s words, “blow Gogol and smoke.”

But I think that despite the truistic observation that in each fictional character one can always find something of its author, such as, for instance, Bulgakov’s own insecurities in the quotations given above, still in this case it is much easier to write about someone else, rather than about one’s own person. All the more true, considering that Bulgakov insists that he had been given the package containing the manuscript by a man who later committed suicide.

However, I cannot even imagine to myself that at any point of his life Bulgakov did not want to live.

That’s why we should be looking for an answer among Russian litterateurs. Whose features then can we discern in the character of S. L. Maksudov? Why is Bulgakov drawing our attention to the fact that people habitually mix up his first name and patronymic, saying it backwards: not Sergei Leontievich, but Leonty Sergeevich, and Maksudov has to correct them all the time.

What exactly does Bulgakov want to say by this, except for the mere fact of disrespect toward the person of his hero?

Let us not forget that from the very beginning of the Theatrical Novel Bulgakov shows us a man with an abnormal state of nerves, or rather an abnormal mental system, capable not only of committing suicide, but of thinking it through in minutest detail.

Maksudov is actually capable of stealing a gun from a friend who works, of all places, in law enforcement. And then, when a fortunate occurrence prevents his suicide (the happy event is the unexpected appearance of a publisher interested in publishing his novel), he restores the gun to its rightful owner with equal ease, raising no suspicions whatsoever about his own role in the gun’s original disappearance.

Here Bulgakov demonstrates his own ability to write -- and he most probably was planning to write one -- a blockbuster whodunit.

To be continued…

CHARACTER AND ECONOMICS

It seems to me, and I suspect not entirely without ground, that honest and upright people are more suited for socialism, while the dishonest ones, the Madoff types, thrive and prosper under capitalism. This point becomes clearer when we restate the proposition above in the following fashion. –

Dishonesty goes only so far under socialism, but under capitalism it defines the nature of competition, and determines the difference between spectacular success and abject failure.

On the other hand, a society consisting entirely of honest and upright people is a patently utopian society. Corruption is the way of the world, be it under socialism or capitalism. Stalinist methods of fighting corruption (shoot the perpetrators!) do not justify themselves when their enforcement almost inevitably falls into the hands of scoundrels. They become a foundation of amoral tyranny and expose the basic lethal flaws of totalitarian society, which in a utopia may not be such an evil idea, after all, but as it so frequently turns out to be when wishful thinking falls and breaks its neck against harsh reality.

Conversely, capitalist societies are not entirely made of dishonest people. Honest and hardworking capitalists can achieve a limited measure of success without resorting to crookery. Mind you, a limited measure of success, because, with very few exception, the breaking of the “sound barrier” in capitalist competition requires a level of ruthlessness which cannot be reached by the good and well-meaning…

Moreover, it is much easier to harmonize honesty, integrity, and hard work with productive capitalism, that is, industrious, value-producing capitalism. Alas, in the business of profit-making, financial manipulation and all kinds of schemes have too much lure to be resisted by society. As a result, the good capitalist finds himself or herself at a tremendous disadvantage. A good example of this is the movie Other People’s Money. Yes, it does have a sort of happy ending, suggesting that on the balance even manipulative capitalism is capable of healing itself. But all is not well that ends well in Hollywood. Besides, the morale of the movie shows an upright American industrial business being (hopefully) rescued by a Japanese intrusion. Not the most promising way of saving honest American entrepreneurs by putting America’s future in the hands of foreigners!..

Where does that leave us? In practical terms, nowhere. All kinds of societies have their share of “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” A limited measure of success can be reached by an enterprising angel regardless of the nature of economics here or there. The question of how far the goody-two-shoes can go is definitely an open question.

So what is the purpose of this entry in my Contradiction in Terms (Economics) section? Well, my purpose in writing all my entries is not to provide neat answers, but to make thinking people think.

I hope that this purpose has been accomplished here.