A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Duets.
Posting #1.
“Put
this bird, –
He
told the tsar – on a spire;
My
golden cockerel
Will
be your faithful guardian…”
A. S. Pushkin. The Tale of the Golden Cockerel.
Creating the Variety Theater, in which Varenukha
serves as administrator, Bulgakov puts as his boss over him Finance Director
with the last name Rimsky. Thus he uses in Master
and Margarita the last names of two great Russian composers,
Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky. Mind you, only one of these characters has an
actual composer as his prototype. As for the prototype of the psychiatrist Dr.
Stravinsky, we will be talking about him later, because he has nothing to do
with the Variety Theater, which is our subject for now. Stravinsky’s real place
is in my chapter The Bard.
As I already wrote in my chapter Strangers in the Night, the idea to insert the Russian composer
Rimsky-Korsakov into Master and Margarita
comes to Bulgakov from Blok. The fact that Rimsky’s prototype is indeed
Rimsky-Korsakov ought to be clear to everybody because of the rooster, whose
cock-a-doodle-doo at night saves Rimsky from being turned into a vampire by
Gella, with Varenukha’s help.
The Mocker. By A. Blok.
“Touching
my eyebrows with red,
She looked and said:
I didn’t know that you can
also be handsome.
Dark Knight, you!
And laughing, she went away
with someone else…
The shadows were swimming,
conjuring’
The little streams of wine
were napping,
And in the distance,
The morning was singing away
With the crow of the
cockerel…
And she came again and said:
Knight, what’s the matter
with you?
These are all your dozing-off
dreams…
What did you expect to hear?
The night is deaf.
The night cannot hear the
crow of the cockerel.”
But in the character of the Finance Director of the
Independent Theater Rimsky, Bulgakov hides a by far more important clue, indicating
that Koroviev’s prototype is none other than A. S. Pushkin. Arriving as part of
Woland’s retinue to the séance of black magic at the Variety Theater, Koroviev
pulls a gold watch from Rimsky’s shirt pocket underneath a buttoned up vest.
The significance of a watch (or clock, in Russian) in
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita is
both death and immortality. By means of the gold watch, Bulgakov shows not only
Koroviev’s (Pushkin’s) appreciation of the composer having written several
operas after Pushkin’s works, such as The
Golden Cockerel and The Tale of Tsar
Saltan, but also for providing proof that in the person of Koroviev we are
indeed dealing with A. S. Pushkin.
At the same time as Bulgakov confuses the reader with
the person of the composer Rimsky-Korsakov, he adds to the confusion with the
Stravinsky character. There is yet a third aspect in connection with the two
last names of the Russian composers. One more puzzle. Inserting Stravinsky into
the mix, Bulgakov gives us no doubt about having another Russian composer in the
novel, that is, to make two with Rimsky-Korsakov.
Among the Variety Theater staff we have the Russian
composer N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. So, who at all can be his boss? Whom has
Bulgakov chosen as the prototype of the Theater Director Stepa Likhodeev?
Bulgakov gives the reader of Master and Margarita two clues regarding this, but alas, both of
them come to us through a third person. Only one of them concerns Stepa
Likhodeev directly. He is a drunk, a party lover, and he is a womanizer. Here
is how Bulgakov describes one of Stepa’s after-party awakenings:
“…Saying nothing about getting up, it
seemed to him that he could not even open his eyes, for as soon as he would do
that, a lightning would strike and his head would fall apart in pieces. Inside
that head a heavy bell was booming, between his eyeballs and the closed
eyelids, brown blotches with fiery-green rims were swimming, and to top it all,
he was nauseous, and it felt like the nausea was linked to the sounds of some
kind of irritating gramophone.
Stepa tried to remember something, but he
could only remember one thing. Was it yesterday, and he did not know where,
that he was standing with a napkin in his hand, trying to kiss some lady, and
promising her that the next day, sharp at noon he would be paying her a visit.
The lady was refusing, telling him: No,
no, I won’t be home! – but Stepa stubbornly stood his ground: And what if I do come, yes, I will!”
Showing a member of the Variety Theater as N. A.
Rimsky-Korsakov, the other name had to be of a very high caliber himself, and,
according to Bulgakov’s opinion, tower over him.
The name of the great Russian writer F. M. Dostoyevsky
readily comes to mind, especially considering that his name has been explicitly
mentioned in Master and Margarita. (“You are not Dostoyevsky!”)
Also the name of N. V. Gogol, whom Koroviev (Pushkin)
mentions twice through his works Dead
Souls and The Inspector.
But neither of these led a dissipated life.
Having used the last name Stravinsky, Bulgakov
indicates that there are two Russian composers hidden in Master and Margarita, so perhaps we will have better luck with a
composer?
And indeed such a composer exists. He has written two
grand operas: Boris Godunov made
world-famous by Chaliapin’s triumphal tour of Europe, which absolutely stunned
the audiences, and Khovanshchina,
based on events during the early reign of Peter the Great. The name of this
composer, whom Bulgakov put over all other Russian composers, greatness-wise,
is M. P. Mussorgsky.
There is only one composer who can stand alongside Mussorgsky
in his epic sweep and grandeur, and he is Richard Wagner.
Pairing Stepa Likhodeev with Berlioz as tenants of the
same no-good apartment #50, Bulgakov offers us a double clue, namely, that it
is not the publishing editor M. A. Berlioz who has a French composer as his
prototype, but his neighbor and co-tenant Stepa Likhodeev.
The second clue comes to the reader through the
character of Ivan Bezdomny, when Bulgakov throws the words: “Delirium Tremens!” out of a crowd of
patrons of the Griboyedov Restaurant catering
to Soviet litterateurs. Mussorgsky died of delirium tremens. S. Yesenin never
suffered from delirium tremens, although he was a drinker himself. Nor did Ivan
Bezdomny, of course, in Master and
Margarita.
Bulgakov is a writer of great precision. He uses no
superfluous words. “Delirium tremens” in Master
and Margarita points to the fact that one of the prototypes of Master and Margarita had died of this
disease.
A third clue comes to the reader of Master and Margarita from Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy, “Chairman of the Housing Committee” of the residential
building where M. Berlioz and S. Likhodeev were sharing the no-good apartment
#50.
I wish to remind the reader that in the 15th
chapter of Master and Margarita: Nikanor
Ivanovich’s Dream, Bulgakov plays upon A. S. Pushkin’s monumental play Boris Godunov. Those who are familiar
with this play can easily establish that.
Considering that Stepa Likhodeev (Mussorgsky) lives in
apartment 50, which is under Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy’s jurisdiction, they must
know each other. And thus, through the medium of N. I. Bosoy, Bulgakov points
to a certain scene in the opera Boris
Godunov, where the tsar hallucinates, purportedly seeing the murdered Tsarevich
Dmitry over there, in the corner…
The following excerpt comes from the libretto written
by Mussorgsky himself. It is not part of Pushkin’s original play. All the more
remarkable is Mussorgsky’s use of the word “likhodey” here meaning “evildoer,”
which is turned into the last name “Likhodeev” by Bulgakov, thus establishing
an unbreakable link between Stepa Likhodeev and Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky. –
“I’m
choking, and my head is swimming…
A
bloodied infant in my eyes!
There…
there, what’s that? There, in the corner…
It
sways and grows…
Comes
near, trembles and moans…
Don’t,
don’t…Not me…
I’m
not your likhodey…
Don’t,
don’t, child!
Not
me… not me…
The
will of the people!..”
Compare this to Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy’s imaginings,
as he rants about the vision of Koroviev, there, behind the bookcase:
“There
he is! There, behind the bookcase! He is smirking! And that’s his pince-nez…
Hold him! Sprinkle the premises with holy water!”
The resemblance of the two quotes may be elusive at
first glance, but it is spot-on on the second.
(We will return to Nikanor Ivanovich in the later
chapter The Bard.)
To be continued…
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