GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXIX

The Bard. Genesis.

M. A. Berlioz.

Posting 2.

“…And I shall be a child again

Under the quiet curtain of the crib,

And sitting by my side will be my mother,

Lit by the light of the icon’s oil-lamp.”

V. Ya. Bryusov.

Bulgakov probably knew Bryusov and had literary business with him, Bryusov being Head of the LITO, as during that time shortly before Bryusov’s death, Bulgakov was already writing his novel White Guard. In all likelihood, Bulgakov was in agreement with everything Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about the man in her memoirs. The reason being the concurrence of each Bulgakovian character whose prototype Bryusov was with the portrait provided to us by Tsvetaeva.

In Part II of his literary memoirs Notes on the Cuffs, Bulgakov has a vivid description of the LITO. Even though he had expected to see Maxim Gorky and Bryusov with Bely, he describes two men only, without stating or hinting their actual names.

“…One was tall, very young, in a pince-nez. What caught the eye first were his leg wrappings. They were white [sic!]. the other was a white-haired old man [sic!] with lively, slightly laughing eyes…”

On the mere basis of this description it is impossible to figure out whether he is really portraying Andrei Bely and Valery Bryusov, or not. Considering that before that, in the same Part II, titled Moscow Abyss, Bulgakov gives the following caricature portrait of V. V. Mayakovsky, having seen a poster about a 12^th [sic!] anniversary of Mayakovsky. –

“He is about 40 years of age, of very small height, bespectacled, very agile. Short rolled up pants. Serves, and doesn’t smoke. Has a large flat. Lives in a study with never-heated-up fireplace... He cannot stand the [building manager] and cannot wait to evict him sooner or later... and then he will live slavno [gloriously] in his five rooms.”

But “Listen!” – you will say. – Isn’t this a portrait of M. A. Berlioz, rather than Mayakovsky?!

And, indeed, the very first chapter, the very first page of Master and Margarita starts with the following words:

“At the hour of a hot spring sunset, two citizens appeared on Patriarch Ponds. The first of them [Berlioz] was approximately forty years of age, dressed in a gray summer pair. He was of small height, dark-haired, well-fed, bald, and his carefully-shaven face was adorned by supersized glasses in a black horn-rimmed [sic!] frame…”

Woland appears only at the end of page 2. –

“...Later on, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, different departments  presented their reports with descriptions of this man [Woland]. Comparing these reports can cause nothing short of amazement. Thus, the first of them says that this man was of a small [sic!] stature, he had gold teeth and had a limp on his right foot. A second report described him as a man of enormous height, with platinum crowns [in his mouth], with a limp on his left foot. A third one laconically reported that this man had no distinctive characteristics.”

The answer here is plain simple. Bulgakov just loves to confuse the reader, like for instance, when Berlioz is already dead, and the only witness to Woland’s connection to this event, the poet Ivan Bezdomny [S. A. Yesenin] comes to search for Woland inside the restaurant of the Writers’ House. –

“…Ivan fell into disquietude, pushed aside the people around him, started swinging the candle, dropping wax, and looking under the tables. Then the word was heard: “Call the doctor!” and someone’s gentle fleshy face, clean-shaven and well-fed, in horn glasses, appeared before Ivan. “Comrade Bezdomny,” the face started speaking in the Jubilee voice, “Calm down! You are upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich… no, simply Mischa Berlioz…”

Here once again we are witnessing Bulgakov’s desire to confuse the reader as to “who is who.” [See my posted chapter Woland Identity.]

And so, I am coming to the conclusion that Bulgakov’s descriptions of his characters’ appearances are of little help to the researchers of his works. Let me remind the reader that in my first chapter of the section A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries – A God-Fearing Lecher, Bulgakov’s “tiny little man” is the poet Osip Mandelstam, who never looked like that in real life. Bulgakov depicts this man spiritually, in accordance with Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs of Mandelstam and his own opinion of this man, whom he had met in the Caucasus. The point of Bulgakov’s description of O. Mandelstam is the littleness of the man’s character.

Using the confusion that he himself had created, Bulgakov managed to remain unsolved for nearly eighty years.

To be continued…

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