The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #5.
“...The flickering
light was reflected not in that cracked pince-nez
which had long deserved being thrown out as
trash,
but in a monocle, also cracked, to tell the
truth…
The
golden pince-nez flickered for just a moment…”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
V. Ya. Bryusov = Professor Kuzmin?
What remains now is to prove that what I have said is
true, using Bulgakov’s own text.
1.
The first thing
that catches the eye is the following phrase:
“At that moment the
opposite door opened and a golden pince-nez glistened in it.”
I’ll get back to the golden
pince-nez a little later. For now, I will just make a note that for the first
time a pince-nez shows up in the novel Master
and Margarita already in Chapter 4.
2.
The second clue
deserves special attention and will
follow at the very end:
“Professor Kuzmin kept
sitting, but leaned back against the high leather back of his armchair.”
3.
The third clue of
this detective story is Professor Kuzmin’s reaction to the “tinkling column of
gold coins wrapped in a piece of newspaper.” The reader remembers of course
that Andrei Fokich Sokov had brought “shredded paper into the no-good apartment
#50, complaining to Woland that the money he had received from customers at his
buffet during the Séance of Black Magic had all turned into worthless paper.”
Under Woland’s gaze the paper immediately turned back into real money, to the
buffet vendor’s bewilderment. During Sokov’s visit to the doctor, “the buffet vendor took out 30 rubles and put the money on
the table, and then suddenly, softly, as if he was operating with a cat’s paw,
he put on top a tinkling column of gold coins wrapped in a piece of newspaper.”
And here is Kuzmin’s reaction:
“And what is this? – asked Kuzmin,
twirling his moustache... Put away your
gold! – said the professor, being proud of himself.”
The reader already knows that the buffet vendor Andrei
Fokich Sokov is the poet Osip Mandelstam. It is therefore easy to accept that
Professor Kuzmin is the poet Valery Bryusov.
Let us try to combine the first and the third clues,
as both of them talk of gold. It was Koroviev foretelling Sokov’s death from
Berlioz’s study. The same Koroviev stated the precise amounts of Sokov’s
savings and stashed valuables. It follows that “gold” in this case means not
money but poetry. Hence, the money transformations: first into worthless paper,
then back to valuable money in the presence of the poets from whom Osip
Mandelstam “cut,” that is, stole lines and ideas from their poetry.
And now suddenly the perfectly genuine ten-ruble
banknotes (all except the three banknotes later turning into Abrau-Dyurso
labels) become gold which Dr. Kuzmin proudly turns down. This is all explained
very easily through the words from the third clue. Dr. Kuzmin twirls his
moustache, being exceedingly proud of himself!
The point is that there was a time when Valery Bryusov
was considered a very interesting poet, earning a lot of good money for his
poems. It means that for Bryusov poetry was gold. Like it or not, he was even
“completing” unfinished works of A. S. Pushkin. (About which a little bit
later.)
On the continuity of Bryusov’s preeminence from
Pushkin, in the line of Russian poetry, we have the testimony of N. S. Gumilev,
who calls Bryusov a “Peter the Great,” as at least in the field of poetry
Bryusov had “cut a window into Europe.” That’s why Bryusov had something to be
proud of. He became Professor at the Bryusov Institute, where he taught the
basics of poetry to beginning poets.
Interestingly, Bulgakov begins his comparison of the
two poets – Bryusov and Pushkin – with the “gold pince-nez.” The pince-nez
first appears in Master and Margarita in
the 4th chapter The Chase:
“The retired confidence man-regent was
sitting on that same spot where Ivan Nikolayevich [the poet Ivan Bezdomny; his
and Azazello’s prototype is the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin] had been sitting
just a short while ago. Now the regent [Koroviev] fixed upon his nose an
obviously unnecessary pince-nez which had one glass missing entirely while the
other one was cracked. Because of this, the checkered citizen became even more
repulsive than when he had been showing Berlioz the way to the rails.”
In order to understand this, we must turn to Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, but not about V. Ya. Bryusov, but rather about Andrei
Bely, who describes the man watching Bely on the train. Here is Marina Tsvetaeva:
“The point is that you who
can’t see are without glasses [sic!], and he who can see is with glasses. Get
it? It means that he cannot see, either. For, the lenses are not for seeing,
but for altering the image – for the appearances. Plain glass, or even empty
[eyeglasses]…”
Bulgakov takes this idea and remakes it in his own
fashion, furnishing Koroviev with a very special kind of pince-nez “in which one lens was missing altogether, while the other
was cracked.”
This pince-nez changes in Bulgakov’s Chapter 22: With Candles:
“...The flickering light was reflected not in that cracked
pince-nez which had long deserved being thrown out as trash, but in a monocle,
also cracked, to tell the truth.”
Bulgakov really does this trick for altering the
appearance. In my present chapter The
Bard the reader will find out the model according to which Bulgakov alters
Koroviev’s appearance.
When in Chapter 18: The Hapless Visitors Bulgakov writes for an umpth time about
Bryusov: “The
golden pince-nez flickered for just a moment” – How elegant!
Koroviev gets his pince-nez only in Chapter 4, that is, after the death of
Berlioz – Professor Kuzmin has a study just like Koroviev has a study in the
no-good apartment #50... – Bulgakov is drawing the reader’s attention that
something is not quite right here:
“There was nothing scary, solemn or
medicinal [sic!] in this oblong room…”
In other words, it is not a doctor who hides behind
the “golden pince-nez.” How is my detective story so far? But it’s just the
beginning, as I am finally moving to the mystery of the three Abrau-Dyurso
labels, which were found on Professor Kuzmin’s desk in place of the three
ten-ruble banknotes previously left on the table by the buffet vendor Andrei
Fokich Sokov. How about that?! “Devil knows what it is! – mumbled Kuzmin, touching the pieces of
paper.” Instead of thirty rubles, three labels removed from wine bottles!
As always, Bulgakov writes very interesting things
with great humor. “Abrau-Dyurso” is anagrammed as AD,” which in Russian means
“Hell,” which is what is waiting for Professor Kuzmin in afterlife. Curiously,
the name of the wine comes from the name of a lake in the Adygea enclave of the
Krasnodar Krai in Southern Russia/Northern Caucasus, 14 km from the port of
Novorossiysk. Abrau, in Adygean, means “a hole” [“a sinkhole”], which in
Bulgakov’s choice of wine is consistent with “Hell.” And indeed Professor
Kuzmin confirms it with his words: “This
is Devil knows what!”
Flowing into the Abrau lake is the river Dyurso, which
in Turkish means “four waters.”
At the end of the 19th century, Riesling
grapevines were brought from the valley of the Rhine in Germany to the valley
of the Dyurso at the lake Abrau. The Riesling wine is good by itself if the
vines are allowed to catch the first frost, after which the grapes are
harvested and the resulting wine acquires a unique taste.
The Abrau-Dyurso estate was bought by the Russian
Emperor Alexander II. The Tsar invited winemakers from France to produce
sparkling wine for the Royal Court, allowing it to mature for three years.
To be continued…
***
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