The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #19.
“Professor Kuzmin was on his bed in his
bedroom with leeches
hanging from his temples, behind his ears,
and on his neck.
At the foot of his bed, over the silken
quilted blanket sat the white-
moustached Professor Bure, compassionately
looking at Kuzmin,
while consoling him to the effect that all of
it was stuff and nonsense.”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
In the 18th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors a certain Professor Bure
makes a brief appearance. Considering that Bure and Kuzmin were classmates, and
Kuzmin’s prototype is the Russian poet V. Bryusov, plus the fact that Kuzmin
recommends Bure to Andrei Fokich Sokov whose prototype is the poet Osip
Mandelstam, it is reasonable to assume that Professor Bure’s prototype is also
a poet.
Chapter 18 closes with Professor Bure visiting his
friend Professor Kuzmin:
“Professor Kuzmin was on his bed in his
bedroom with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears, and on his
neck. At the foot of his bed, over the silken quilted blanket sat the
white-moustached Professor Bure, compassionately looking at Kuzmin, while
consoling him to the effect that all of it was stuff and nonsense.”
...Knowing that Bulgakov’s personages travel not just
from one work to another, but also inside the same work from one character to
another, I decided to find out into which character Professor Bure gets transformed.
And I was not disappointed.
But in order for me to properly relate this story to
the reader, I must begin – strange as it may seem to the researcher – with the
character of Andrei Fokich Sokov. I was particularly interested in a certain
scene in the 18th chapter of Master
and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors when after chastising the buffet vendor
on the unacceptable quality of food at his buffet, Woland asks Azazello to
provide “a taburet for Mr. Chief of Buffet.”
Let me remind the reader that the prototype of
Azazello and also of the poet Ivan Bezdomny happens to be one and the same
Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. –
“The one who was roasting the meat turned around, terrifying the
buffet vendor by his fang, and nimbly offered him [Sokov] one of the dark oaken
low taburets. There were no other seats in the room.”
And so the reader is in for a surprise. Not only were
there no armchairs in the room, but Bulgakov, having introduced Andrei Fokich
into this scene substitutes the word “taburet” with the word “bench”:
“The buffet vendor uttered: Thank
you kindly, and lowered himself on the little bench [sic!]. All at once a
back leg broke off with a crunching sound, and the vendor with a cry of pain
most painfully hit his bottom against the floor. Falling down, he caught
another little bench in front of him with his foot, and, with it, he knocked
down a full cup of red wine all over his pants. And feeling unbearably
uncomfortable in his wet underwear and other clothes, he sat down on yet
another bench with considerable apprehension.”
I was quite struck by this word taburet, which
Bulgakov changes right away to a “little bench.” What does he want to say here?
In order to answer this question we must analyze the whole expression “a dark oaken low taburet.”
The word “oak” is associated with A. S. Pushkin and M.
Yu. Lermontov. The word “dark” is associated with Pushkin, who was of African
descent, but also with Lermontov, who must have spent a lot of time in the sun,
as he appears dark-skinned on all his portraits. The Russian writer I. S.
Turgenev writes about M. Yu. Lermontov’s swarthy face and his large
immovably-dark eyes.
Regarding the oak, this tree is frequently found in
Pushkin’s works. For instance, in the 1836 poem When Pensively I Walk Behind the City, while describing an
ancestral cemetery, Pushkin closes with the following words:
“The
oak is standing large over the solemn coffins,
Swaying
and rustling…”
How elegant!
Or in the magnificent Dedication to the long fairytale-poem Ruslan and Lyudmila:
“There’s
a green oak by the Lukomorye,
A golden chain is on that oak.
Both day and night, a learned
cat
Walks all around along that
chain.
When right he walks, a song
he’s singing;
When left, a fairytale he
tells…”
Bulgakov obviously saw A. S. Pushkin in that oak, as
he adorns the “Dark-Violet Knight” [Pushkin] with a golden chain.
As for the “Learned Cat,” this is how Bulgakov
introduces M. Yu. Lermontov into his novel. In his poem I am Coming Alone on the Road, Lermontov writes what kind of death
he would wish for himself:
“...I
am seeking freedom and rest!
I’d like to forget and fall
asleep!
But not with that cold sleep of the grave…
I’d like to fall asleep
So that all night, all day my
ears may be pampered
By a sweet voice singing of
love,
And so that over me,
forever green,
A dark oak may bow and
rustle.”
And so, Bulgakov chooses these particular last words
from Lermontov’s poem for his “dark oaken low taburets,” thus pointing to the
enormous black cat, in other words, Kot Begemot:
“In front of the fireplace upon a tiger
skin there sat, benevolently squinting at the fire, a huge black cat.”
Talking about “low taburets,” Bulgakov plays on the
two meanings of “low” – both “short” and “unseemly, despicable.” Pointing to
this is Woland’s reaction when he finds out that Andrei Fokich was paid
shredded paper instead of money:
“But
this is so low! – resented Woland. You
are a poor man... aren’t you a poor man?”
In this fashion Bulgakov shows that Andrei Fokich Sokov’s
prototype the poet Osip Mandelstam heavily borrowed from both Pushkin’s and
Lermontov’s poetry.
When Koroviev from a next-door study informs Woland
how much money the buffet vendor has stashed away, Sokov as though got stuck to
his taburet. But when Woland asked him to show that shredded paper in the
presence of the poets whom Mandelstam had stolen from, the shredded paper
turned back into real money, into the gold which Sokov would later bring to
Professor Kuzmin as payment for cancer treatment prompted by the macabre
prediction that Sokov would be dead in nine months.
M. Bulgakov writes that having seen the gold, the
buffet vendor with a wild smirk rose from the taburet to which he had
previously seemed to have been stuck, or glued. This is how Bulgakov describes
thievery committed by Osip Mandelstam, having stolen from poetic works of
Pushkin and Lermontov.
A very interesting device, both with the taburet and
with the shredded paper! In English, I would refer to this as Mandelstam’s
“sticky fingers,” which is of course incompatible with the image and character
of a real poet.
***
Having figured out the puzzle of the “taburet,” I am
now turning to the “little bench.”
Not only does Bulgakov belittle Osip Mandelstam through the use of the words “little bench,” but he also points here
to the fact that Mandelstam also serves as the prototype of Nikolai Ivanovich
No-Name already in the 20th chapter Azazello’s Cream.
Considering that Nikolai Ivanovich was “sitting on a
bench,” we see that, even though Bulgakov uses the same word “bench,” he does
not use it with a diminutive affix, like in the case of Andrei Fokich Sokov.
And surely he uses this word the way he does in order to draw the attention of
the researcher, and he does it four times, three of them in the course of a
single page.
“Margarita saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the
bench.
Farewell,
Nikolai Ivanovich! – yelled
Margarita, dancing [naked] before Nikolai Ivanovich. The man gasped and crawled
along the bench, supporting himself with his hands and knocking off his
briefcase to the ground.
Here she figured out that she would no
longer need the nightgown, and, ominously laughing, she dropped it on the head
of Nikolai Ivanovich. Blinded, Nikolai Ivanovich fell off the bench onto the
bricks of the walkway.”
I am drawing closer and closer to my objective, as in
describing Nikolai Ivanovich, Bulgakov is leading the researcher off the right
track, giving him a light-colored goatee and thus pointing out to the smart researcher,
who might have been able to figure it out by himself, that the prototypes of
the characters in the novel Master and
Margarita are [predominantly] Russian poets. Such a researcher might say that in this case the reader is
dealing with the Russian poet K. D. Balmont.
But it is not so! Bulgakov shifts from “little bench” to “bench” merely because the “little
bench” is small, and it stands inside a house, whereas the “bench” is big, and it stands outside in
the yard. As for misleading appearances, this is a frequent occurrence in
Bulgakov. One ought to pay attention primarily to the totality of the details,
and only after that to prioritize them in the rank of their importance.
***
I
have now approached a new exciting chapter of my work. Not only will this
chapter include M. A. Bulgakov’s 6th chapter of Master and Margarita: Koroviev’s Shenanigans, but also his 15th
chapter: Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream.
At last, the reader learns what kind of “Koroviev’s shenanigans” they are. And
also the reader will really-really learn who it was who visited Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy in his dream.
***
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