The Bard.
Berlioz Is
Dead.
Kuzmin Is In
Leeches.
Long Live
Bosoy!
Posting #6.
Ubi bene ibi patria.
Marcus Pacuvius as quoted by Cicero.
Bulgakov’s
character Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy
contains certain features of a contemporary of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. I
was led to this thought primarily by Woland’s words:
“I didn’t like this Nikanor
Ivanovich at all. He is a vyzhiga [scoundrel] and a knave. Is it possible to
make him not come anymore?
Messire, you only need to
give the order! – returned
Koroviev from somewhere [sic!], but not in a rattling voice, but clearly and
sonorously.”
Considering
that the novel’s action takes place in Bulgakov’s own time, but two of the main
characters, Koroviev and Kot Begemot, whose prototypes, two Russian poets:
Pushkin and Lermontov, belong to the Golden Age of Russian literature, a
hundred years before, there has to be a bridge between the ages (Golden and
Silver), which some of Master and
Margarita’s personages are crossing all the time back and forth.
This
is the only way how Koroviev’s sudden change of voice can be explained. The
“rattling” voice of a 20th century man born in 1799 changes to the
“clear and sonorous” voice of the poet as a young man.
Note
Koroviev’s [Pushkin’s] next action being dialing a number, and reporting in,
for some reason, whiny voice:
“I deem it my duty to report
that our Chairman of the Housing Committee... Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is a foreign
currency speculator. At this moment, hidden inside his Apartment #35, in the
ventilation system of his lavatory, wrapped in a newspaper are $400 [US]. This
is a building resident Timofey Kvastsov speaking.”
I
was also struck by another phrase in Chapter 15: Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream. A very odd phrase indeed:
“...Before his dream, Nikanor Ivanovich had not known the works of
the poet Pushkin at all, but as for the man himself, he knew him very well.”
I
decided to take another look at Pushkin’s Articles
and Sketches, and I wasn’t disappointed. I discovered plenty of material in
the article Triumph of Friendship, or Alexander
Anfimovich Orlov Vindicated. From this article I learned that a certain
Faddey Venedictovich Bulgarin, Pushkin’s contemporary, had written a novel
titled Ivan Vyzhigin. Pushkin wrote
his article under the penname “Feofilakt Kosichkin.” I was most interested in
the person of Bulgarin. And indeed, this one was indeed a “vyzhiga,” a real scoundrel.
In
the novel Ivan Vyzhigin Bulgarin
practically portrayed himself. Pushkin learned Bulgarin’s biography from
Lieutenant Colonel Spechinsky [the following is loosely quoted from the EKSMO
footnotes in the 2008 Pushkin edition], “who told him
that he had known Bulgarin in Revel, where he had served, demoted to private,
suffering from chronic drunkenness. Bulgarin had been visiting Spechinsky’s
servant Grigory, from whom he stole his soldier’s overcoat and sold it for
booze.
Discharged in 1811, Bulgarin fled to Warsaw and next to France. He
served in Napoleon’s Army, claimed that he had received the Order of Legion
d’Honneur for the 1812 Campaign, but was never able to prove it. In 1814 he
surrendered himself to the Prussian troops who extradited him to Russia.
Returning to Russia, picked up journalism. During the Decembrist Rebellion in
1825 found himself on Senate Square as a spectator, shouting: Constitution! Due to his acknowledged
merit (Bulgarin hid the Ryleev Archive from the authorities and saved
Griboyedov from serious trouble), Pushkin sent him a letter of gratitude. You belong to the small number of
litterateurs whose censure and praise
can be and must be respected.
However, after 1826, in order to rehabilitate himself with the
authorities, as someone who had had close ties to the Decembrists, he engaged
in political denunciations [sic!] and settled into official journalistic career
under the sponsorship of the Chief of the Gendarmes Count Benkendorf. Together
with the famous philologist and publisher Nikolai Gretsch, he published the
journal Son of the Fatherland. Also
being the publisher of the newspaper The
Bee, he virtually monopolized the St. Petersburg press business…”
Before
we move to a more serious part of the character of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, I’d
like to share with my reader the experience of a discovery that had taken me
several hours of contemplation before it struck me.
Bulgakov
shows Koroviev [that is Pushkin] as a “Vyzhigin” of sorts, on account of
Pushkin’s preliminary plan of responding to Bulgarin with Pushkin’s own parody:
The Real Vyzhigin: A
Historical-Moral-Satirical Novel of the 19th Century.
Contents:
Chapter I. Vyzhigin’s Birth
in Kudlashka’s Kennel.
Chapter II. Vyzhigin’s First
Denunciation. The Garrison.
Chapter III. A Fight in a
Pub. Your Nobleness! Buy Me a Drink!
Chapter IV. Friendship with
Evsei. The Soldier’s Coat. Theft. Escape.
Chapter V. Ubi Bene, Ibi
Patria.
Chapter VI The Fire of
Moscow. Vyzhigin Plunders Moscow.
Chapter VII. Vyzhigin
Defects.
Chapter VIII. Vyzhigin
Without Bread. Vyzhigin the Pauper. Vyzhigin the Huckster.
Chapter IX. Vyzhigin the
Gambler. Vyzhigin and the Former Policeman.
Chapter X. Vyzhigin’s Meeting
with Vysukhin.
Chapter XI. A Merry Company.
An Odd Verse and an Anonymous Letter to a Person of Rank.
Chapter XII. Tanta. Vyzhigin
is Made a Fool of.
Chapter XIII. Vyzhigin’s Wedding.
Poor Nephew! What an Uncle!
Chapter XIV. M. and Mme.
Vyzhigin Buy a Village…And Inform the Esteemed Public About It.
Chapter XV. Family Troubles.
Vyzhigin Seeks Consolation Among the Muses, Writes Denunciations…
Chapter XVI. Vidocq, Or Off
with the Mask!
Chapter XVII. Vyzhigin
Repents and Becomes a Respectable Man.
Chapter XVIII and the Last. A
Mouse in Cheese.
So,
what happened after such a good letter from Pushkin to Bulgarin? A conflict
started between Bulgarin and Gretsch on the one side and the virtually unknown
Moscow writer Alexander Anfimovich Orlov who was also a writer of novels and
thus presented competition, being published in Moscow.
We
are encountering an interesting twist here. Using the pretext of coming to the
defense of Orlov, A. S. Pushkin lambasted his enemies who envied his genius and
were concocting all sorts of lampoons against him in their magazines in the
form of “Chinese Anecdotes” [about
which later]. Through his maternal line Pushkin was an African. His
great-grandfather Ganibal had been adopted by Peter the Great, thus making
Pushkin not only a full-blown Russian, but also a descendant of Peter, equally
proud of his maternal and paternal (Pushkin) lines.
In
his celebrated article Triumph of
Friendship, or Alexander Anfimovich Orlov Vindicated, Pushkin used the
silly attacks on Orlov to mount his own attack on the attackers.
Considering
that Bulgarin and Gretsch were St. Petersburg publishers, Pushkin writes this
about them:
“It is not for the first time that we have noticed this strange
hatred toward Moscow in the publishers of the Son of the Fatherland and The
Bee. Painful for the Russian heart are such [demeaning] statements about
mother Moscow, white-stone Moscow, her who suffered so much at the hands of the
Poles in 1612 and at the hands of all kinds of rag-tag rabble [sic!] in 1812. [“Rag-tag rabble” – this is how A. S.
Pushkin calls the Europeans!] Moscow is still the center of our enlightenment.
Moscow is the birthplace of the authentic Russians, who got their education in
Moscow and mostly wrote there, not some outlanders and defectors for whom ubi bene, ibi patria, for whom it makes
no difference whether to run under the French eagle or use the Russian language
to dishonor everything Russian, as long as they can fill their stomachs.”
Thus,
Pushkin proves himself as a true Russian patriot. It was for a good reason that
he wrote that “Moscow is the maiden
chamber, and Peterburg is the anteroom.”
To
be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment