The Bard.
Berlioz Is
Dead.
Kuzmin Is In
Leeches.
Long Live
Bosoy!
Posting #3.
“And who is going to
pay the apartment rent – Pushkin?”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
The
reader remembers that Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov serves as the prototype to four
Bulgakovian characters: Pontius Pilate, M. A. Berlioz, Professor Kuzmin, and N.
I. Bosoy.
Thus
having earlier visited the dream of Pontius Pilate, we are about to enter
Bosoy’s dream, as Nikanor Ivanovich is committed to the psychiatric clinic of
Dr. Stravinsky, where, as we know, master and Ivan Bezdomny are patients as
well. (I will have a separate subsection here later as to who is who in Nikanor
Ivanovich’s dream.)
Ivan’s
guest, master, tells Ivan about the new patient:
“...Some kind of
crimson-faced fatso was brought into Room 119. He is mumbling all the time
about some kind of currency [sic!] in the ventilation system and swearing that
demonic power has taken residence in their building on Sadovaya Street. He
scolds Pushkin like there is no tomorrow and he shouts all the time: Kurolesov
– Bis, Bis!”
Apparently,
Bosoy was under sedation at the clinic, when he had his dream, as Marina
Tsvetaeva writes:
“Bryusov was never supposed to have dreams, but knowing that poets
have them, he made a substitute for the unseen by making up for them. Does it
come from his sheer inability to have dreams – his sad passion for narcotics?”
Thus
Bulgakov here makes a play on this passion in his own way, placing N. I. Bosoy
in an agitated state in a psychiatric clinic. But even here, in a presumably
restful environment, he is being haunted by foreign currency and… A. S.
Pushkin.
And
although N. I. Bosoy swears by God that he’s never held any hard currency in
his entire life, nobody seems to believe him.
After
which the “well-known dramatic talent”
Kurolesov appears, about whom master tells Ivan in Chapter 13.
Appealing
to the audience to surrender hard currency to the authorities, Kurolesov
performs “excerpts from the Avaricious
Knight by the poet Pushkin.”
Drawing
the reader’s attention to the main personage of his Chapter 15, Bulgakov
writes:
“...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.
Several times a day he would utter phrases like these:
And who is going to pay the
apartment rent – Pushkin?
So who has screwed out the
staircase electric bulb – Pushkin?
So who is going to buy the
petroleum – Pushkin?..
Bulgakov
does this in order to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that V. Ya.
Bryusov not only edited Pushkin’s complete works, but also “completed” his
unfinished creations, which he by no means ought to have done, had he realized
the extent of Pushkin’s genius, as it required no “finishing touch.”
“Now, having acquainted himself with one of [Pushkin’s] works,
Nikanor Ivanovich became sad, imagining to himself a kneeling woman with
orphaned children with rain pouring down, and he thought involuntarily: What a character this Kurolesov is! Meanwhile,
the other one continued raising his voice, continued his confession, and
completely confused Nikanor Ivanovich, when he started addressing someone who
was not on stage, and responding to himself, as though he were the absent one,
calling himself now the Sovereign,
now Baron, now Father, now Son, now
addressing himself as thou, now as you. Nikanor Ivanovich understood only
this thing that the artist on the stage died a cruel death, screaming: Keys! My keys! Then he fell on the
floor, wheezing and carefully tearing off his necktie. Having died, Kurolesov
got up, brushed dust off his tuxedo pants, bowed, and exited...”
While
asleep, Nikanor Ivanovich felt sick again.
“The theater with the curtain fell apart, and through his tears
Nikanor Ivanovich saw his room in the clinic and the head nurse Praskovia
Fedorovna with a syringe in her hand.
What’s all this, I say? Nikanor Ivanovich was saying bitterly, as
he was given an injection. – I haven’t
got any of it, I haven’t! Let Pushkin surrender currency to them, I haven’t got
it!”
Bulgakov
continues to perplex the reader and the researcher in the Epilogue of the novel, leaving Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy alive at the
end.
“...Not only would Nikanor Ivanovich never attend a theater
performance either for pay or free-of-charge, but his face would become
distorted whenever there was a conversation about theater. No less, but to an
even greater degree than theater, he would hate the poet Pushkin and the
talented performing artist Savva Potapovich Kurolesov, the latter to such a
degree that last year, seeing a black-framed obituary in a newspaper announcing
the death by stroke of Savva Potapovich in the prime of his career – Nikanor
Ivanovich became purple in the face, nearly following Savva Potapovich as he
did, and roared: Serves him right!
Moreover, that same night Nikanor Ivanovich – for whom the death of
the popular performer brought back a multitude of oppressing memories – alone
in the company of the full moon [sic!] only, throwing its light on Sadovaya
Street – got himself horribly drunk. And with each glass, the cursed chain of
hateful figures was getting longer still...”
In
this passage Bulgakov gives away V. Ya. Bryusov, of whom I already wrote
earlier in this chapter.
Comparing
the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov with Bryusov, N. S. Gumilev says:
“The poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, with his sunniness and purely
masculine strength, so much different from the moon-like femininity of Bryusov,
conveys the image of Phaeton.”
And
this is how Bryusov’s “moon-like
femininity” is expressed in Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita, indicating that hidden in the character of M. A. Berlioz is
the Russian poet Bryusov. –
“And then, all around [Berlioz] the whole street squealed in
desperate women’s voices...”
And
another instance of the full moon over the about-to-die Berlioz:
“...The sky over Moscow as though faded, and one could see quite
distinctly high up there the full moon, not yet golden, but white...”
And
in D. S. Merezhkovsky’s article The
Nighttime Luminary we read:
“Pushkin is the daytime, whereas Lermontov is the nighttime
luminary of Russian poetry. All of it [Russian poetry] oscillates between the
two of them like between the two poles—contemplation and action.” (Dmitry
Merezhkovsky.)
That’s
why, rather than calling Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy a “looney,” like the poet Ivan
Bezdomny, I am finding Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy in the Russian poet Valery
Bryusov.
And
so, V. Ya. Bryusov serves as the prototype of four personages in Master and Margarita: M. A. Berlioz, N.
I. Bosoy, Professor Kuzmin, and Pontius Pilate in the eponymous sub-novel. The
keyword here is “horror,” “uzhas,” in Russian, which is also translated as “horribly,”
present in all these three cases.
“Here horror overwhelmed Berlioz to such an extent that he closed
his eyes.”
“Here the procurator got up from the chair, squeezed his head with
his hands, and his yellow shaven face expressed horror.”
“Moreover, that same night Nikanor Ivanovich... got himself
horribly drunk.”
But
the main proof of the fact that Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is a Russian poet can
be found in M. Tsvetaeva’s memoirs. However, all in good time.
To
be continued…
***
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