Alpha And Omega.
Posting #42.
“Those who survived
will die, and those who died will rise…
And in the dictionary,
thoughtful grandchildren
Will write, after the word Dolg
[Duty] the word Don.”
Marina Tsvetaeva.
Continuing
from the previous posting, it is understandable why Marina Tsvetaeva despised
Osip Mandelstam. But likewise brilliantly did Bulgakov make use of this essay
by Tsvetaeva. Already in his first novel White
Guard, Bulgakov makes Mandelstam the prototype of Colonel Shchetkin, using
the portrait of Colonel Tsygalsky from Marina Tsvetaeva’s essay, hoping that
the researcher would bring up a proper association. Instead of Colonel
Tsygalsky, Colonel Mandelstam, aka Colonel Shchetkin. Marina Tsvetaeva’s essay
likewise confirms my thought that the novel White
Guard has been exquisitely polished by Bulgakov, which means that the
author has been returning to his first unpublished novel throughout his whole
life. Polished perhaps too well. Why?
Marina
Tsvetaeva’s essay was written in 1928 whereas the novel White Guard is believed to have been written in 1923-24. Furthermore,
Bulgakov had met Mandelstam in the Caucasus during the Russian Civil War and may
have known the same details about Mandelstam and Tsygalsky which Marina
Tsvetaeva knew.
***
Working
on N. S. Gumilev in my chapter Who is Who
in Master, I, unexpectedly for myself (as I had already been aware of this
information), made a huge discovery. In his Articles
and Sketches On Russian Poetry, N. S. Gumilev took notice of Marina
Tsvetaeva’s first collection of poetry The
Evening Album, published in 1910. Gumilev writes:
“Marina Tsvetaeva is innerly talented, innerly original… The
epigraph is taken from Rostand, the word “Mama” never leaves the pages. All of this is
reminding us how young the poetess is, which is confirmed by her own
lines-confessions.”
Gumilev
also notes the freshness of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry:
“There is much novelty in this book: new is the daring (sometimes
excessively) intimacy, new is the subject, for instance, a child’s falling in
love, new is the immediacy, wildness of admiration for life’s trifles.”
Gumilev
also feels, or rather understands, that he is facing an accomplished poetess,
despite her young age:
“And, as to be expected, she has instinctively guessed all [sic!]
principal laws of poetry…”
On
this basis, Gumilev comes to the following conclusion:
“Thus, this book is not only an endearing book of a girl’s
confessions, but also a book of wonderful verses.”
In
another place Gumilev returns to the same collection of Marina Tsvetaeva’s
poetry:
“Marina Tsvetaeva’s first book The
Evening Album makes one believe in her, and perhaps all the more because of
its genuine childishness, so endearingly-naively unaware of her difference from
maturity.”
As
I already wrote before, even though Marina Tsvetaeva denied ever meeting
Gumilev, she obviously knew his poetry, all the more so since his books and
articles were being published. She particularly admired Gumilev’s poem Muzhik, forestalling the emergence of
Rasputin in Russia, as well as his amazing poem A Tram That Lost Its Way.
In
order to confirm my prognosis of the next discovery, which had overwhelmed me,
I decided to reread Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry and also certain particular pages
of Bulgakov’s White Guard, Chapter
13, to be exact.
Unfortunately,
Bulgakov did not supply titles to his chapters in the first novel. But this
chapter can be safely titled The Appearance
of the Heroine, in opposition to The
Appearance of the Hero in Master and
Margarita.
“…Escaping through the back passage from the store of the nowhere
to be found and lasciviously smelling of perfume Mme. Anjou… Out of fear, all
at once an alarm shouted inside him…”
And
here Bulgakov infuses mysticism into the dangerous situation in which his hero
Alexei Turbin has found himself:
“…Very distinctly, the voice of Malyshev whispered to him: Run! Turbin looked into the distance and
had the time to see black figurines. Facing him upfront, gray people were
rising. Turbin figured out that those were Petlura’s men [the enemy]. Why
couldn’t he turn himself into a knife’s blade, or glue himself into the wall?”
In
this passage in the 13th chapter, in the guise of Colonel Malyshev’s
voice, whispering advice to Alexei Turbin we have the Russian poet S. A.
Yesenin.
“It is enough to chase a man under gunfire, and he turns into a wise
wolf; instead of a very weak and useless in difficult situations mind,
there emerges the wise animal instinct. Turning around like a wolf, Turbin
increased his speed, turned into Maloprovalnaya Street…”
[This
is where Colonel Nai-Turs had lived with his mother and sister Irina, with whom
Nikolka Turbin had fallen in love.]
Alexei
Turbin turns into a wolf because he thinks that Petlura’s men are taking him
for a “rabbit.” Same as the “wolf,” the “rabbit” comes out of S. A. Yesenin’s
theory that all people are like wild beasts. Bulgakov takes this and the “knife’s
blade” straight from Yesenin’s poetry, remembering that Yesenin’s features are
passed to Turbin through the mysterious voice of Colonel Malyshev, whispering
into his ear.
Thus
Bulgakov points out that Sergei Yesenin is present in his novel, just like
Nikolai Gumilev, as Alexei Turbin wants to be “glued into the wall.”
Running
away in a shootout, Alexei Turbin “sped up again, and
dimly saw ahead of him, flashing close to the walls near the water drainage
pipe, a fragile black shadow…
Two
paragraphs later, I realize that it is a woman’s shadow.
“…And here he saw her [sic!] at the very moment of miracle
in the black mossy wall, completely fencing off the snowy pattern of the trees
in the garden. Half-falling through this wall and stretching out her arms, like
in a melodrama, her huge from fear eyes glowing, she shouted Officer! This way! This way!”
To
begin with, we must note here that once again Bulgakov puts an emphasis on the
“wall,” as an allusion to the untimely death of N. S. Gumilev, executed
by a firing squad on trumped-up charges. Regardless of the fact that already in
his first novel Bulgakov tries his hand at bringing a work of “fiction into
history,” as A. S. Pushkin puts it, here already Bulgakov uses great Russian
poets as prototypes of the characters of White
Guard.
It
was only the character of the woman who saved Alexei Turbin’s life that somehow
escaped me. At one time I had come to the conclusion that she may have been
Bulgakov’s typist in Moscow, to whom he had been bringing his manuscript of White Guard, to have it typed, and with
whom he had probably been having an affair. But when in the 19th
chapter, having recovered, Alexei Turbin comes to visit his rescuer Yulia Reise
on Maloprovalnaya Street, it becomes clear who she is when Turbin gifts her
with the bracelet of his mother for saving his life.
Apparently,
the bracelet was made of silver. Having insisted that Yulia Reise must accept
the gift, Turbin “fastened the dark forged bracelet on
the fragile wrist.” Silver objects need to be cleaned with chalk, or else their color
darkens. Bulgakov uses jewelry and foreign currency in Master and
Margarita as a way of showing the
value of the poetry of this or that Russian poet. [See Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream.]
Here
it had become perfectly clear to me that through the silver bracelet, although
he does not use the word “silver” and most likely because he does not use it,
Bulgakov points to the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The bracelet must be made
of silver because it used to belong to Alexei Turbin’s mother. From the very
beginning of the novel White Guard,
M. A. Bulgakov describes his family’s household: the bronze clock singing and
playing a gavotte”; “the tiled Dutch stove”; “the furniture of old red velvet”;
“worn-out rugs” [which means that they had been in use], bronze lamps; “the
best in the world bookcases with books smelling of mysterious ancient
chocolate”; “gilded cups, silver, portraits, drapes…”
To
be continued…
***
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