GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCXLIV

Alpha And Omega.

Posting #31.

“Like on the previous day, Mr. Colonel was girded
with a silver sword, but for some reason the
thousand lights were no longer playing on
the silver imagery.”

M. Bulgakov. White Guard.

Suddenly, there was a man, the only one who came to Col. Malyshev’s defense. It was Karas, whose prototype is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. At the time in 1918 when V. Ya. Bryusov was being attacked by “poetic vermin,” according to Marina Tsvetaeva, Gumilev came to his defense. As the reader surely remembers, Gumilev in one of his articles went so far as to call Bryusov a “Peter the Great” for bringing a new movement into Russian literature, namely, Symbolism. In his turn, when Gumilev found himself in great trouble in 1921, Bryusov made an effort to help Gumilev, which unfortunately came to naught, as Gumilev’s trial and execution had happened too fast for anyone to interfere with any chance of success. [See my chapter The Garden: Caiaphas.]

Having suddenly received support from Karas, “the Colonel thrust an exceptionally sharp glance into Studzinsky. In Mr. Colonel’s eyes, sparks of real irritation were jumping, on Studzinsky’s account.”

It becomes perfectly clear here that Pontius Pilate and Colonel Malyshev have one and the same prototype, namely, V. Ya. Bryusov. There is a certain similarity between the two situations, that is, the arrest of Yeshua and the attempted arrest of Colonel Malyshev at the end of chapter 7 of White Guard.

It also becomes clear from the interesting device which Bulgakov is using here, namely, drawing attention to Pontius Pilate’s eyes, and to the eyes of Colonel Malyshev.

Here is Master and Margarita (1940):

“A good man? – asked Pilate, and a devilish fire sparked in his eyes.”

“He lit the chandeliers? – Pilate mimicked the prisoner through his teeth, and his eyes flickered as he was saying that.”

And here is White Guard (1924):

“…With that, the Colonel thrust an exceptionally sharp glance into Studzinsky. In the Colonel’s eyes, sparks of real irritation were jumping, on Studzinsky’s account.”

Which leads us to the question: What really happened between these two Russian poets? This is what I find in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs:

“Balmont and Bryusov have truly divided between themselves the saying: Put your hope in God (Balmont) but do not fail yourself (Bryusov).”

And also this:

“The joy of obedience (Balmont). The joy of conquest (Bryusov). With the current of his own gift (Balmont). Against the current of his own giftlessness (Bryusov).”

Bulgakov obviously went along with Bryusov, making him a “colonel” of the Silver Age in Russian literature:

“Like on the previous day, Mr. Colonel was girded with a silver sword [sic!], but for some reason the thousand lights were no longer playing on the silver imagery.”

Here Bulgakov is reacting to the fact that the vermin of poetry of the time had been mounting an attack on Bryusov’s authority. By the same token, they were also trying to throw off their pedestals all other great poets of the Silver Age. The vermin were no good as poets, and they wanted to prove that the greats had outlived their attraction. (See my chapter The Garden: Caiaphas, where I am analyzing Blok’s article The People and the Intelligentsia.)

And in the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita, while describing the anteroom in the “no-good apartment #50,” Bulgakov writes:

“The whole large and semi-dark anteroom was jam-packed with unusual objects and garments. Thus a mourning-black cloak, lined with some flaming cloth was thrown on the back of a chair. A long sword with a glittering golden hilt was lying on the console table under the mirror. Three swords with silver hilts were standing upright in the corner, as plainly as some umbrellas or walking sticks…”

But there is a more serious aspect, which is apparently missed by all researchers of Bulgakov’s works. It is the persistent emphasis on the word “student” in the novel White Guard. It centers around the personage of Karas.

According to N. S. Gumilev’s first wife Anna Akhmatova, respecting the wish of his father, a navy surgeon in Kronstadt, after his graduation from school, Gumilev spent one summer aboard a ship. This is the reason why Bulgakov names him Karas, which in navy jargon means a first-year sailor.

Thus, introducing Karas, Bulgakov opens the eyes of all his attentive readers that behind this personage hides the great Russian poet and writer N. S. Gumilev. Returning to Russia from abroad, Gumilev continued teaching students how to write poetry. The most famous group he taught was called The Sounding Shell. Bulgakov in Master and Margarita used the Russian word “rakovina” (having two meanings: shell and sink) to draw the researcher’s attention to the fact that one of the prototypes of master in the novel is indeed N. S. Gumilev. (See my posted chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: Mr. Lastochkin.)

In order to make more assertive his point that N. S. Gumilev is one of master’s prototypes, M. A. Bulgakov goes even further in the 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita: A Troublesome Day, as it is in this chapter that Mr. Lastochkin appears, one of the personages whose prototype happens to be N. S. Gumilev.

And what a bold move! Bulgakov daringly supplies Lastochkin with the same patronymic, Stepanovich, as that of Gumilev. When Bulgakov was writing his Diaboliada, he was far more careful, giving his hero the name Varfolomei Petrovich Korotkov. I had a good reason to be drawn to this surreal novella [see my posted chapter Diaboliada], and even though I couldn’t at first discern N. S. Gumilev in V. P. Korotkov [sic!], I was by no means wide of the mark when I concluded at that early time that Bulgakov’s Korotkov had to be a Russian officer. And, of course, N. S. Gumilev was a decorated Russian officer as well. [Also see my posted chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: Mr. Lastochkin for more.]

It is amazing that in the same 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita: A Troublesome Day, Bulgakov points to an organization which includes a variety of “circles,” “clubs” [kruzhki]. The word “kruzhok” also comes up in the 26^th chapter The Burial, indicating that in Gumilev’s case nothing like a proper burial had taken place.

Imagine how the accountant V. S. Lastochkin (whose prototype is N. S. Gumilev) must have felt, to hear about himself…

To be continued…

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