Alpha And Omega.
Posting #32.
“Doctor, this is no
time for thinking.
Take off your shoulder straps!”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
I
have earlier noticed that in the chapter in White
Guard where the school building housing the mortar division was located and
where, some time before, Bulgakov must have studied with his friends whom he
shows in his novel not like he shows Karas and Myshlayevsky, giving them features
of Russian poets, namely, Gumilev and Mayakovsky, making these characters
shine, and most importantly, entering Bulgakov himself into Russian literature
as a pathfinder, using poetry and prose, and even memoirs of well-known Russian
writers and poets, inserting them themselves into his original works.
And
so, the school building. Where does Bulgakov take his idea from of turning it
into a ship? All poets write about ships, but none like Yesenin does. This
genius has managed to navigate a ship over ground. In his extraordinary
poem-play Pugachev Yesenin writes:
Pugachev:
“Is it
important? Is it important? Is it important
That the
dead do not rise from their graves?
What is
Peter to her? [Peter III to Catherine II]
To the
malevolent and unruly mob?
But I want
to teach them to the laughter of sabers
To drape
that ominous skeleton with sails
And launch
it over the waterless steppes [sic!]
Like a ship
[sic], And behind it, Across the blue hillocks
We shall
move the bubbling fleet of living heads…”
And
in Bulgakov’s White Guard, as he is
describing the school building, Bulgakov writes:
“…The black windows were presenting a completest and sullenest
calm. The first glance at them made it clear that it was the calm of the dead.”
That’s
why in Master and Margarita, as the
two of them were walking over the sand, master was silent. By 1934 all his
three prototypes (Bely, Gumilev and Blok) were dead, and only the poetess
Marina Tsvetaeva was alive, which is the reason that only she is talking.
Master’s speechlessness was the calm of the dead.
And here again is Bulgakov’s
“ship” in White Guard:
“Strangely, in the center of the city amidst the disintegration,
the seething, and the bustle, there still remained a dead four-deck ship once
carrying tens of thousands of lives into the open sea…”
And
Bulgakov continues:
“…Who is now studying inside this ship [school]? And if no one –
then why?”
In
the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov is also using a “ship” as a
building where, like in White Guard,
Russian poets dwell as prototypes (In this case M. Yu. Lermontov and S. A.
Yesenin) of the hero S. L. Maksudov. [See my chapter A Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.]
“The building was asleep… Not a single window in all five stories
was lit. I understood that this was not a house but a multi-deck ship, flying
under the immovable black sky. I was entertained by the thought of movement. I
felt more at peace, and so did my cat, and she closed her eyes.”
But
the most important proof is the change in the appearance of Colonel Malyshev,
taking place right in front of the eyes of Alexei Turbin. Bulgakov writes:
“The face was strangely familiar, but as though disfigured and
distorted by something…”
And
nevertheless Bulgakov writes:
“…Having let Turbin in, and without any explanations, the figure
immediately darted from him to the cap, and squatted, with reddish-brown
reflections of light on his face. Malyshev?
Yes, Colonel Malyshev! recognized Turbin.”
But
then, to Alexei Turbin’s question: “What’s this? Finished?” – the
colonel replies laconically: “Finished,” adding ironically and calmly: “We’ve done some
warring – enough of it. And, having checked documents in his wallet, he
pulled out two pieces of paper, tore them up crosswise, and threw them into the
stove.”
Meanwhile,
Turbin is peering into the new figure of Colonel Malyshev.
“…Malyshev no longer looked like any kind of colonel. Standing in front
of Turbin was a somewhat thickset student, an amateur actor with swollen
raspberry-red lips.”
This
is no longer a portrait of V. Ya. Bryusov, who had been a revolutionary since
his student years and had even been expelled from school. On the other hand, S.
A. Yesenin had never been a revolutionary, coming from well-to-do peasant
stock. He was not a participant of either the Revolution or the Civil War. [See
my chapter The Two Adversaries.]
He
may have been slightly overweight, his portraits show somewhat swollen
raspberry-red lips. M. A. Bulgakov must have seen him in Moscow in the early
1920’s.
Bulgakov
surely found it more interesting to join these two images – Bryusov and Yesenin
– in a single personage. He shows the virility and determination of the
authoritarian Bryusov together with the passivity of Yesenin. He shows the
dramatic changes especially clearly in the following passage in the same place
in the 10th chapter of White
Guard:
“The City is taken. – Malyshev
suddenly scowled, skewed his eyes, and spoke, once again unexpectedly, not as
an amateur actor, but as Malyshev had been before [that is, as V. Ya. Bryusov].
– The HQ’s have betrayed us. We needed to
have scattered in the morning. But I fortunately, thanks to good people,
learned it all during the night and was able to disperse the division. Doctor,
this is no time for thinking, take off your shoulder straps!”
So
why does Bulgakov call Colonel Malyshev an “amateur actor”? And also why does
he provide him with a silver sword, “but, for some reasons,
thousands of lights are no longer playing on the silver toreutics”? And
whom does the “American moustache” belong to?
Bulgakov
explicitly indicates that it was an “American-style mustache.” The face of
Malyshev as though separates in two, because of the mustache. Bryusov had a
mustache, but because it had an American-style trim, this detail points to
Yesenin, who visited America, but did not have a mustache.
Bulgakov
clearly applies the tag of “amateur actor” to S. A. Yesenin, who wrote two
outstanding poems easily adaptable as theater plays. One is Pugachev, the other is Land of Scoundrels. On the strength of
these two works alone, Yesenin joins the number of poets of the Silver Age.
Hence, Malyshev’s “silver sword.”
To
be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment