Alpha And Omega.
Posting #3.
“…with books smelling
of ancient mysterious chocolate …”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
I
was always struck that M. Bulgakov, taking one of the two epigraphs to his
novel White Guard from Pushkin’s
novella Captain’s Daughter, which he puts
in lowercase: Captain’s daughter, as
is standard in the Russian language, turns the title into a personal name for
the heroine Mashenka Mironova on the third page of the first chapter of White Guard:
“... the furniture in old red velvet, the bed with shiny knobs, the
worn-out carpets, multi-colored and raspberry, with a falcon on the arm of
[Tsar] Alexei Mikhailovich, with Louis XIV, relaxing on the bank of a silken
lake in the garden of paradise, … the bronze lamp under the lampshade, the best
in the world bookcases with books smelling of ancient mysterious chocolate, with
Natasha Rostova, Captain’s Daughter…”
Alongside
Natasha Rostova, from Leo Tolstoy’s War
and Peace, we do not find the expected proper name of the heroine: Mashenka
Mironova, but the title name Captain’s
daughter turned into the heroine’s proper name: Captain’s Daughter, with both nouns capitalized.
As
the reader may have noticed by now, Bulgakov does the same thing with the line “…and Captain’s Daughter will be burned in the stove,” drawing
the reader’s attention to it for a third time.
I
have already written about N. S. Gumilev’s long poem A Tram That Lost Its Way, written a year before his death. In this
poem, Gumilev clearly presents himself as the hero of Captain’s Daughter Petr Grinev, who goes to an audience with the
Empress Catherine the Great, wearing a braided plait, per the custom of
the time.
In
such a manner, Gumilev transports himself into the time of Catherine II,
following Pushkin’s advice to coif yourself according to the times you are
visiting. By the same token, Gumilev is incarnated in Grinev, lamenting his
beloved Mashenka Mironova, who was the daughter of the garrison commander Ivan
Mironov. But for some reason, instead of calling her by her proper name, like
Natasha Rostova is called, Bulgakov calls her simply as “captain’s daughter.”
Why
is it so important to Bulgakov? In order for the reader to understand the
connection with Gumilev, who was shot in 1921. (I am presently asking the
reader to find the personage in White
Guard whose prototype he happens to be.)
Bulgakov
does not build his Margarita along the lines of Natasha Rostova or Maria Mironova.
Knowing how the three poets lived their lives, he creates a childless married
woman of about 30, also portraying a younger Margarita, possibly of 19, on the
pages of his novel. (Please find this younger Margarita on the pages of
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita…)
As
I already wrote before, Bulgakov’s Margarita is very much alike the woman in White Guard who risked her life to save
the hero Alexei Turbin from imminent death.
This
woman, Yulia Alexandrovna Reise, saves the life of a man who becomes her lover.
While in Master and Margarita,
Margarita, having fallen in love with master because of his novel Pontius Pilate, which becomes her life,
dies simultaneously with master.
Bulgakov
kills both lovers but in different parts of Moscow: Margarita in her mansion
and master in a psychiatric clinic, only because Marina Tsvetaeva, in her diary
entry About Love writes that “Isolde in love with
anyone but Tristan is unthinkable.”
In
other words, this is the kind of love Marina Tsvetaeva wanted for herself and
she got such love on the pages of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.
Although
both these women, Yulia Alexandrovna Reise and Margarita, are deeply flawed, in
the scene of the poisoning Bulgakov relieves Margarita of her vice:
“Margarita was lying sticking her face into the rug. The face of
the poisoned woman was changing. Her temporary witch’s squint was disappearing
in the eyes, as well as the former cruelty and wildness of her features was
leaving them. The face of the deceased lightened up and at last softened, while
her scowl stopped being a predatory scowl, but merely a suffering woman’s
grimace. Azazello unclenched her white teeth and poured into her mouth several
drops of that same wine which he had used to poison her. Margarita sighed and
started sitting up…”
As
for Yulia Alexandrovna Reise, “she,”
as Bulgakov calls her, appears “at the precise moment
of miracle in a black mossy wall. She [sic!] had half-fallen into that wall.”
And
after her, Alexei Turbin followed “into the narrow slit
of the wicket in the wooden black [!] wall.”
Bulgakov
puts such an emphasis on the color black for a reason, as he describes his Blokian
lady-stranger [sic!]. –
“...Under the hands of the
woman in black...”
[What
a surprise! This is precisely as Bulgakov describes Margarita in her black
spring overcoat during her first meeting with master.]
“...stuck into the wall and
the latch locked. The woman’s eyes appeared close to Turbin’s eyes. He vaguely
read in them determination, action, and blackness. [!]”
It
is amazing that nobody seems to guess the Blokian Unknown in this woman. Also
coming out here are certain features of A. S. Pushkin, whom Bulgakov worships.
His hero bleeds in the small cottage of the woman-stranger, and had the wound
not been in the upper part of the arm which could be bandaged from above in the
manner Alexei Turbin, being a physician, showed his nurse, he would also have
bled to death.
It
is also amazing that the “small cottage” also points to Pushkin for those who
are familiar with his letters to his wife Natalia Goncharova, where he
describes the toy-like little cottage of Pavel Nashchokin, where the
furnishings are suitable only for spiders and flees, and only live little people
are missing.
So,
that is what Bulgakov is doing. He supplies “live little people” for his
“mysterious little cottage” in the novel White
Guard. But this is for its proper place later.
After
which, “the woman” [until now a nameless stranger] offers “cognac” to Alexei
Turbin. In Master and Margarita, cognac
is linked to A. S. Pushkin. [His poetry is indeed cognac! See my chapters Margarita’s Flight and Backenbarter.]
When
“some naked fat man wearing a black silken top hat pushed to the back of the
head” climbs onto the riverbank, Margarita sensed that the whole “river started
emitting a strong smell of cognac.”
Bulgakov
writes that the fat man was “considerably tipsy.” Considering that Bulgakov
shapes the character of Alexei Turbin after himself, making him a physician
who, like Bulgakov, served in that capacity in the White Army, I just cannot
dismiss the thought I have that with such, granted minor details, Bulgakov
likens himself to Pushkin. Per aspera ad
astra!
Thus,
if not in real life, then at least in his creative work, which Bulgakov was so
exceedingly proud of, and which was never published during his lifetime, he,
through his hero, gets closer to Pushkin’s Captain’s
Daughter, written against the background of the Pugachev Rebellion, which
thus gets him closer to the Russian Civil War in White Guard than any possible connection to L. N. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, where the background is
Napoleon’s aggression against Russia and his subsequent utter defeat.
Hence
the first epigraph to White Guard,
taken from Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter.
To
be continued…
***
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