GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXLIV

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #7.

“Rumble, New Bridge!

I hear how being born in your noise from

a charlatan father and an actress mother

 is French Comedy…”

M. Bulgakov. Molière.

A very interesting turn awaits the researcher in the 2^nd chapter of Bulgakov’s: A Tale of Two Theater Buffs. The two theater-lovers here are Jean-Baptiste Poquelin himself and his maternal grandfather Louis Cresse, who familiarized his grandson with the theater. “It turned out that both the grandfather and the grandson loved the theater immeasurably!”

Bulgakov introduces Molière’s grandfather in a very interesting fashion:

“And right here, in the light of my candles, appearing before me in the opening door is a gentleman of the bourgeois type…”

Like Molière’s father Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, he was an upholsterer too.

And it comes to mind right away that in the 22^nd chapter of Master and Margarita: With Candles, Margarita meets not just one or two, but four theater lovers who themselves wrote plays, namely, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, S. A. Yesenin, and V. V. Mayakovsky, respectively Koroviev, Kot Begemot, Azazello, and Woland. And the fifth – Marina Tsvetaeva herself.

Curiously, the Prologue in Bulgakov’s Molière with its title I Talk to the Midwife echoes the title of the first chapter of Master and Margarita: Never Talk to Strangers, and thus, there is a strong affinity between the opening titles of the two novels.

In the second chapter of Molière: A Tale of Two Theater Buffs, Bulgakov points to the presence in Master and Margarita of the Russian poet Alexander Blok, among the plays he wrote is the 1906 play Balaganchik (farce, fairground booth). This word can be found on frequent occasions in the second chapter of Molière.

Also on these pages we find a favorite word of Blok: “masks.” [See my chapter Strangers in the Night.]

And also pointing to Blok is the word “strangers, unknowns,” prominently standing out in Blok’s poetry and of course in his celebrated play The Unknown.

Also striking in this chapter is the following paragraph:

“Rumble, New Bridge! I hear how being born in your noise from a charlatan father and an actress mother is French Comedy, she screams shrilly, and her rude face is sprinkled with flour.”

Apparently, here Bulgakov has in mind the burgeoning Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, about to become Molière, and his companion for 20 years Madeleine.

So, how does that correspond to Master and Margarita? In the 26^th chapter The Burial, Bulgakov writes this:

“We shall now be always together, the vagabond philosopher was telling him in his dream. Once there is one, there is the other right there. They will remember me and immediately they will remember you! Me, a foundling, son of unknown parents, and you, son of an astrologer king and of the daughter of a miller, the beautiful Pila…”

We are reading here about Bulgakov’s creation of the subnovel Pontius Pilate within the novel of Master and Margarita.

In other words, if in the novel Molière M.A. Bulgakov writes about the “charlatan father” Molière and the “actress mother” Madeleine as the parents of the French Comedy, in the subnovel Pontius Pilate he is offering his readers this puzzle: Who of the book’s personages may be the parents of Pontius Pilate?

Pilate’s father, no matter how strange it may seem, happens to be Yeshua’s prototype the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. He is chosen by Bulgakov as the “astrologer king.” He is a “king” because he is a poet. The idea that all poets are kings comes to all significant poets of the Silver Age from A. S. Pushkin:

“Poet – you are tsar!”

In his poetry, Blok turns the tsar into the king. And so it goes. Why astrologer? Bulgakov takes it from two sources.

To begin with, it is Blok’s play The Unknown, which is featured in my posted chapter Blok’s The Unknown, but also in my not yet posted chapter The Magus, on account of its deep mysticism. In this play, Blok features three main masculine personages: Poet, Blue, and Stargazer [astrologer]. This is how Bulgakov gets his “astrologer king.”

Why does the title “astrologer king” elude Blok?

Blok liked to write about the stars, but Gumilev loved the stars, knew them, and apparently was a dedicated student of astronomy. He also knew the legends behind the stars and constellations. It was an amazing experience for me to read Gumilev’s musings about the nightly sky in his Notes of a Cavalryman:

“…Sometimes we stayed in the forest for the whole night. Then, lying on my back, I was looking at the countless, clear on account of frost stars for hours, entertained by joining them in my imagination by golden threads. Then I started discerning, as though on a woven golden carpet, various emblems, swords, crosses, chalices, in incomprehensible to me, but filled with non-human meaning combinations. Eventually, clearly outlined were the celestial beasts. I saw how the Big Bear, bringing down her muzzle, was sniffing out some creature’s track, how the Scorpio was moving its tail, figuring out whom to sting. For a very short while I was overcome by an inexpressible fear that should they look down and notice our Earth, it may turn into a massive chunk of matted-white ice and fly in a complete disregard of all established orbits, infecting all other worlds with its dread.

At this point I would usually in a whisper ask the soldier next to me for makhorka, roll myself a cigarette, and with great pleasure smoke it hidden inside my hands: smoking it in any different manner would allow the enemy to make out our position.”

Isn’t it true that although Gumilev is writing these lines about the nightly sky in prose, they come out mysteriously poetic?

I’d like to offer the reader a Gumilev poem from the poetry collection Romantic Flowers, which I am analyzing elsewhere. (See my chapter The Garden. Gumilev.) The title of the poem is In The Skies:

“The days shone brighter than gold

And the she-bear night was fleeing,

Catch her, Prince, catch her now,

Tether her and tie her to your saddle…

And then in the blue marquee

You will point out the she-bear night

To your Warrior-Dog.

The dog bites in a deadly hold,

He is brave, strong, and cunning,

He has carried his beastly hatred for bears

From times immemorial…”

The she-bear here is obviously the celestial constellation Ursa Maior. And who is the Prince? He is certainly another constellation: Orion the Hunter.

Same thing about the Warrior Dog: Canis Maior.

Bulgakov takes this Warrior-Dog from Gumilev and passes him on to Pontius Pilate as Banga, the Procurator’s fear-inspiring giant dog. Even the intrepid and invincible giant of a man Mark Ratkiller is afraid of Banga.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXLIII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #6.

“On the stage behind the tulips, where the king of waltzes’ orchestra had been playing, a raving-mad monkey jazz was raising hell. A huge gorilla adorned with a pair of shaggy side whiskers, with a trumpet in hand, was conducting, heavily dancing to the rhythm. In one row there sat orangutans and blew into sparkling trumpets. On their shoulders nested chimpanzees with harmonicas. Two gamadrils with manes like lion’s were playing the grand pianos, and these pianos could not be heard behind the thunder, and the peep, and the thumping of the saxophones, violins, and drums in the paws of the gibbons, mandrills, and the monkeys.”

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

After the 19^th chapter of Molière: The School of Dramaturgy, of great importance both to the researcher of Bulgakov and to the beginning writer, I am returning to the normal sequence of the chapters in the novel Molière, beginning with the 1^st chapter In The Monkey House.

The study of these chapters will help establish the influence of Bulgakov’s novel Molière written in 1932-1933 on the work of his life, the novel Master and Margarita.

In the very first paragraph we read that Molière’s father belonged to the Shop of the Upholsterers, and was himself “an upholsterer and furniture merchant.”

And on the next page Bulgakov, while describing Molière’s father’s business, draws the reader’s attention with the following words:

“He was the Court Upholsterer and Draper... There were rumors that aside from selling armchairs [sic!] and drapes, he was in the business of lending money at considerable interest… The whole day long people were crowding into his shop to choose carpets [sic!] and drapes…”

The theme of the “armchair” is very significant in Master and Margarita and I am treating it with utmost seriousness in every chapter where this piece of furniture comes up. But in this case added to the furniture are not only drapes, but carpets as well.

In the 26^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Burial, Afranius goes to the Lower Town, to the area known as the Greek Street, where a number of Greek-owned shops were located, including a shop that sold carpets. Focusing on this fact, Bulgakov finds it necessary to repeat these words, as he describes a night at the Garden of Gethsemane, where Niza has just invited Judas to listen to the nightingales. –

“...In a few minutes Judas was already running under the mysterious shadow [sic!] of sprawling giant olives. The road was rising up the hill. Judas was breathing heavily, at times getting out of darkness into the intricate lunar carpets, reminding him of the carpets he had seen in the shop of Niza’s jealous husband…”

As the reader must surely remember, Niza’s prototype is none other than the Russian poetess M. Tsvetaeva, see my chapter The Garden. As for the prototype of Judas, see my chapter The Guests at Satan’s Great Ball.

What remains to be explained is the title of the 1^st chapter of Bulgakov’s Molière: In The Monkey House.

“On the corners of the three-story building [where Molière was growing up, the 15^th-century architect] had placed wooden sculptural images of orange trees with carefully trimmed branches. In a chain along these trees stretch out little monkeys picking off the fruit. In the sunset of his years, while contemplating his own coat of arms, [Molière] depicted in it his long-tailed friends guarding his family home.”

In the 28^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot, Bulgakov replaces oranges with tangerines in a foreign currency store in Moscow. –

“The fatso [a manifestation of Kot Begemot] took possession of the top tangerine in the pyramid, and, having swallowed it at once, skin and all, attacked a second one. Then he swallowed a third one, paying for none.”

As for the monkeys, the reader knows already that their first appearance takes place earlier, in the 23^rd chapter of Master and Margarita: The Great Ball at Satan’s. Bulgakov writes:

“…And Margarita once again flew out of the room with the swimming pool. On the stage, behind the tulips, where earlier the King of the Waltzes’ orchestra had been playing, an ape jazz was raising hell. A huge gorilla adorned with a pair of shaggy side whiskers, with a trumpet in hand, was conducting, heavily dancing to the rhythm. In one row were sitting orangutans and blowing into sparkling trumpets. On their shoulders nested chimpanzees with harmonicas. Two gamadrils with manes like a lion’s were playing the grand pianos, and these pianos could not be heard behind the thunder, and the peep, and the thumping of the saxophones, violins, and drums in the paws of the gibbons, mandrills, and the monkeys.” [See my chapter Woland in Disguise.]

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXLII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #5.

What remains in this Prologue to Bulgakov’s novel Molière (this is the title under which he offered it to BVL), is the description of the bronze monument to Molière.

It is amazing that Bulgakov includes this too into the scene with the “intricate” song of the fountain. –

“Having taken the prisoner from under the colonnade into the garden, Ratkiller took a whip from the legionnaire standing at the foot of the bronze statue and with a slight sweep lashed the prisoner’s shoulders.”

The “bronze statue” here indicates that Yeshua’s prototype was writing plays. And indeed, N. S. Gumilev wrote six plays, among his other works.

And in the novel Molière Bulgakov writes:

“Here he is – the sly and charming Gaul, Royal comedian and playwright. Here he is, in a bronze wig and with bronze bows on his shoes. Here he is, the king of French Dramaturgy!”

And immediately, starting the next paragraph, Bulgakov adds: “Ah, Madame!” This is how he is addressing the imaginary midwife, pointing to the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva who serves not only as the prototype of his principal heroine Margarita, but as his immense source of material contained in her precious memoirs of her contemporaries Bryusov, Bely, Balmont, Mandelstam and others, as well as a very interesting work of hers to which she gave the title My Pushkin. This work tells the story of her “acquaintanceship” with A. S. Pushkin and gives us some details of her childhood. Without Marina Tsvetaeva it is virtually impossible to imagine the novel Master and Margarita.

And how does Bulgakov reward his Psychê for her generous gifts to him? Let us open Chapter 13 of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero:

“She entered the gate just once, but prior to this I experienced no less than ten heart palpitations. And then when her hour would come and the hand of the clock showed midday, [the heart] would never stop pounding until without a noise, almost silently, the shoes with black suede bows, tied by steel buckles, would come level with the window.”

Bulgakov rewards Marina Tsvetaeva through Margarita by giving her Molière’s buckled shoes. And also by the words: “Ah, Madame!” which follow the words: “Here he is – the king of French Dramaturgy!” Bulgakov is giving another explanation why he calls Margarita a “French Queen.” In terms of Bulgakov’s creative work, Marina Tsvetaeva is a Queen. Aside from poetry and her memoirs of contemporaries, she was writing plays. So, here is the answer to Margarita’s question:

“Why of Royal blood? – whispered a frightened Margarita, pressing herself to Koroviev.”

In the process of dealing with this matter, it must be noted that Bulgakov is thus confounding the researcher with all this French drivel, while providing real clues along the way from his Molière to Master and Margarita.

***

It is just one step from Margarita to master for the researcher in the packed 19^th chapter of Molière: School of Dramaturgy.

Having dedicated his play School of Wives to Henrietta of England and thus taking a “clever step” Bulgakov sees it as a fateful mistake on the part of Molière.

“Having forgotten that a writer must never enter any arguments in print about his creations, Molière, driven to consternation, decided to attack his enemies.”

This is where Bulgakov takes his idea from to set the publishers, editors and critics upon master’s manuscript of Pontius Pilate, submitted by him to M. A. Berlioz.

If Molière, in Bulgakov’s opinion, made a huge mistake, entering “arguments in print about his creations,” master’s fateful mistake was to take his manuscript on Margarita’s advice to a totally antagonistic editor who, without any intent to even consider it for publication, forwarded it to an equally antagonistic group of critics – Latunsky, Ahriman, and Lavrovich – who ganged up on master, dragging him through hell in newspapers.

Strange as it may seem, M. Bulgakov, in the same 19^th chapter of Molière: School of Dramaturgy, raises the subject of religion. After the astounding success of Molière’s School of Wives, a certain minor author De Vizet came up with his own play titled Critique of the School of Wives.

On close examination this play turned out to be a bunch of nonsense, and nobody wanted to stage it in a theater.

“De Vizet limited himself to printing his work and spreading it around Paris. As it turned out, this play was not so much a critique as a denunciation [sic!] plain and simple.”

In Master and Margarita the role of the denouncer is played by “the editor” [M. A. Berlioz].

As master submits his manuscript of the novel Pontius Pilate to the editor, a barrage of sheer vituperation follows, courtesy of three scumbags who use such expressions as “an enemy sortie,” warning the reader that this novel is “an attempt to sneak into print an apology of Jesus Christ.”

“One day the hero opened a newspaper and saw in it the critic Ahriman’s article Enemy Sortie, where [Ahriman] warned each and all that our hero wished to sneak into print “an apology of Jesus Christ.” … The next day, in another newspaper, under the signature of Mstislav Lavrovich, another article appeared, in which the author proposed to hit, and hit hard against Pilatism, and against that God-painting hack who fancied to sneak it into print...”

Bulgakov writes that “the works of Ahriman and Lavrovich could be considered a joke in comparison with the article written by Latunsky, titled Militant Old-Believer…”

All that barrage of denunciations was an explicit call to arrest and exile master. By now, the reader already knows that the subject of discussion here is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. As I already wrote, in the 19^th chapter of Molière Bulgakov uses the word “denunciation.” I’ve already written in my chapter Mr. Lastochkin that Gumilev enters the character of master in a big way. For instance, he was “master” in the organization he himself created, known as the “Poets’ Shop.” He was the poet who  was arrested, but rather than exiled, executed in August 1921.

Bulgakov very skillfully ties this in the 19^th chapter of Molière: School of Dramaturgy with the denunciation of Molière himself. –

“De Vizet reported that the ten ancient admonitions in verse which Arnolf, intending to enter into marriage, reads to Agnes are nothing else but a distinct parody of the Lord’s Ten Commandments.”

Explaining what happened after that, Bulgakov points directly to Gumilev.

Having given ten admonitions to his wife, Arnolf “starts with the eleventh.”–

“He begins – the actors were telling Molière quietly – but he does not say a single word except: Rule Eleven, so that what one remembers, dear master, is that there are precisely ten of them.”

Had anyone asked Bulgakov why he is using the word “master” here, he would undoubtedly have said that Jean-Baptiste Molière was a master of his trade.

And so, in some way, master’s story about Pontius Pilate, which he tells the poet Ivan Bezdomny in Dr. Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic, corresponds to Molière himself fighting mediocre writers of his own time.

By the end of this “wretched year 1663,” Molière was sullied by a “formal denunciation of him to the king.” This second denunciation also corresponds to what happened to Gumilev. In my chapter Veiled Guests at Satan’s Great Ball the researcher will get my answer as to who it was.

In this chapter Bulgakov also demonstrates to the researcher how one can play with names. In De Vizet’s Critique of the School of Wives there appears a certain “Elomir.” Rearrange these letters in the Russian language, and you will get the name “Molière.”

Remarkable that right before this passage, Bulgakov poses his own puzzle to the researcher:

“Edm Burso, also a litterateur and a passionate detractor of Molière.”

An answer to this puzzle can be found in the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, closing the first part of Bulgakov’s novel. My own answer is given in my extraordinary chapter The Bard (Subchapter Barbarian at the Gate).

My advice to the researcher is not to be caught in Bulgakov’s trap when he is having a good time playing with this surname:

“But you cannot really distort another person’s name from the stage: Br... Bru… Broso... and call Burso a lousy writer.”

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXLI

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #4.

“The water was still playing its intricate and pleasant song in the fountain…”

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

(Continued from the previous posting.)

So what fits the French King Louis XIV here? It is the old French expression stating that with the death of a preceding monarch the next in line immediately becomes king. On the one hand, there is a pragmatic statement of continuity of power here. On the other hand, each king in the chain of succession becomes a carrier of the mystical gene of royal immortality, and thus becomes immortal in that figurative sense.

But no matter what, nobody can ever dethrone the sly and charming comedian and playwright… Molière was the trailblazer, the subsequent generations learned from him, imitated him, staged his works. The future generations will undoubtedly be doing the same.

Describing the monument to Molière in Paris, “where [three streets] meet at a sharp angle: Rue Richelieu, Rue Therese, and Rue Molière,” Bulgakov focuses his attention on the “dried-up bowl of the fountain.”

This fountain bowl is present already in Bulgakov’s first novel White Guard.

On the day when Petlura’s troops entered Kiev, there was a gathering of people on the city’s main square to listen to and to see Petlura.

“Above the buzzing crowd, onto the frozen slippery bowl of the fountain, people’s hands raised a man… The raised man glanced inspiredly over the thousands-strong thicket of heads, somewhere where ever more clearly the sun disk was climbing up, gilding the crosses with thick red gold. He waved up his hand and in a weak voice shouted: ‘To the people—glory!’ … ‘Glory to the people!’ repeated the man, and instantly a strand of blond hair jumped and fell on his forehead... The voice of the radiant man grew strong and could be heard clearly through the roar and the crackle of feet … through distant drums. The radiant man pointed to the sun with a certain terrible anguish, yet at the same time with a determination…’Like the Cossacks sang: The Sergeants are with us, with us, like with brothers. With us! With us they are!’ [He was speaking to the crowd in Ukrainian.] With his hat, the man struck his chest, which was flaming with an enormous wave of a red bow. ‘With us because these sergeants are with the people, they were born with them and will die with them.’”

M. Bulgakov calls this man “radiant,” which means a man of the future. The words describing the bowl of the mountain as “frozen” and “slippery” indicate that the road of this man and of all those who would follow him, was hard and dangerous.

As for the bowl of Molière’s Fountain, it is “dried-up,” which means that Molière has long been dead and is no longer creating new plays. Bulgakov here compares Molière’s dried-up fountain of creativity to a dried-up inkstand.

In the novel Master and Margarita the word “fountain” appears 5 times already in the 2^nd chapter Pontius Pilate, but the “fountain bowl” comes up only once:

“The wings of the swallow sniffled right over the head of the igemon; the bird rushed toward the bowl of the fountain and flew out, to freedom. The procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw a burning pillar of dust near him.”

Only in Master and Margarita do we find a “bowl of the fountain” and a “burning pillar of dust.” As I already explained in an earlier chapter, Bulgakov is using M. Yu. Lermontov here. And thus, the fountain bowl also represents immortality. Considering that the reader already knows that the prototype of Yeshua is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev, the fountain bowl belongs to him, which is indicated by Bulgakov’s use of the word “swallow” [“Lastochka” as in “Mr. Lastochkin”].

In the 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita: A Troublesome Day Bulgakov introduces a new personage who appears just once in his novel and is also missing from the Epilogue, where we learn the outcomes of Woland-related adventures for most of the novel’s dramatis personarum.

His name is Vasili Stepanovich Lastochkin. Bulgakov keeps only the patronymic of his prototype who is of course Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev.

As for the Epilogue, Gumilev comes up only indirectly there through the use of the word “hypnotizers,” which Gumilev used to describe poets. [See my chapter Mr. Lastochkin.] Bulgakov takes it from Gumilev’s articles of literary criticism.

Bulgakov writes about immortality in the 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate.

“...The same inexplicable anguish that had already visited him on the balcony had now pierced all his being. It seemed to the procurator that he had left something unsaid with the condemned man, and, perhaps, even something unlistened to. Pilate chased this thought away and it flew away instantly, like it had flown in to him. It flew away, but the anguish remained unexplained, for it could not be explained by some kind of another short thought that flashed like lightning and went out right away: ‘Immortality, Immortality has come, immortality…’ Whose immortality has come? This is what the procurator didn’t understand, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him freeze in the scorching sun.”

As the researcher and the reader already know, the story splits onto a dual track. Alongside a historical (or rather, quasihistorical) story of Pontius Pilate and Christ, another allegorical-historical story is developing at the same time. It is a story of the Russian poet Valery Bryusov, as Pontius Pilate, and the Russian poet Nikolai Gumilev, as the prototype of Yeshua. Apparently, Bryusov was unsuccessful in his effort to help Gumilev, in spite of an apparent effort to seek help through Maxim Gorky, the reigning Prince of Russian literature, who hurried to see Lenin in Moscow, but was too late to save the poet from execution. In the following passage from Master and Margarita, observe the reference to Caesar’s residence in Capraea, reminding us of Gorky’s erstwhile residence on the Italian Island of Capri.

“Oh no! – exclaimed Pilate. – It wasn’t necessary to choose words. It is only too obvious that you were complaining to Caesar about me. But now my time has come, Caiaphas! Now will my message fly – and not to the Viceroy in Antiochia, and not to Rome, but straight to Capraea – to the Emperor himself. Message about how you are releasing from capital punishment known rebels in Yershalaim...”

It is amazing how Bulgakov has thought everything out, combining two stories into one of Christ and Gumilev. A master indeed, and of the highest order!

And so, immortality in Bulgakov passes on from Molière to Gumilev, and not only for Gumilev’s creative work, which by the time of his death included collections of poetry, prosaic fiction, and plays, plus for his priceless non-fiction work, including his diaries of actual experiences and articles of literary criticism, but also for his personal bravery and steadfastness during the last hours and minutes of his life. Like Bulgakov’s Yeshua, Gumilev was fearless, truthful, and “childlike,” according to the people who knew him. In a word, he radiated innocence and was alien to falsehood both in his thinking and in his conduct.

As for Gumilev’s “fountain bowl,” Bulgakov puts it this way:

“The water was still playing its intricate and pleasant song in the fountain…”

The word “intricate” is used by Bulgakov to indicate that the Pontius Pilate story is far too complex for a straightforward reading. Hidden inside it is the tragic story of the great Russian poet executed in 1921.

It is also not only a story of N. Gumilev’s immortality, but of the immortality of the man writing about it – M. A. Bulgakov.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXL

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #3.

“Let Us Be Like the Sun!”

K. D. Balmont.

M. A. Bulgakov’s novel Molière opens with a Prologue under the title I Talk to the Midwife. And it’s already a score!

The title of the 1^st chapter of Master and Margarita is Never Talk to Strangers.

Bulgakov starts Molière in a very lively manner, and throughout the whole novel one feels that in it are contained his own reminiscences of the Caucasus where he found himself together with the White Army working as a surgeon/physician during the Russian Civil War. Stuck in the Caucasus after the evacuation of the Whites, he started writing and staging plays, as a means of earning his living. His wife Tatiana Lappa was selling tickets and also participated with her husband in the performance of his plays. Curiously, all these plays were burned by Bulgakov before his move to Moscow.

Thus Bulgakov must have felt an affinity with the great Molière through their shared humble beginnings, associated with humiliating circumstances, and also a rejection of the life that seemed to have been destined for them. Molière was born in the family of an upholsterer, whereas Bulgakov studied to be a medical doctor. Neither of them was interested in their prospective professions.

Thus already on the second page of the Prologue to Molière we come across some very important information supporting my own thought that there is a good reason why already in the 1^st chapter Bulgakov writes about the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (the 2nd Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, ruled 1645-1676).

This is a very important historical fact. The point is that present at the performance of Molière’s 2^nd play in 1668 in Paris was the Ambassador of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to France – Petr Ivanovich Potemkin. (I am writing about his famous relative in my chapter A Dress Rehearsal For Master and Margarita [The Theatrical Novel].)

Interestingly, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was also a contemporary of Bogdan Khmelnitsky whose monument, erected in 1888 on the original suggestion of the Russian historian Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (1817-1885), whom I am often quoting in the history sections of my work, is one of Kiev’s most distinguished landmarks.

Hetman Khmelnitsky liberated Ukrainian lands under Polish occupation and reunited them with Russia.

At the same time in France it was the long reign of King Louis XIV (1643-1715), the Sun-King in whose honor the Russian poet of French descent K. D. Balmont gave one of his poetry cycles the title Let Us Be Like The Sun.

And so, the great Molière lived during the time of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. (See my chapter Diaboliada where I am providing a historical note on the “three falcons of Alexei Mikhailovich.”)

In his very lively imaginary conversation with the midwife who delivered Molière, Bulgakov tells her about the future of the baby she has just delivered. A very interesting literary device! –

“This baby will be better known than the now reigning king Louis XIII and will become more famous than the next king [Louis XIV, the Sun-King].”

Some very serious things are contained in this Bulgakovian Prologue, which even a professional researcher can easily miss.

1.      To begin with, one must not forget that Bulgakov’s conversation with the midwife is surreal, considering that Molière died in 1673, while Bulgakov predicts the baby’s future in 1932. It is a very interesting device to insert yourself into a distant past!

2.      Secondly, as for the actor Du Parc, who, according to Bulgakov, weeping, exclaims upon Molière’s death: “Oh, to lose the only one whom I’ve ever loved!” – he, incidentally, had no longer been alive at the time. This is an even more amazing situation, considering that a dead person speaks at the funeral of another person, as though alive.

3.      Thirdly, Bulgakov as though piles on all this surreality with a message of his own, a man of the twentieth century:

“But you, my poor, blood-drenched master! You never wanted to die anywhere – either at home or outside your home!”

Here we already have a direct link between a distant past (Molière’s death) and a recent event. So, who is the subject of that recent event, if not Bulgakov’s tragic contemporary, master’s prototype (one of the three), the Russian poet of the Silver Age N. S. Gumilev, executed by a firing squad in 1921. Throughout the book, Bulgakov keeps calling Molière “master.”

As Bulgakov calls his principal hero “master” in Master and Margarita, without giving him any other name, we are left with the reasonable conclusion that in the novel Molière we are getting a hint regarding one of master’s prototypes. Molière being a playwright, that man must also have written plays. Bulgakov uses three Russian poets in the portrait of master: Blok, Bely and Gumilev. Of these three Blok wrote plays, and so did Gumilev. The scale weighs heavier toward Gumilev because in 1911 in St. Petersburg he organized the so-called Shop of Poets, and became one of its three “masters.”

But obviously, aside from the direct connection to the Shop of Poets, Bulgakov uses the word “master” in a broader sense. What it means to Bulgakov is that the specific writer, poet, playwright, or music composer, etc., has reached a state of artistic perfection in his or her field.

4.      Fourthly, aside from George Sand, Bulgakov writes about the Russian writer V. R. Zotov, who also wrote a play about Molière. In this play, King Louis XIV himself visits Molière, to check on his health condition. –

“The Prince, running toward Louis, exclaims: Your Majesty! Molière is dead. And Louis takes off his hat, saying: Molière is immortal!”

As for Bulgakov himself, he is using it in the 28^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot. Having come for cold beer to the restaurant at the Griboyedov House of Writers, Koroviev and Begemot are stopped at the entrance to the restaurant because neither of them has an ID to gain them admission. (See my chapter Kot Begemot.)

When Koroviev says that Dostoyevsky can have no such ID, the woman at the desk replies:

“You are not Dostoyevsky.

Who knows, who knows? – replied the other.

Dostoyevsky is dead! – said the woman, but somewhat hesitantly. [And here it comes. –]

I protest! – ardently exclaimed Begemot. – Dostoyevsky is immortal!

[The woman is still demanding some kind of identification.]

Have mercy, this is, after all, ludicrous! – Koroviev wasn’t giving up. – A writer isn’t determined by an ID, but by what he writes!”

It is an amazing occurrence, but in the Prologue: I am Talking to the Midwife, Bulgakov does the same thing. He completely demolishes Zotov’s version, observing that “he who rules the earth would never take off his hat before anybody, except the ladies, nor would he visit the dying Molière, like no prince would ever do. He who rules the earth would consider only himself immortal, but in this, I believe, was mistaken.”

And so, Bulgakov yet again confirms that “real immortality” comes to a person only through his or her works.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXXXIX

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #2.

“Great was the year and frightful,

the Year of Our Lord 1918^th,

and from the Start of the Revolution the 2^nd.”

M. Bulgakov. White Guard,

In the case of Molière, M. Bulgakov uses his own work commissioned by BVL: Library of World Literature, the publishing entity founded by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, which is, so to say, “where the dog is buried.”

Retelling Molière  in his own words, Bulgakov uses his idea in another work and in his own way. For instance, in the 19^th chapter of Molière: School of Dramaturgy, Bulgakov writes:

“The servant Alain, sermonizing to the housemaid Georgette, compares a wife to soup, which is meant for the husband.”

And in his last work A Theatrical Novel, which Bulgakov wrote shortly before death, and which I am rightfully calling A Dress Rehearsal For Master And Margarita [See my posted chapter under this title], Bulgakov already in Chapter 6: Catastrophe has the following passage, corresponding to the passage from Molière  quoted above:

“Vasili Petrovich, either in my dream or in reality, lodged himself in my room, but the real horror was in the fact that he was pouring himself brandy, but I was the one who was drinking it.”

We need to note here that in this 6^th chapter Catastrophe of his Theatrical Novel Bulgakov points to Molière , but indirectly, passing over to the French theme:

“Paris had become truly unbearable. Grand Opera, and someone in it is showing the fig: shows it and puts it away, again shows it and puts it away.”

When Marina Tsvetaeva is reluctant to describe something, she uses her little daughter Alya or somebody else to do it. Bulgakov uses his personages, like in this case Sergei Leontievich Maksudov, the main character of the Theatrical Novel, who has fallen ill with a fever and has become delirious. –

“For several days I was swimming in fever, then the temperature fell. I stopped seeing Champs-Elysees, and nobody spat on a bonnet, and Paris wasn’t stretched for a hundred miles...”

There is an even subtler indication pointing to Molière. If in the chapter School of Dramaturgy M. A. Bulgakov writes about “a wife and soup,” in the Theatrical Novel he writes this:

“I was hungry, and the good neighbor, master’s wife [sic], made me bouillon…”

This passage may be interpreted by both the reader and the researcher according to the measure of their wickedness.

Bulgakov very skillfully teaches the researcher of his works how the beginning writer ought to be trained. Although he “advises” beginning writers to dedicate their works to persons of importance like Molière did it himself, dedicating his School of Wives to the wife of his patron, brother of the king, Princess Henrietta of England. “In his dedication, Molière poured upon the Princess a whole bucket of flattery. A clever, let me put it straight, clever move!”

During his life as a writer, M. Bulgakov wrote only one dedication. He dedicated his novel White Guard to his second wife Lyubov Belozerskaya. There were also two epigraphs to this novel. One from A. S. Pushkin’s novella Captain’s Daughter, written against the backdrop of the Pugachev rebellion. The other epigraph comes from Revelation 20.

In such a way Bulgakov compares his first novel to Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter, considering that in both cases the subject is Russian civil war.

If there is another work of this kind, it is L. N. Tolstoy’s Sebastopol Stories (rather than his War and Peace). As in Chapter 7 of White Guard Bulgakov writes:

“The night is important, a military night. Out of Mme. Anjou’s windows emanate beams of light. The beams illuminate ladies’ bonnets, and corsets, and pantaloons, and guns of Sebastopol. And there walks back and forth the pendulum-junker, drawing an Imperial Monogram with his bayonet...”

In this fashion, Bulgakov compares the  war in Ukraine which the White forces lost with the Crimean War of 1853-1856 in which the British and the French joined forces with the Ottomans against Russia, and the Russians lost. It was precisely in the Crimean War where Count Lev N. Tolstoy served as Lieutenant, and wrote his Sebastopol Stories. At the time when the Russians fought Napoleon in 1812, Count L. Tolstoy had not been born.

In Chapter 14 of White Guard, M. Bulgakov opens a card game with a mention of L. N. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but I am writing about this in another, upcoming fascinating chapter Alpha and Omega.

Bulgakov’s White Guard starts solemnly. –

“Great was the year and frightful, the Year of Our Lord 1918^th, and from the Start of the Revolution the 2^nd.”

This opening sentence shows a great affinity between Bulgakov’s thinking and that of the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, who writes in her memoirs:

“I shall not leave you! Only God can say that, or a muzhik with a hammer in Moscow in the winter of 1918.”

So why does Bulgakov make such an emphasis on the number 19 in Master and Margarita? The second part of the novel starts with Chapter 19, which is titled Margarita. On the very first page of this chapter, Bulgakov draws the researcher’s attention by the following phrase:

“Since she was married at the age of 19 and got into the mansion, she had known no happiness.”

Yet again Bulgakov points to the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, for whom the year 1919 was even worse than 1918. In her 1923 diary entry, when she was already living in Europe, Marina Tsvetaeva put the question somewhat differently:

“What kind of person must one be, who then, in 1919 in Moscow, having known me, having seen my children, would be asking a question like that?!”

What was the question?

“So, how is everything with you? All is well?”

There was a terrible famine in 1919 all across RSFSR, including the capital city of Moscow. This is how Marina Tsvetaeva writes about it in 1919:

“…One is unaccustomed to being hungry, when someone else is well-fed. Correctness in me is stronger than hunger, even my children’s hunger. So how are you? Got everything you need? Yes, thank God, so far.”

During one of such “famines” Marina Tsvetaeva’s second daughter died.

This is why Bulgakov picks this year for Marina Tsvetaeva. 1919. Twice the number 19. The chapter Margarita is #19, and 19 is her age at the time of her marriage.

Marvelous!

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCXXXVIII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #1.

“Let the invective of your enviers

Flow like a muddy river.

Your charming comedy

Will pass into the future ages.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux.

This chapter is going to answer many questions connected to M. Bulgakov’s evolution as a writer. When I began reading Bulgakov, my starting point was his essays and sketches, followed by his novellas, short stories, and plays, eventually coming to the work of his life: the novel Master and Margarita. Having already acquired a certain understanding of Bulgakov’s manner of writing and of the writer’s character from his works, I was nevertheless stunned by the novel’s ending. As I was reading Master and Margarita, I saw it as a mystical, rather than fantastical, novel. By that time I had already read his short story Cockroach and his novella Diaboliada, to which I was secretly drawn for some reason that I could not explain even to myself...

Until I discovered in the character of V. P. Korotkov a great Russian poet who tragically lost his life in 1921 in the Revolutionary Petrograd. The poet’s name was Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev.

I was struck by the fact that even before I had the Korotkov-Gumilev connection, I portrayed this personage to myself as a Russian military officer. Imagine my joy then as I found out that already in 1923, that is, two years after Gumilev’s execution, Bulgakov depicted in the personage of V. P. Korotkov this very interesting Russian poet, incidentally, a highly decorated army volunteer in World War I. [See my chapter Mr. Lastochkin.]

Both these works of Bulgakov – Cockroach and Diaboliada – are mystical works.

Which is why I saw Koroviev’s transformation into the Dark-Violet Knight as a mystical act. And indeed, as I wrote on several occasions before, inside the novel Master and Margarita, alongside the spy novel and the psychological thriller, there exists a “mystical novel” which is mistaken by the reading public for a fantastical novel.

I read Bulgakov’s Molière already after I read the Theatrical Novel, which, as the reader may remember, I saw as a Dress Rehearsal For Master And Margarita. Rereading and noting the most interesting places, I realized that Bulgakov knew the plays of this amazing sorcerer very well. I don’t know whether it was BVL who offered Bulgakov to write a biography of Molière for them, or when they approached him, it was he who made this offer, but I know that already in his 1923 novel White Guard about the Russian Civil War, and already on the 2^nd page, Bulgakov skillfully hides Molière in the form of “furniture upholstered in old red velvet and a bed with shiny knobs, worn-out rugs...”

And behind the hidden Molière there appear the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Louis XIV, the Sun-King of France, who was a sort of patron of the French playwright.

Also pointing to Molière are “the best in the world bookcases with books smelling of ancient mysterious chocolate.” –

“…Here is this clay plate, and the furniture in old red velvet, and 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…”

In other words, in this passage Bulgakov places Molière alongside the Russian writer L. Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, and A. S. Pushkin, the author of Captain’s Daughter, a novella about Pugachev’s Rebellion.

The last two works are connected to Bulgakov’s novel White Guard, although in the case of L. N. Tolstoy I would rather pick his Sebastopol Stories, as they relate to war.

Tolstoy was an artillery officer, like my father Petr Sergeevich Sedov and like my husband’s father Artem Fedorovich Sergeev-Artem, in World War II.

My father was in Brest when the war started, after which he served until the end, having entered Europe through Hungary.

Having established that Bulgakov had a special interest in Molière even before he started writing his first work White Guard, I decided to study Bulgakov’s Molière in order to find the connection between this novel and Master and Margarita. in order to make it more comprehensible both to the researcher and the reader, I begin with the 19^th chapter of Molière: School of Dramaturgy.

Only after that shall I follow the book order, starting with the Prologue.

I’ve been wondering why Bulgakov titled this chapter 19: School of Dramaturgy? It seems at first sight that everything is already clear on the first page of this chapter, where Bulgakov writes that after Easter 1662 the theatrical season “was going quietly.” The only play enlivening the season was Molière ’s School of Husbands. This is probably why Molière  had the thought of writing a 5-act play School of Wives for the Christmas season in December.

And here Bulgakov throws a bone to the researcher, and what a bone it is! Bulgakov writes:

“School of Wives, like the School of Husbands was written in defense of women and their right of choice in their love.”

So it seems to be here that the researcher receives a juicy marrow bone for his research. Chapter 19 in the novel Master and Margarita is titled Margarita, and it is here that Bulgakov writes the following words about his heroine in enumerating the perks she had received through marriage to her VIP husband:

“...She never experienced a want of money... She could buy anything she liked and never touched a primus [she had a cook and a housemaid]. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, and adored his wife.”

And yet she was never happy, “not for a single minute since her marriage at the age of 19 had she known happiness...”

Bulgakov has a very simple explanation for this. Margarita did not love her husband:

“She was obviously telling the truth. She needed him, master, and not a gothic mansion or a separate garden, and not money. She loved him, she was telling the truth.”

And indeed, Bulgakov portrays Margarita Molière -style, that is, defending her right of choosing whom to love. She had made a mistake before and now she wants to correct it.

This example makes it clear why Bulgakov gave the 19^th chapter of his Molière  the title School of Dramaturgy. This title echoes the titles of two plays of Molière  himself: School of Husbands and School of Wives. And here the themes of Bulgakov’s 19^th chapter of Molière  and the 19^th chapter of Master and Margarita coincide.

But this is only the beginning. As a matter of fact, the “sly” Bulgakov – through his title School of Dramaturgy – wants to show the researcher how he, Bulgakov, studied how to write his plays, using as his teachers such greats as Molière and Shakespeare. I have already written on several occasions how he used for the same purpose the poetry of Russian poets who would become prototypes of the personages of his works.

To be continued…

***