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…

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