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 2nd 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 19th 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 19th 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 19th chapter of Molière
and the 19th 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…
***
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