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 19th
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 19th 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 19th 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 19th 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 18th 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…
***
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