The Bard.
Berlioz Is
Dead.
Kuzmin Is In
Leeches.
Long Live
Bosoy!
Posting #4.
“In the narrow room where, hanging on the wall
was an old poster illustrating in several pictures
the methods of reviving those drowned in a river,
a middle-aged unshaven man was sitting,
his eyes showing alarm.”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
In
Chapter 9 of Master and Margarita:
Koroviev’s Tricks, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy appears for the first time. This
is how Bulgakov introduces this character:
“Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, Chairman of the Housing Committee of the
Apartment Building #302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow, where the late
Berlioz used to reside, found himself in a terrible turmoil. He was besieged by
tenants because of the vacated premises, namely, the three rooms occupied by
Berlioz – study, drawing room, and dining room...
Nikanor Ivanovich was called into the apartment’s anteroom, taken
by the sleeve, whispered to, winked at, promised to make it worth his while.
This torture went on until after noon, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled from
his apartment to the office quarters near the gates. When he discovered that
they were waiting for him there too, he fled from there as well.”
To
begin with, what strikes here most is that when Bulgakov introduces M. A.
Berlioz on the first page of the novel, he writes: “M.
A. Berlioz, editor of a thick arts journal, and [!] chairman of the board of
one of the biggest literary associations in Moscow, abbreviated as Massolit.”
This
is a very important point, as in Chapter 18: The Hapless Visitors, Bulgakov draws the reader’s attention to
those selfsame “office quarters near the gates” in
the “Apartment Building #302-bis on Sadovaya Street in
Moscow... In the narrow room where, hanging on the wall was an old poster
illustrating in several pictures the methods of reviving those drowned in a
river, a middle-aged unshaven man was sitting, his eyes showing alarm.
May I see the Chairman of the
Housing Committee? –
politely inquired [Berlioz’s uncle who had just arrived from Kiev].”
I
was always struck by the fact that Bulgakov put this poster in a “narrow room.”
I understood that here is some sort of puzzle which I might never find an
answer to. However, reading Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, I realized that there
is an answer, and this answer proves my point that Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is
also a poet.
Describing
in her memoirs the “estrade” [variety stage] from which poets often recited
their verses, Marina Tsvetaeva writes:
“The estrade has its scale: merciless. The place that has no
half-measures. One against all (Scriabin being the first) or one for all (Blok
being the last), and in these two formulae is the formula of the estrade. With
all others one should stay at home entertaining acquaintances.
The estrade of the Polytechnic Museum is not an estrade. The place
where they are reciting from is the bottom of the seas. The reciter is a
drowned body (or someone who is drowning), the whole human sea is pressing on
him; or else a victim strangled by the annular movements of a boa constrictor
(the amphitheater). The audience leans heavily on the person making appearance,
whose voice is a voice de profundis of the seas, a scream for help, not that of
a winner. The one booed on stage falls through it only to the middle level of
the audience. The one booed in the Polytechnic Museum falls below anything
possible: down to Hell. You are being booed by the whole human upper layer, by
the whole of the upper level. Empyreans booing Tartarus. And not only booing.
Either it is the gravity of the chasm or the realization of the feeling of
power and levity at a height, which has a special predilection for throwing
objects. The herd feeling of impunity. – The Polytechnic Museum is an
indispensable place for herd impudence and deadly – for the author’s shyness.
The estrade of the Polytechnic Museum is merely an arena with the only difference
being that the lions and tigers are up there.”
Considering
that Bulgakov takes many ideas from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, the same can be
the case with the poster about the rescue of the drowning victims. Indeed, a
poet reciting his or her verses from the stage is, in Tsvetaeva’s opinion, a
drowning victim.
But
there is even more stunning evidence. If the office of the House Management of
the Apartment Building #302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow was a “narrow
room,” then the meeting which M. A. Berlioz, as the chairman of the board of
the Massolit, was never able to attend, was taking place in one room at the
Griboyedov House, where 12 litterateurs were crammed inside. Just like Chairman
Bosoy, Chairman Berlioz was scheduled together with these twelve others to
decide upon the housing question, as to who was to be allowed into the
available dachas [country houses].
There
is a good reason why Bulgakov gives so much attention in Chapter 5, It Happened at Griboyedov’s, to all
sorts of different rooms, and why he writes that “Massolit Chairman Berlioz had
visiting hours at Griboyedov’s.”
Also
drawing the reader’s attention is the fact that despite the multitude of rooms
in this “ancient cream-colored two-storey building...” – “having cut through the longest line imaginable, staring
downstairs in the doorman’s room, one could see the sign on the door into which
people were pressing every second, which read: Housing Question.”
And
so, both Berlioz and Bosoy were dealing with the same question, posing an acute
problem in those post-Revolution years: the Housing Question.
***
There
is yet another explanation for the poster about the rescue of the drowning.
Here is Marina Tsvetaeva’s discourse about the river, courtesy as ever
so often of her memoirs.
“”Bryusov’s antimusicality, as opposed to the external (local)
musicality of a number of his verses, – is the antimusicality of the essence,
dryland, absence of a river.”
When
she was just 17, Marina Tsvetaeva was on one occasion contrasted with the Russian
poet Max Voloshin:
“You have more river than the
riverbanks. He has more riverbanks than river.”
I
immediately remembered a poem by A. Blok from his 1908-1916 poetry collection Harps and Violins, in which Blok
describes how he writes poetry:
“Pining
and weeping and laughing,
The rivulets of my verses are
ringing
At your feet, and each verse
Runs, weaves a living lace,
Not knowing its own banks…”
And
also this poem from the 1914 poetry collection Carmen:
“You
will rise as a stormy wave
In the river of my verses,
And from my hand I’ll never
wash away
Your perfume, Carmen!”
Which
naturally leads the researcher to M. Yu. Lermontov’s Journalist, Reader, and Writer (1839):
“Writing
about what? There comes a time
When
both the mind and heart are filled,
And
rhymes, comradely like waves,
Stream
chirping, one after another,
Rushing
forth in a free sequence.
The
wondrous luminary rises
In
half-awakened soul;
And
words are stringing along like pearls
Onto
thoughts breathing with strength…”
(Hence
D. S. Merezhkovsky’s Nighttime Luminary about
Pushkin and Lermontov, and N. S. Gumilev’s 1907-1910 poetry collection Pearls.)
To
be continued…
***
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