Alpha And Omega.
Posting #37.
“Petronie, you are
grimacing, may I be hanged!”
N. Gumilev. The
Prodigal Son.
Introducing
the scene with the hetman’s change of dress and his transformation into the
fictitious German Major von Schratt, and also pointing to the mysteriousness of
the Major (the reader is by then well aware that the real identity of the
non-existent Major is Hetman Skoropadsky, so where is his mysteriousness
anyway?), Bulgakov in reality is pointing to the mysteriousness of the next
personage appearing on the next page, namely, a certain “man in the uniform of
an artillery colonel,” who has managed to penetrate into the “apparatus
[communications] room” of the hetman’s palace.
Knowing
that Bulgakov does not leave loose ends, I started looking for a clue. And then
I found it in the dream of the wounded Alexei Turbin in the 12th
chapter of White Guard:
“Lying in complete fog was Turbin. After the injection, his face
was perfectly calm, his features sharpened and refined. A calming poison was
moving and guarding in his blood. The gray figures [military men in overcoats]
stopped bossing around like in their own house and went after their own
business, pulling away the cannon for good. Even if some complete outsider
would turn up, he would somehow behave decently [in the dream], trying to
connect with the people and things whose rightful place was always in the
Turbins’ apartment.”
In
other words, Alexei Turbin’s nightmares had stopped. Having received the
medication, he had calmed down.
Meanwhile,
Bulgakov continues:
“At one time Colonel Malyshev appeared, sat in the armchair, but
smiled in such a way that it’s all right,
and all will turn for the best. And he was not mumbling menacingly and
ominously [as he probably was in a previous nightmare], nor was he stuffing the
room with paper. Although he was burning documents, but he dared not touch
Turbin’s diploma, nor [the deceased] mother’s photographs. Besides, he was
burning papers using a pleasant and perfectly blue flame from alcohol, which
was very soothing, as it was always followed by an injection. The bell was
frequently ringing for Mme. Anjou. [The ladies’ store, which was the
Headquarters of the Mortar Division, where Colonel Malyshev had been sitting].
Brynn… – Turbin was saying, intending to convey the
sound of the bell to the one sitting in the armchair, and taking turns sitting
there were – now Nikolka, now a
stranger with the eyes of a Mongol (he dared not raise the devil on
account of the injection), now a mournful Maxim, white-haired and trembling.”
Brynn... – the wounded man was saying gently,
constructing out of flexible shadows [sic!] a moving picture, torturous and
difficult, but winding up with an unusual and happy and ailing end.
The
last sentence may very well point to V. Ya. Bryusov’s work A Mirror of Shadows. Bulgakov simply substitutes it by “flexible
shadows in a moving picture,” which is apparently building inside his brain.
The moving pictures of his dream…
The
first to appear in Turbin’s dream is “Colonel Malyshev,” combining features of
Bryusov and Yesenin. Thus this dream becomes very important to the researcher.
Very significant is also the fact that Alexei Turbin does not see his brother
Nikolka first, considering that Nikolka, as a junior officer, was supposed to
take part in the events of December 14, and he did.
And
so, for the first time in Bulgakov’s White
Guard there appears a truly mystical personage, a certain “stranger with
the eyes of a Mongol.”
How
many times has Bulgakov introduced the word ”stranger” into his works? What it
means is that someone pretty well-known is involved. It holds in this case: the
reader is looking at the well-known Russian poet of the Silver Age, executed by
a firing squad in the Revolutionary Petrograd in 1921…
Alongside
White Guard, Bulgakov in 1923 wrote
the novella Diaboliada, showing N. S.
Gumilev in the character of V. P. Korotkov, apparently due to the short
lifespan of this amazing poet, the fourth (35) among the great Russian poets in
that category after Lermontov (26), Yesenin (30), and Griboyedov (34).
I
find plenty of proof here. To begin with, why does he appear to Alexei Turbin
in a dream? Like, for instance, Bulgakov writes that the “stranger with the
eyes of a Mongol” did not dare raise havoc allegedly due to an injection
administered by a doctor to the wounded Turbin.
As
for the “eyes of a Mongol,” N. S. Gumilev has a poem titled The Prodigal Son. This remarkable poem
can also be perceived as a dream of Alexei Turbin, as Gumilev is transported
into another time, another country. –
“...Of
flowers and wine, of expensive incense,
I celebrate my day in the
merry capital [Rome]!
But where are my friends,
Cinna, Petronius?
Ah, here they are, here they
are, salve amici!
Come, hurry, your couch is
ready for you,
And the roses are beautiful
like a woman’s cheeks…”
[Here
already we can see Gumilev’s influence on Bulgakov’s subnovel Pontius Pilate. My commentary will
follow the last line of Gumilev’s poem.]
“…Perhaps
you remember the father’s word,
I was sent here to rectify
transgressions…
But in a world ruled by
perversity,
Having mastered the science
of Roman philosophers,
I see the only vice –
untidiness,
The only virtue – elegant
boredom.
Petronie, you are grimacing,
may I be hanged
If you are unhappy with my
Siracusan!
You, Cinna, are laughing,
isn’t he indeed ridiculous –
That squinting-eyed slave
with the narrow skull?”
Terrific!
There is plenty of material here for both the novel Master and Margarita and the subnovel Pontius Pilate. And there is also a prediction, to say nothing of
my proof, that “the stranger with the eyes of a Mongol” is none other than N.
S. Gumilev in M. Bulgakov’s first novel White
Guard.
Talking
to the Roman poets Cinna and Petronius, N. Gumilev, making fun of himself,
predicts his own death both in Bulgakov’s Pontius
Pilate and in his own life.
“…Petronie,
you are grimacing, may I be hanged
If you are unhappy with my
Siracusan!
You, Cinna, are laughing,
isn’t he indeed ridiculous –
That squinting-eyed slave
with the narrow skull?”
I
already wrote before that Gumilev had squinting eyes. Gumilev’s sister-in-law
was more sympathetic in her description: “slightly
squinting eyes.” And S. K. Makovsky in his Portrait of N. S. Gumilev refers to his “somewhat squinting glance.”
That’s
why in Bulgakov’s novel Master and
Margarita there are so many instances of a squinting glance, which is so
hard not to pay attention to. Bulgakov is just begging the researcher to
realize that N. S. Gumilev is present in his novel.
To
be continued…
***
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