Alpha And Omega.
Posting #47.
“…Father was already lying
under a black marble
cross. And mama was also buried
there.
Eh… Eh…”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
Master
to Ivanushka, regarding his hand-sewn cap:
“...She sewed it for me with
her own hands, he added mysteriously.”
It’s
a third time Bulgakov uses the word “mysterious.” I join Bulgakov in his offer
to the reader to solve this puzzle.
The first time this word
happens at the very end of the 11th chapter: The Splitting of Ivan. –
“Sleep was crouching toward
Ivan, and he already imagined both a palm on an elephant leg and a cat walking
past him, not a scary one but a merry one; in other words, sleep was just about
to cover Ivan, when suddenly the barred screen door moved sideways noiselessly,
and a mysterious figure materialized on the balcony, hiding from the moonlight,
and warning Ivan with his finger.”
Another
allusion to M. Yu. Lermontov is contained in this passage. Among the poems
alluded to, we easily recognize Happy
Hour and Three Palms.
Alexander
Blok’s poems are filled with mysteries/secrets:
“Mysteries of the approaching
meeting, secret fear, the Mysterious Maiden of the Sunset, the Holy Mystery of
God, mystery with no end, my perfect mystery, the secret eye, the mystery of
the dawn, the mysterious voice…”
Is
that indeed what Bulgakov has in mind when he writes so mysteriously: “...when suddenly the
barred screen door moved sideways noiselessly, and a mysterious figure
materialized on the balcony…”?
Hardly!
This one had to be N. S. Gumilev, who is the proper hero in the Political
Thriller of Master and Margarita.
There
is a good reason why Bulgakov commits Yesenin and Gumilev, rather than Blok and
Bely, into a psychiatric clinic. Only Yesenin and Gumilev were actually
arrested, and neither of them was ever in possession of the keys. (Although
right before his death, when Yesenin was put in a psychiatric clinic, he
somehow managed to escape from there, perhaps with the help of stolen keys?)
In
the 6th Cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady, although written in 1902, Blok writes:
“...He
was gone, he vanished in the night,
No one knows where to.
He left the keys on the desk,
Inside the desk – a clue
about his track.
And who would have known then
That he was not coming back
home?..”
This
poem, although written as early as in 1902, becomes a very good illustration of
Gumilev’s arrest in 1921, following which he would never be seen again.
***
Strange
as it may seem, my work on the theme of the “keys” convinced me of the
correctness of my original thought about the prototype of Staff Captain
Studzinsky. My first thought focused on A. Blok. But when I started comparing
the dialogues of Studzinsky and Colonel Malyshev with the dialogues of
Aphranius and Pontius Pilate in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate of the novel Master
and Margarita, I leaned more toward the Russian poet K. D. Balmont.
Thus
it so happens that already in the novel White
Guard Bulgakov was experimenting with splitting characters. In the process
of my work, I found in the character of Colonel Malyshev features of both V.
Ya. Bryusov and S. A. Yesenin.
And
in this case with Staff Captain Studzinsky it so happens that Blok is indeed
part of that character.
To
begin with, Blok’s friend Andrei Bely in his novel Peterburg portrays him as an officer: S. S. Likhutin.
Secondly,
it has something to do with Blok’s poetry. In his long poem Retribution, Blok moves the action from
Russia to Warsaw, first getting there the main character’s father, and next the
son, who comes to Warsaw for his father’s funeral. Mind you, Studzinsky is a Polish name.
And
thirdly, having acquainted myself with Blok’s poetry, I pictured him as an
introverted and dry man who was only releasing his pent-up feelings through his
poetry. For had he been as passionate in life as he was in his art, he would
surely have gone mad. It is his restraint, bordering on indecision in Bulgakov’s
White Guard in the scene of
Malyshev’s attempted arrest, that ought to compel the researcher to make the
natural, albeit elusive, connection.
There
is a curious story regarding the table of rank among Gumilev’s contemporary
poets. When asked whether there were any Generals in contemporary Russian
poetry, Gumilev replied: Blok will do for
a Major-General. – What about
Balmont? – was the follow-up. With him, Gumilev was not so generous: “Staff Captain.”
Never
obvious, Bulgakov knew better than to make it too easy for the reader.
Alexander Blok a Major General? No way!
Staff Captain Studzinsky would do!
I
always sensed that Blok must be present in Bulgakov’s White Guard. On the very first page of the novel, Bulgakov uses the
distinctive Blokian expression from his celebrated long poem The Twelve:
“Eh! Eh!”
Why
would he do something as unusual as this, if not to establish an implicit
connection to Blok, who had died in 1921, as Bulgakov was about to start his
work on White Guard (1923-1924)? To
me, there is no doubt here.
Eh! Eh!
To
be continued…
***
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