Alpha And Omega.
Posting #48.
“The scarlet
and white was discarded and crumpled,
They were
throwing handfuls of ducats at the green,
And the
black palms of the windows that came running
Were dealt
burning yellow cards…”
V. V. Mayakovsky. Night.
There
is a good reason why Bulgakov draws the reader’s attention to the unveiled
portrait of the Russian Emperor Alexander I, as he introduces a thoroughly
mystical figure here. This mysterious personage is needed by Bulgakov in order
to light up the school building with electricity. Colonel Malyshev entrusts
this task to Lieutenant Myshlayevsky who, knowing the building’s layout, “ran
into the front hall.” Bulgakov writes:
“Within a minute from somewhere downstairs there came the sound of
his thundering blows, and shouted commands. [No wonder, as Myshlayevsky’s
prototype is none other than the Russian Revolutionary poet V. V. Mayakovsky.]
And in response to them, in the front entrance, giving a faint reflection on
the portrait of Alexander [sic!], the light came on.”
Colonel
Malyshev’s praises were unneeded Lieutenant Myshlayevsky simply knew which door
to knock on. Bulgakov knows how to mystify the reader. –
“And below on the staircase a little figure showed up and slowly
crept up the stairs. The little figure walked on unbalanced ailing feet,
shaking its white head. The figure was wearing a wide double-breasted jacket
with silver buttons and colorful green buttonholes. In its hands the little
figure was carrying an enormous [sic!] key. At the top of the stairs, bustling
in the semi-darkness, its hands shaking, the figure opened the oblong box on
the wall, and a white spot looked at him.
The old man put his hand somewhere inside and clicked, and
instantly the upper side of the vestibule, the entrance to the assembly hall,
and the corridor were drowning in light.
The darkness shrunk and fled into its corners. Myshlayevsky took
possession of the key right away, and thrusting his hand inside the box,
started playing, clicking the black switches. The light went now off and now
on. Having played enough, Myshlayevsky permanently lit up the hall, the
corridor, and the reflector over Alexander [over the Emperor’s portrait]. Then
he locked the box and put the key in his pocket…”
Doesn’t
this passage read like a detective story?
“…Roll on to get some sleep,
old man. Everything is in full order.
The old man started guiltily blinking his half-blind eyes: And what about the little key there? The
little key, Your Excellency? What about it? Is it going to stay with you?
The little key is staying
with me, that’s right!
The old man shook a little bit more, and slowly started to retreat.”
It
is this passage which makes it clear how Bulgakov enriches his personages by
giving them features of some very interesting people, famous both for their
literary activity (mainly poetry) and for their lives. And indeed, even as he
was a high-school student, who were Bulgakov’s friends? Books! Most of all he
must have been fascinated with poetry. As I have already written, already in
his first major work White Guard,
Bulgakov attempts to insert Russian poets into the characters of his heroes.
Bearing
this in mind, the “little figure”
depicted in the passage, above has to be not just a school custodian, but somebody
having a real-life prototype. I confess to being at a loss for a while, until I
read, in the context of my work, the scene of Nikolka’s escape after the death
of Nai-Turs, and came across a strange, but graspable to me passage:
“Nikolka threw away his papakha and put on that blue student cap.
The cap was too small for him and gave him a disgusting, devil-may-care,
civilian look. Some kind of good-for-nothing expelled from school now for the
first time saw a living person. On the opposite sidewalk, some lady was
running, and a hat with a black bird’s wing on it was sitting sideways on her
head; from her arms hung a gray shopping bag, from which a desperate rooster
was trying to tear out screaming so that the whole street could hear it: ‘Pettura, Pettura!’ The lady was
screaming and weeping, throwing herself at the wall. Like whirlwind, a commoner
slipped by, crossing himself in all directions and yelling: ‘Lord Jesus! Volodka! Volodka! Petlura is
coming!’”
So
this was the strange passage that caught my great interest. The point is that
A. S. Pushkin has a satirical poem in which he calls himself a “commoner.” The
poem was written in 1830 and titled My
Genealogy. Pushkin enumerates his illustrious ancestors who served their
country since the time of St. Alexander Nevsky:
“My
ancestor Racha with his mighty muscle
Was serving Saint Nevsky;
His descendants were spared
The royal ire of Ivan IV.
The Pushkins were friends of
tsars,
Many of them were covered
with glory
When a certain commoner from
Nizhny Novgorod
[Kuzma Minin] Was fighting
the Poles…
There were times when we were
in high esteem,
In other times… but – I am a
commoner…”
It
was Kuzma Minin and also four Pushkins who signed the charter declaring the
reign of the first tsar of the Romanov Dynasty Mikhail Fedorovich (1613).
“…The
spirit of stubbornness has screwed up all of us.
With his inherited
indomitableness,
An ancestor of mine quarreled
with Peter,
And was hanged by him for
that reason…
When the mutiny started, my
grandfather
Remained loyal to the fallen
Peter the Third…
Then my grandfather was
quarantined in a fortress,
And our unyielding family was
quieted down,
And I was born a commoner.”
Regarding
Pushkin’s “unyielding family,” the reader must be reminded that the root of the
family name “Pushkin” means “Cannon” in Russian.
In
Pushkin’s Post Scriptum to his Genealogy the focus shifts to his
maternal great-grandfather of African descent Ganibal who was:
“…diligent,
incorruptible’
Tsar’s confidant, and not a
slave.”
[See
more in my chapter Margarita Beyond Good
and Evil.]
“…And
he was father of Ganibal
Before whom, amidst the
Chesme depths,
There burned a colossus of
enemy ships,
And Navarino fell the first
time.”
The
reference is to the first 1770 battle of Navarino, in which Pushkin’s
grandfather was in command of the Russian Fleet, defeating the Ottoman fleet.
The second battle of Navarino took place in 1827.
A.
S. Pushkin probably also had to deal with that kind of “poetry vermin” that
Marina Tsvetaeva would be later writing about. Pushkin writes:
“…Under
my emblazoned seal
I have preserved a heap of
charters;
I do not hobnob with new
nobility,
I have subdued the
haughtiness of blood.
I am a scholar and a
versificator,
I am simply Pushkin, not
Musin.
I am not rich, not a courtier,
I am big on my own: I am a
commoner!”
To
be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment