The Bard.
Adventures Of A Dead Poet.
Posting #3.
“Cats
forbidden!”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
I always suspected that Bulgakov was a great
connoisseur of music and that he put Mussorgsky very high up there among music
composers. For this reason, he puts Stepa Likhodeev at the head of the Variety
Theater, above Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Varenukha) and another Russian
composer Rimsky-Korsakov (Rimsky).
But only during my work on the chapter The Bard I must have been so much
inspired by A. S. Pushkin that I understood where Bulgakov’s “Scram!” comes
from, and why Azazello gets disguised as a kitten. And also why Kot Begemot
sends Likhodeev (Mussorgsky) to Yalta.
The “kitten” Azazello did not like that Mishenka in
Mussorgsky’s song In the Corner blamed
him for just about everything. As for Kot Begemot, he must have been offended
by another Mussorgsky song from the Children’s cycle: Cat Sailor, where the cat gets close to the birdcage, in order to
catch and eat the bird in it, but the little girl chases away the cat and saves
the bird.
“…Then
suddenly I see our cat Sailor on the windowsill,
On
top of the cage, scratching!
The
bullfinch is shaking, pressed into the corner, squeaking.
I
got angry! Hey brother, you have a taste for birds!
No,
wait, I got you. I see through you, cat!
There
am I standing looking away, like nothing happened,
But
I notice with one eye: something strange is going on!
The
cat looks me in the eye quietly,
But
his paw is about to get into the cage:
But
just as he wanted to catch the bullfinch, I slap him!
Mama,
how hard is the cage!
My
fingers hurt, mama!
Mama!
Here in my fingertips, right here,
It’s
painful, so painful…
No!
How about the cat, mama, eh?”
The name of the cat is Sailor, which is why Kot Begemot sends Stepa Likhodeev to Yalta,
where the sea is, once the cat’s name calls for the sea.
[As long as we are still on Mussorgsky’s Children’s cycle of songs, it may be
worthwhile to remember how that cycle was received by those who knew a thing or
two about music. The great Hungarian composer and pianist extraordinaire Ferenc
Liszt, having obtained the music of the cycle, sat down to play it, as always
to an audience of friends and students. The witnesses reported that during
Liszt’s performance, his fingers uncharacteristically trembled and tears flowed
from his eyes. “Nobody has ever done it,”
he said. “And nobody can, like Mussorgsky
did. This music reconnects you to childhood… Amazing!”]
In Bortko’s television serial Master and Margarita, having found himself in Yalta, Stepa
Likhodeev gets inside a boat. This also proves my thought, as the producers of
the serial, as I noticed, must have read M. A. Bulgakov’s drafts. I do not have
these drafts, as I do not have a complete edition of Bulgakov’s works. But I
think that these “drafts” are more likely to mislead the researcher than to
enlighten him. When I am done with everything that I am doing and when I am
standing on a firm ground as a result, I feel that I am then going to be less
susceptible to false clues and will study Bulgakov’s drafts, which will
hopefully let me solve some of the author’s personages which I have not been
able to solve so far.
There is a third explanation why Stepa Likhodeev has
been sent off to Crimea. Bulgakov surely thought that Mussorgsky had needed a
change of scenery, a rest, and the help of good doctors, which Bulgakov himself
never received.
When Sergei Eisenstein returned to Russia from
America, having made a number of movies there, he was exhausted. Stalin, who
was deeply interested in the movie business, immediately sent him to Crimea under
the care of knowledgeable physicians. Having taken the rest and received
treatment, Eisenstein got to work, not only directing movies of genius, but
writing theoretical works on cinematography and teaching students at the State
Institute of Cinematography in Moscow the art and skills of groundbreaking moviemaking.
Introducing Mussorgsky into the novel Master and Margarita, Bulgakov was in a
difficult position portraying Stepa Likhodeev the way Mussorgsky was in real
life, a ladies man (he was never married), hard liquor drinker, which could not
but affect his health (he died at the age of 42 of delirium tremens).
In order to confuse the reader, Bulgakov keeps Stepa
Likhodeev alive, but gets him arrested upon his return to Moscow.
The first and last name of Stepa Likhodeev, although
probably taken from A. S. Pushkin’s The
Shadow of Fonvizin (see!), still have a clear meaning in connection to M.
P. Mussorgsky. The last name ‘Likhodeev’ means someone capable of wild daunting
deeds. The name Stepa comes from Stepan.
Bulgakov’s train of thought was attuned to Russian
history, which is amply demonstrated by his Theatrical
Novel, where he gives his characters last names from the times of Peter the
Great and Catherine the Great, that is, from the 18th century. But
for some reason the Independent Theater,
alongside the play The Favorite, which
points to the Catherinean era, rehearses another play, according to Maksudov’s
impression, which has the title Stenka
Razin. There is no such play in reality.
It is very likely that here Bulgakov hints at the
staging of another play, which is Pushkin’s Boris
Godunov (see my chapter Dress
Rehearsal For Master And Margarita). But it is also quite possible that
Bulgakov hints at his own play Days of
the Turbins, which had been running at the Moscow Arts Theater for several
years.
Stenka Razin is a no less meaningful name in Russian
history than that of Emelyan Pugachev. I think that Bulgakov could well have
given the name Stepa to Stepa Likhodeev just because Stenka Razin was capable
of wild daunting deeds. As for the name Razin, it can well be interpreted as
someone who strikes the enemy without hesitation or mercy (Razin – Razit’).
It is clear why Bulgakov chooses such a name for his
Mussorgsky character. Modest Petrovich wrote two grand operas on two very
complex historical subjects: Boris
Godunov about Russia’s Time of Troubles, and Khovanshchina about the rebellion of the Princes Khovansky against
the young Peter I.
In other words, M. Mussorgsky chose wild, daunting
times for the settings of his two great operas. Hence, Stepa Likhodeev is, in a
way, Stenka Razin.
As for A. S. Pushkin’s long poem Fonvizin’s Shadow, there is a reference there to the “Russian
verse-doers (stikhodei).” Hence, Stepa Likhodeev’s last name is Likhodeev.
***
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