Alpha And Omega.
Posting #27.
“And what is
important? That same Shervinsky
said that [the Bolsheviks] are with red stars
on their papakhas…
said that [the Bolsheviks] are with red stars
on their papakhas…
There will be sheer horror in
the City.”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
In
the 19th chapter of White
Guard, Bulgakov confuses his text partly due to the already stated
complicated personality of L. Yu. Shervinsky himself, namely, drawing attention
to his “voice.” We will immediately recall how Alexei Turbin hears Colonel
Malyshev’s voice as he is running home from the headquarters of the artillery
[mortar] division. He is hearing this “voice” ordering him: “Run!”
Bulgakov
takes this idea from Lermontov’s long poem Demon,
in which Lucifer falls in love with the young Georgian bride Tamara. He kills
her fiancé and appears to her as “voice,” seducing her. [See my posted chapter Triangle.]
But
returning to the theme of the Bolsheviks three times, and not in order,
Bulgakov undoubtedly draws attention to the personage (Shervinsky) himself. It
remains unclear where Shervinsky got his information from. –
“Everybody was listening to Shervinsky with open mouths, even
Annushka [the maid].
What kind of stars? – Myshlayevsky was gloomily asking.
Small, like cockades,
five-pointed, – Shervinsky
was explaining. – On their papakhas. They
say they are coming like a storm cloud. In a word, they’ll be here come
midnight.”
But
on the very first page of the 19th chapter Bulgakov writes very
strangely, using the words of Dr. Alexei Turbin:
“And what is important? That
same Shervinsky said that they [the Bolsheviks] are with red stars on their
papakhas… There will be sheer horror in the City.”
He
is apparently referring to the prospect of street battles between Petlura’s
forces and the Bolshevik troops, of whose coming Turbin had learned from a
patient of his. Bulgakov provides this information 1.5 pages later.
It
is not by accident that Bulgakov convolutes his text. The most important thing
here is not that the Bolsheviks are coming to crush Petlura, but the fact that
Shervinsky had learned about it. It was Shervinsky “in the uniform of an
artillery colonel” who was in the apparatus room the night when Hetman
Skoropadsky fled from the palace. Shervinsky had to be there at the time. Otherwise,
how could he have learned the information about the Bolsheviks?
Shervinsky
was an intelligence officer. Such a man knows how to cover his tracks. This is
why M. A. Bulgakov makes the story of the Bolsheviks so confusing. It’s the
researcher’s turn to unravel the story of the “two colonels.” For now it is
perfectly clear who he was, who delivered the information to Colonel Malyshev
about the flight of Hetman Skoropadsky and the coming of Petlura’s forces into
the City.
***
In
the 3rd chapter of White Guard,
Bulgakov for some reason compares the shoulder straps of Karas and Shervinsky:
“Karas' golden crossed cannon on his crumpled
shoulder-straps were regular nothing alongside the pale cavalry shoulder-straps
and the carefully pressed blue breeches of Shervinsky…”
Only
now it becomes clear that in his capacity as Adjutant of the commanding officer
– Cavalry General Belorukov – Shervinsky could get himself any kind of uniform,
which is exactly what he did.
Considering
that the generals, in Bulgakov’s White
Guard, proved themselves unworthy
of their rank, Bulgakov is putting an emphasis on the colonels – Malyshev and
Nai-Turs – and not only on the Russian side. Petlura has even more colonels in
his army... Probably because a colonel is closer to his men than a general.
This
is how Bulgakov honors the two Russian warrior-poets: Lermontov and Gumilev
dead at the ages of 26 and 35 respectively, combining their features in the
character of the mysterious “man in an artillery colonel’s uniform.” If we
apply Gumilev’s table of ranks to Russian literature, yes, there are generals
in it, and both these poets qualify.
As
for the word “mysterious,” but without “colonel” accompanying it, Bulgakov also
uses it repeatedly in his novel Master
and Margarita.
The
first time it occurs in Chapter 3
when Berlioz tells Woland that his story of Jesus Christ cannot be
corroborated:
“Oh, no! Kto can prove
it! – the professor responded with great assurance and he suddenly mysteriously
motioned both friends closer to himself.”
The
second time it’s chapter 4, when the
poet Ivan Bezdomny is chasing Woland and his company after the gruesome death
of Berlioz:
“Not even a grain of doubt remained that the mysterious
consultant had known beforehand the full picture of the terrible death of
Berlioz.”
And
the third time later in the same 4th chapter. Ivan’s chase of
Woland continues:
“Ivan went deep into the mysterious web of Arbat
side-streets.”
The
fourth time, in chapter 6, Ivan
Bezdomny is brought to the psychiatric clinic:
“Here, doctor, – said
Ryukhin for some reason in mysterious whisper, timidly glancing back at
Ivan Nikolayevich – is the famous poet
Ivan Bezdomny…”
The
fifth and sixth time it is chapter 8:
A Duel Between the Professor and the Poet.
First, Ivan is bitterly sneering at the fact that moved by an urgent need to
warn everybody about the danger coming from the “stranger-consultant,” he had
found himself in some “mysterious medical room” where he was examined
and forced to discuss nonsense about his “heavily drinking uncle Fedor.” Later
on he tells his story to the head of the psychiatric clinic Professor
Stravinsky, the gist of it being the following:
“So listen: last night on
Patriarch Ponds I met a mysterious personality, either a foreigner or
not a foreigner, who knew about Berlioz’s death beforehand and personally saw
Pontius Pilate.”
Having
used the words “a mysterious personality,” Bulgakov invites the reader to solve
the mystery of who are hidden behind both the “foreigner/not a foreigner”
Woland and Professor Stravinsky. The reader is getting my take on Stravinsky in
my chapter The Bard: Bezdomny’s Progress.
Without
citing all other occurrences of “mysterious” in Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita (the reader must
have got the picture!), we move to Chapter 11: The Splitting of Ivan, where this word comes up again at the end of
the chapter:
“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.”
From
this we can conclude that virtually all “figures” in Bulgakov’s works are
“mysterious,” and we must be looking for their prototypes. With a particular
skill, Bulgakov inserts both the features of the executed Russian poet N. S.
Gumilev and him himself, already starting with his first novel White Guard. In such a manner Bulgakov
shows the future generations not only how to write, but also that a writer must
be an impartial and just chronicler of his time.
Thus
Ivan Bezdomny calls Woland: “this most
mysterious citizen.” As for the character of master, Bulgakov writes in the
same 13th chapter The
Appearance of the Hero:
“Yes, a grateful listener did Ivan Nikolayevich [Bezdomny] receive
in the person of the mysterious stealer of the keys.”
To
be continued…
***
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