Alpha And Omega.
Posting #33.
“'I am Demon,' he
said, clicking his heels,”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
I
already wrote before that when M. A. Bulgakov introduces Malyshev in his novel White Guard, he for some reason makes it
confusing.
“Mr. Colonel was holding a quill in his hand, and he was in fact
not a colonel, but a lieutenant-colonel, wearing broad golden shoulder-straps
with two spaces and three stars and with crossed golden cannons on them.”
As
for Valery Ya. Bryusov, the rank of colonel naturally applies to him, as he
introduced French Symbolism as a trend in poetry to Russia, and thus taught Symbolism
to his students, discovering a multitude of new movements and shades of
movements.
Counted
among Bryusov’s students are such notable names as A. Blok, A. Bely, N. Gumilev
and very many others. Showing in Colonel Malyshev a deep disappointment in the
course of the Civil War, Bulgakov likewise shows his disappointment in the
state of Russian poetry at the time.
As
for Bryusov himself, he died in the year 1924, right when Bulgakov had
completed his novel White Guard.
Like
practically all young poets of the time, Mayakovsky and Yesenin were also
Bryusov’s disciples. Yesenin followed his teacher into Rest the next year 1925,
having left behind him a poem in memoriam of Bryusov. This is how the poem
begins. –
“We
die, descending into quiet and sadness,
But I do know that Rus will
not forget us…”
The
poem continues a la Marina Tsvetaeva:
“…We
did not like the hucksters for sale…”
Marina
Tsvetaeva called such hucksters “the
vermin of poetry: cocainists, profiteers from scandal and saccharine.”
From
the same Yesenin poem come the following lines which I have quoted on numerous
occasions in my work A Chapter on
Bulgakov:
“We shall
repeat the old rhymes some forty times.
We will be
able to blow Gogol and smoke.”
Yesenin
writes: “And
still we were always alone.” Which is probably why Bulgakov joins V.
Ya. Bryusov and S. A. Yesenin in the single character of Colonel/Lieutenant
Colonel Malyshev. It is also possible that Bulgakov used N. Gumilev’s ranking
system for Russian poets. Gumilev called the poet Blok “major-general of Russian literature.” He also bestowed the rank of
Staff-Captain on K. D. Balmont. Pointing to it is also the silver sword of
Colonel Malyshev. The reader surely remembers that in Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita the members of
Woland’s cavalcade have swords, of which one has a golden hilt and three –
silver ones.
As
for Bulgakov’s novel White Guard, two
swords are present there. One is Colonel Malyshev’s silver sword. But there is
another one with a golden hilt allegedly belonging to L. Yu. Shervinsky,
formerly Lieutenant of the Leibgarde, Lancers Regiment.
I
believe that “the curved sword of Shervinsky, with its gleaming golden hilt” is
somehow an important clue offered by Bulgakov to the researchers of his novel White Guard. There are just two swords,
their owners live in the same City, finding themselves on the same side of the
warring parties, and they must obviously be connected to each other.
And
here a second colonel comes to mind. Bulgakov had already written that during
the hetman’s transformation into a German army major, two Russian officers were
in evidence. However in the two halls adjacent to the bedroom where the
transformation of Hetman Skoropadsky was taking place, there were other groups
of officers among whom Russian officers could well be present as well.
But
even before the hetman’s transformation the Russian commander Cavalry General
Belorukov had already fled from the City, having taken two adjutants with him.
It can well be imagined that Shervinsky had left Belorukov’s staff HQ, finding
himself in some kind of monastery [sic!].
A
monastery also points to M. Yu. Lermontov, as Tamara is hiding in a monastery
from Demon [Lucifer] who is pursuing her, having killed her fiancé.
Having
been working as a staff officer to the commander of the Russian forces Cavalry
General Belorukov, L. Yu. Shervinsky could get the number of the mortar
division located in the ladies’ store with the same ease as he could get this
number 212 from his friends, but that would have been more suspicious.
Shervinsky would not have liked to answer their questions. Hasn’t he told V. V.
Myshlayevsky that on December 14 he had stayed at Belorukov’s HQ until midday?
Why
am I so set on L. Yu. Shervinsky?
To
begin with, it’s his golden saber, pointing to M. Yu. Lermontov being awarded a
golden saber for bravery during the Caucasus War.
“Lieutenant
Lermontov of the Tengin infantry regiment during the storming of the enemy’s
fortifications on the river Valerik had the assignment to watch the activities
of the advance storm column, which involved the greatest danger from the
enemy’s side, hiding in the woods behind the trees and bushes. But this officer
accomplished the assignment entrusted to him with outstanding bravery and
sangfroid, and he stormed the enemy’s fortifications in the first ranks of the
bravest.”
It
was for this exploit as a scout that Lermontov was awarded the Golden Saber.
Bulgakov’s
L. Shervinsky is a truly mystical figure. He hadn’t been a student at the
school where Alexei Turbin, Karas and Myshlayevsky had studied together. It is
not known where he had come from in the City. Also unknown is how, and for what
services, he’d managed to become Adjutant to General Belorukov. An added
mystery comes his way through the Golden Saber.
The
fact that Shervinsky is a mystical figure akin to Bombardov in the Theatrical Novel is further ascertained
by the dream of Alexei Turbin’s sister Elena:
“The dim mist parted and revealed Lieutenant Shervinsky
to Elena. His slightly protuberant eyes smiled cheerfully.
'I am Demon,' he said, clicking his heels, 'and Talberg is never coming back. I’ll sing to you.
He took from his pocket a huge tinsel star and pinned it
on to the left side of his chest. The mists of sleep swirled around him, and
his face looked bright and doll-like among the clouds of vapor…”
Here
Bulgakov clearly points to Lermontov’s Demon,
who kills Tamara’s fiancé, in order to possess her. The last lines in
particular point to the poet himself:
“…In a piercing voice, quite unlike his voice when awake,
he sang: ‘Live, we shall live!’”
Lermontov
was killed in a duel after making his own shot up into the air. In his article Nighttime Luminary, D. S. Merezhkovsky
writes:
“Playing games with death for him was almost the same as
playing with iron ramrods at the cadet school, which he bent with his bare
hands and tied into knots, like ropes.”
To
be continued…
***
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