Alpha And Omega.
Posting #13.
“The burnt kiss of the
two mouths,
A minute’s scream and a weak
moan.”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Demon.
And
so, M. A. Bulgakov is making his best effort to draw the reader’s attention to
the fact that S. L. Maksudov in the Theatrical
Novel is a composite character, carrying features of several Russian poets:
Lermontov, Yesenin, and one more, whose identity I am offering my readers to
figure out by themselves.
Having
met resistance from S. L. Maksudov, Ivan Vasilievich starts calling him Leo, Lion, that is, a hulk, as all
people who meet resistance to their advances, succumb at the end, getting
nothing.
Thus
already in the 1924 novel White Guard,
Bulgakov gives one of his characters the name Leonid, Leo, Lion. Everyone knows the story of Leonid and the 300
Spartans, who might have won their fight had they not been betrayed by a
Judas...
Thus,
using the name Leonid and the golden sabre Bulgakov builds yet another image of
the Russian poet M. Yu. Lermontov, putting him on the same level as A. S.
Pushkin, as the two of them are inseparable in the novel Master and Margarita as Koroviev and Kot Begemot.
Bulgakov
makes Lermontov a “lion” of Russian literature, and, considering that Lermontov
was killed in a duel at the age of 26, Bulgakov gives him the name “Leonid” in White Guard, which means “Son of a
Lion.” But 14 years later, in the Theatrical
Novel, Leonid becomes Leonty.
After
the novel White Guard Lermontov
becomes The Cap in Bulgakov’s next
story Cockroach, and in Diaboliada (1923) he is already playing
two roles. (See my chapter Diaboliada.)
Moving
on to the operatic talent of Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky, we need to note that
Bulgakov is pursuing a dual purpose here. To begin with, Bulgakov is pointing
to Anton Rubinstein’s opera Neron,
written on a French commission to a French libretto. Curiously, Rubinstein’s most famous opera is Demon, after Lermontov. Here is a good example of how Bulgakov
skillfully throws the reader off the scent.
A.
Rubinstein’s Neron contains ballet
scenes with Bacchantes dancing in them. It is quite possible that Bulgakov used
this opera/ballet in Chapter 21 of Master
and Margarita: The Flight, first giving a preview, as was his habit, and a
page later returning to the same theme of the Bacchantes:
“On the other bank of the river Margarita saw a flouncing light
from the bonfire, and some moving figures as well. It seemed to Margarita that
some kind of merry music was coming from there. The music was getting stronger
and merrier...”
And
following next comes an amazing depiction of a frog orchestra, apparently
directed by Kot Begemot, who brings one of these frogs back to Moscow with him.
(See my posted chapter Kot Begemot.)
“…The music under the pussy-willows hit stronger and merrier… There
in two rows were sitting fat-headed frogs, and puffing themselves up like they
were made of rubber, they were performing a boisterous march on wooden flutes.
Luminescent touchwood lamps were hanging from willow twigs in front of each
musician, throwing light on their sheet music, the flouncing light from the fire
was playing on the frog faces…”
M.
Yu. Lermontov played several musical instruments, and it is he who drives/flies
Margarita to Moscow in a brown open car, disguised as a black long-nosed
rook-chauffeur.
“The frogs were playing a march in Margarita’s honor. Transparent
mermaids interrupted their dance over the river and waved weeds at Margarita.
Naked witches [sic!] jumping from behind the pussy-willows lined up in a row
and started curtseying and bowing. Some goat-legged creature offered her to lie
down and take a rest, handing her a glass of champagne…”
In
the 2005 TV miniseries Master and
Margarita, directed by V. V. Bortko, this event is depicted more as a
Bacchanalia with bacchantes dancing wild dances and a satyr. This is probably
how M. A. Bulgakov depicted this in his drafts, but I do not use his drafts
because they are misleading.
And
here is an interesting passage from the 3rd chapter of White Guard:
“The little lancer felt right away that he was in-voice [sic!] like
never before, and the pink drawing room was filled with a really monstrous
hurricane of sounds. Shervinsky was singing the Epithalamium to the God Hymenaeus [from A. Rubinstein’s opera Neron], and, oh, how was he singing! Yes,
indeed, all is nonsense in the world, except the kind of voice Shervinsky had!”
The
point here is not the god Hymenaeus, the god of marriage. Lermontov was never
married! The point is a complicated allusion through the composer Anton
Rubinstein to Lermontov’s long poem Demon,
where Lucifer falls in love with a Georgian maiden of exceptional beauty. He appears
to her as “Voice,” confessing his love to Tamara, and promises her to reconcile
with God, which promise he quickly breaks at the sight of a Cherub.
Having
killed Tamara’s fiancé, Demon kills Tamara herself with a kiss. His passionate
speech to her, over two pages long (here is that “monstrous hurricane of
sounds” in Bulgakov), convinces her. His words: “Love me!” turn into:
“The
burnt kiss of the two mouths,
A minute’s scream and a weak
moan.”
As
I already wrote before, Tamara’s prototype happened to be Nina Chavchavadze,
known as the “Black Rose of Tiflis.” Married at the age of 16 to the great
Russian poet A. S. Griboyedov, her husband was killed less than a year into
their life together. Nina Chavchavadze was a woman of exceptional beauty, still
very young, and she had many suitors. But she never married again.
(For
more, see my chapters Triangle and Kot Begemot.)
M.
Yu. Lermontov comes in big time in the 6th chapter of Bulgakov’s White Guard, as military cadets and
officers gather in the building of a school where a storeroom facility has been
set up for them. Amazingly, Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky is not there, but the
scene for some reason is changing with the removal of the curtain from the
portrait of the Russian Emperor Alexander I. –
“Mounted on a pure-bred argamak charger, the saddle-cloth
emblazoned with the imperial monograms... with a beaming smile and in a white-plumed
tricorn cocked at a rakish angle, the balding, radiant [Tsar] Alexander I
galloped in front of the artillery men. Flashing them a smile after a smile,
redolent of insidious charm, Alexander was waving his broad sword with its tip
pointing the cadets to the troops of Borodino...”
Passing
by the “radiant Alexander,” the cadets were singing from memory the words from
Lermontov’s poem Borodino, thus
raising their combat spirit before the imminent clash with Petlura’s
cutthroats.
“Past the conqueror of Napoleon, left shoulder forward, marched the
[artillery] division.”
Introducing
this wonderful scene, Bulgakov yet again reminds us about M. Yu. Lermontov, who
also had been a cadet at one time, and even wrote A Cadet’s Prayer.
Bulgakov
also reminds the reader about Lermontov with the following words:
“The stony silence and the shaky duskiness of the abandoned
building [of the school] were quickly awakened by the echo of the military
step. Strange sounds started flying under the arches as if some demons [sic!]
had been aroused from their sleep.”
To
be continued…
***
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