Alpha And Omega.
Posting #10.
“…I read War and
Peace. That’s a book!..
It was written not by some good-for-nothing,
but by an artillery officer!”
M. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
Already
in his first novel White Guard,
written in 1923-1924, Bulgakov inserts Russian poets into his work. A testimony
to that is the following conversation between Myshlayevsky and Lariosik in the
14th chapter, when the gathered friends are about to start playing
cards at the apartment of the Turbin family:
“You play? – Myshlayevsky
asked Lariosik.
Lariosik blushed, became embarrassed, and immediately laid it all
out: that he played vint [screw, a Russian version of bridge], but very-very
poorly.
If I may ask, do you compose
verses? – asked
Myshlayevsky, keenly peering into Lariosik.
I do! -- modestly replied Lariosik, blushing even
more.”
…Myshlayevsky
makes up his mind to team up with Lariosik against Karas and Shervinsky. His
following words are explosive:
“Well, now... let’s get
together closer… Why not?.. He’s lying, if you like to know. I read War and
Peace. That’s a book! I read it to the end – and with pleasure! And why?
Because it was written not by some good-for-nothing, but by an artillery
officer… Yes, that was some writer, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,
Artillery Lieutenant… Pity he resigned from service: could have made it to
general… Well, what? He had an estate!.. One can write a novel out of
sheer boredom [sic!]: nothing to do in winter… It’s easy with an estate...
I myself would have gone to an estate with pleasure!..”
Finally,
in the last sentence, Bulgakov sells the store on the prototype of V. V.
Myshlayevsky.
One
more, and perhaps the most important for the researcher proof that the
prototype is the same as Woland’s – Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky!
Considering
that in his short autobiography I Myself
Mayakovsky writes this:
“Beginning of 1914. War. Took it agitatedly… Then war is declared.”
Under
the heading “Winter” [sic!]:
“Disgust and hatred. Drafted! Now I do not want to go to the front…
Even worse with being published. Prohibited to soldiers…”
Under
the heading “Soldiery”:
“Crappy time. Inside my head War
and Peace unfolds. In my heart Man.”
That
was 1915. In 1916, under the heading “1916”:
“War and Peace finished.
Somewhat later Man. Parts published
in The Annals…”
A
key phrase in Bulgakov’s White Guard:
“I myself would have gone to
an estate with pleasure!..”
Mayakovsky’s
Short Biography is titled precisely: I Myself. And also pointing to the
existence of two works of War and Peace is
Bulgakov’s opening of the sentence about Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, which passes
virtually unnoticed because of the parallel discussion of the card game:
“…Two spades… Yes-s… That was
a writer, was Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Artillery Lieutenant…”
Bulgakov
does not write clearly that V. V. Myshlayevsky is an artillerist. He does it
indirectly via Junior Lieutenant Fedor Nikolayevich Stepanov, nicknamed Karas.
Bulgakov
writes:
“Everybody must go, and the
artillerists must necessarily go to the mortar division…”
It
is in this artillery division under the command of Colonel Malyshev that the
reader later meets Karas and Myshlayevsky. The main hero of White Guard Alexei Turbin is also there
as the division’s physician. Hence, Myshlayevsky’s “two spades,” knowing that
he is an artillery officer, like Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was one.
As
I already wrote, Bulgakov had a good reason to make V. V. Mayakovsky Woland’s
prototype, because Mayakovsky was larger than life.
Writing
a War and Peace after L. N. Tolstoy?
I
also wrote that Bulgakov shows in his Theatrical
Novel that he is putting his White
Guard above L. N. Tolstoy’s War and
Peace because Bulgakov depicts Russia’s Civil War with great accuracy and
precision.
That’s
why there can be no doubt that V. V. Myshlayevsky has the same prototype as
Woland, and he is V. V. Mayakovsky. Even the initials V. V. M. coincide, with
Myshlayevsky sounding very much like Mayakovsky.
Giving
this character the name Myshlayevsky, Bulgakov even in this case points to
Mayakovsky. However, this particular puzzle will be solved by me in another
chapter.
***
The
card game also points in the direction of V. V. Mayakovsky. I already wrote in
my chapter Woland Identity that in
his Sketches of America, the Russian
poet S. A. Yesenin is complaining on board the ship taking him to America:
“…I walked through enormous
halls of specialized libraries, walked through recreation rooms, where card
games were played (and where I somewhat regretted that Mayakovsky wasn’t
there), walked through the dance hall…”
...In
other words, Mayakovsky loved to play cards. In one of my favorite poems of his
(The Night, 1912), he writes:
“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…”
There
are no card games as such in Master and
Margarita, but the following cards-related words belong to Woland:
“Having looked attentively at Margarita,
Woland observed as though to himself:
Yes, Koroviev is right: how
whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!”
We
must also note here that, instead of a card game, Woland is playing chess with
Kot Begemot. And it’s this chess game that Margarita is commenting on
approvingly, eliciting Woland’s remark above.
“I
beseech you not to interrupt the game. I believe that the chess magazines
would’ve paid good money for the opportunity to publish it [the game].”
And
of course Woland’s remark is easily explainable by the fact that Margarita’s
prototype is the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva who wrote in one of her
poems:
“Red
Skirt, Devil [sic!] in Blood.”
To
be continued…
***
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