Monday, March 12, 2018

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCXXVIII


Alpha And Omega.
Posting #15.


He is being called the Emperor of Elba:
Such was Tsar Dodon.

A. S. Pushkin. Napoleon’s Epitaph.


It is quite possible that when Bulgakov unveils the portrait of Napoleon’s vanquisher the Emperor Alexander I of Russia, in the novel White Guard, he may be pointing to M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Napoleon’s Epitaph:

True, no one scorns your shadow,
Man of fate! You are with people, fate is over you;
Who knew how to elevate you, only he could bring you down:
As for greatness, nothing alters it.

There is a reason why A. S. Pushkin in his unfinished poem Bova compares Tsar Dodon, who has killed the lawful Tsar Bendokir the Dimwitted, to Napoleon. –

You have heard, good people,
About the tsar who for the whole twenty years
Never took off his armor,
Never dismounted his mettled charger,
Everywhere he was flying victorious,
Drowned the baptized world in blood,
Neither sparing the non-baptized,
And brought down into nothingness
By the fearsome Angel Alexander,
He is passing his life in humiliation,
And now forgotten by all,
He is being called the Emperor of Elba:
Such was Tsar Dodon.

Not without reason, having armed himself with these two giants, Bulgakov writes the following conversation between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua in the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita, titled Pontius Pilate:

So, you insist that you did not incite the people to demolish or set fire to [sic!] or destroy in any other way the Temple?
I, Igemon, incited nobody for that kind of action. Do I look dimwitted? [sic!]
Oh, no, you do not look dimwitted, – softly replied the procurator, and smiled with some kind of strange smile. – So, swear that it wasn’t so.
What do you want me to swear by? – asked the untied [Yeshua].
Well, swear at least by your life, – said the procurator, –  for it’s high time to do it as it is hanging by a hair! You should know it.
You don’t think – do you? – that you were the one who hung it[ my life on a hair], Igemon? If you do, you are gravely mistaken.
Pilate shuddered and answered through his teeth: I can cut this hair, [you know!]
And in this you are mistaken too – radiantly smiling and shielding himself from the sun retorted the arrestee. – Do admit that surely only the one who hung it can cut the hair!

And indeed, it is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev who serves as Yeshua’s prototype in Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate, and follows M. Yu. Lermontov both in his life and in the works of the mystic M. A. Bulgakov. Bulgakov introduces him not only in the character of V. P. Korotkov in Diaboliada, not only in the character of V. S. Lastochkin in Master and Margarita and as Yeshua in Pontius Pilate, but even in Bulgakov’s first novel White Guard, already in the 3rd chapter, as Junior Lieutenant Fedor Nikolayevich Stepanov, artillerist, nicknamed Karas since his student days at the Alexander’s School.
Let us not forget that on the preceding page Bulgakov depicts a drunken party of friends gathered at the Turbin’s flat. The word “smoke” occurs twice here, and the word “fog,” which Bulgakov likes so much – three times. The word “smoke” is understandable, in view of the smoking habits of the gathered men, although Yesenin’s words in Memory of Bryusov stand out:

“...We will be able to blow Gogol and smoke.

Which is what Bulgakov is doing all the time. There is fog in the heads of the partying group, on account of the consumed wine and vodka.
“Vodka, vodka, and fog!” – writes Bulgakov, and also: “Fog was swaying in the heads.” And this too: “Glaring in the fog are the sassy words: You cannot sit upon a hedgehog with a bare profile!

Why does Bulgakov need this? Naturally, to fog the brain of both the reader and the researcher. So what, if a drunken company has gathered together? And cloaked in this fog, Bulgakov starts highlighting the guests at the Turbin’s apartment. The first among them is Victor Victorovich Myshlayevsky. The researcher may have forgotten or merely have neglected to relate to this name the material written by Bulgakov just one page before:

“...In cold sweat [on account of the dream he had just dreamed about thieves], Vasilisa jumped up with a scream and the first thing he heard was a mouse [“mysh” in Russian, as in “Myshlayevsky”] with its family, laboring in the kitchen over a bag of biscuits...”

The dream about thieves turned out to be prophetic. Vasilisa had a hiding place where he kept his valuables and money, of which he was rudely robbed by nationalist “bandits.” We will return to this thought later on, but here I’d like to note that with the help of the real “mysh” Bulgakov has posed a puzzle about Myshlayevsky himself. I suggest the reader to solve it, but as for me, I will be giving the solution in another chapter.
I am now returning to the last of Alexei Turbin’s three friends: Fedor Nikolayevich Stepanov, aka Karas, an artillerist. Bulgakov’s puzzle lies in the word “Karas” (Carassius, Crucian carp), which for some reason is missing from the “remarkable stove with its dazzling surface” holding inscriptions both of the members of the Turbin family and of the “tender and ancient childhood friends of the Turbins – Myshlayevsky and Karas.”
To begin with, let me draw the attention of both the reader and the researcher to the fact that Bulgakov writes “tender and ancient childhood friends,” who may well be literary personages from books “smelling of ancient chocolate,” namely, Natasha Rostova and captain’s daughter, as well as the authors of the books themselves: M. Yu. Lermontov, aka Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky in Bulgakov, plus V. V. Mayakovsky aka Bulgakov’s Victor Victorovich Myshlayevsky.
It is amazing how right I was when I was visited by the thought that Bulgakov decided as far back as in his young years to become a writer just because he decided to write a book about Satan.
His sister gives us a keen clue when she accuses him of “Satanic pride.”
It turns out that even in his youth Bulgakov was planning V. V. Mayakovsky as the prototype of his Satan.

To be continued…

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