Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Adam and
Eve.
Posting #1.
“There is however in this most innocent and
invulnerable of all criminals one spot of
vulnerability:
an insane – only he is never
going to lose his sanity –
love for nanny.”
Marina Tsvetaeva. Fortuna.
Among the works of M. A. Bulgakov featuring the
relationship of Marina Tsvetaeva and Andrei Bely, I am going to offer a brief
analysis of Bulgakov’s play Adam and Eve.
As Marina Tsvetaeva wrote in the same 1924 Poem
of the End:
“The
innermost, garter-like
Secret
of wives from husbands
And
widows from friends – to you,
The
intimate secret of Eve from the Tree…”
In her published diary, Marina Tsvetaeva has a
peculiar entry which explains why I believe that the prototype of Eve in the
play Adam and Eve is none other than
Marina Tsvetaeva:
“Why
the Serpent when Eve?”
But the most important consideration that brought me
to this thought is not so much Eve as the character of the Academician
Alexander Ippolitovich Yefrosimov, age 41. Reading Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs,
I could not help thinking that Bulgakov, with his unique sense of humor, had so
much “fallen in love” with Andrei Bely’s eccentricity that he succeeded in
creating the comically astounding personage of a Russian scientist.
Also from Marina Tsvetaeva’s diary, M. Bulgakov takes
the line on the second page of his play Adam
and Eve:
“...and the flawless underwear of
Yefrosimov shows that he is a bachelor and never dresses all by himself, but
some old woman, convinced that Yefrosimov is a demigod and not a man, irons for
him, reminds him [of things], serves him in the morning...”
And here is Marina Tsvetaeva describing the hero of her
play Fortuna (Duc de Lauzun):
“There is however in this most innocent and
invulnerable of all criminals one spot of vulnerability: an insane – only he is
never going to lose his sanity – love for nanny.”
The reader must surely remember the astonishing story
about a little goat in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs about Andrei Bely. [See my
chapter The Garden.] Marina Tsvetaeva
exposes Andrei Bely lock, stock and barrel in this phrase about “nanny.” [See
above.]
And indeed, describing his Academician Yefrosimov,
Bulgakov substitutes the word “nanny” by the word “old woman.” Bulgakov’s
description of Yefrosimov actually follows Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir:
“Excited. Twitches. Yefrosimov is thin,
shaven, in the eyes fog, in the fog candles.”
In her diary About
Love, Marina Tsvetaeva writes:
“Shaven, slim, the old man is always a bit
ancient, always a bit marquis. His attention is more flattering to me, excites
me more than the love of any 20-year-old. Here is nostalgia for his
twenty-year-oldness, happiness about my [age of 20], and the ability to be
generous.”
In Bulgakov’s play Adam
and Eve, Eva Voikevich is 22 years old, and her husband Adam is 28, whereas
Yefrosimov is 41. For a twenty-year-old girl a forty-year-old male is already
an old man.
As for the word “excited” in relation to Academician
Yefrosimov, if the reader had a chance to get acquainted with Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoir of Andrei Bely, whom she calls a “Captive Spirit,” he surely must
realize how incredibly eccentric this man was. He was continuously “excited.”
Since his first meeting with Marina Tsvetaeva until the very last.
“Berlin [a scene at a restaurant]
Ehrenburg’s table. And then suddenly over everything – over everybody –
stretched-out arms – the curls – the halo: You?
You? (He never knew my name.) Here?
How happy am I!”
And then comes the follow-up, when Marina Tsvetaeva
reminds Bely of their first meeting at their mutual friend Ellis’s place.
(Ellis was the penname of the Russian poet Lev Lvovich Kobylinsky, translator
of the French poet Charles Baudelaire.)
“…And how we [with her sister
Asya] were happy at the Don!
You? You? That was you! Was
it really you? – [exploded
Andrei Bely.]”
This exchange alone is already indicative of how
high-strung and permanently excited Andrei Bely was. And dangerous?
Indeed, he could easily get to a person’s heart with
his exuberantly lavish compliments right and left:
“I
marveled at her so much then! I admired her! The most red-cheeked and serious
girl in the world. Then I was telling everybody: Today I saw the most
red-cheeked and serious girl in the world.”
And during their next meeting, once again in a Berlin
restaurant:
“I was sitting with a writer and two
publishers… And suddenly – two hands. Over heads, and cups, and elbows, two
hands grabbing me. You! I’ve been missing
you! Pining for you! All the time
feeling that I’ve been lacking something, something of utmost importance…”
How can one not lose
one’s head? One’s defense mechanism ought to become activated here, but Marina
Tsvetaeva was a poet and she needed such jolts, and the woman in her got hooked
on this artfully woven lacework, as Blok would say. Even the idea of the “old
man,” instead of a “twenty-year-old,” comes into her diary from Andrei Bely…
Oh, how this man knew his craft!
“…Someone puts up a chair, clears the
table. No, no, I want to sit by her side.
My dearest, my darling. I am a perished man! You know of course? Everybody
already knows!.. But let us not talk about this, don’t ask me, let me just be
happy. For I am happy because there is always a radiance emanating from her…”
The reader will learn what happened several pages
later:
“…Oh,
but you know how malicious she is! [Asya Turgeneva, Andrei Bely’s wife.] She
needs (in whisper) to wound me straight in the heart; she needed to kill the
past, to kill herself as that one, so that that one would never
have been. This is revenge! Revenge that I alone have appreciated as such.”
Yes, Andrei Bely was very smart and lived an
interesting life. Wasn’t he the one who had just been telling Marina Tsvetaeva
the diametrically opposite?! –
“You
know of course? And everybody already knows why, except me. But let us not talk
about it, don’t ask me…”
And there we find him answering his own question. How
skillfully he is doing this! But we have to give him his due. Both in his
poetry and in his novel Peterburg,
Andrei Bely is quite as honest in presenting us with himself, showing himself
from highly unflattering side.
It is incredible that Marina Tsvetaeva was unable to
see through that when she was reading Andrei Bely’s novel Peterburg. Humiliated by his wife who left him and publicly
appeared with her lover in Berlin, Andrei Bely believes that for others it is
merely a passing attraction.
“...It’s natural so far.
After a forty-year-old balding, awkward one [A. Bely talks about himself] – a
twenty-year old, black-haired, with a dagger, etc…”
Here is where Marina Tsvetaeva herself has everything
to the contrary. She prefers a clean-shaven slender old man to any
twenty-year-old.
Andrei Bely’s exaltation appealed to Bulgakov. He was
interested in this personage reconstructed by him in his play Adam and Eve as “Academician
Yefrosimov.”
For instance, already on the second page of the play,
Bulgakov writes:
“From the side of the yard onto the
windowsill jumps Yefrosimov. Dressed in a magnificent suit, which indicates
that he had recently been on a business trip abroad.”
Bulgakov loved to travel but unfortunately for him he
was not allowed to go on foreign trips by the Soviet authorities.
And in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs I read (Andrei Bely
is talking):
“This
[place] is without an address. It is surprising that letters are getting there
[to Bely’s place near Berlin] at all. Your letters, because others
– quite naturally, can’t be more naturally. Essentially, only bills ought to be
getting there – for a hat in the English shop Jacque twenty years ago…”
Wait a minute, the reader will ask. The play is talking not about a
“hat,” but about a “magnificent suit.”
Wrong! Already on the third page of the play, right
after the “suit,” a “hat” turns up. The men in pursuit of Yefrosimov, the
neighbors living in Adam’s apartment are quite displeased that the scientist is
dressing well. They yell after him: “Burzhuy!
[Bourgeois! – a word of opprobrium
toward well-to-do people] He’s wearing a
hat! How about that?!”
Later on, Yefrosimov himself complains that everyday
his fellow passengers in a tram are saying: “Look! He is wearing a hat!”
One more proof of the fact that the character of
Yefrosimov comes to Bulgakov from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs of Andrei Bely is
the name “Jacque” [sic!], which will be the opener of the next posting.
To be continued…
***
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