Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Adam and
Eve.
Posting #2.
“Ah,
but for Jacque, I would have been
all alone in the world!”
M Bulgakov. Adam and Eve.
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” itself.
When the people in Adam’s apartment learn that
Academician Yefrosimov has invented an apparatus that “precludes a chemical
war,” it turns out that Yefrosimov has saved all their lives by pointing this
apparatus at them, like a photo camera taking pictures, also protecting
himself, but forgetting about Jacque, his dog, whom he had left at home. The
reader learns about it when Yefrosimov suddenly exclaims:
“Oh
my God! Jacque! Jacque! What an idiot I am! I have forgotten to take a picture
of Jacque!.. The first thing I should have done! Oh Lord! An eclipse of the
mind… Ah, Ah, Ah!”
Here Bulgakov flies from his play Adam and Eve right into his novel Master and Margarita. With these “Ah’s” he points to master and to his prototype Andrei Bely. As I
already wrote in many chapters, in such a manner Bulgakov is confusing his
reader with regard to who is who and what is actually going on.
Yefrosimov is painfully reacting to a howling dog, and
the reader begins to understand that something very wrong is going on:
“Yefrosimov. Wait, wait! Are you hearing it again?
Adam (alarmed). What? So, a dog
is howling. It is being teased by a harmonica…
Yefrosimov. Ah,
no, no. They are howling all day today.”
Here we have another indication of Master and Margarita. Thus M. Bulgakov
closes his 13th chapter The
Appearance of the Hero with the dialogue between Ivan Bezdomny and his
guest master at the psychiatric clinic:
“Tell
me, what happened after that to Yeshua and Pilate?, asked Ivan, I am begging you, I want to know.
Ah,
no, no, replied the guest
with a twitch of pain. I cannot remember
my novel without a shudder. Your acquaintance from Patriarch Ponds would have
done it better than I can. Thank you for the conversation. Good bye. – And
the guest disappeared from view.”
Naturally, I have written already on quite a few
occasions that present in the personage of master are three Russian poets of
the Silver Age: Bely, Blok, and Gumilev. Which is why a researcher is having
such hard time figuring it out.
To the question of Eve’s husband Adam: “Who is Jacque?” – Yefrosimov tells him a
sad story:
“Ah,
but for Jacque, I would have been all alone in the world, because I cannot
count – can I? – my aunt who is ironing [my] shirts!”
And so, it turns out that Bulgakov transforms Marina
Tsvetaeva’s “nanny” from her play
about her hero, first into “an old woman”
and then into an “aunt.” But M.
Bulgakov’s hero Yefrosimov loves his dog far more than his aunt, whom he does
not even worry about.
“…Jacque
lightens up my life… (pause). Jacque
is my dog. I see four boys walking and carrying a puppy with them, and
laughing. It turns out they were going to hang him. I paid them 12 rubles not
to hang him. Now he is an adult, and I never part with him.”
I was always wondering why Bulgakov gives a human name
to a dog, a foreign name at that. Now, after taking into account Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, it all becomes clear: Jacque
is the name of the men’s store where Andrei Bely was buying his clothes.
Recalling Andrei Bely’s story about the place where he lives:
“This
[place near Berlin] is without an address. It is surprising that letters are
getting there... Essentially, only bills ought to be getting there – for a hat
bought from the English shop Jacque twenty years ago…”
The story about his dog also reminds of the story told
by Marina Tsvetaeva about Andrei Bely. If in that story there was a homeless
yellow dog in Moscow, which would leave after you pat her, then in Germany all
dogs and people belonged to somebody.
Probably Bulgakov took pity on Andrei Bely and gave
him a puppy, which in the play Adam and
Eve was raised by Yefrosimov and became attached to him.
For the same reason, Bulgakov made Andrei Bely the
prototype of Matthew Levi in the subnovel Pontius
Pilate of the novel Master and
Margarita. Matthew Levi was at first abusive toward Yeshua, calling him a
dog, but soon thereafter he became devoted to him. According to Marina Tsvetaeva,
Andrei Bely wanted to belong to somebody, too.
***
Remaining is the funniest part regarding Yefrosimov,
namely, his high-strung eccentricity, which brings Adam to suspect that he has
lost his mind.
“Adam (softly to Eve). Do you consider him normal?
Eve. I consider him absolutely
normal.”
And before that, indignant at being called an
alcoholic by the punks chasing him –
Yefrosimov (twitching). No, I am calm!”
–Which
corresponds to how Bulgakov describes master in the 13th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the
Hero. Relating to Ivan the details of his arrest, “spasms
were distorting his face now and again…”
And also: “Ah no, no, replied the guest with a
twitch of pain.”
Even the arrival of Yefrosimov is similar to the
arrival of master, only with a more comical effect:
“From the side of the yard onto the
windowsill jumps Yefrosimov. He is excited, he is twitching.”
In Master and Margarita’s
24th chapter: The
Extraction of Master:
“From the windowsill down across the floor there spread out a
greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s guest
calling himself master…”
Bulgakov confuses the researcher, because if anyone
has solved the prototype of Yefrosimov, then in this passage from the 24th
chapter of Master and Margarita it
follows perfectly clear that master’s prototype in this case is Alexander Blok.
(See my chapter Strangers in the Night.)
But also right here the researcher finds an excerpt
relevant to the one I am analyzing in Bulgakov’s play Adam and Eve:
“Don’t
cry, Margo, don’t torment me. I’m gravely ill. – He [master] grasped the
windowsill with his hand as though attempting to jump upon it and run away…”
Thus mixing together in one paragraph the poetry of
different poets, Bulgakov moves from one to another confusing the researcher
all the more. (See my chapter Who Is Who
In Master.)
And so it is quite possible that what was funny in the
play with Yefrosimov, becomes gruesome in Master
and Margarita. This alone ought to make both the researcher and the reader
think about what and whom Bulgakov is writing in reality in his works.
To be continued…
***
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