Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Black Snow.
Posting #3.
“Anna, Anna, is it
sweet to sleep in the grave?
Is it sweet to see
unearthly dreams?”
Alexander Blok. Steps of the Commander.
It’s quite possible that M. A. Bulgakov picks the name
Anna for the heroine of Black Snow because
of the 1910-1912 poem of Alexander Blok The
Steps of the Commander. (See my chapter Blokian
Women.) In A. Blok’s poem, Anna has been raped by Don Juan. Bulgakov was
very much interested in this theme and introduced a real, historically recorded
woman Frieda into his novel Master and
Margarita.
This is how Blok closes his poem:
“Donna
Anna will rise at the hour of your death,
Anna will rise at the hour of
death.”
Perhaps Bulgakov, having chosen Blok for the role of
Bakhtin, already knew that Blok was interested in the Russian poetess Anna
Akhmatova, who was also living in Petrograd. I already wrote that it is quite
likely that Blok’s numerous “Ah’s!” are on account of her assumed last name
“Akhmatova.”
Interestingly, having visited the poets’ club Stray Dog in Petrograd, Blok made an
entry in his diary to the effect that “Anna
Akhmatova was there.”
Having come to Ivan Vasilievich for the reading of his
play, Maksudov is unpleasantly surprised that his first name and patronymic are
always spoken incorrectly. Now it is Leonty Sergeevich (instead of Sergei
Leontievich), now it is Leonty Leontievich, now Sergei Sergeevich, and so on.
At last, I understood that Bulgakov does it
deliberately. The name Sergei Sergeevich
belongs to A. Bely’s character S. S. Likhutin (“No Evil to Come”?) [whose prototype is A. Bely’s friend A. Blok] in
the novel Peterburg. Thus Blok has “ikh” in his name, while in Bulgakov it
is “akh” – Likhutin – Bakhtin.
The next scene in the play Black Snow takes place on a bridge, which also points to Blok for
whom bridges are common settings in his poems and in his most famous mystical
play The Unknown.
“Bakhtin to Petrov. Well, farewell. Very soon you will come for
me.
Petrov. What are you doing?
Bakhtin shoots himself in the temple, falls
down. In the distance we can hear harmoni… (Bulgakov does not finish the word harmonica.)”
Here an argument flares up between Maksudov and Ivan
Vasilievich. The latter wants no gunshots. In the meantime I will use this to
explain what is happening “on the bridge.” In order to do that I will quote S.
L. Maksudov’s words from the next page:
“I am
having a mass scene on the bridge. Masses have collided here.”
This is how Bulgakov symbolically depicts the Russian
Civil War. This is easy. Not so easy is to figure out the scene between Bakhtin
and Petrov. If Bakhtin is Blok, then who is Petrov? And here we must remember
N. S. Gumilev’s article in the literary journal Apollon:
“The Russian Symbolists
took upon themselves the heavy but lofty burden of bringing native poetry out
of its Babylon Captivity in which they had languished for nearly half-a-century.
Alongside their creative work proper, they needed to cultivate the culture,
spell out ABC truths, to defend with a foaming mouth ideas which had long
become commonplace in the West. In this respect, V. Bryusov can be compared to
Peter the Great.”
(As the reader must remember, Peter the Great was the
Russian Emperor of early 18th century who opened the Russian road into
Europe, and for the Europeans – a road into Russia.)
I already wrote that Bulgakov was very interested in
the literary life of Russia, including the art journals, of which there were
quite a lot. Bulgakov had a great interest in V. Ya. Bryusov, as both the
researcher and the reader have already learned. It was Bryusov whom Bulgakov
picked as the prototype of many of his personages, Bryusov being a trailblazer
in Russian literature. In the article quoted before, N. Gumilev calls Bryusov
not only a Symbolist, but a “Modernist who has created his own style.”
Which is why it is possible to imagine that the
meeting on Bulgakov’s bridge in Black
Snow (The Theatrical Novel) was
between Blok and Bryusov (Bakhtin and Petrov). But these two poets were
friends. And indeed, Bryusov did follow Blok who died in August 1921 of
malnutrition with Bryusov following him in 1924.
But Gumilev also died in August 1921, which is why
Bulgakov picking the last name Petrov had given it to the author of the article
on Bryusov, namely, Gumilev. Such a combination fits, because in the death of
Bakhtin [Blok] Bulgakov is in reality showing the death of Gumilev executed by
a firing squad in a group of 30 men. Here is the “mass scene” for you. But
first comes the death of Blok, followed by Gumilev’s in the same month. The
“colliding masses” speak of the same thing, used as a substitute for the
expression “crowding at the wall.”
In other words, Bulgakov gives two poets of the
Russian Silver Age to say farewell to one another before death, which happens
on the bridge in the play Black Snow.
Touching! This scene reminds me of Margarita (Marina
Tsvetaeva) saying farewell to Ivan Bezdomny (S. Yesenin) at the psychiatric
clinic, where Ivan is a patient.
In favor of Gumilev speaks the woman’s name Anna, as
Gumilev’s first wife was indeed Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poetess whom Blok
was deeply interested in and even wrote a poem To Anna Akhmatova, explicitly addressed to her.
And also Gumilev’s second wife was also Anna.
Bulgakov confuses the researcher by the following
sentence:
“I
won’t allow him singing Spanish serenades under the window of my fiancée!”
Even though Alexander Blok has a poetry cycle Carmen, N. S. Gumilev has called himself
a “conquistador in iron armor,” which makes him assume the identity of a
Spaniard.
By the same token, Bulgakov confuses the researcher by
the last name Yermakov, instead of Petrov. He also perpetuates confusion
through the following verbal joust:
“I’ll
shoot you!”
This is probably Bakhtin yelling at Yermakov who,
before throwing away his guitar and running onto the balcony, responds:
“You
aren’t going to prove anything by it!”
Instead of shooting Yermakov, Bakhtin shoots himself,
but not in front of Yermakov, but rather in front of Petrov. The idea here is
probably the triangle of A. A. Blok, L. D. Mendeleeva, and Andrei Bely.
In which case, Yermakov’s prototype must be Blok’s
friend A. Bely who had an affair with Blok’s wife L. D. Mendeleeva.
How convoluted, how terribly entangled is all this!
To be continued…
***
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