Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.
Posting #6.
“On the stage behind
the tulips, where the king of waltzes’ orchestra had been playing, a raving-mad
monkey jazz was raising hell. A huge gorilla adorned with a pair of shaggy side
whiskers, with a trumpet in hand, was conducting, heavily dancing to the
rhythm. In one row there sat orangutans and blew into sparkling trumpets. On
their shoulders nested chimpanzees with harmonicas. Two gamadrils with manes
like lion’s were playing the grand pianos, and these pianos could not be heard
behind the thunder, and the peep, and the thumping of the saxophones, violins,
and drums in the paws of the gibbons, mandrills, and the monkeys.”
M. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
After
the 19th chapter of Molière:
The School of Dramaturgy, of great importance both to the researcher of
Bulgakov and to the beginning writer, I am returning to the normal sequence of
the chapters in the novel Molière,
beginning with the 1st chapter In
The Monkey House.
The
study of these chapters will help establish the influence of Bulgakov’s novel Molière written in 1932-1933 on the work
of his life, the novel Master and
Margarita.
In
the very first paragraph we read that Molière’s father belonged to the Shop of
the Upholsterers, and was himself “an upholsterer and furniture merchant.”
And
on the next page Bulgakov, while describing Molière’s father’s business, draws
the reader’s attention with the following words:
“He was the Court Upholsterer and Draper... There were rumors that
aside from selling armchairs [sic!] and drapes, he was in the business of
lending money at considerable interest… The whole day long people were crowding
into his shop to choose carpets [sic!] and drapes…”
The
theme of the “armchair” is very significant in Master and Margarita and I am treating it with utmost seriousness
in every chapter where this piece of furniture comes up. But in this case added
to the furniture are not only drapes, but carpets as well.
In
the 26th chapter of Master and
Margarita: The Burial, Afranius goes to the Lower Town, to the area known as the Greek Street, where a number of Greek-owned shops were located,
including a shop that sold carpets. Focusing on this fact, Bulgakov finds it
necessary to repeat these words, as he describes a night at the Garden of
Gethsemane, where Niza has just invited Judas to listen to the nightingales. –
“...In a few minutes Judas was already
running under the mysterious shadow [sic!] of sprawling giant olives. The road
was rising up the hill. Judas was breathing heavily, at times getting out of
darkness into the intricate lunar carpets, reminding him of the carpets he had
seen in the shop of Niza’s jealous husband…”
As
the reader must surely remember, Niza’s prototype is none other than the
Russian poetess M. Tsvetaeva, see my chapter The Garden. As for the prototype of Judas, see my chapter The Guests at Satan’s Great Ball.
What
remains to be explained is the title of the 1st chapter of
Bulgakov’s Molière: In The Monkey House.
“On the corners of the three-story building [where Molière was growing up, the 15th-century
architect] had placed wooden sculptural images of orange trees with carefully
trimmed branches. In a chain along these trees stretch out little monkeys
picking off the fruit. In the sunset of his years, while contemplating his own
coat of arms, [Molière] depicted in
it his long-tailed friends guarding his family home.”
In
the 28th chapter of Master and
Margarita: The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot, Bulgakov replaces
oranges with tangerines in a foreign currency store in Moscow. –
“The fatso [a manifestation
of Kot Begemot] took possession of the top tangerine in the pyramid, and,
having swallowed it at once, skin and all, attacked a second one. Then he
swallowed a third one, paying for none.”
As for the monkeys, the
reader knows already that their first appearance takes place earlier, in the 23rd
chapter of Master and Margarita: The
Great Ball at Satan’s. Bulgakov writes:
“…And Margarita once again flew out of the room with the swimming
pool. On the stage, behind the tulips, where earlier the King of the Waltzes’ orchestra had been playing, an ape jazz was
raising hell. A huge gorilla adorned with a pair of shaggy side whiskers, with
a trumpet in hand, was conducting, heavily dancing to the rhythm. In one row were
sitting orangutans and blowing into sparkling trumpets. On their shoulders
nested chimpanzees with harmonicas. Two gamadrils with manes like a lion’s were
playing the grand pianos, and these pianos could not be heard behind the
thunder, and the peep, and the thumping of the saxophones, violins, and drums
in the paws of the gibbons, mandrills, and the monkeys.” [See my chapter Woland
in Disguise.]
To
be continued…
***
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