Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.
Posting #14.
“Director always
had under the flap of his coat
specially prepared tablets on
which he secretly
recorded everything of
interest to him of what
people were talking about in
the barber shop.”
M. Bulgakov. Molière.
In
the same 8th chapter of Bulgakov’s Molière: The Nomadic Pretender, we see the reappearance of the
theme of the armchair. This story is most interesting. If the young A. S.
Pushkin during his exile in the south of Russia had the habit of visiting
prisons in order to converse with the convicts in them, then Molière, according
to Bulgakov, “made friends with the local most
respected and the very best hairdresser Maître Gelly. The establishment of the
Maître enjoyed great popularity. The door to his barber shop was banging
nonstop, its customers were butchers [sic!] and bakers, functionaries and all
sorts of other people. In a word, Maître Gelly had a kind of club in his establishment.”
It
was indeed a club where the patrons were talking among themselves, with Maître Gelly
and with his assistants, and where illiterate people brought letters to be read
to them.
“And so, Molière imposed himself on Maître Gelly to be invited to
the shop on Saturdays to count the receipts. The hospitable Gelly offered the
Directeur [of the Theatre] a wooden armchair [sic!] near the counter, and he [Molière]
sat in it, receiving silver coins. However, Maître Gelly told all his customers
as a secret that the receipts had nothing to do with it. They were just a pretext.
In fact, he told them that the Directeur always had under the flap of his coat
specially prepared tablets on which he secretly recorded everything of interest
to him of what people were talking about in the barber shop. But the Maître did
not know the purpose of that.”
It
is this passage in the 8th chapter of the novel Molière that demonstrates that I was right when I wrote that
Bulgakov himself was a sponge who was sucking in everything he ever heard or
saw of anything that ever happened anywhere. Because a writer never knows what
particular things may be of use to him later on.
Bulgakov
practically gives himself away in the following manner:
“It is unclear whether the barber Gelly was telling the truth or
not, but, in any case, the wooden armchair from the barber shop was later
acquired by a museum.”
Here
it becomes clear that a certain part of this story written by Bulgakov is
untrue. But which part is it? Was it true that the wooden armchair from a
barber shop got itself into a museum for the reason stated above?
We
therefore need to remember the genius of Pushkin who wrote about the magic of
another sorcerer from Scotland Sir Walter Scott, whose 30 volumes of complete
works I devoured many years ago when I was in the 7th grade at
school.
In
his article on the historical book by M. N. Zagoskin: Yuri Miloslavsky, or the Russians in 1612, A. S. Pushkin writes:
“…In our time, by the word
‘novel’ we understand a historical epoch developed in a fictional narrative…”
(This
phrase alone should be priceless! Wasn’t it exactly how Bulgakov wrote his
novel Molière for BVL? This novel was
not published at the time: 1933.)
“…Walter Scott carried after
him a whole crowd of imitators. But how far are they all from the Scottish
bard. Like Agrippa’s disciples,
having conjured up the ancient demon, they could not control him, and became
victims of their audacity…”
(Agrippa’s Disciple is a legend about a
real person: the alchemist Agrippa von Nettesheim [1486-1535]. There are
variations of it in Southey’s ballad Youth
and in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Disciple.)
“…Into the age where they wish
to transport the reader, they themselves resettle with a heavy baggage of
homegrown habits, prejudices, and daily impressions.”
But
Bulgakov, having transported himself into the 17th century, not to
mention a different country, which he had never been to, but only conjured up
in his imagination, inspired by the plays of Molière himself, didn’t transport
his baggage as well. On the contrary, having written Molière, Bulgakov does everything possible to explain the
connection of Molière and his other
works to the novel of his life: Master
and Margarita.
Bulgakov
is also explaining to the beginning writer, not yet corrupted by easy shortcuts
and political expedience how to write. Bulgakov’s Molière becomes a godsend for every honest writer, as well as for
the researcher of Bulgakov’s works.
Born
in 1891, Bulgakov was 42 when he wrote his novel Molière. By that time he was well familiar with all plays written
by the French giant, who must have carried Bulgakov into the theater with him.
In
all Bulgakov plays I can feel the special brand of Bulgakovian humor shine
through, which in my chapters I am calling “unique.”
“Having
conjured up the ancient demon,” Bulgakov was able “to control him, and did not
become a victim of his audacity,” paraphrasing Pushkin.
A
writer in his forties, Bulgakov remembered his young years in Northern
Caucasus, where he in order to support his wife and himself, was writing and
staging plays which he later destroyed all in their entirety. One can feel in
Bulgakov’s Molière his own boyish spirit, his own boyish voice of the young
pugnacious Bulgakov.
Which
is why his novel is so easy to read. In 1933, the editors of BVL did not
understand this. Without imitating Molière, Bulgakov developed his own style,
as a novel is definitely different in style from writing plays.
The
novel’s rejection must have been a big blow for Bulgakov’s ego. But he surely
realized that his was the future in Russian literature. And that’s how he
remained: the last Russian writer without a match in the world.
And
now I have reached the proper words in Pushkin’s article:
“Under the beret
[italicized by Pushkin], canopied by feathers, you will recognize a head
coiffed by your hairdresser; through the lacework of a phrase a la Henri IV,
you can see a starched cravat of the modern dandy.”
Bulgakov
did no such thing. Having had my full measure of Molière, Dumas, and Balzac, I
can testify to the authenticity of Bulgakov’s Molière. Reading this work is both easy and pleasant.
The
coincidence of Pushkin’s Henri IV and Bulgakov’s Louis XIV is rather amusing.
But of most interest is whether Bulgakov may have invented the barber Maître Gelly?
This story appears in chapter 9 of the novel Molière: Prince Conti Comes Out on Stage. This story appears so
perfect, as though too amusing to be true. But the most amusing part of it is
that it is true! Checking the information on the French Internet, I verified
the historical existence of this particular barber and gossip-monger.
By
the same token, true is the story of Maître Gelly’s armchair, the “seat” of Molière’s
curiosity as a writer and allegedly a prominent exhibit in his museum which
actually does not exist.
So
what about the Molière Museum? Bulgakov writes:
“True or not was the story of the barber Gelly, at any rate the
wooden armchair later traveled from the barber shop to a museum. ”
Bulgakov
may be using this “museum” as an allegory of Molière’s literary heritage. Molière’s
plays will forever remain an integral part of the sterling core of world
literature, and hopefully of the world stage repertoire as well.
Bulgakov
also writes this about Molière’s burial place:
“And although [119 years later] someone’s remains were dug up and
entombed in a mausoleum, no one can say with assurance that these remains do
belong to Molière. The great honor may well have been given to a person
unknown.”
To
be continued...
***
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