Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.
Posting #22.
“The image of the
charming seducer Don Juan
Tenorio was woven before him during the
nightly vigils, and beckoned him.”
M. Bulgakov. Molière.
In
the 20th chapter of Bulgakov’s novel Molière: Egyptian Kin there are several moments which throw light
on the events taking place in Master and
Margarita:
“The shadow of the king was beginning to be hallucinated by all
behind the shoulders of the director of the troupe [Molière].”
And also:
“In the opinion of the priest of St. Bartholomew Church Pierre
Roulet, Molière happens to be not a man at all, but a demon merely incarnated
in flesh and dressed in man’s attire.”
The
theme of the “shadow” and the “demon” continues into the very beginning of the
21st chapter: May Thunder
Strike Molière! Bulgakov writes:
“The image of the charming seducer Don Juan Tenorio was woven
before him during the nightly vigils, and beckoned him.”
Here
Bulgakov explains how he created the image of the Checkered One in the 1st
chapter of the novel Master and Margarita:
“And then the balmy air thickened before him [Berlioz], and woven
out of this air, there appeared a most strange, transparent citizen. A jockey
cap upon his small head, a checkered stumpy jacket, also made out of air. This cannot be! – thought Berlioz in
great confusion. But alas it was, and this long see-through citizen was
dangling in front of him right and left without touching the ground. Then
horror overtook Berlioz, and the checkered one disappeared, together with the
blunt needle previously piercing his heart. What
the devil! – exclaimed the editor. – You
know, Ivan, I’ve almost had a heatstroke right now! Even some kind of
hallucination with it…”
As for Molière whom the
priest calls the demon, in chapter 15 of Master
and Margarita: Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream, Bosoy exclaims:
“God True, God Almighty... He
sees all! And as for me – it serves me right: The Lord punisheth me for my
filth... But foreign currency – I never took it! If you wish, I’ll eat earth
that I didn’t... And Koroviev – he is the devil!
Here the room was filled with a wild roar of Nikanor Ivanovich
jumping up from his knees:
There he is! There, behind
the cabinet! Smirking! And it’s his pince-nez! Seize him! Sprinkle this place
with holy water!
And
now back to Bulgakov’s novel Molière:
“The Don Juan theme was
wandering across different countries and attracted all, including the French.
Quite recently both in Lyon and Paris the French were performing plays about
Don Juan, or the Stone Guest, which
in the hands of the first translator of the Spanish play became Stone Feast, after the translator got
mixed up over the Spanish words “guest”
and “feast.”
Molière got excited and started writing his own version of Don Juan, creating a very good play with
a strange fantastic ending: his Don Juan is consumed by hellfire.”
Bulgakov
uses the word “hell” in his novel Master
and Margarita. First it happens in chapter 5: The Affair at Griboyedov:
“The thunder of the golden cymbals in the
jazz sometimes covered over the thunder of the dishes which the
dishwashing women were sending along slanted surface down to the kitchen. In
other words, Hell.
And there was at midnight an apparition in hell. A dark-eyed
handsome with a dagger-beard came out on the veranda, dressed in a tuxedo and
encompassing his possession with a regal glance…”
The
researcher already knows from my chapter The
Bard: The Desperado-Flibustier who exactly this Archibald Archibaldovich
is.
And
then in chapter 23: Satan’s Great Ball
Bulgakov depicts hell in such a fashion which nobody had ever even dreamed of,
making use of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry cycle about Don Juan, in which she
presents herself as Carmen.
“It appeared to Margarita that she had
flown over a place where she saw mountains of oysters in huge stone ponds. Then
she flew over a glass floor with hellish fires burning under it and white
hellish cooks running back and forth between them. Then somewhere, as she was
already losing comprehension of what was going on, she saw dark basements with
some kind of lights burning, where young maids were serving meat sizzling on
red-hot coals, where guests were drinking her health from large tankards. Then
she saw white bears playing accordions and dancing Kamarinskaya on a stage.
Then she saw a salamander-magician who wouldn’t get burned in the fireplace.”
And
so, Bulgakov inserts the word “stone” into the depiction of the feast at
Satan’s Great Ball, thus taking advantage of the mistake made by the translator
of Don Juan from Spanish, when he
mixed up the words “guest” and “feast.” But Bulgakov’s stone feast has its own
stone guest in the person of Koroviev/Pushkin who had written the “Little
Tragedy” Stone Guest as his own variation
on the Don Juan theme.
With
an equal skillfulness, Bulgakov draws the researcher’s attention to the
following phrase:
“It appeared to Margarita that she had flown over a place where she
saw mountains of oysters in huge stone ponds.”
Here
Bulgakov remembered perhaps Louis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland in order to write this scene into his own. I
would also like to draw attention to the ending of chapter 23:
“The columns crumbled, the lights were extinguished. Everything
shrunk, and all the fountains, tulips, and camellias ceased to exist. And what
remained there was merely what had been there: the modest drawing room of the
jeweler’s widow, and from a slightly ajar door there dropped out a strip of
light. It was through this door that Margarita entered.”
I
see Bulgakov’s Margarita as a grown-up Alice.
To be continued…
***
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