GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLVII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #20.

“…But you, muddlers of the chambers,

The easy-tongued demagogues,

You, the calamitous rousers of the mob,

Slanderers, enemies of Russia!

What have you gained?..”

A. S. Pushkin. To the Slanderers of Russia.

The researcher will be well-served to pay close attention to Bulgakov’s chapter titles. Thus, for instance, in the novel Molière chapter 24 has the title: He is Resurrected And Dies Again.

The title of the 24^th chapter of Master and Margarita is The Extraction of Master. What do these two chapters have in common?

Bulgakov’s puzzles can also be found in such works of his as Diaboliada and Fateful Eggs. As the reader knows, I always respond to the puzzles I come across, because I am basing these puzzles on Bulgakov’s text. For instance, the 26^th chapter of the novel Molière is titled The Great Resurrection, while the 26^th chapter of the novel Master and Margarita is titled The Burial.

The novel Molière starts with a Prologue which has the title I am Talking to the Midwife. At the same time, the novel Master and Margarita starts with Chapter I which has the title Never Talk to Strangers.

Another puzzle is hidden in Chapter 7 of Molière: The Illustrious Gang. At the same time the title of Chapter 7 in Master and Margarita is The No-Good Apartment.

If in Bulgakov’s novel Molière the title of the 9^th chapter is Prince Conti Comes Out on Stage, then in chapter 9 of Master and Margarita the title is Koroviev’s Shenanigans, in which Koroviev alias the Checkered One alias the Regent “comes out on stage,” and he is of course the hypnotizer in chief of the whole gang appearing in Moscow.

While the 10^th chapter of Master and Margarita has the title News From Yalta, the 10^th chapter of Molière contains “news” in its title: Burgognians Beware: Molière is Coming!

Also containing a puzzle are the following words used by Bulgakov in the title of the 11^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Splitting of Ivan, whereas the 11^th chapter of Molière, titled Bru-Ha-Ha, has a parallel subject relating to the splitting of Molière. With the help of Philippe of France Duc d’Orleans, who realizes that his perception of Molière is dual. Bulgakov writes:

“Philippe of France [alias Duc d’Orleans, the King’s only brother] and Molière study each other with their eyes. Philippe of France checks his impression. It is dual [sic!]: It would seem that best of all he might like the smile and the creases on the face, but by no means the eyes of the comedian. The eyes indeed appear wary, kind of somber. But for some reason he is attracted to the eyes.”

An amazing exercise in splitting!

No matter how strange this may seem to the reader, despite the title of the 12^th chapter of the novel Molière: The Lesser Bourbon, the content of this chapter corresponds to the content of the 12^th chapter of Master and Margarita: Black Magic and Its Unmasking. Bulgakov writes:

“Molière’s troupe was nicknamed The Troupe of Monsieur the Only Brother of the King, and the patron immediately allotted the salary of 300 livres to each of Molière’s players. But at this point it must be noted with great sorrow that according to the testimony of contemporaries, of these 300 livres none were actually paid. The reason for this is that the King’s Brother’s finances had been in a pitiable condition.”

And this famous money scene is from the 12^th chapter of Master and Margarita:

“Old trick,” came a voice from the gallery. “That one in the stalls is one of their company!

You think so? – yelled Fagot, screwing up his eyes at the gallery. In that case you are in the same gang with them, because the deck is now in your pocket!”

And as the reader knows, the deck of cards turns in the pocket into a bank-wrapped bundle of banknotes marked as “1,000 rubles.”

The audience became highly agitated. Everybody wanted to believe that the money was real. As the reader remembers, Fagot shot up from his pistol…

“...There was a spark and a bang and right away from under the dome, diving among the trapezes, a shower of white papers started falling down in the audience hall. In a few seconds the paper rain – thickening all the time – reached the chairs, and the audience started catching the falling pieces of paper.”

This is how Bulgakov depicts the political assassination of A. S. Pushkin for money, which once again supports my thought on the subject. (See my chapter The Bard.)

The following words also have a special meaning:

“They were looking at the lit stage through the banknotes and saw the truest and the rightest signs of authenticity: the water marks. The smell, too, was leaving no doubts: it was the incomparable smell of freshly-printed money… The word chervontsy was ringing everywhere. Generally speaking, the excitement was growing, and it is difficult to say what the outcome might have been, had Fagot not stopped the money rain by suddenly blowing into the air.”

The words “suddenly blowing into the air” signify the death of A. S. Pushkin. Also pointing to it are Bulgakov’s following words:

“Immediately in the dress circle there appeared a policeman’s helmet, someone was taken away from the dress circle.”

This is how Bulgakov shows the arrest of the French subject D’Anthes who had killed Pushkin in a duel by shooting him in the liver. D’Anthes was a professional military man, which underscores the fact that Pushkin’s was a political killing. In his play Alexander Pushkin, Bulgakov gives the following words to D’Anthes, regarding Pushkin:

“He will be writing no more.”

In his writings and overall opinions, Pushkin was very critical of the Europeans. A good example of his invective is the poem To the Slanderers of Russia. (See my chapter The Bard.) There are all too many anti-Europe articles and poems throughout Pushkin’s works, curiously including a direct reproach to Byron who joined an anti-Russian propaganda chorus without actually visiting Russia even once in his life. Pushkin accuses Byron of thus dishonoring himself.

As an example of Pushkin’s displeasure with Europe, the following poetic excerpt can be quoted:

“Remembering the great day of Borodino

With a brotherly wake, we said:

Hadn’t the tribes advanced,

Threatening Russia with calamity;

Wasn’t all Europe here?

And whose star was leading it!..

…And now what? In their arrogance

They have forgotten their disastrous retreat;

Forgotten the Russian bayonet and the snow,

That buried their glory in the desert…”

Pushkin wrote this poem in 1831 as a tribute to the 19^th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino. In it he addresses the Europeans:

“…But you, muddlers of the chambers,

The easy-tongued demagogues,

You, the calamitous rousers of the mob,

Slanderers, enemies of Russia!

What have you gained? Or is the Ross

An ailing, enfeebled colossus?”

The killer of Pushkin, D’Anthes, was arrested and expelled from Russia, which makes Pushkin a martyr for the Russian Orthodox Christian Faith.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLVI

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #19.

“And it’s always battle!

We only dream of rest

Through blood and dust…”

A. Blok. On the Kulikovo Field.

And so, when I followed the road suggested for an investigation of the death of N. S. Gumilev by the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, I proved to be right, despite the general paucity of evidence that I could find on the Internet, regarding this matter.

Bulgakov also followed the same road, as already in the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, he gives one of the visitors the suggestive last name “Poplavsky,” pointing to the person who may have given the evidence against Gumilev.

This may be just one of the versions and quite likely, a confused and plain wrong one. Only when the material on Gumilev’s arrest and execution is declassified, only then will the Russian people learn what really happened.

But meanwhile, like the Superintendent of Finance of France Nicolas Fouquet, alias the Vicomte de Melun et Vaux, alias the Marquis de Belle-Ile, who had committed thievery from the state coffers on such a scale that had seldom been perpetrated in history.

By the same token, the Russian poet Gumilev (Lastochkin), according to Bulgakov, delivered the money entrusted to him by the Variety Theater, but was arrested anyway, and he is still hoping that a different judge will judge both him, the poet, who found himself in a most unfortunate situation, and the vengeful enemy about whose existence he never had any suspicion.

“…And especially that unknown one who had thrown the letter on the sand.”

Only in this manner, masking himself behind the story of Mlle De Lavaliere, known to all who had read Dumas’ Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, Does Bulgakov once more present the story of the betrayal of the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev already in the novel Molière.

Gumilev’s death must have shaken Bulgakov pretty badly, as he returns to it again and again, beginning with his novella Diaboliada.

The only place in Master and Margarita proper where sand is explicitly present is in chapter 32: Forgiveness And Eternal Refuge. Having said farewell to Woland –

“This is your road, master, this one! Farewell! My time has come!” – [says Woland.]

“Farewell! – replied Margarita and master to Woland in one cry. Then black Woland, following no road, threw himself into a chasm, and after him all his cavalcade did the same.”

– this is what follows next:

“Neither the cliffs, nor the platform, nor the lunar path, nor Yerushalaim remained around. The black stallions vanished as well. Master and Margarita saw the promised sunrise [the Radiant Resurrection].Master was walking with his lady-friend in the sparkle of the first morning sunrays over the rocky mossy bridge. They crossed it. The brook was left behind the faithful lovers as they were walking along the sandy road. Listen to the soundlessness, Margarita was saying to master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet. – Listen and enjoy what you were deprived of in life – quietude. Look, there, ahead, is your eternal home, which you have been given as your reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the clinging grapevine. It creeps up to the very roof. So, this is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evening you will be visited by those you love, those who interest you and those who do not upset you. They will play for you, they will sing for you, you will see the color of the room when candles are burning. You will be going to bed having put on your soiled and eternal night cap; you will be falling asleep with a smile on your lips. The sleep will strengthen you, you will be reasoning wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away: I will be the one guarding your sleep.”

Why is “sand” so important in this case? I already wrote before that this sand is connected to the desert. Everybody knows this, but there is a particular connection for the Christians with the story of Jesus Christ in the desert, where he is being tempted by the devil.

But there is an additional reason too. In a single character Bulgakov shows three Russian poets, which is why it is so difficult for a researcher to figure things out. Yet in this case everything has to be clear. In the opening poem of the poetry cycle Separation, Alexander Blok writes:

“You walked away, and I am in a desert,

Clinging to the hot sand.

But the tongue can no longer

Utter the proud word.

Having no sorrow about what had been,

I understood your [Russia’s] loftiness:

Yes, you are native Galilee

To me – an unrisen Christ.”

Yes, Marina Tsvetaeva goes to Rest together with Alexander Blok.

In the poetry cycle Motherland, Blok writes in the 1908 poem On the Kulikovo Field:

“And it’s always battle!

We only dream of rest

Through blood and dust…”

No Trotsky ever would have been able to come up with the idea of “permanent revolution” without these Blokian words.

Bulgakov utilizes practically all of these proud words, comprehensible to every Russian. While using the word “sand,” he also uses the word “dust” already in the 2^nd chapter Pontius Pilate, as well as in the 26^th chapter The Burial, where he writes:

“The impatient Judas was already outside the city limit. On his left Judas saw a small cemetery. Having crossed a dusty road, Judas hurried toward the Kidron Stream, in order to cross it...”

As for the word “dust,” I have already written on several occasions that Bulgakov takes this word from the poet of the Golden Age of Russian literature M. Yu. Lermontov, who writes:

“…How dared I wish for loud glory,

When you are happy in the dust?”

And of course, Yeshua’s prototype Gumilev modeled himself after Lermontov, having become a warrior-poet in his Table of Rank among the poets.

Just before Pontius Pilate received from his secretary compromising material on Yeshua, Bulgakov writes:

“The wings of the swallow sniffled right over the head of the igemon; the bird rushed toward the bowl of the fountain and flew out, to freedom. The procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw a burning pillar of dust near him.”

Returning to the words of the poem opening Blok’s poetry cycle Motherland, “You walked away, and I am in a desert, Clinging to the hot sand…” I think that Bulgakov poses his next puzzle here, leaving yet another clue allowing the reader to decipher who is who in Master and Margarita.

Although this poem is religious in nature, but like in so many other poems, Blok combines love and religion.

I see an unfaithful woman here, whom Blok must have been in love with. Pointing to this is not only the phrase quoted in the previous paragraph, but also the last four lines of the poem:

“...And let another one embrace you,

Let him multiply the wild rumor:

The Son of Man does not know

Where he can repose his head.”

Having reread this poem, I have no doubt whatsoever that Blok wrote this poem about his wayward wife Lyubov Mendeleeva.

And so, it turns out that introducing the scene with the letter on the sand in the novel Molière, M. A. Bulgakov shows, to begin with, that on the strength of this Blokian poem, it is Blok of all three prototypes of the “triply romantic master” who is walking along a sandy road with Margarita (M. Tsvetaeva) toward the Rest which during his life he could only dream of. Bulgakov in the novel Master and Margarita makes the impossible possible for Blok.

Secondly, this scene with the “letter on the sand” points toward another Russian poet contained in the character of the “triply romantic master” – the “magnificent third” N. S. Gumilev, because the incriminating testimony was in a written form, as it is mandated by law. In this case the hero dies in the character of Yeshua, because of all Russian poets, Gumilev was the only one who was convinced that he was worthy of Paradise. Gumilev expresses this conviction already in his early poetry collection Romantic Flowers (1903-1907) in the poem Death:

“You [Death] were luring me with a song of Paradise,

And you and I, we shall meet in Paradise.”

And in the 1911-1915 poetry collection The Quiver Gumilev makes it even more explicit:

“Apostle Peter, get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door...”

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLV

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #18.

“Here comes trouble on my head, driven to Paris by oxen.”

Philippe d’Orleans about  Molière’s arrival in Paris

in M. Bulgakov’s novel Molière.

Bulgakov also draws the attention of the beginning writers to the importance of the voice of the one who is being described, especially if this man plays a leading role in the novel.

Thus, for instance, “Philippe concluded that [Molière] had an unpleasant voice. But after a few words of the guest, he, for some reason [probably on account of flattery], seemed to start liking [Molière’s] voice.”

Bulgakov is clearly using here Philippe of France in order to draw attention not only to human eyes, which are the most expressive part of the face, but also to the human voice.

Like, for instance, in a short paragraph, Bulgakov goes out of his way to change Molière’s voice. To Philippe’s amazement, Molière starts talking in a totally different voice – a harsh chest voice – and then goes back to his previous voice, then a brusque voice again… Then a third voice, a voice exceptionally stringent and impressive. Molière addresses Philippe, expressing hope that His Majesty [King Louis XIV] is in good health.

And then after a fiasco with Corneille’s tragedy Nicomede, Molière has to resort to flattery again. While Philippe d’Orleans “could not raise his eyes, but was sitting sunk into his armchair, retracting his head into his shoulders.” It was Philippe’s privilege to invite Molière and his troupe to the Old Louvre for the performance.

“And again, he, the cursed one, starts talking in that same [flattering] voice. Here comes trouble on my head, driven to Paris by oxen.”

Apparently, Bulgakov has learned a lot by reading Molière, and especially, his slyness. He tricks the researcher in his description of Louis XIV “with a capriciously protruding lip,” like Niza’s in Pontius Pilate. And also by presenting the reader with not just one but two actors’ troupes: one of them Molière’s on the stage, and the other one, known to all Paris, the troupe of Royal Bourgogne Actors, among the audience. –

“Only one of the Bourgogne actors was laughing his heart out with genuine sincerity. This hook-nosed man with delicate facial features was a great tragedian, the best in France performer of the role of Nicomede.”

Here apparently, same as with the King Louis XIV, the sly Bulgakov acts in character, drawing a parallel between the hook-nosed French actor and Judas in Pontius Pilate, while doing the same in comparing Niza to the French King on account of a capricious lip.

Therefore all of them must be actors. In a sense, it must be so, because M. Bulgakov was writing plays and very much wanted all his works to be staged or adapted for the cinema screen. But the main way that he leads the researcher off the right track is by showing the heroes of Master and Margarita as “foreigners.”

As for the actors of the Royal Bourgogne Theatre, having been stunned by Molière’s comedy and by the actors’ performance, they decided that Molière was the devil, and his actors were demons.

“Thanks to [Philippe] d’Orleans! Thank you for bringing [to Paris] from the provinces -- demons! The devil! The devil! What actor-comedian?”

That’s what the sly Bulgakov writes, reminding us of the appearance of a “foreigner” on Patriarch Ponds. It is for a reason that Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy renounces his official title as Chairman of the Housing Committee:

“You are Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, Chairman of the Housing Committee?

On hearing his, Nikanor Ivanovich burst into a horrible laughter, and responded literally with the following:

Yes, I am Nikanor, surely, Nikanor. But what-the-joker Chairman am I?! Had I been Chairman, I would have instantly established that he [Koroviev] was a demonic creature! If he wasn’t, what would that be? A cracked pince-nez, dressed in rags… What kind of interpreter to a foreigner could he possibly be?

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!”

What is the sly Bulgakov trying to say by this? That Satan really invades human bodies? Or that talented people possess superior powers from God? What do you think, my reader?

Only in the 12^th chapter of the novel Molière does Bulgakov explain:

“Had there been no such famous book – Register – handwritten by a young man who called himself Charles Varlais sieur de Lagrange, former actor in the lead role – we would have known even less about our hero [Molière], meaning that we would have known next to nothing about him.

From the very first day of having been admitted into the troupe, sieur de Lagrange equipped himself with a thick notebook in which he entered daily everything that was going on in Molière’s troupe.”

I cannot help being reminded of Yeshua’s words in the 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate:

“So it was you who were going to destroy the Temple building and incited the people to do so?.. It is clearly written here: incitement to destroy the Temple. This is what people are testifying to.

These good people have learned nothing and got totally mixed up over what I had told them. Generally speaking, I am beginning to worry that this mix-up is going to last for a very long time. And all because he was writing down after me incorrectly.”

Yeshua is talking about Matthew Levi here, whose prototype in Bulgakov is the Russian poet and writer Andrei Bely. (See my Chapter The Garden.)

Two more scenes in the novel Molière are connected to Yeshua in the subnovel Pontius Pilate. In the 17^th chapter After the Death of a Jealous Prince, M. Bulgakov very cautiously but surely deals with the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finance of France.

As the researcher knows, the 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita is titled A Troublesome Day. In this chapter virtually out of nowhere we are confronted with the arrest of the Accountant of the Variety Theater Vasili Stepanovich Lastochkin.

Bulgakov took a big risk with the numbering of both chapters (#17) and also with the occupation of the two arrestees in these chapters. Pointing to Judas in N. S. Gumilev’s case, where Gumilev is the prototype of the accountant Lastochkin, Bulgakov switches to a mystical tone. From this short excerpt, if we paraphrase it, it becomes clear that a woman was a participant in the slandering of Gumilev. Bulgakov shows it through Fouquet’s letter – which was found by someone – to a certain Mlle De Lavaliere, who happened to be the King’s mistress.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLIV

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #17.

“Blok possesses a purely Pushkinian ability to

make one feel the eternal in the transitory,

behind each accidental character to show

the shadow of genius, guarding his destiny.”

Nikolai Gumilev on Alexander Blok.

As for Bulgakov’s description of Gumilev’s face, it all boils down to the following words in his description of Molière in the eponymous novel:

“In a word, [he is] extremely uncomely in appearance.”

This corresponds to what contemporaries were saying about Gumilev, such as, for instance, the beginning poetess Irina Odoevtseva:

“So, this is how he is, Gumilev. It is hard to imagine a more uncomely, more unique man. Everything is unique in him, and uniquely uncomely.”

However, Mme Nevedomskaya in her memoirs has a far more charitable opinion of Gumilev:

“He had an unusual face, either a Bi-Ba-Bo, or Pierrot, or a Mongol, but his eyes and hair were of light color…”

Curiously, although on his portraits Molière’s wigs are always dark-haired, Bulgakov, for some reason, says that has a light-colored wig on him.

Meanwhile Mme Nevedomskaya writes this:

“…Intelligent probing eyes, slightly squinting. With all that, accentuatedly ceremonial manners, while his eyes and mouth show a sly grin. It feels like he wants to do some mischief.”

It is this particular description of Gumilev by Mme Nevedomskaya that must have been noted by others as well. Bulgakov picks it up and passes it on to Woland on Patriarch Ponds. He is also putting a special emphasis on the eyes in the novel Molière:

“But his eyes are quite remarkable. I am reading in them a strange indelible sarcastic grin, and, at the same time, some kind of eternal amazement before the world around him.”

Strangely, I never noticed anything like that in any of Molière’s portraits. On the other hand, I instantly recognized Mme Nevedomskaya’s words about the eyes of N. S. Gumilev, as well as the following words of Bulgakov:

“He found amusing sides in people, and liked to exercise his wit on that account.”

Following Pushkin’s advice, Bulgakov does not “resettle” himself into the 17^th century France, a country he had never been to, or an age for which he was born too late. Although he masterfully uses details from French history and was well-versed in the customs of that time, the manner of dress, and the personalities of the time with their intrigues and accomplishments, which in no way impedes in his portrayal of the main character of the novel, that is Molière, his ability to use features of the people, his contemporaries, whom he personally knew, while diversifying their traits and appearance through those of the greats whom he respected and loved. For instance, Bulgakov writes:

“I see that he is irascible. He has acute mood swings. This young man easily passes from moments of mirth to moments of heavy brooding. He finds amusing sides in people, and likes to exercise his wit on that account.”

What Bulgakov has here is, in all likelihood, a psychological profile of my favorite poet Mikhail Yu. Lermontov.

Continuing to describe Molière’s eyes, Bulgakov moves on to the Russian poet Alexander Blok:

“There is something voluptuous in these eyes, as though feminine, and at their bottom – a hidden malaise. Some kind of worm, believe me, is sitting in this 20-year-old man, and now already it is eating into him.”

(See my chapter Guests at Satan’s Great Ball: The Twenty-Year-Old Lad.)

The next excerpt also points to Alexander Blok.

“At times, he imprudently falls into candor, at other times he tries to be cagey and dissimulating. At times he is rashly brave, but he may immediately fall into indecisiveness and cowardice. Oh, do believe me, under these conditions he will have a hard life before him, and he will make a lot of enemies.”

Naturally, Bulgakov comes to all these conclusions having A. Blok in mind, based on Blok’s own poetry. Blok was of course brutally honest in his poems. He found material for his verses, as well as inspiration for them, in himself.

A corroboration of Alexander Blok’s duality came to me from Nikolai Gumilev’s Articles and Notes on Russian Poetry. In one of his articles he writes:

“In front of A. Blok stand two Sphinxes, making him ‘sing and cry,’ with their unsolved puzzles: Russia and his own soul. The first [Sphinx] is Nekrasov’s, the other one is Lermontov’s. And frequently, all-too-frequently, Blok shows the two of them fused into one, organically inseparable. Impossible? But hasn’t Lermontov written The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov?

Like no other, can Blok combine two themes in one, without contraposing them to each other, but merging them chemically. This device opens to us horizons without measure in the realm of poetry.”

I already wrote before that Bulgakov was reading all literary journals published in Russia, absorbing the best in them and learning from the poets (sic!) how to write good prose.

In yet another article about Blok, Gumilev continues praising him:

“Usually, a poet gives the people his works. Blok gives himself. What I want to say by this is that in his poetry there is no resolution of general problems, as in Pushkin, nor philosophical, as in Tyutchev. He simply portrays his own life, which, fortunately for him, is so wondrously rich in internal struggle, catastrophes, and enlightenments.”

Gumilev pays Blok the best compliment that can be paid to a poet.

“Blok possesses a purely Pushkinian ability to make one feel the eternal in the transitory, behind each accidental character to show the shadow of genius, guarding his destiny.”

Isn’t it what Bulgakov is doing in his novel Molière? Bulgakov himself is also writing about duality in the 11^th chapter of Molière:

“Philip of France [alias Duc d’Orleans, the King’s only brother] and Molière study each other with their eyes. Philip of France checks his impression. It is dual [sic!]: It would seem that best of all he might like the smile and the creases on the face, but by no means the eyes of the comedian. The eyes indeed appear wary, kind of somber.”

And Philip wants to incline himself to like the [honeyed] creases on the face, but for some reason he is still attracted to the eyes.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLIII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #16.

“…Was it he or someone else

Who traded his merry freedom

For the sacred long-awaited battle?”

N. S. Gumilev. Memory.

Before I go any further in the 11^th chapter of Bulgakov’s Molière, I’d like to return to the 5^th chapter. Here Bulgakov writes the following, virtually spelling it out:

“And so, there is no more boy in a small collar, and there is no scholastic with long hair…”

And this is it!

“…In front of me, in candlelight [pri svechakh], stands a young man. The hair on him is artificial. He is wearing a light-colored wig.”

What attracts me in this passage is not only the changing appearance of the person from “a boy to a youth to a young man,” but also the words “pri svechakh,” which are exactly the words of the title of the 22^nd chapter of Master and Margarita, showing the commonness between Molière and Master and Margarita. Bulgakov writes:

“…I avidly peer into this man…”

And there is a good reason for it, because it is precisely in this 22^nd chapter of Master and Margarita: With Candles that Abadonna appears for the first time. As I have written already on several occasions, in the character of Abadonna Bulgakov hides the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev who perished in 1921. It is also for a reason that Koroviev calls Margarita “diamond donna” in chapter 24 The Extraction of Master.

And of course at Satan’s Ball, Margarita sees “alongside Azazello three more young men vaguely reminding her of Abadonna.” (Apparently, these three men were, like Gumilev, falsely accused of crimes they did not commit, and executed.)

As for the word “donna,” Bulgakov uses it probably suspecting that Marina Tsvetaeva (Margarita’s prototype) with her uncompromising directness of views, was not going to remain long in this world. And indeed, she may have been executed as well, in 1941, the official year of her death by suicide. (For I cannot believe she hanged herself. After all, she was religious and had a son with her!)

Describing Molière, Bulgakov writes:

“He is of medium height, somewhat slouching, hollow-chested, wide-set eyes on a swarthy face with high cheekbones, sharp chin and broad nose. In a word, extremely uncomely in appearance.”

Having become interested in this unusual portrait created by Bulgakov, I decided to take a closer look at the best-known portraits of Molière (available on the Internet), presumably the same portraits that Bulgakov was also looking at, in his time. And what a difference between those famous classic impressions and Bulgakov’s portrayal of Molière!

And then I was struck by a thought. What if Bulgakov in Molière decided to describe, at least in his physical appearance, some other man closer to him and therefore more comprehensible to him as a character? Whom would he have picked? Was it a composite of two persons?

As the researcher already knows, in my own study I followed the works of Russian writers, poets, and music composers. And in that passage above (“And so, there is no more boy in a small collar, and there is no scholastic with long hair… In front of me, in candlelight, stands a young man..”) I see Gumilev’s poem Memory from his posthumous poetry collection A Pillar of Fire, which is the last one prepared for publication by Gumilev himself and dedicated to his second wife Anna Nikolayevna Engelhard. The poetry collection was published in the autumn of 1921.

This edition of 1,000 printed copies was known to Bulgakov, as he was collecting material on N. S. Gumilev even before the poet’s death. After all, Gumilev had become a leading poet and writer of his time.

The poem Memory is in a way a poetic autobiography of its author.

“…The very first one, plain-looking and thin,

A fallen leaf, a child of wizardry,

Stopping the rain with his word.

Memory, you cannot find a sign,

You won’t convince the world that it was me…

And the second one loved the wind from the south.

He said that life was a friend of his,

And the world was just a rug under his feet.

I don’t like him at all, it was he

Who wanted to become a god and a tsar,

He hung the sign ‘poet’

Over the door to my silent home.”

Having portrayed himself first as a child and next as a youth, Gumilev moves on to the time when he became a traveler and visited Africa.

“I love the chosen one of freedom,

The seafarer and the shooter,

Ah, the waters sang for him so sonorously,

And the clouds envied him.

His tent was tall,

The mules were fast and strong;

He drank in like wine the sweet air

Of the land unknown to the white man…”

And so, the idea of writing about Molière in three persons comes to Bulgakov from Gumilev’s poem Memory. Bulgakov is not going after the 4^th persona of Gumilev – warrior – in the same poem, because Gumilev is showing excessive modesty here, having survived the action of WWI, unlike so many others:

“…Was it he [Gumilev] or someone else

Who traded his merry freedom

For the sacred, long-awaited battle?..”

This happens to be one leg of my chair.

A second leg of the chair presents itself in Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem dedicated to A. Blok:

“The slouching shoulders were bending under the wings…”

And then: “Not the crushed rib, not the broken wing…”

And now in the same poem under #13 of the Blok cycle, Marina Tsvetaeva inserts Gumilev, for which reason Bulgakov must have combined them in one character. –

“It wasn’t the firing squad’s

Through-the-chest bullet...”

That was about Gumilev. Blok died four days after Gumilev’s arrest.

“….This bullet cannot be taken out.

Wings cannot be repaired.

He was walking disfigured.”

This was about Blok.

In these lines I see the third (Blok) and the fourth (Gumilev) legs of my chair.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLII

Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.

Posting #15.

“But you, my poor and bloodied master!

You did not want to die anywhere –

either at home or outside home.”

M. Bulgakov. Molière.

The end of the 10^th chapter Burgognians Beware: Molière is Coming! resembles master’s scene in the 31^st chapter of Master and Margarita: On Vorobievy Hills. Bulgakov writes:

“Molière stopped the caravan and stepped out of the wagon to stretch his legs. He took several steps away from the caravan and started peering into the city, which, 12 years before, had thrown him out, bankrupt and shamed. Shreds of memories rushed through his brain. For a moment he was overtaken by fright and he was drawn backward. He felt like he was old, and he said, moving his lips in solitude: Turn back? Yes, I’ll turn back! He turned and walked to the front wagon of the caravan, and told his front echelon: Well, move forward!”

And in the 31^st chapter of Master and Margarita: On Vorobievy Hills. Bulgakov writes:

“Master ejected himself from the saddle, left the horseback group, and ran to the edge of the hill, his black cloak dragging behind him on the ground. A poignant sorrow crept into master’s heart, supplanted by sweetish anxiety, a wandering Gypsy stirring. – Forever! This has to be thought through! – thought master. He started listening and accurately recording everything that was going on in his soul. The group of horsemen were waiting for master in silence. They were watching as the black long figure on the edge of the precipice was gesticulating, now raising his head as though trying to cast his glance all across the city in order to look beyond its limits, now hanging it low as though studying the trampled stunted grass under his feet.”

Thus, they are both “masters,” as in the Prologue to Molière Bulgakov already calls him “master” on page 12:

“But you, my poor and bloodied master! You did not want to die anywhere – either at home or outside home.”

In the novel Master and Margarita, master combines the features of three Russian poets: Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, and Nikolai Gumilev. However, only one of them can be called a “bloodied master” – Gumilev. His features are predominant in master. And in chapter 32: Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge, on the last page where Margarita together with master are walking to their “last refuge,” only Gumilev remains:

“Margarita could not see herself, but she could well see how master had changed. His hair was shining white now in the moonlight, and at the back of his head it formed itself into a plait which was flying in the wind… Like the youth-demon, master was flying without taking his eyes off the moon, but he smiled at her, like at a good acquaintance and a beloved.”

This excerpt reveals Bulgakov’s mysticism. Margarita can’t see herself because her prototype the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva was still alive at the time of M. Bulgakov’s death.

As for master, what Bulgakov shows in this passage is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. Master’s plait reveals Gumilev as Grinev, Pushkin’s personage in Captain’s Daughter, living in the time of the Empress Catherine the Great in the 18^th century, as Gumilev portrays himself in his poem The Tram That Lost Its Way. Bulgakov made this poem the basis of his novel Master and Margarita, as the “tram” symbolizes human life.

Also pointing to N. S. Gumilev is the comparison of master to the youth-demon, as Gumilev built his life along the lines of M. Yu. Lermontov, whom Bulgakov portrays as Kot Begemot and next as a youth-demon.

N. Gumilev came up with a ranking system for poets, where the top rank belongs to the so-called “warrior-clerk,” the poet-warrior. In his life, Gumilev followed M. Yu. Lermontov, having signed up as volunteer for military service in the Russian Army in World War I.

Gumilev valued Lermontov’s poetry very highly and emulated Lermontov as well in his personal bravery and fearlessness.

There are two more things to explain. Why does master like the youth-demon never take his eyes off the moon?

As I have already explained elsewhere, Bulgakov takes this from D. S. Merezhkovsky, poet, mystic, philosopher, who was calling Pushkin the “daytime luminary” of Russian poetry and Lermontov the “nighttime luminary” in an eponymous article.

***

In the invented story of Molière’s trip to Naples, Bulgakov shows N. S. Gumilev’s trip to Crimea where he allegedly became acquainted with a young man from a good family, who later slandered him, bringing about Gumilev’s arrest and execution. This young man wrote poetry, ingratiating himself into Gumilev’s style and taste. In his memoirs, the Russian poet G. Ivanov describes the provocateur:

“He was tall and slim, with a merry glance and an open youthful face. He wrote verses that were not a bad imitation of Gumilev’s.”

In the 11^th chapter of Molière: Bru-ha-ha, Bulgakov teaches the beginning writer how to read human faces. In his novel Molière, Bulgakov describes his dramatis personae without ever getting a slightest glimpse of them. And how could he? Molière lived in the 17^th century!

Having become interested in theater back in Northern Caucasus, Bulgakov had to possess an excellent imagination. But a person’s imagination is always based on something real. In the opening of the 11^th chapter, Bulgakov describes Molière through movements:

“…Running among [the assistants], agitated, now shouting, now pleading with someone, was a man.”

In order to describe this man, Bulgakov is using words that could refer to anyone. The man turns out to be “ugly” and “grimacing.” In the scene he has smudged the sleeve of his caftan with paint.

Such a description of Molière is hardly giving the reader anything, but still it is very-very interesting. Moreover, to make the description even more enigmatic, Bulgakov writes:

“Because of his agitated state, the man’s hands had become unpleasantly cold.”

Where does Bulgakov take all of this from? Does he want the reader to figure out that Molière is rubbing one hand against the other or is putting both hands crisscross under his arms? The imagination of the beginning writer is now running wild…

To be continued…

***