Last night I went to see an evening of Chekhov one-acts (and also adaptations of his stories into plays). Adaptations done by the wonderful Michael Frayn. I knew one of the actors – the other two in it were previously unknown to me – but everyone was just fantastic. They all played about 15 parts a piece, and each was distinct, separate, recognizable … The plays were howlingly funny at times – and then there was a moment in one which became so unblinkingly sad and tragic (in that Chekhov end-of-Cherry-Orchard-sound-of-axe-hitting-tree-trunk way) – that my eyes flooded with tears. Chekhov is hard, sometimes, to get – especially for Americans – who either over-psychologize him, or sentimentalize him. Americans are kind of optimistic,so Masha strolling around saying, “I am in mourning for my life” seems kind of … weird … but to Russians it would be recognizable, and also FUNNY. Last night was a delight – because it had that Chekhovian mix of tears and laughter – which seem so essential to any of his plays working. Marvelous night.
Then I came home and got into the ol’ pajamas, and listened to the rain coming down outside, and finished Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
Written during the Great Terror of the 1930s. Bulgakov knew it would never be published in his lifetime. But he wrote it anyway. He wrote an entire first draft – and then was too afraid to have it lying around – and burned it. (There’s a famous line in the book: “Manuscripts don’t burn.” Multiple meanings there.) And then – Bulgakov reconstructed it from memory later. Extraordinary. He wrote many sections of the book in the last months of his life – so there is an awareness of the approaching of death in the language. Death stalks Moscow in this book – quite literally. Satan is abroad. Wreaking havoc whereever he goes. The book is quite cinematic – entire movies unfurled in my mind as I read it – Satan’s grand ball, for example … It’s not just descriptive language – Bulgakov isn’t just interested in surfaces, of course – but he certainly knows how to set scenes, erect set pieces, show us where to look. All of this makes sense because he had been a hugely successful playwright – and had even written a play that Stalin approved of. This was why he became famous at the time. More on this later. Master and Margarita is a satire, a VICIOUS satire – the entire thing is describing what was actually happening in Russia at that time – but that nobody was allowed to say. His book was not published in Russia until 1966 – and even then – it was highly censored. And it is only in the last 20 years that translators have brought this book out to the American public. Much of the manuscript was in fragments – and it was often not clear which version Bulgakov would have used – if he had lived to complete the work. So there’s a sense of reading a work in progress.
It’s a terrifying book, so inventive. The ways he finds to express the Great Terror, without ever mentioning the Great Terror … the ways he brings in black magic, and mass hypnosis, and strange arrests, and the casual-ness of groupthink … But it is all done without ever saying what is really going on. He has plausible deniability. He’s just writing a fanciful humorous tale about a black magician and his sidekick, a huge cat. He’s not writing about the Great Terror. He’s writing fiction! There’s one section where an entire office building, every staff member, is under the spell of the magician – and they all are singing the same patriotic song – in unison – and they cannot stop. The entire office building. 100s of people, singing en masse. And they WANT to stop. They BEG people to try to break the spell. It is this kind of highly magical event that Bulgakov uses to describe the world around him. And so You want to kiss Bulgakov for his courage. For having the foresight to SEE what was going on. His life was ruined. He could not get anything published. But he kept writing.
