Bulgakov's Накануне Feuilletons
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Bulgakov's Накануне Feuilletons Edythe С. Haber* Bulgakov published his first feuilleton for the newspaper Накануне in June 1922, only ten months after he arrived in Moscow from his long Civil War wanderings, «без денег, без вещей, без крова.»1 One might add that he arrived without a literary name and, after having barely survived the terribly cold, hungry and inflation-ravaged winter of 1921-22, it was his affiliation with Накануне that gave him his first, albeit still modest, recognition as a writer.2 Накануне was an institution peculiar to the early 1920's: a periodical published in Berlin but distributed daily in the Soviet Union as well as abroad, and numbering among its contributors Soviet and emigre writers alike. An oigan of the «Смена вех» movement,3 which advocated rapprochement between 6migres and the Soviet Union, its Литературное приложение * Edythe С. Haber — Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Massachusetts- Boston and Fellow at the Russian Research Center, Harvard. She has published articles on Bulgakov, Teffi, and Nabokov and has recently completed a book on early Bulgakov. 1 Quoted from his sister. H. А. Земская by E. А. Земская, «М. А. Булгаков. Письма к родным (1921-1922 гг.),» Известия Академии наук СССР, Серия литера- туры и языка, т. 35, № 5 (сент. — окт., 1976), стр. 452. 2 For more detailed biographical information about his early period, see M. Chudakova, Жизнеописание Михаила Булгакова (M.: Книга, 1988), chapt. 2. 3 For a brief summary of the «Смена вех» movement, see Nikolai Poltoratsky, "Smena Vekh," in Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 427-28. For more about Bulgakov's association with the group and the troubles it later caused him, see Ellendea Proffer, Bulgakov (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984), pp. 63-64; 595, n. 22. 3 приложение was edited by the well-known writer, Aleksei Tolstoi, who was to return to Russia in 1924." Bulgakov's inclusion among the many well-known contributors to Накануне was an important event in his literary life, especially since his pieces soon attracted favorable notice. Thus, E. Mindlin, secretary of the Moscow editorial board, recalls how Tolstoi complained that he was receiving too little from Bulgakov, after which his works were sent not less than once a week. Bulgakov, in fact, together with his then friend, Valentin Kataev, became one of the most published and popular writers in Наканунеand between 1922 and 1924 contributed about twenty-five pieces to the magazine. His publications include part of «Записки на манжетах,» his first longer work, and two Civil War stories,6 but the great bulk of his Накануне contributions consisted of satiric feuilletons. The concept of the feuilleton is a vague and capacious one, which «создавалось исторически, а не явилось результатом анализа,» as Viktor Shklovskii has noted.7 Under this rubric the most varied material comes together, from literary and political articles, to personalized reportage, to short stories and even novels. The single common trait that unites these many subcategories, as one early Soviet investigator remarked, is their publication in newspapers, but as supplementary material, providing the reader with interesting additional information or light reading.8 Historically the "feuilleton-as-article" predated the "feuilleton-as- story." While the latter gained prominence in Russia in the early twentieth century, especially through the works published in the best known satirical journal of the teens, Сатирикон, the former was a popular feature in Russian periodicals by the mid-nineteenth century. As practiced in the 1840's and 1850's by such prominent writers as Dostoevskii, Turgenev, Goncharov, and Nekrasov, feuilletons took the form of correspondence-chronicles of varied content, which could include theatrical and music reviews, portraits of various human types, and many aspects of the passing scene. What differ- 4 E. Mindlin, Необыкновенные собеседники (M.: Советский писатель, 1968), pp. 122-29. Among those who returned with him was the famous feuilletonist, Vasilevskii-Ne- Bukva, whose young wife, Liubov' Evgen'evna Belozerskaia, met Bulgakov at a reception in early 1924 celebrating the emigres' return and married him several months later (see L. E. Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, О, мед воспоминаний [Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1979], pp. 9-11). 5 Mindlin, pp. 145-147. ' «Записки на манжетах» appeared in the Литературное приложение of Нака- нуне on June 18, 1922. One Civil War story, «Красная корона,» was published on Oct. 22, 1922, the other, «В ночь на 3-е число,» on Dec. 10, 1922. 7 «Зорин,» Журналист, №№ 6-7 (June-July, 1925), p. 16. 8 Il'ia Gruzdev, «Техника газетного фельетона,» in Фельетон: Сборник ста- тей, ed. Iu. Tynianov & В. Kazanskii (Leningrad: Academia, 1927), pp. 13-14. 4 entiated them from other newspaper material was the distinctive and individu- alized authorial voice. As L.F. Ershov has noted: «Фельетон часто имел форму остроумного авторского монолога, перебиваемого отступ- лениями от основной темы, с непринужденным переплетением повествовательных и разговорных интонаций.»9 While several of Bulgakov's Накануне pieces approach the short story form, most of the feuilletons he published there conform to the older correspondence-chronicle type. (In contrast, his feuilletons for the other newspaper to which he regularly contributed, Гудок, trace their origins to the later short story type, especially as practiced by the two most celebrated Сатирикон writers, Averchenko and Teffi.10) Most of the Накануне pieces are loosely structured correspondences, including general descriptions of the transformations taking place in Moscow, sketches of various human types, and accounts of particular events. The latter include a murder trial («Кома- ровское дело»), an agricultural exhibition («Золотистый город»), a demonstration («Бенефис лорда Керзона»), a theatrical performance («Биомеханическая глава» in «Столица в блокноте»). The feuilletons are unified primarily by the narrative voice, sometimes ironic, sometimes directly commenting and interpreting the goings-on." Organized as they are around a city, Bulgakov's Накануне feuilletons are generically related to Dostoevskii's «Петербургская летопись,» al- though their lighter, more humorous-satiric tone indicates additional influ- ences, certainly of Bulgakov's favorite writer, Nikolai Gogol', and perhaps of Vlas Doroshevich (the most popular feuilletonist of the turn of the century) and his followers.12 The structure of the feuilletons betrays modern influences ' Сатирические жанры русской советской литературы (JL: Наука, 1977), р. 96. My overall description of the feuilleton owes much to Ershov. 10 The belle-lettristic nature of Bulgakov's Гудок feuilletons is pointed out by L. E. Kroichik, «М. Булгаков — фельетонист «Гудка»,» Вопросы журналистики (Воро- неж: Изд. Воронежского университета, 1969) I, pp. 111-12. Не notes a similarity between Bulgakov's feuilletons and those of the relatively obscure Сатирикон writer, 0. L'Dor (who remained in the Soviet Union), but does not mention the influence of the far more famous Averchenko and Teffi (who emigrated). Bulgakov's sister, Nadezhda, however, who told T. A. Ermakova that Bulgakov was certainly influenced by the Сатирикон writers, added that he «высоко ценил талантливых сатириконцев А. Аверченко и Т. [sic.] Тэффи.» See Ermakova, «Драматургия М. А. Булгакова.» Диссертация на соиска- ние степени кандидата филологических наук (М.: Московский областной Педа- гогический Институт им. Н. К. Крупской, 1971), р. 21. 11 For an interesting discussion of the narrative voice in the Накануне feuilletons, see E. 1. Orlova, «Автор — рассказчик — герой в фельетонах М. А. Булгакова 20-х годов,» Научные доклады высшей школы. Филологические науки, № 6 (1981), pp. 24-28. 12 For a general discussion of the influence of Doroshevich on early Soviet prose writers, see M. Chudakova, «Заметки о языке современной прозы,» Новый мир, № 1 (1972), pp. 214-16. See also Ershov, Сатирические жанры, pp. 101-5. 5 as well, with the associative transitions of the photo montage and the cinema often replacing the chronological flow of earlier feuilletons.13 The broad scope of many of the pieces, devised to offer succinct but vivid panoramas of contemporary Moscow to the newspaper's emigre readers, left a permanent mark on Bulgakov's works. Thus, the depiction of a wide range of discrete occurrences united by the urban landscape and the narrative voice is character- istic of his first novel, Белая гвардия, and reaches its highest level of virtuosity in Мастер и Маргарита. * * * The Накануне feuilletons are unique among Bulgakov's works for their generally bright and optimistic picture of Soviet life. They are a reflection of the early NEP period (1922-24), when, after the destruction and chaos brought about by the Civil War, life was reasserting itself. A prototype for the Накануне pieces is an article, «Торговый ренес- санс,» written in January, 1922 and sent by the author to his sister in Kiev, in the hope (vain, as it turned out) of having it published in a Kiev newspaper.14 In this vividly written but rather primitively structured work, the author recounts the commercial resurrection of Moscow during the NEP period. The reawa- kening city is portrayed, characteristically for Bulgakov, in terms of light and dark: «В глубине запущенных помещений загорелись лампочки, и при свете их зашевелилась жизнь: ... Вымытые витрины засияли. Вспыхнули сильные круглые лампы над выставками или узкие ослепительные