Chapter 13.1
Hello!
Were you thinking that Ivan Bezdomnyi is the protagonist of the novel? Then you
are in for a big surprise!
Chapter
13 tells about the hero – THE HERO APPEARS – and how does he appear? In room No.
117 of Stravinsky’s clinic where Ivan is put up….in the evening when the
transformation is taking place in Ivan’s thinking, when it is getting dark, when
Ivan is drowsing, when he sees the huge cat passing by in his dream, there appears
a mysterious figure and in a threatening way asks Ivan to keep quite.
Ivan
is not scared. He sees a clean shaven man with dark hair, sharp nose, with
excitement in his eyes peeping into the room. He was about 38 years; a lock of
hair had come over his forehead.
You
must have guessed that this is Gogol’s portrait. Age mentioned is that of Bulgakov
at that point of time (b. 1991). You must have recollected that Nikolai Gogol
too was undergoing psychic treatment…after the Dead Souls he was so harassed by
authorities that he had to be sent to the psychiatric clinic. Nikolai Gogol was
Bulgakov’s favourite writer and hence we can say that it is a way of paying tribute
to him, by showing how the talented writers suffered.
Actually
the plot of chapter could be divided into three parts: comments on the
contemporary literary situation; life sketch of the hero and harassment of
talented writers in the Soviet society.
We
shall take each of these aspects.
So, when the stranger enters room
No. 117 he explains to Ivan how he managed to steal Praskovya Fyodorovna’s
bunch of keys, and how he is able to visit his neighbor. In spite of possessing
keys to the balcony, he doesn’t want to run away from this place as he has
nowhere to go. And then the conversation begins. The stranger asks Ivan whether
he is aggressive, and when Ivan answers that he had smashed the ‘mug’ of a
person in the restaurant, the guest warns him that this will not be tolerated…but
his objection is to the word ‘mug’. He emphasizes that a person has a ‘face’
and not a ‘mug’. Bulgakov is criticizing the lexis of formalists, particularly
that of futurists and specifically that of Mayakovsky who has used such words
in plenty in his poems.
And
when Ivan tells him that he is a poet, the guest gets nervous. Obviously he is
not comfortable with writers, poets, critics…and Ivan’s name – Bezdomnyi, which
is as per the fashion of those days too displeases him.
When
Ivan asks him whether he likes his poems, the stranger answers that he does not
like them. To Ivan’s question, “which of my poems have you read?” he says, “Not
a single. But tell me aren’t they all similar to the poems of others?” Here, we
notice that he is talking about the propaganda literature, which, as if comes
out from a mould….
And
then Ivan promises that he will stop writing.
When
the guest is told that Ivan has come here because of Pontius Pilate, the guest
gets too eager to know the whole episode that took place at the Patriarchy
Ponds. He tells Ivan that he had met Satan at the Patriarchy Park.
He
tells Ivan that he too has landed in Stravinsky’s clinic because of Pontius
Pilate and then narrates his story to Ivan……
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें
टिप्पणी: केवल इस ब्लॉग का सदस्य टिप्पणी भेज सकता है.