Reading Master and Margarita - 06

Chapter 6

Schizophrenia, as was said

It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.

The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in a pile on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.

This clinic of Prof Stravinsky is newly opened in the outskirts of city and we shall see that more and more people will land there.

Ivan Bezdomnyi threatens that he will protest against his being forcibly brought to this mental hospital, he emphasizes that he is completely normal.

'You can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.

'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?'

'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly, 'and I'll file a complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he adverted separately to Riukhin.

'And what do you want to complain about?'

'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force to a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully.

Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly no insanity in the man's eyes. No longer dull as they had been at Griboedov's, they were now clear as ever.

Now Riukhin realizes that Ivan has no trace of any mental disorder on his face. He is scared….

And Ivan shouts at him that he will ‘see’ Riukhin, even calls him ‘lice’!

Ivan goes on exposing poet Riukhin.

'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots, of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!'

'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired.

'This one here - Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in Riukhin's direction.

The latter flushed with indignation.

… …

'Psychologically, a typical little kulak,' Ivan Nikolaevich began, evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, 'and, what's more, a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for the First of May - heh, heh, heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring down!!" But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks... you'd gasp!' And Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.

Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was nothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill!

Riukhin does not argue. But while returning to Moscow he confesses that whatever insulting words were hurled at him by Ivan were true.

The description of Riukhin suggests that Bulgakov is hinting at the famous revolutionary poet of that time V.V.Mayakovsky. The expressions that help us to reach this conclusion are:

“Look at his lanky and melancholy personality and compare with his loud poems which he has written for the 1^st of May… ‘Get up!...and Scatter!’ and does he believe a single word of what he writes? Look into his heart and you will be shocked to see what he is thinking about!”

In ‘The Master and Margarita’ we often come across a loud voice on radio coming from all corners, all houses…that is Mayakovsky’s.

Bulgakov and Mayakovsky did not like each other and didn’t leave a chance to ridicule each other. Mayakovsky in his play “Bedbug” ridicules Bulgakov by depicting a scene where in his name was found in the dictionary of archaic words.

 Bulgakov also never spared Mayakovsky….

But while returning back to Moscow, Riukhin analyses his own situation and he realizes that his life has gone waste and now nothing is possible to mend there.

“ I am 32, and what next? May be I shall be writing a few poems every year…then what? Till how long? Till old age? What do these poems bring him? Fame? Oh, let me not cheat myself….fame never comes to them who create foolish poems. Why they are trash? I don’t believe a single word of what I write! Nothing is possible to change in my life….it has gone!”

Then the truck stops near a monument…. A man standing with his head down,       

“Here is the example of perfect talent! Whatever he did, in whatever situation he was pushed into, everything just helped him! Otherwise what is so captivating in those words, ‘Hazy storm…’? And that white soldier killed him and made immortal…

This is about Pushkin…

So, Bulgakov has shown the literary situation of 20’s – 30’s of 20^th century and compared the same with that of 19^th century, and also shown what it is that makes the poetry immortal!

Also note that the first day of our story ends here. Which day of the week is this, we are yet to know. The action has taken place in and around Patriarchy Ponds, Griboedov House which are near to each other and then it shifts to the Clinic at the outskirts of Moscow. Ivan is declared Schizophrenic…so both the predictions of Professor come true!

Ivan is kept in Room No 117 of the Clinic and he will soon be surrounded by many others.