Magister Faustus

Abstract

An investigation of Faustian motifs in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus reveals surprising affinities between each novel and sheds light on the function of the Faust story as a subtext.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis, from the Russian text © 2014 Voprosy literatury. “Magistr Faustus: Faustianskie motivy v romanakh Master i Margarita i Doktor Faustus,” Voprosy literatury, no. 4 (2014), pp. 60–102. Translated by Liv Bliss. Translation reprinted from Russian Studies in Literature, vol. 51, no. 3. doi: 10.1080/10611975.2015.1071639. Note: The Diana Burgin/Katherine Tiernan O'Connor translation of The Master and Margarita has, unless otherwise indicated, been used in this article and another article in this issue of Russian Studies of Literature, by Feliks Nodel’. Proper names are therefore rendered here as they appear in that translation, rather than in Taylor and Francis's standard transliteration.—Trans.

^1. I define the method of juxtaposition I am developing here, which I call “Idem-forma,” in earlier publications (see, for example, V.V. Aristov, “Tozhdestvo v neskhodnom: Poeticheskie miry Bloka i Mandel'shtama v sopostavlenii dvukh stikhotvorenii,” Voprosy literatury, 2001, no. 6). I stand firm on the relative originality of this approach. It contains elements of comparativistics and intertextuality but the crux here is neither the revelation of typological regularities (although invariants are also important) nor a demonstration of how literary forms of expression permeate indiscriminately, to the point of erasing the boundaries between works. It is instead the contention that individual essentialities [sushchnosti] are reinforced when a shared space is discovered. The discussion of such important issues, however, lies outside the scope of this article.

^2. M.I. Turovskaia, “Kogda bogi smeiutsia. Griundgens-Mefisto-Mann,” Seans, 2011, nos. 47–48.

^3. There is no question that Mephisto is artistically comparable neither to DF nor to MM (the screen version of Mephisto, which was directed by István Szabó and starred Klaus Maria Brandauer, may have been more influential). But Klaus Mann was the first to do any serious work on the image of Faust-as-artist, and essentially labeled the figure of the one whom a recently published monograph that developed the Faustian image (G.V. Iakusheva, Faust v iskusheniiakh XX veka: Getevskii obraz v russkoi i zarubezhnoi literature [Moscow: Nauka, 2005], p. 167) defined as an ambivalent “Faustopheles” (the “-tophel” element deriving from the German word Teufel, “devil”), which happens to be a name given to transvestite heroes of postmodernism, in which contemporary variants of Faust are played for laughs.

^4. T. Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, 10 vols., vol. 9 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1960), p. 348. [English translation from Thomas Mann, The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Knopf, 1961), pp. 210–11.]

^5. Ibid., p. 222 [Story of a Novel, p. 35].

^6. Ibid., p. 216 [Story of a Novel, pp. 26–27].

^7. V.V. Gudkova, “Kogda stikhli [correctly, otshumeli] spory: bulgakovedenie poslednego desiatiletiia,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 91, 2008; Gudkova, “Marsh diletantov (obzor novykh knig o Mikhaile Bulgakove),” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 104, 2010.

^8. K.A. Ikramov, “‘Postoite, polozhite shliapu …’: K voprosu o transformatsii pervoistochnikov,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 4, 1993.

^9. See, for example, I.Z. Belobrovtseva, S.K. Kul”ius, Roman Mikhaila Bulgakova “Master i Margarita”: Opyt kommentariia (Tallin: Tallinskii pedagogicheskii universitet, 2004) and O.Z. Kandaurov, Evangelie ot Mikhaila (Moscow: Graal’, 2002).

^10. M.N. Zolotonosov, “‘Vzamen kadil'nogo kuren'ia …,’” Druzhba narodnov, 1990, no. 11.

^11. B.M. Gasparov, “Iz nabliudenii nad motivnoi strukturoi romana M.A. Bulgakova ‘Master i Margarita,’” in Gasparov, Literaturnye leitmotivy:Ocherki russkoi literatury XX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

^12. Ibid., p. 69.

^13. Ibid., p. 67.

^14. V.P. Filimonov, Andrei Tarkovskii: Sny i iav’ o dome (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia/Zhizn’ zamechatel'nykh liudei, 2012), p. 228.

^15. D.M. Magomedova, “‘Nikomu ne izvestnyi kompozitor-odnofamilets …’ (O semanticheskikh alliuziiakh v romane M.A. Bulgakova ‘Master i Margarita’),” Izvestiia Otdeleniia literatury i iazyka RAN (Seriia literatury i iazyka), 1985, vol. 44, no. 1.

^16. As noted by A. Davydov.

^17. Recurrent note has been made of the “musicopsychiatric” triad of Stravinsky, Rimsky, and Korsakov. The first is chief of staff in a psychiatric clinic and the composer's namesake and the second, another (mentally unstable) character in MM, who unavoidably comes trailing the name Korsakov (the second part of the composer's surname, which is the name of another famous psychiatrist). Mann also grouped those three names together in a letter to the conductor Bruno Walter dated May 6, 1943: “Stravinsky … His early work, under the supervision of Rimsky-Korsakov”: Mann, Pis'ma (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), p. 153.

^18. Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 205 [Story of a Novel, p. 11].

^19. Ibid., p. 218 [Story of a Novel, pp. 29–30].

^20. Ibid., p. 225 [Story of a Novel, p. 39].

^21. Ibid., p. 235 [Story of a Novel, p. 54].

^22. Ibid., p. 228 [Story of a Novel, pp. 42–43].

^23. Ibid., p. 231 [Story of a Novel, p. 48].

^24. N.A. Kholodkovskii, Kommentarii k poeme I.V. Gete “Faust” (Moscow: Knizhnyi dom Librokom, 2009), p. 23.

^25. Hugo Wolf ended his days in a psychiatric clinic. I note that some facts from the biographies of Tchaikovsky and of Mann himself were also used in Leverkühn's story.

^26. Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 219 [Story of a Novel, pp. 31, 30].

^27. Ibid., pp. 209–10 [Story of a Novel, pp. 17, 18].

^28. Ibid., p. 224 [Story of a Novel, pp. 37–38].

^29. Ibid., p. 307 [Story of a Novel, p. 154].

^30. Ibid., p. 333 [Story of a Novel, pp. 189–90].

^31. Ibid., p. 256 [Story of a Novel, p. 84].

^32. The juxtaposition of different works by one author (in this case, Bulgakov) from the perspective of the Idem-forma merits a separate study, especially of the pairing of MM and the play Batum. But such a comparison does not fall within the scope of this article

^33. The indication that Akhmatova was speaking there of the muse is found in other of her poems on a similar theme (“Fear and his Muse stand watch by turns,” on Mandelstam's final fall out of favor) and in her appeal to her own muse, that “sweet guest” (“‘Are you the one,’ I ask, ‘whom Dante heard dictate / the lines of his Inferno?’ She answers: ‘Yes.’” [Poems of Akhmatova, trans. Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward (Boston: Mariner Books, 1997), p. 79]). Such extreme scenarios linked to the manifestation of the muse bespeak a tradition that harks back to Blok, to his “To the Muse” [K Muze]: “In your melodies' inward cantation / Lies a message of doom and decline— …/ … / And when you look on faith with derision, / Then above you there soon starts to glow / That dim, purple-grey, nimbus-like vision / I distinguished in days long ago./ … / For the rest you are Muse, and pure wonder / But for me—only torment and hell” [Robin Kemball's translation of Poems from Blok and Akhmatova (www.jstor.org/stable/126173) accessed January 2015.—Trans.].

^34. Frieda/Frido, Margarita, Gretchen, Susanna Margaretha Brandt, Frieda Keller… there is a potential juxtaposition, by association, between Frieda's story [Frieda, in MM, had suffocated her newborn baby—Trans.] and the death of Nepomuk, known as Echo, another innocent child. (In The Story of a Novel, Mann describes his grandson Frido in much the same terms as Nepomuk's elfin image in DF.) Frieda Keller's story [Keller strangled her illegitimate son after he was returned to her at the age of five; Bulgakov modeled his “Frieda” on her.—Trans.] may be juxtaposed with that of Susanna Brandt, the unmarried servant who killed her newborn child in her fear of social censure. Brandt, the real-life prototype of Gretchen in Faust, confessed in all sincerity before her execution her belief that, by yielding to sin on the prompting of the devil, she had actually become a witch. Here are some characteristic excerpts from The Story of a Novel: “In the afternoon, on the promenade with little Fridolin. When the walk is over, he says ‘Nuff.’ This for Nepomuk Schneidewein” (Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 216 [Story of a Novel, p. 26]) and “Drew for Frido a palm, a railroad, a cello player, a burning house” (ibid., p. 349 [Story of a Novel, pp. 211–12]).

^35. There is also a link between the word “peace” [pokoi] and the title Notes of a Dead Man [Zapiski pokoinika]. More on that later.

^36. The inevitable connotations associated with Freemasonry's rank of “Master Mason,” and so on, which have been widely discussed in the literature, beginning with an article published by Vladimir Lakshin in 1968, are distractions at best.

^37.Literaturnaia gazeta, 1933, no. 27.

^38. Just imagine Bulgakov's novel being titled The Doctor and Margarita! Theoretically it could have been, but “artistically” this is completely impossible, one reason being that it would result in an overly explicit nod to Doctor Faust (whereas Bulgakov needed only distant and subtle associations). Another reason that would not pass muster is that it could heard as a direct allusion to the author himself, since Bulgakov was a physician by education—or, in the vernacular, a “doctor.” That said, the associations in the novel with “doctors” (i.e., physicians) are of no small importance.

^39. “Rabochii klass dolzhen vospitat’ svoikh masterov kul'tury,” Izvestiia, July 25, 1929.

^40. Iakusheva, Faust v iskusheniiakh XX veka, p. 87.

^41. Ibid., p. 112.

^42. M.P. Kireeva, “Ia mogu skazat’ ‘net,’” Kinovedcheskie zapisi, 2001, no. 58.

^43. One may recall past reductions of a person to a cipher, which in Stalin's concentration camps was sewn on the prisoner's uniform and in Hitler's was tattooed on the arm.

^44. L.M. Ianovskaia, Treugol'nik Volanda (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1992).

^45. The first to turn Ianovskaia's attention to Bulgakov's markings (adding another sloped line to the “V” in Sokolov's prose translation of Faust) may have been photographer and Bulgakov expert Iurii Krivonosov. The name Voland comes up only once in Goethe's Faust, in the Walpurgisnacht scene: Platz! Junker Voland kommt. Platz! Süßer Pöbel, Platz! (“Make room! The devil is coming! Make room, rabble, look lively, now!” in Nikolai Kholodkovskii's translation) [“Back! Squire Nick is coming! Back, sweet rabble! Slump!” in Walter Kaufmann's (Faust, p. 371)—Trans.]). Interestingly, Mephistopheles follows that tirade by saying to Faust “Hier, Doktor, fasse mich!” [Here, Doctor: take a hold! (ibid.)]. This brings “Voland” and “Doctor” into close proximity.

^46. S.E. Pestov, “Master i Berlioz,” Istina i zhizn’, 2006, no. 3, p. 37. Pestov writes, “The ‘evil’ apartment where Mikhail Afanas'evich Bulgakov lived is inhabited in the novel by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, the polar opposite of the Master, and hence of the author. Let us assume that Bulgakov had nothing particular in mind when he proffered his own residence to a character. But could he have given that character his own name, Mikhail, and his initials, M.A.B., inadvertently? After Berlioz dies, his uncle from Kiev lays claim to his apartment: on top of everything else, Berlioz and Bulgakov are fellow-countrymen. There are enough coincidences to make one wonder why Bulgakov endowed a character so alien to him, one of the officials he portrays so scathingly in the novel, with particulars from his own biography? The only possible explanation of this is that the Master and Berlioz reflect not only differing sides of Bulgakov's personality but also differing variants of the fate, as he saw them.”

^47. Kireeva, “Ia mogu skazat’ ‘net.’”

^48. S.M. Eizenshtein, “MMM,” in Iz istorii kino: Dokumenty i materialy, pt. 10 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977).

^49. Any juxtaposition of the gloomily contemporary yet phantasmagorical shenanigans of the crew in MMM with the appropriate “literary allusions” also falls outside the scope of this article.

^50. Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 287 [Story of a Novel, p. 125].

^51. Gasparov, Literaturnye leitmotivy, p. 53.

^52. E.Iu. Sidorov, “Predislovie,” in M. Bulgakov, Belaia gvardiia. Teatral'nyi roman. Master i Margarita (Kishinev: Artistike, 1988), p. 8.

^53. The topic may have been suggested first by Vladimir Lakshin in his famous article “Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita” [Roman M. Bulgakova “Master i Margarita”] (Novyi mir, 1968, no. 6), in which he stated, in particular, that “Woland is brimming with a leisurely dignity, calm, and wisdom.… Goethe's Mephistopheles is malicious, egoistical, and immoral.… Bulgakov's Woland is capable of accomplishing everything that ancient legend ascribed to Doctor Faust” (ibid., pp. 292–93). Lakshin discusses the unification in Woland's image of “the devil Mephistopheles” and “the mage Faust” with his passion for research and learning. He also paints a word-picture of a fantastic Mephisto-Faust brimming with good intentions. But does this match up with all the facts in the novel?

^54. Iakusheva, Faust v iskusheniiakhXX veka, p. 117.

^55. Ikramov, “‘Postoite, polozhite shliapu …,’” p. 189.

^56. Ibid., p. 192..

^57. N.F. Zhdanov, “Bulgakov: Konets istorii i russkii Faust,” Kommentarii, 2000, no. 10, p. 57.

^58. Ibid., p. 58.

^59. I.L. Galinskaia, “Kriptografiia romana ‘Master i Margarita’ Mikhaila Bulgakova,” in Galinskaia, Zagadki izvestnykh knig (Moscow: Nauka, 1986).

^60. This is undoubtedly the inverse of what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount: “Ask and it shall be given you” (Matthew 7:7), which means that these prideful words from the Gospel According to Woland are unobtrusively invested in usurping the place of one of Christianity's home truths.

^61. Woland's utterance also contains an audible hint that the Master need not come right out and ask for anything because his covert “Faustian” desires are already being met. Those who wished him ill and did him wrong are being punished and, more to the point, his “great novel” (truly his magnum opus) is not only in progress now but also arising once again from the ashes.

^62. I.P. Zolotusskii, Gogol’ (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia / Zhizn’ zamechatel'nykh liudei, 1979), pp. 466–67, 468.

^63. Mann, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 259 [Story of a Novel, p. 87].

^64. E.Iu. Mikhailik, “Peremena adresa,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 66, 2004.