Tag Archives: Bulgakov

CSI: A Gentleman in Moscow

3 Replies

(Context – Subtext – Intertextuality)

The author, Amor Towles, name drops in A Gentleman in Moscow. He weaves the names of literary greats, facts from the writers’ lives and passages from classics. A special surprise is the frequent mentioning of Chekhov and Tolstoy. I search for a term to describe this writing technique. No, it’s not plagiarism because the quotes are attributed to each author. By accident, between context for Bulgakov and subtext for Chekhov, I stumble on this little word – intertextuality.

Of course, it is not a little word, and the concept is huge in application. Intertextuality includes lifting and incorporating lines and thoughts from previously published works. It also expands to building upon previously published themes, characters and plots. Here is a reason for writers to be avid readers. To reference a previous work, the writer must have knowledgeable of the text within the writers’ work. Without a sufficient  literary background, the modern writer misses the opportunity for deeper meaning. I struggle with merely achieving sufficient knowledge to find the hidden treasures of intertextuality in my reading.

 Intertextuality

To find examples of intertextuality in A Gentleman in Moscow, I utilize technology to locate the passages. A simple “search” or “find” in the digital copy delivers numerous references for Chekhov, Tolstoy and even Bulgakov. Famous titles, such as War and Peace, enter the dialogue when one character is challenged to transcribe a favorite passage. And Anna Karenina is wedged under a furniture leg to steady  a wobbly bureau.

One of my favorite references is in a footnote. Towles writes about what I encountered in reading Tolstoy and Chekhov. He writes that “among readers of European fiction the character names in Russian novels are notorious for their difficulty. Not content to rely on given and family names, we Russians like to make use of honorifics, patronymics, and an array of diminutives – such that a single character in one of our novels may be referred to in four different ways in as many pages. To make matters worse, it seems that our greatest authors, due to some deep-rooted sense of tradition or a complete lack of imagination constrained themselves to the use of thirty given names. You cannot pick up a work of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Turgenev without bumping into an Anna, an Andrey, or an Alexander.”

Count the Many Ways 

Speaking of Alexanders and multiple names, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov– called Count, Alexander and  Sasha — is the protagonist in A Gentleman in Moscow . In this fictional book, the Count is under house arrest and confined to the Metropol Hotel in 1922 for publishing a poem unacceptable to the newly empowered Communist party. The abdication of Nicholas II, the Bolshevik Revolution, civil war in Russia and War World I were only a few years in the past. The Count, a descendent of Russian aristocracy with ties to the former Tsar, has lost seemingly everything. The following passage by Towles describes the downfall of aristocrats, writers and politicians.

” . . . the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile.”

Literally Literary

The character, Mikhail Mindich, a boyhood friend of the Count, mentions Chekhov  and is in the process of editing a compilation of Chekhov’s letters. In one scene, Mishka (nickname) shares his frustration at being forced to delete part of a letter by Anton Chekhov to his sister. Although Chekhov’s letter was written in 1904, the 1930s in Russia and the Great Purges (1936-1938) eliminated anything counter-revolutionary or negative about Russia. Towles includes the letter sent from Chekhov in Berlin on June 6, 1904 to his sister, Masha.  Only a month before his death, Chekhov comments on the good German bread, his improving health and the quality of his hotel.

As you might guess, Mishka is eventually imprisoned as an Enemy of the People. Following his imprisonment, Mishka writes a book titled Bread and Salt. Towles includes passages about bread from Genesis, Matthew and Luke and by authors Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. The passages inspire me to find these stories and novels to read next and better understand the effect of intertextuality in this example. Curious about the reference to bread and salt, I discover this is a welcoming custom in Russian for guests or on special occasions. Perhaps the Count’s reading Mishka’s book is the special occasion or a reference to a shared greeting in their more pleasant past as young men.

This novel accomplishes the job of putting history in context with literature. Towles, a reader of Russian literature, confirms the importance of Tolstoy and Chekhov in the history of world literature. I also learn through the events portrayed in the novel the cultural and political sentiment for Mikhail Bulgakov during the time when he wrote The Master and Margarita.

Now, I know enough about Russian literature to be dangerous.

To See or Not To See – That Is the Question

10 Replies

Purist might believe a true literary experience occurs with the left hand holding book and the right dutifully turning thick pages of print. Generally, I agree except for Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita read by Jeremy Irons. I vote this one better to be heard by the gifted actor’s deep resonating voice and not seen. Here are a few things when considering the choice of print or sound.

The Structure of Black and White

In every list of the best books, Nabokov’s Lolita is present. This book published over fifty years ago presents a forbidden topic wrapped in beautiful prose which is shocking and endearing at the same time. The opening sentences are pure power – “Lolita, light of life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

The reader knows of tragedy to come and embraces the journey to discover why the narrator says, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” Humbert Humbert’s obsessions are repulsive and disgusting to readers, yet he suffers a growing paranoia for his premeditations, actions and results. However, HH somehow manages to be sympathetic, even pitiful, in the skilled hands of Nabokov. The character, neither villain nor hero, fills a new space as the anti-hero, anguishing and lamenting for the beauty and loss of his young love, his captive, Dolores Haze.

If you do read the words, the black and white sentences jig and jag spilling over to the next line and the next with semi-colons inserted as the author’s favorite punctuation mark. I appreciate well placed clauses as much as the next writer and find Nabokov full of surprise and tantalizing sentence structure. Masterful combinations are only fully absorbed by the eyes – otherwise melting into an auditory symphony of words. Now that I have finished the novel, I am ruined for anything less than prose perfection.

Beyond the Book

One invaluable thing in the book is a chronology of Nabokov’s life from birth to death with a column for literary context and historical events. I confirm Nabokov’s birth in St. Petersburg and the brief overlap of his life with Russian greats Tolstoy and Chekhov. He was almost a teenager during the Russian Revolution and published his first book of poems during World War I at the age of seventeen. The family fled and went into exile while Vladimir studied at Cambridge. When Joyce published Ulysses and Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, Nabokov’s father was assassinated in Berlin.

So, it is odd to me that Nabokov lived or continued to live in Berlin from 1925-1937. He published nine novels in Russian, moved to Paris and then the United States in 1940, the same year Hemingway published For Whom the Bell Tolls. As my son now considers colleges for study, it catches my attention that Nabokov taught at Wellesley and then Cornell. During this time, he published his next novel in English. His spectacular writing in English must rival his native Russian language.

Shortly after the year of Stalin’s death, Lolita was published in 1955 by a Parisian publisher of explicit material because the established major publishers feared the public’s reaction to this novel’s subject matter. In 1958, Pasternak published Doctor Zhivago, one of my mother-in-law’s favorites (on my list to read or watch the 1965 film). One year later, Nabokov resigned from Cornell and moved to Switzerland. In the final decade of Nabokov’s life, Bulgakov published The Master and Margarita.

Hearing is Believing

Better than attending a three hour play or watching a film, I lived this novel for precisely eleven and a half hours – over two weeks commuting to work. The deep baritone voice of the British actor disrupted my usual car audio listening vibe. As Jeremy Irons raced through the Forward at a clip faster than I usually listen, talk or think, I weaved in my highway lane, resetting the base to low and going back to tweak the treble eventually to high before I could comfortably listen to the recording. I had just achieved the perfect balance when I heard “. . . a classic in psychiatric circles . . . the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac – these are not only vivid characters in a unique story; they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils.” The warning added an extra writer-ly chill to my January morning. I debated whether to turn back and stop, but I trusted a gifted actor with an-oh-so-marvelous voice.  Jeremy Irons became Humbert Humbert, transforming mere words on a page, unfolding the story and revealing the depth of depravity and desperation – hence the panting maniac..

National Public Radio, in a fiftieth year anniversary of Lolita, interviewed Cornell staff about Nabokov. The author traveled the United States and used the travel experiences for Lolita. He also frequently rode the public transit and listened to the communication style of Lolita-aged girls taking notes on index cards. It is said Nabokov wrote the entire novel on index cards and pieced the story together. The car ride after HH picks up Dolores Haze from summer camp shows his research with perfectly timed teenage sarcasm, irreverence and awkward interactions.

This audio book delivers bursts of humor such as the first overnight hotel stay. HH misinterprets the questions of a drunk on the front porch. Irons is brilliant in reading this little exchange in Chapter 28 which highlights the beginning of HH’s well-deserved paranoia.

‘Where the devil did you get her?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said: the weather is getting better.’

‘Seems so.’

‘Who’s the lassie?’

‘My daughter.’

‘You lie – she’s not.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said: July was hot.’

The audio book succeeds where the 1962 Stanley Kubrick film did not. The film, however, unites Jeremy Irons with the work, the actor cast for HH in the film and a natural for the recording. His reading is acting and makes this one of the best audio book recordings I’ve heard to date.

Four Types of Playful Writers

7 Replies

Writers are, in general, playful people. As explained in a study by Dr. Rene Proyer “Playful people are able to reinterpret situations in their lives so that they experience them as entertaining or are able to reduce stress levels.” In my writing, I often rework real life situations with a better (or worse) ending and a more empowered character – a SuperMe – capable of witty remarks and amazing feats of skill, knowledge or cunning. Although it seems hard to find anything entertaining about pain or loss, the expression of an unpleasant experience in a creative way can be cathartic. For an example, recall Life of Pi by Yann Martel; young Pi survives on a boat with what seems to be a tiger, baboon and hyena.

The study categorizes playful people in four ways. I imagine writers can check one or all these categories. I will test each categories with myself and with the four Russian writers on my reading list for the year – Tolstoy, Chekov, Bulgakov and Nabokov.

1) “Other-directed playful” includes socializing with friends and other writers.   For me – a member of several writing groups, an “E” for extrovert on Myers-Briggs tests and working in a profession that involves people – this category is a hit. For the Russians writers, socializing with each other is well documented. Tolstoy reportedly took partying (1800’s style) at college to the extreme and never graduated. Lucky for him, it did not deter his writing career and success.

2) The “light-heartedly playful” consider life a game. And in games, it’s how the game is played. During the years I cared for my parents, we continued to play games. I had a performance baseline for each of them and measured each day against the previous. During play, the filters and pretensions dropped. Strategy choices revealed character, health and mental faculty. Humor was also part of the game. Chekhov began his writing career by publishing humorous anecdotes and stories to pay for his medical school studies. After that, his writing took a turn for the dark and serious.

3) The “intellectually playful” like to play with thoughts and ideas. Occasionally, the less tired and more clever me does re-orchestrate events to tell a playful story. I once threw away a microwave because my son said smoke came out of it. When I learned this might not have been true, I wrote a short story, “Trial of the Microwave.” On a more serious topic, Bulgakov wrote a satire about Stalinist Russia, Master and Margarita, which casts a wall-eyed loon and a talking cat as the devil’s attendants. I needed the talking cat in the microwave situation.

4) The “whimsically playful” enjoy “strange and unusual things and are amused by small day-to-day observations.” Details – accents, tone of voice, body language – convey information to the observant. The crystallized conflict photographed above caught my attention the other day. I took several photographs to determine if the ice was melting or the water was freezing. Before I could decide, my fingers numbed, and I almost dropped my phone in the water. Nabokov’s narrator in Lolita can dial up the description to create a complete image and feeling. Read through this jewel by Nabokov. He writes “. . . on the trim turf of the lawn-slope, an old gentleman with a white mustache, well-dressed – double-breasted gray suit, polka dotted bow-tie – lay supine, his long legs together, like a death-size wax figure.”

One last point about playfulness, Dr. Proyer notes that play enhances the ability to solve complex problems. A playful person can shift perspectives. In writer-speak, this shift is changing point of view. A writer imagines the thoughts and motivations of each character and determines the best narrator for a story. Solving (complex) plotting problems may mean jumping into another character’s thoughts and point of view. Or the story might need the intimacy of first person. Sometimes, I get it wrong. I’m quite proficient at switching from third person to first or vice versa. And being playful, I find it fun to edit and try it again in a different way.

A Russian Roulette of Writers

3 Replies

When the hygienist said it would be a few minutes, I reached into my bag for a book or story packed for such an occasion—a few stolen moments of reading. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout mingled there in my oversized and heavy purse with my Nook, spare change and crumpled receipts. My short story group selected the book to examine short stories compiled into a novel.

 

A World Literature Illiterate

The dentist’s usual routine—rush in, smile, check teeth, smile, rush out—stopped at the sight of my book. He asked, “What are you reading?”

I told him about the short story group.

“If you want to read the best short stories, you should read Russian authors,” my Russian dentist said.

“Our study group reads mostly American authors,” I said, embarrassed at my limited knowledge. I hadn’t read many of the American writers until I joined the group several years ago. My discovery of authors like John Cheever, Tobias Wolf, Antonya Nelson, George Saunders and Jhumpta Lahiri was still new and fresh.

I remembered a few foreign authors. “We read James Joyce—Irish.” Dubliners, of course, duh. “And Gabriel Garcia Marquez—South American.”

The dentist sighed and examined me through his ultra-magnified glasses zooming into the tiniest imperfections in my teeth, pores in my skin and crevices of my soul. “If you want to read a real story, read Chekov, the greatest short story writer.”

 

Required Reading

A few months later, I visited the dentist again. Study guide in hand and prepared to redeem my reputation, I announced, “We’re studying Chekov this month. And this one.” I point to the page. “He’s Russian too?”

“Nabokov. Yes, he’s Russian.” The dentist, his eyes downcast, said nothing more.

“Have you read ‘The Woman with the Dog’ by Chekov?”

“Yes, yes, of course. At my home in Russia, we had a library of more than three hundred books. First edition books. Valuable, but all stolen.”

I imagined his family living in Russia during the cold war years and wondered what forced them to leave. “Do you want to read our lesson? We’re studying stories retold or written in homage to another work. The Chekov story is recast by the author Joyce Carol Oates. And Lorrie Moore writes ‘Referential’ based on Nabokov’s story. Have you read ‘Signs and Symbols’ by Nabokov?”

He looked at me again through those magnifying lenses attached to his glasses, piercing through my ignorant American inquiry. “I read it in eighth grade.”

I tried to remember what I read in eighth grade, on those late nights sitting in my bean bag chair next to a pole lamp I rescued from the trash. My middle school friends swapped vampire novels and other contraband. My college-aged brother left behind his anti-war books like Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

But what did I read in school? Did I read in school? Overall, my eighth grade literature was entirely forgettable compared to what I read at home after my parents went to sleep. My dentist’s superior schooling trumped the American mandates for my entirely forgettable eighth grade year.

 

Biased To Domestic

My dentist politely declined my outline and expressed no interest in the other writers. Instead, he tore a scrap of paper from my file, unfortunately not the part with the amount I owed him, and wrote Bulgakov and his novel shown in the photo above. “This is the best. Read this.”

The conversation haunted me for several weeks until I studied an article about Americans bias to invest domestically when greater returns existed elsewhere. I wondered if greater reading returns came from abroad also. There was only one way to know.

The idea of reading the best of Russian writers piqued my curiosity and is one of my New Year’s resolutions. About Chekov and Nabokov, my dentist later confessed that he wanted the literature in Russian and not translated into English. I sympathized, hoping he can read some English, because I was trusting this guy with my teeth.

 

TAGS: