Meetings at the pool table
Sometimes Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Bulgakov played billiards together. According to the memoirs of the screenwriter and friend of Bulgakov, Sergei Yermolinsky, a crowd of curious had gathered around them at that time:
“Of course, Bulgakov and Mayakovsky! Him and look, a scandal will break out.
Contemporaries recalled that Bulgakov was quieter and almost did not hide his distaste for the “white” writer, despite Mayakovsky’s attempts to restrain himself. Mayakovsky was distraught when he learned that the Moscow Art Theater was staging the “Turbine Days” based on Bulgakov’s “White Guard”. It is known that he urged his colleagues to disrupt the performances and took his place when he came to production, then defiantly got up and left the hall.
Yermolinsky recalled in his diaries how Mayakovsky mocked Bulgakov by mentioning the “Turbine Days” while playing pool.
“Turbinchiki is a thing! Get totally rich with your Manya aunts and Uncle Vanya (The attack on the Moscow Art Theater with performances based on Chekhov – “socialbites.ca”), build a country house and a big pool of your own. I will definitely visit and train, ”said the screenwriter Mayakovsky.
In response, Bulgakov replied: “Oh, Vladimir Vladimirovich, insecticide will not help you either, I assure you. A country house with its own pool will be built by your Prisypkin with you to our bones.
He mentioned Ivan Prisypkin, the main character of the story The Bedbug by Mayakovsky, a former party leader who left the party voluntarily and divorced his wife.
rivalry
The critic and literary critic Miron Petrovsky most accurately described the similarities and differences between Bulgakov and Mayakovsky:
“The similarity between them is beyond the level that can be understood from the fact that they belong to the same period. This is a far-reaching similarity characteristic of antipodes, or rather mirror twins. Similarity with difference, proximity with distance, is the ideal condition for opposing artists to compete for a “monopoly” on genre, for possession of “true genre” and “artistic truth.”
According to Petrovsky, when two creative people only feel partnership, they have nothing to argue with each other, but only when they feel opposition, they have no common language to discuss. But, according to the critic, Bulgakov and Mayakovsky had all the necessary prerequisites for a truly unfolding dialogue to emerge.
Mayakovsky in the works of Bulgakov
While Mayakovsky sang “new life” in his poems, Bulgakov mocked members of MASSOLIT, the fictional association of writers from The Master and Margarita. According to the literary critic Boris Gasparov, Mayakovsky became the prototype of the poet Alexander Ryukhin in the novel. This character appears in the work as a mediocre and jealous person, and Bezdomny describes him as “a fist carefully disguised as a proletarian”. Gasparov also believes that the Master’s mention of “slanted rain” in a conversation with Bezdomny is a direct reference to Mayakovsky’s line “I will pass through my country // How does the oblique rain pass”.
In Mayakovsky’s poem “On the Garbage”, one of the main symbols of petty-bourgeois greed was a canary who was asked to “turn his head”. Perhaps that is why in Bulgakov’s “White Guard” Lariosik appears with a cage in his hand and says: “The bird is man’s best friend. However, many consider it unnecessary in the house, but I can say one thing – in any case, the bird does not harm anyone.
Also in the poems of the “White Guard” hero Ivan Rusakov, Bulgakov parodied Mayakovsky’s revolutionary futuristic poem “A Cloud in Pants”.
“Liberation” Bulgakov
In 1974-1985, the literary critic Lydia Yanovskaya corresponded with Belozerskaya-Bulgakova, the second wife of the writer Bulgakov Lyubov. In one of the letters, the writer’s wife told how Mayakovsky poisoned her because of the production of Days of the Turbine. But the poet unknowingly saved his opponent. After the performance of The Cabal of the Concrites was banned, Bulgakov wrote to Stalin:
“one. I want to be appointed lab director at the Art Theatre. If I am not appointed as a manager, I would like an extra full-time position. If redundancy is not possible, I would like the stagehand position. If that is also impossible, I ask the Soviet Government to take care of me as it sees fit, but to do something, because I am now a playwright who has written five plays known in the USSR and abroad – poverty, street and death.
On April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky committed suicide and demanded that no one be held responsible for his death. The poet’s suicide also shocked Bulgakov, who planned to commit suicide. It can be assumed that this event was one of the reasons for the author’s rejection of the fatal plan. Yanovskaya described Bulgakov’s face at Mayakovsky’s funeral as “unprecedentedly gloomy and helpless”.
On April 18, 1930, Stalin called Bulgakov and advised the playwright to apply to the Moscow Art Theater to enroll him in the theatre.