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Ruin Is Not Caused By Lavatories (Mikhail Bulgakov)

The passage from The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov that you are about to see in the video (in Russian, the English translation is below), has long been known by heart. When I was 16, I loved the images Bulgakov painted and satyrical notes; a little less than 16 years later I can’t help loving the relevance this passage still has today. Whether social, economic, political, cultural or personal, the ruin does indeed start in people’s heads. It’s what we think on the regular basis that eventually makes or breaks us. Obviously, things are often a little bit more complex, but the bottom line remains: our mind is the mightiest weapon – we should be careful not to use it against ourselves.

The part of Professor Preobrazhensky in this adaptation of Bulgakov’s story is played by Evgeny Evstigneev, one of the best actors of his generation. Dr Bormenthal is played by Boris Plotnikov.

'Why on earth do they  have to remove the flowers from the landing? Why does
the electricity, which to the best of my recollection has only failed  twice
in the  past twenty  years, now go  out regularly  once a month? Statistics,
Doctor Bormenthal, are  terrible  things.  You who know  my latest work must
realise  that  better than  anybody.'

'The  place is going  to ruin, Philip Philipovich.'
'What do  you mean by ruin? An  old woman with a broomstick? A witch who smashes  all  the
windows and puts out all the lights? No such thing. What do you mean by that
word? I'll tell you  what it is: if instead of operating every evening I were to
start a glee club in my apartment, that would mean that I was on the road to
ruin.  If  when I go  to the  lavatory I don't  pee,  if  you'll  excuse the
expression, into the  bowl but on to the floor instead and if Zina and Darya
Petrovna were  to do  the same  thing,  the lavatory would be ruined.  Ruin,
therefore,  is not  caused by  lavatories but it's  something that starts in
people's heads. So  when these clowns  start shouting "Stop the  ruin!"  - I
laugh!'  (Philip  Philipovich's face became so distorted  that  the doctor's
mouth fell open.)  'I swear to you,  I find it laughable! Every one of  them
needs  to hit himself on the back of the  head and then  when he has knocked
all  the  hallucinations  out of  himself  and  gets  on  with sweeping  out
backyards  -  which is  his real  job  - all this  "ruin" will automatically
disappear. You can't serve two gods!  You  can't sweep the  dirt out of  the
tram tracks and settle the fate of the Spanish beggars at the  same time!

The Labyrinth of Minotaur: UK Human-Cow Clone Created

Sarah Hills from Metro.co.uk reports that the UK scientists have finally succeeded at creating “hybrid embryos that are part-human and part-animal”. In November 2006, a group of scientists from the University of Newcastle applied “for permission to create embryos by combining human DNA with cow eggs. Their research aims to develop new therapies for human ailments such as strokes, Alzheimer’s and tissue damage suffered by spinal trauma victims.” The permission was granted, and now we’re in for a long debate over whether or not this is ethical. Hills explains that “the technique, called nuclear transfer, involves removing the nucleus of a cow egg – which contains most of the genetic information – and replacing it with human DNA. The egg is then encouraged to divide until it is a cluster of cells only a few days old”.

Ah well… Some people compare a “human-cow” to Frankenstein’s monster. For my part, I remember a brilliant novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Fateful Eggs (1925), about the ray of light discovered by Ivan Persikov, the Professor of Zoology (Russian text). This is the description of discovery from Chapter III of the novel:

“What had happened was this. When the Professor put his discerning eye to the microscope, he noticed for the first time in his life that one particular ray in the coloured tendril stood out more vividly and boldly than the others. This ray was bright red and stuck out of the tendril like the tiny point of a needle, say.
Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of the great man’s experienced eye for several seconds.
In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand times more significant and important than the ray itself, that precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope mirror and lens. Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised. This strip of red was teeming with life. The old amoebas were forming pseudopodia in a desperate effort to reach the red strip, and when they did they came to life, as if by magic. Some force seemed to breathe life into them. They flocked there, fighting one another for a place in the ray, where the most frantic (there was no other word for it) reproduction was taking place. In defiance of all the laws which Persikov knew like the back of his hand, they gemmated before his eyes with lightning speed. They split into two in the ray, and each of the parts became a new, fresh organism in a couple of seconds. In another second or two these organisms grew to maturity and produced a new generation in their turn. There was soon no room at all in the red strip or on the plate, and inevitably a bitter struggle broke out. The newly born amoebas tore one another to pieces and gobbled the pieces up. Among the newly born lay the corpses of those who had perished in the fight for survival. It was the best and strongest who won. And they were terrifying. Firstly, they were about twice the size of ordinary amoebas and, secondly, they were far more active and aggressive. Their movements were rapid, their pseudopodia much longer than normal, and it would be no exaggeration to say that they used them like an octopus’s tentacles.”

The consequences thereof were frightening and disturbing. But, of course, the whole “human-cow” thing is not at all new, and the consequences are usually monstrous. In the past I mentioned a medieval tale about a lion who fell in love and made love a Parisian woman. In Ancient Greece, however, there was a different story. I quote from Pseudo-Appollodorus (from Theoi.com):

“Minos aspired to the throne [of Krete], but was rebuffed. He claimed, however, that he had received the sovereignty from the gods, and to prove it he said that whatever he prayed for would come about. So while sacrificing to Poseidon, he prayed for a bull to appear from the depths of the sea, and promised to sacrifice it upon its appearance. And Poseidon did send up to him a splendid bull. Thus Minos received the rule, but he sent the bull to his herds and sacrificed another . . .

Poseidon was angry that the bull was not sacrificed, and turned it wild. He also devised that Pasiphae should develop a lust for it. In her passion for the bull she took on as her accomplice an architect named Daidalos . . . He built a woden cow on wheels, . . . skinned a real cow, and sewed the contraption into the skin, and then, after placing Pasiphae inside, set it in a meadow where the bull normally grazed. The bull came up and had intercourse with it, as if with a real cow. Pasiphae gave birth to Asterios, who was called Minotauros. He had the face of a bull, but was otherwise human. Minos, following certain oracular instructions, kept him confined and under guard in the labyrinth. This labyrinth, which Daidalos built, was a “cage with convoluted flextions that disorders debouchment.”

Minotaur was widely commemorated in art, as you can see in the post (all images are courtesy of Theoi.com). The rest of the story goes along the lines of a heroic myth, with Theseus eventually arriving to Knossos and killing Minotaur. It is only the beginning of human-cow cloning, but who knows: the Greek myth may turn out to be more realistic and prophetic than we have ever thought.

Information about images (from left to right, clockwise):

Theseus and the Minotauros. Attributed to Leagros Group or to Group of Vatican 424. C6th BC. Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Vaticano, Vatican City.

Theseus and the Minotauros. Attributed to Apollodoros. ca 525 – 475 BC. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Theseus and the Minotauros. Floor Mosaic. C2nd – C3rd AD. Universität Fribourg Bibliothek, Fribourg, Switzerland.

Earthquakes in My Life (Deux Hommes dans la Ville)

In August 2007 Robin Hamman reported on the BBC Manchester Blog about an earthquake in Manchester. He was rather surprised that very few of us, Manchester bloggers, noticed it. I didn’t notice it, no. But the Manchester earthquake was but 2 points on the Richter scale. The recent earthquake that hit much of the UK was 5 points, and I did feel it. Well, since this was the first earthquake I personally experienced I’ve got to write a memo of it. I was in the bathroom, and the door shook and rattled, but hardly anything moved, including myself. I thought it was a very strong wind which does occasionally visit the house where I currently live. You can easily imagine my surprise when in the morning I read about Britain being hit by its second strongest earthquake since 1984.

In my Russian LiveJournal I wrote about this experience, since it was really the experience, and I’m very grateful to the reader who sent me their support, even though I didn’t suffer any damage (unlike some people and households in England). In my turn, I hope that none of my friends or readers was affected by the force of Nature.

Although this was the first time I experienced an earthquake myself, it wasn’t the first earthquake in my life to which I had to react somehow. On December 7, 1988 when I was at the second form at school (still primary school), a devastating earthquake hit Armenia. As I gathered from browsing the Internet, it is now known as the Spitak, or Gyumri Earthquake. You can easily guess by looking at the date that this catastrophe occurred while the USSR still existed, and I believe it was a common initiative across all Soviet schools to organise sending some humanitarian aid to the families, and most importantly children who suffered from the earthquake. In my childhood I’ve had a lot of toys, and my Mum and I collected a huge bag of different dolls to send to children in Armenia.

I must be honest, though, and admit that the empathy upon which I focus so much these days and about which I write so much, – well, this empathy wasn’t something I had had back in 1988. I don’t know, perhaps it was normal since I was a child, and I have noticed in the recent years that some childhood experiences are relived much more sharply when I recall them some 15-20 years after they’d happened. With the Spitak Earthquake, I vividly remember smiling sceptically at my grandmother and mother, for I couldn’t understand why they were crying, as my family never had any relatives in Armenia or adjacent areas. Obviously, these days when I look at these photos and there is a whole pool of similar experiences to remember I take their reaction differently. Although I guess that there is a reason for my then reaction, I’m ashamed of it, and my parents did reproach me for it.

That was in 1988. These days I realise that I haven’t always been so detached, and that something had touched my profoundly long before the experience I’m about to relate. I told you in the past about the effect the Russian adaptation of Conan Doyle stories had on me, and there are a few more films that opened me up from one side or another. I feel that in many ways these experiences were brought by some external force (I’m not religious, but this is where I become fatalist and a mystic) to unravel my inner feelings and callings that otherwise would lay dormant.

Occasionally I feel also that when myself or whoever else speak about art, there is a more or less substantial group of people who are extremely sceptical about the ability of art to influence anyone. I don’t know about “whoever”, this is when I’m speaking entirely from my heart and my own memories. It was 1994, I was in the 9th form at school (the last year at secondary school, for you to have an idea), and because it was before my birthday in December I’d still be 13. In the summer of 1994 I read Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, which had a profound effect on me. As I don’t remember exactly how I was reading it, I doubt this effect was such that it made me cry, but it certainly made me think.

It was probably October or November 1994 when they showed Deux hommes dans la ville on Russian TV. The film is known in the English-speaking world as Two Against the Law or Two Men in Town (Due contra la città in Italian), it was made in 1973 by José Giovanni and starred Jean Gabin and Alain Delon. The plot, in short, is about a bank robber (Delon) who returns home after ten years of imprisonment, makes his best to escape the old pals, but falls victim to the harassment of a cop from his past. Gabin’s character is trying to help and save the unfortunate young man, but the tragedy unravels. The film touched on social injustice, capital punishment, and the inability of an individual to outpower the Law.

It was the first film when I sat in front of the TV set and never moved. It was the first ever film with which I sympathised. I’ve seen a few films with Delon previously, but back then I sometimes relied on the perceptions of my family, and my mother who probably looked at this actor through his performances in Borsalino or Zorro didn’t develop any affection for him. Naturally, it was different with me, and since 1994 I’ve seen many films with Delon, including La Piscine, Once a Thief, and Il Gattopardo.

But back in 1994 I was totally devastated and destroyed by the feature. I was crying throughout the last part of it. As if that wasn’t enough, I woke up in the night, instantly remembered about Delon’s character in the last scenes, especially those in the death chamber, and once again I cried. I thought of the character’s girlfriend… I knew perfectly well that nothing wrong happened to Delon. I knew that this could be just another “story”. But I was inconsolable for the rest of the night, very much moved for a few days after, and am still under the effect of the film, almost 15 years later.

Naturally, I’m thinking exactly what it was that moved me so much. The more I think about it the more I’m inclined to believe that I felt pain from my inability to change anything. Even if such story did take place in France in 1960-7os, I was sitting in Russia in the 1990s, and it was pointless to contemplate on what could be done because there was no capital punishment in France by 1994. Lars von Trier raised the same problem in Dancer in the Dark just a few years ago, although for me it was a film “in context”, whereas Deux hommes dans la ville was the first film of such topic.

So, the devastating effect of Giovanni’s feature had to do with my understanding of my “calling” or desire to be involved – be that involvement in art or in helping people. It could never take place without the actors, the script, the directing, and the whole gamut of other factors involved in film production. And while my experience as a film aficionado has grown far and wide since 1994, it is this film that I will be invariably getting back to when thinking of when and how I realised that whatever books, films, melodies, paintings tell us, they ultimately tell us something about ourselves.

Needless to say, I am deeply indebted to the cast and crew of this film. Deux hommes dans la ville was my own earthquake that shook me and threw me out of a void of detachment. I can never be thankful enough for this…

The Visions of Begemot (Part 1)


It’s been a few months since Manchester bloggers met at The Hare and Hounds pub in Shudehill. And we’ll be meeting again this coming Monday, between 6 and 11pm at the Festival Pavilion outside Manchester Central (G-Mex). Read more at BBC Manchester Blog and leave a comment there if you want to come along.

And when I was at the memorable meet-up in April (when I saw a man in a yellow duckling suit, unzipped on the back), I was talking to Rob Baker, who happened to be having an on-and-off romance with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Like most readers, he was fascinated with the cat Begemot (or Behemoth, if we opt for historical spelling). This cat is an adorable black gluttonous creature that walks on his back paws, speaks rather eloquently, and rides a tram. On occasion, he can also tear one’s head off and even fire a gun, but for that one needs to seriously enrage the cat.

As we know, artists see things differently not only from other people, but from other artists, as well. I wondered how many interpretations of Begemot in illustration I could possibly find, considering how popular Bulgakov’s novel is. The result can be seen below. I didn’t even think of making a complete list of all Begemot’s images that could be found online, but even those that I found make up for enjoyable and observant viewing. There are also so many of them that I will have to organize them in a few posts, otherwise there will be too much writing and too many images.

Book covers.

Type in “bulgakov” in Amazon.co.uk Search window, and in a matter of seconds you will be staring at the innumerable covers of editions of one of the best-known and loved books in world’s literature. And on almost all of them you’ll see Begemot. We may speculate endlessly, exactly what makes this character so appealing. It is generally appealing – as any tram-riding cat would be. It challenges our attitude to black cats – again, a black cat may be a symbol of bad luck, but Begemot appears to be a master of smooth-talking, and how can it then bring any bad luck? This creature is lovely, fluffy, magical in every sense of the word, and it’s a cat. I suppose one of the reasons why Begemot is so popular is because it seems easier to conceive of a cat’s, rather than human, face.

The covers of the first English-language editions showed a particular fascination with Begemot’s rascal and smart side. It is no wonder that Harper & Row 1967 cover (left) is liked by many: the illustrator has probably come closest to capturing the cat’s mischievous essence. The Grove Press edition of the same year takes more interest in Begemot’s “human” side, falling short of giving us an ultimate boxer-cat (right).



It is interesting to see how the same
publishing house – Penguin and Picador, on this occasion – can present two so different interpretations of Begemot. With Penguin, one illustrator opted for a carnival mask (thus highlighting the theatrical and the figurative in the novel) (left), whilst another chose to produce a caricature (right), not unlike those drawn to illustrate one of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s books (below).


Picador’s covers are no less peculiar: one shows you, well, a cat with cards (left); and on another the cat has got an extreme modernist makeover (right). Vintage Classics and
Avalon Travel Publishing both take
on the theme of all-pervasiveness of a devilish spirit, which Vintage makes slightly more figurative and political. On another Vintage cover we see Begemot in profile, and the angle of his head reminds me of a gargoyle at the Notre Dame de Paris. The Harvill Panther’s monochrome cover brings to mind politics, the black-and-white cinema and photos of 1930s, and the closeness of the Second World War (below, from left to right: Vintage, Avalon, Vintage and Harvill Panther covers; the gargoyle image is displayed on top). Finally, the cover of Fontana 1974 edition (further below, right) made me wonder if it had had any influence of the make-up artists who subsequently worked on The Cats musical.






(And please forgive me this little rant, but how could The Daily Telegraph reviewer back in 2004 ever allow themselves to write this phrase, which is now proudly cited on the book’s page on Amazon: “The Master and Margarita comes over like a grown-up and vastly superior version of Harry Potter”. OF COURSE, it is VASTLY SUPERIOR to Harry Potter and to the vast majority of other books out there. OF COURSE, it is incomparably thought-provoking, challenging and complex, which is why there hasn’t been and still isn’t any equally great adaptation of this novel in cinema or on stage. OF COURSE, The Daily Telegraph was reviewing one of the most influential books of the 20th c. I’ve got nothing against Harry Potter (or J K Rowling, for that matter), but to even compare it to Bulgakov’s novel is too much of an honour for the young wizard saga).

Russian cover artists also like Begemot, although the cat doesn’t feature prominently on the Russian covers. The covers of EKSMO-Press publishing house, as well as that of Molodaya Gvardiya (Youth Guard), present an unmistakably feline face of Behemoth. Personally, I like the Sovetskaya Literatura (Soviet Literature) cover better of the three, which partly has to do with the fact that it was this edition that I read myself more than ten years ago (below, from left to right: EKSMO, Molodaya Gvardiya, and Soviet Literature covers). Surprisingly, the only website I found which has got this edition listed is Kevin Moss’s comprehensive resource.






A Hungarian cover gives us a giant Behe-Cyclop, while two Italian covers give completely polar interpretations of Behemoth: one cat is arrogant; another reminds me of a rabbit (below, left to right). Yet another Italian cover looks familiar to the Vintage’s that you saw above. This profile view seems to be the most popular, as it is also replicated on a Portuguese cover (I didn’t include either in this post).












A Chinese book brings to mind those beautiful medieval Chinese paintings; German and Estonian covers have not at all been taken by Behemoth (at least those that I saw), and a Polish 2006 cover gives the cat a minimalist feel (below, left to right).
























Links:
Master and Margarita, a resource created by Kevin Moss at Middlebury College. The site lists published texts of Bulgakov’s novel, translations and bibliography, as well as the list of illustrations and themes. Unfortunately, the list of links hasn’t been updated for some time, but otherwise it is a very useful website. In addition, Kevin has also created several other sites dedicated to the Russian choir at Middlebury, Russian literature and language, and Russian gay culture.

Master and Margarita, a very comprehensive resource from where I linked to many images here. The resource was created by Jan Vanhellemont from Belgium, and, as Jan tells us on the front page (written in quite good Russian, I should say!), he never heard about the novel until one summer night in 2003 in Paris, where he first heard about the book. A year later he finally got to read it and has been studying the Russian language since, in a hope to be able to read the book in its original language one day. I must admit, I’m very smitten by this story. Bulgakov’s novel has played a crucial part in my life, as well, but Jan’s is a very different experience. Judging by the site, he’s doing pretty well, and since I’m sure he’ll know about this post, I’m happy to provide some distant language tuition. The site contains articles, illustrations, film excerpts, music pieces, and many more, so is definitely worth a visit.

Illustrations:

Most of book covers’ images were taken from Amazon.co.uk and Jan Vanhellemont’s site. Soviet Literature edition’s back cover image is on Kevin Moss’s site. The cover of Mayakovsky’s work is of the Krasnaya Nov’ (Red Novelty) edition displayed at Mayakovsky and His Circle site (some areas of the site are still in development). The gargoyle picture comes from this lady, WTS, at traveljournals.net. The Chinese painting is Plum Blossom and the Moon by Chen Lu (Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644) at http://www.xabusiness.com/china-resources/song-liao-jin-dynasties-paintings.htm. All images are linked to their original location.

The Lovers by Rene Magritte

One of my favourite paintings is The Lovers by Rene Magritte. We see a man and a woman sharing an intimate kiss, but their faces are covered with white cloths. You can certainly interpret this as an image of blinding passion. However, I prefer to view the picture as an image of two people who were destined to meet one another. They don’t know each other by face, but they share this moment of profound intimacy because they have recognised one another.


Awhile ago, whilst looking at the painting, I realised that this scene (or rather something that must have happened prior to it in order for this moment to take place) has been described in one of my favourite novels. I speak about Chapter 13 of Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The text is available online in two English translations, for those who never read it, and I have to say that the passage I’m quoting below is not rendered impeccably in either version; however, the 1997 text generally follows the original Russian text closer, whereby I’m quoting from it. In this chapter (called The Hero Enters), the character of Master is fully introduced to us for the first time.

'She was carrying repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand.  Devil knows what they're called, but for
some reason they're the first to appear in Moscow. And these flowers stood out clearly against her black spring
coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya and then
looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya! Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I can assure
you that she saw me alone, and looked not really alarmed, but even as if in pain. And I was struck not so much
by her beauty as by an extraordinary loneliness in her eyes, such as no one had ever seen before! Obeying this
yellow sign, I also turned down the lane and followed her. We walked along the crooked, boring lane silently, I
on one side, she on the other. And, imagine, there was not a soul in the lane. I was suffering, because it seemed
to me that it was necessary to speak to her, and I worried that I wouldn't utter a single word, and she would leave,
and I'd never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:
' "Do you like my flowers?"

'I remember clearly the sound of her voice, rather low, slightly husky, and, stupid as it is, it seemed that the
echo resounded in the lane and bounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, coming up
to her, answered:

'"No!"
'She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, understood that all my life I had loved
precisely this woman! Quite a thing, eh? Of course, you'll say I'm mad?'

'I won't say anything,' Ivan exclaimed, and added: 'I beg you, go on!'

And the guest continued.

'Yes, she looked at me in surprise, and then, having looked, asked thus:

'"You generally don't like flowers?"
'It seemed to me there was hostility in her voice. I was walking beside her, trying to keep in step, and, to my
surprise, did not feel the least constraint.

'"No, I like flowers, but not this kind," I said.
'"Which, then?"

'"I like roses."

'Then I regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily and threw the flowers into the gutter. Slightly at a loss,
I nevertheless picked them up and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, and I carried
them in my hand.
'So we walked silently for some time, until she took the flowers from my hand and threw them to the pavement,
then put her own hand in a black glove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.'
'Go on,' said Ivan, 'and please don't leave anything out!'

'Go on?' repeated the visitor. 'Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.' He suddenly wiped an
unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: `Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley
leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the
way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without
knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man ... as I was, too,
then ... with that, what's her ...'
'With whom?' asked Homeless.

With that... well... with ...' replied the guest, snapping his fingers?

'You were married?'

'Why, yes, that's why I'm snapping... With that... Varenka ... Manechka ... no, Varenka ... striped dress, the
museum ... Anyhow, I don't remember.
'Well, so she said she went out that day with yellow flowers in her hand so that I would find her at last, and that
if it hadn't happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.

'Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later, when, without having noticed the city, we
found ourselves by the Kremlin wall on the embankment.

We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We
arranged to meet the next day at the same place on the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun shone down
on us. And soon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife.

Links: Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1967, English translation by Michael Glenny).Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1997, English translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).

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