Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by USMA Digital Commons (United States Military Academy, West Point) United States Military Academy USMA Digital Commons West Point Research Papers Spring 2018 Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations John M. Pendergast United States Military Academy, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/ usma_research_papers Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Pendergast, John M., "Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations" (2018). West Point Research Papers. 72. https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/usma_research_papers/72 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by USMA Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in West Point Research Papers by an authorized administrator of USMA Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. John Pendergast (New York) BULGAKOV AND TCHAIKOVSKY: THEMES AND VARIATIONS Summary Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations References to Tchaikovskyís works in Bulgakovís writing function without explanation and somewhat surreptitiously as both signifiers of the writerís antipathy toward the nascent communist regime and as hermeneutic devices. They reveal the authorís ambivalence toward the characters and the works themselves, such as The White Guard, ìA Dogís Heartî and The Master and Margarita. Failure to interpret these enigmatic signposts may present no obstacle to understanding the plot, but unlocking the puzzle signified by their presence offers a much richer appreciation for the conflicts and dilemmas confronting the characters. The reader unfamiliar with Tchaikovsky may skim over musical references in these three works as merely atmospheric. This article posits that such a reader gains an impression very different from that which arises upon consideration of the musical and thematic associations. This consideration provides not only a deeper appreciation of the works, but reveals the extent to which Bulgakov himself was of two minds in his relation to them. Key words: Bulgakov, Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, Goethe, music, opera, signifier, signpost, hermeneutics, materialism, irony, paradox, Faust, Don Juan, Onegin *** Bulgakov was a music aficionado. His appreciation for Gounodís opera Faust, for example, provides a source for numerous literary themes explored in his novels and plays, and the same may be said of Verdiís Aida. Like many of his background, he was immensely fond of the music of Tchaikovsky. It appears at least as often as that of Gounod or Verdi but, as this paper seeks to establish, seems to have a different function from that of the western composers. In the case of Gounod and Verdi, the references seem to function as analogies, employed to deepen the emotional content of the charactersí dilemmas as presented within the narrative. References to Tchaikovskyís works, on the other hand, function without explanation and somewhat surreptitiously as both signifiers of Bulgakovís antipathy toward the nascent communist regime and as a hermeneutic device that potentially reveals the authorís ambivalence toward the characters in such works as The White Guard, ìA Dogís Heartî and The Master and Margarita. The role of these musical references is akin to the similarly unexplained presence of the plethora of historical detail to be found, for example, in the Pilate chapters of Master and Margarita, which one of the authorís biographers has characterized as mysterious signposts to another layer of meaning1. Failure to interpret these enigmatic signposts presents no obstacle to understanding the plot, but unlocking the puzzle signified by their presence offers a much richer appreciation 137 Славянские чтения XII for the conflicts and dilemmas confronting the characters. Similarly, the reader unfamiliar with Tchaikovsky may skim over musical references in these three works as merely atmospheric ñ imagery employed to suggest a mood. This would be a mistake and will, I shall argue here, produce an impression of the motivations of the characters very different from that which arises upon consideration of the musical and thematic associations. This consideration provides not only a deeper appreciation of the works, but reveals the extent to which Bulgakov himself was of two (or more) minds in his relation to them. The White Guard considers the fate of the Turbin family in 1918ñ1919. They are members of the Russian intelligentsia living in Kiev, strongly reminiscent of Bulgakovís own family. Three major factions are struggling for control of unfinished business in Kiev: collaborators with the German-Prussians of Kaiser Wilhelm, who want to complete the unfinished business of the First World War; Ukrainian nationalists under the leadership of Petlyura, who want to make Ukraine a nation in its own right; and the White Guards, who oppose the fall of Russia to Red communism, which the reader knows will triumph in the end. The Turbins are, it becomes clear, avowed monarchists (as was Tchaikovsky). Unfortunately, the imperial Russian family has been assassinated by the new Bolshevik regime, and any dreams of restoring the lost Russian Empire are utterly futile. One of the siblings, Elena, is married to a German collaborator. As the story begins in the bitterly cold December of 1918, he leaves her behind to go into hiding with the German-installed Hetman, while her brothers and friends gather in the family home to commiserate over the sad state of affairs. Bulgakov indulges in a kind of metaphysical materialism by describing the physical surroundings of the Turbin home in almost fetishistic detail. The cream colored curtains and the lamp with the green shade are mentioned many times, and their significance as emblems of security and comfort has been explored by a number of critics2. I see this materialism as metaphysical because it is clear that his lingering attention to the details of the furnishings is not intended to convey luxury, wealth or power. The Turbins have none of these: they have only cherished memories of lost loved ones and days gone by. The music of Tchaikovsky, universally admired among Russians, is of a piece with the attention Bulgakov pays to ordinary household items. He responded rather coldly to the more challenging music of such composers as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, is as familiar and soothing as a velvet sofa. Bulgakov devotes a great deal of attention to one particular item in the home: the stove, clearly a source of warmth and life. The stove is a kind of totem, evocative perhaps of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad as a kind of synecdoche for the major players and events in the story that unfold in Kiev, caught amid the shifting tides of the Russian Revolution, the German-Prussian occupation, and Ukrainian nationalism: Замечательная печь на своей ослепительной поверхности несла следующие исторические записи и рисунки, сделанные в разное время восемнадцатого года рукою Николки тушью и полные самого глубокого смысла и значения: «Если тебе скажут, что союзники спешат к нам на выручку, – не верь. Союзники – сволочи. Он сочувствует большевикам.» 138 John Pendergast. Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations Рисунок: рожа Момуса. Подпись: «Улан Леонид Юрьевич». «Слухи грозные, ужасные, Наступают банды красные!» Рисунок красками: голова с отвисшими усами, в папахе с синим хвостом. Подпись: «Бей Петлюру!» Руками Елены и нежных и старинных турбинских друзей детства – Мышлаевского, Карася, Шервинского – красками, тушью, чернилами, вишневым соком записано: «Елена Васильевна любит нас сильно, Кому – на, а кому – не.» «Леночка, я взял билет на Аиду. Бельэтаж N 8, правая сторона.» «1918 года, мая 12 дня я влюбился.» «Вы толстый и некрасивый.» «После таких слов я застрелюсь. (Нарисован весьма похожий браунинг.) «Да здравствует Россия! Да здравствует самодержавие!» «Июнь. Баркаролла.» «Недаром помнит вся Россия Про день Бородина.»3 (emphasis mine) We can see all the themes of the story laid out here: the lively relationships among the Turbins and their friends, their antipathy toward the Bolsheviks and Petlyura, and their affinity for the old order. Of particular interest to this argument, toward the end of this listing, highlighted in boldface in the above citation is ìJune: Bacarolle.î This can only be a reference to the 6th movement of Tchaikovskyís extremely popular set of solo piano pieces, the ìSeasonsî. In the midst of the other graffiti, it is easy, first of all, simply to miss the reference entirely, especially since two other musical references are perhaps more prominent and familiar: to Verdiís opera Aida and to the refrain of Lermontovís poem ìBorodinoî. These lend further credence to Bulgakovís musical obsessions. Once one considers the barcarolle, one could assume that it is merely of a piece with all the other beloved memories of bourgeois comfort to which the Turbins cling: a happy summer memory, in the midst of the war-torn, bitter winter. But the version of the collection that would have been found in a home like the Turbinsí would also have had an epigraph printed at the head of each movement. This version was originally published in St. Petersburg, with epigraphs chosen by the publisher Bernard in 1876, republished by Jurgenson in 1886, and subsequently republished many times4. In the case of the No. 6 Barcarolle, the epigraph was from the first stanza of a poem by Pleshcheev. Выйдем на берег; там волны Ноги нам будут лобзать; Звезды с таинственной грустью Будут над нами сиять.5 Let us go to the shore; there the waves Will kiss our feet. With mysterious sadness The stars will shine down on us. 139 Славянские чтения XII The epigraph on its own suggests a rather conventional moment in a love poem, but a stanza further along in the poem reveals that the simple melancholy glimpsed in this musical moment increases to outright turbulence and violence, of the kind which the Turbins seem unable either to overcome or even face. Много они нас терзали, Мучили много, друг мой: Те – своей глупой любовью, Те – бесконечной враждой.6 They have torn us asunder, They have tormented us, my friend: Some ñ with their stupid love, Some ñ with their endless hostility. This implicit surrender to overwhelming violence perhaps explains why the staged version was acceptable to Stalin. In fact, The Days of the Turbins was among his favorite productions: he saw it no fewer than twenty times.7 As he explained in a letter of 1929: If even such people as the Turbins are forced to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, confess their cause finally lost, that means that the Bolsheviks are invincible.8 Bulgakov seems to see things quite differently. If we link the stars in the fourth line of the epigraph with the hostility inherent in the second stanza cited above, we have an approximation of the closing words of the novel: All this will pass. The sufferings, agonies, blood, hunger, and wholesale death. The sword will go away, but these stars will remain when even the shadows of our bodies and our affairs are long gone from this earth.9 Pleshcheyevís verses, reflected on the printed page of Tchaikovskyís barcarolle, itself enigmatically etched into the totem of the Turbinsí stove, reveal Bulgakovís conviction that the power of the Bolsheviks was fleeting, while the enduring power of poetry and music was second only to that of the stars. It is actually difficult to think that Bulgakov ever believed that his novella, ìA Dogís Heartî, stood a chance of being published in the Soviet Union, replete as it is with themes of utter contempt for the mindlessness of the proletariat, and scathing criticism of such ostensibly progressive ideas as the forced sharing of private apartments and political denunciation by one neighbor of another. In the story, which is an oblique retelling of Frankenstein, Doctor Preobrazhensky (whose name means ìtransfigurationî) decides to transplant the testes and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man into a dog. Prior to this moment, the story has actually been told from the point of view of Sharik the dog, and Bulgakovís characterization provokes the reader to feel fond of him. After the operation, the dog undergoes a rapid metamorphosis into a rather unpleasant human being, who smokes and curses and has terrible table manners, all of which make him just as detestable to the doctor, as the dog was beloved. There are communists living in the building where the doctor has his apartment, which has seven rooms, deemed unacceptably large by Soviet standards. They want to dislodge him so that the local apartment commission can take it over. With their help, Sharik gets papers to rename himself Sharikov and eventually gets a job in the Pest Control department, killing stray cats. The enmity between the doctor and his creature reaches a climax when Sharikov attempts to denounce the doctor as an attempted murderer and counterrevolutionary. This incites the doctorís assistant to subdue Sharikov in a manner that initially leaves the reader with the impression that he has been killed. We later learn that the climax has merely reversed the process of transformation, and the 140 John Pendergast. Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations man Sharikov has begun to revert to the dog Sharik, to the relief of all, except perhaps the covetous communists. Doctor Preobrazhensky seems constantly to have on his mind two snippets of music. The first, ìTo the sacred shores of the Nile,î is an aria from Aida. Significantly, ìTo the sacred shoresî is not an aria for Aida the slave-girl herself, but for Amneris, her royal rival for Radamesís affections, providing another straightforward signifier of Preobrazhenskyís aristocratic sensibilities. The other snippet, ìFrom Seville to Granada,î is from a song, ìDon Juanís Serenadeî, written by Tchaikovsky to an excerpt of Aleksei Tolstoyís dramatic poem ìDon Zhuanî. Given that there is no love interest at all in this Bulgakov story, the erotic element inherent in the song cannot offer any associative interpretation. Don Zhuanís status as a member of the aristocracy seems a more likely explanation. He had the boldness to invite a dead man to dinner and laughed in the face of death. This kind of boldness is consistent with the experiment Preobrazhensky undertakes with Sharik/Sharikov. Tolstoyís dramatic poem ìDon Zhuanî, written from 1859ñ60, is also an oblique retelling of the familiar tale, with the addition of a prologue à la Goetheís Faust in which Satan wagers with a group of heavenly spirits that he can corrupt the don10. The mise-en-scène of the Serenade recalls the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet: a man standing below the balcony of his beloved raises his voice to attract and seduce her by proclaiming his thoughts and feelings. The important difference here is that the singer, Don Zhuan, is addressing a loose woman named Nisetta, to provoke the indignation of Donna Annaís father and convince him that he is not worthy of her. In spite of Zhuanís lilting and graceful vocal line, the anxious energy of the cross-rhythm piano part ñ ostensibly mimicking the plucking of a guitar ñ reminds us that Donna Anna suffers while Zhuan puts on an insolent display. Here, as is always the case in Tchaikovskyís conception of Don Juan, the driving force is Donna Anna. От Севильи до Гранады From Seville to Granada В тиxом сумраке ночей, Раздаются серенады, Раздаётся стук мечей; Много крови, много песней Для прелестныx льётся дам, — Я же той, кто всех прелестней, Песнь и кровь мою отдам! In the silent gloom of night, Serenades ring out, Swordfights ring out: Much blood and many songs Pour out for delightful ladies ñ To her, most delightful of all, I offer my song and blood! In Alexei Tolstoyís version of the story, which was banned for publication in his lifetime, Donna Anna and Don Zhuan experience a deep and abiding love. In fact, when the officers of the Inquisition come to seize Don Zhuan and punish him for having killed her father, she is motivated by her love for him to conceal his whereabouts. In the penultimate scene of the play, she calls upon him to remember his love for her, which, in this version, he does: so much so, that after her death, he joins a monastery and becomes a model of restraint and steadfast faith. This apotheosis of the power of love seems to have little connection to Bulgakovís story of a doctor and his dog. The mysterious signpost, to borrow Profferís phrase, seems point out that this story, like 141 Славянские чтения XII Tolstoyís play, is not simply a retelling of a familiar tale. After wreaking havoc as an unwieldy and boorish communist, Preobrazhenskyís creature, unlike Frankensteinís tragic and homicidal outcast, is restored to his better nature, which happens to be that of a rather well-fed bourgeois dog, just as Tolstoyís Don Zhuan ñ unlike Mozartís familiar libertine ñ rises to his better nature inspired by love for Donna Anna. Additionally, the censorship of the play, the presence of Satan and other spirits, and prolonged dialogues on the murky line between good and evil may explain why Bulgakov began to think about a project he would soon undertake and work on for the remainder of his life: The Master and Margarita. On one level at least, Bulgakovís final novel is a retelling of Goetheís Faust, set in Stalinist Moscow of the 1930ís. The musical moment in question comes after a chapter that features the astonishing beheading of a magazine editor, the more astonishing because Bulgakov manages to imbue the scene with a great deal of dark humor, all the while maintaining a lively argument about the existence of God, Jesus, and the devil. The devil himself appears in the form of a foreign professor named Woland, a name borrowed from Goetheís Faust, and makes an extremely compelling argument for the existence of all three. He argues his point with the editor ñ whose name happens to be Berlioz ñ and with a hapless poet ñ who goes by the ridiculous nickname of ìHomeless.î The editor Berlioz, for his part, argues that there is no God, savior, or devil, and that man is in charge of his own affairs. The devil Woland laughs that Berlioz cannot even be sure of his plans for that night, and that in fact he is about to die: Your head will be cut offÖ by a Russian woman, a member of the Komsomol.11 This seemingly insane pronouncement leads the editor to try to get away for help from the police, but as he steps through the turnstile to board a streetcar, he slips in spilled oil, and the streetcar decapitates him: the driver is a Komsomol woman, just as Woland predicted. Homeless the poet is naturally thrown into great agitation and tries to apprehend Woland, but his efforts are fruitless, and in fact, after several misadventures, he ends up wandering aimlessly clad only his underwear, carrying a candle, with an icon pinned to his shirt. He finally decides to go for help to the Griboedov House of the Writerís Union, where Berlioz has his office and was supposed to have gone to a meeting. As he makes his way on foot, in this state of agitation, after such a shock, the following takes place: Everyoneís windows were open, and shining in each one was a lamp with an orange shade; from all the windows, doors, gateways, rooftops, attics, cellars, and courtyards came the hoarse strains of the polonaise from the opera ìEugene Oneginî12 [Ö] Throughout his difficult journey, he was, for some reason, inexpressibly tormented by the omnipresent orchestra accompanying the deep bass who was singing of his love for Tatyana.13 Both the polonaise and the aria can be seen as simple staples of Russian culture. Certainly, Bulgakovís extensive listing of all the places from which the sounds of Tchaikovskyís music emanate and confront Homeless calls to mind the monolithic nature of Soviet radio programming: it was the only thing on, no matter where you went! This fails to consider, however, the fact that the two pieces of music are described in the order in which they appear during a full performance of the opera. This suggests that the radio is likely broadcasting the entire opera. The polonaise comes at the start 142 John Pendergast. Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations of the final act of the opera, following a horrible act of violence, a duel in which one friend kills another. The thick, brass chords that open the polonaise were borrowed by Tchaikovsky from his own Fourth Symphony and represented for him the inexorable hand of fate.14 Thus, the seeming banality of the polonaise becomes a dreadful reminder of the violent decapitation Homeless has just witnessed and the fateful prediction of Berliozís death that preceded it. The aria takes us on an altogether different journey, tied not to Homeless, Berlioz, nor directly, at least, to the devil. It is the lonely province of the creative genius. The action of the opera Eugene Onegin is rather faithful to the plot of Pushkinís famous novel in verse. The tone of the opera, on the other hand, is quite different. Pushkin, while dealing with sophisticated and profound matters in his novel, nonetheless retains a light narrative tone throughout, rather like Bulgakov. If we look below at the text of the aria that seems to pursue Homeless through the streets of Moscow, we see that two lines are from Pushkin (indicated by Novel), another twelve are lines that Pushkin ultimately deleted from his published work (indicated by ìdeletedî), which Tchaikovsky seems to have come across in the published appendices and found useful for his purposes.15 Some of these ìdeletedî lines, it is worth noting, ring true with the imagery of greed and dissolution at the Griboedov House, into which Homeless is about to enter (indicated with underscore): Любви все возрасты покорны; Ее порывы благотворны, И юноше в расцвете лет, Едва увидевшему свет, И закаленному судьбой Бойцу с седою головой! Онегин, я скрывать не стану, Безумно я люблю Татьяну! Тоскливо жизнь моя текла, Она явилась и зажгла, Как солнца луч среди ненастья, Мне жизнь и молодость и счастье, Среди лукавых, малодушных, Шальных, балованных детей, Злодеев и смешных и скучных, Тупых, привязчивых судей, Среди кокеток богомольных, Среди холопьев добровольных, Среди вседневных, модных сцен, Учтивых, ласковых измен, Среди холодных приговоров Жестокосердой суеты, Среди досадной пустоты Расчетов, дум и разговоров, Она блистает, как звезда Во мраке ночи, в небе чистом, И мне является всегда В сиянье ангела лучистом! 16 Novel. 8.XXIX.1 Novel. 8.XXIX.3 Opera.III.1 Novel. 6.XLVII [deleted ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”] Opera.III.1 (emphases mine) 143 Славянские чтения XII The rest of the text (indicated by Opera) was composed by Tchaikovsky, with no care for the meter or rhyme scheme that Pushkin fastidiously preserves elsewhere.17 Yet this music is very likely the most popular excerpt from the opera, and if you ask Russians to quote Eugene Onegin, they are likely to quote the lines shown above underscored and in bold ñ lines written by Tchaikovsky, not Pushkin! The scene that follows this fleeting reference takes place in the fictionalized union of Soviet Writers, which Bulgakov lampoons mercilessly. It is in this scene where the poet Homeless begins to recognize the futility of his bad Socialist Realist drivel, where the reader sees the idle uselessness of the Writerís Union, and where Bulgakovís courage as a writer is met with the cowardice that would ban this work and much else of his output until after his death. At least one other fleeting reference to Tchaikovsky takes place in Chapter 15, ìNikanor Ivanovichís Dream,î in which the chairman of the house committee in charge of Berliozís residence is confronted with the crime of keeping foreign currency. His crime has been concocted by Wolandís henchmen, but the consequences and their effect on his psyche are quite real: he is arrested, loses his mind and is taken off to a sanitarium. There, under the influence of an injection from the psychiatrist Stravinsky,18 he dreams that he is in a theater of some sort, to which others accused of the same crime have been invited to confess. Those who confess and hand over their currency are released. After one of those gathered confesses and exits the theater, the lights go out, and a nervous tenor can be heard singing: There are piles of gold there, and they all belong to me. This line is sung by Herman, the money-crazed gambler from Tchaikovskyís opera, The Queen of Spades. The chapter is permeated with references to Pushkin, whom Nikanor mentions often without having read anything by him before. An actor recites Pushkinís play ìThe Covetous Knightî, thus the reference to the covetous Herman seems appropriate to the chapterís overall theme of greed. This then would seem to contradict the argument that Bulgakov employs Tchaikovsky hermeneutically. As with the lines from Eugene Onegin, however, these lines were not written by Pushkin. They are from the libretto, which, apart from the plot, has almost nothing in common with Pushkinís prose.19 Tchaikovskyís obliteration of Pushkinís text was unintentional. He took up Pushkin as the subject of more than just these two works out of a sincere admiration for the power of his poetry. As meticulous as Bulgakov always was in his research, especially with regard to his final novel, he would have been aware that these lines, ostensibly from Pushkin, were actually the work of others and ended up in some cases being better known than Pushkin. This situation is not merely ironic, nor just paradoxical. It goes beyond simply offering a signpost for polyvalent interpretations of the various charactersí motivations. As a writer, Bulgakov would have been quite sensitive to the manipulation of an authorís text by succeeding generations. He is demonstrating just how well he understands that the author is not fully in charge of his text. With these musical references, Bulgakov seems to be telling us: donít believe everything you read, even if he wrote it. When we explore the connotations of Tchaikovskyís music, we discover quite another world of ideas and interpretations. We should not, however, assume that these ideas take precedence over the more obvious 144 John Pendergast. Bulgakov and Tchaikovsky: Themes and Variations ones, nor that they purport to provide a higher truth. The contradiction belies the superficial signifier and fully exposes the paradox inherent in the narrative moment. Seen in this light, Bulgakovís prose takes on the kind of open-ended interpretive features we usually reserve for poetry, and gains from this light a freshness of perspective that keeps his ideas vital and provocative. END NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Proffer, Ellendea. Bulgakov: Life and Work. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1984, p. 542. Dobrenko, E.A. Bulgakov, Mikhail. White Guard. Trans. Marian Schwarz, Introduction by E.A. Dobrenko. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. xxvii, xxxiv; Haber, Edith. The Lamp with the Green Shade: Mikhail Bulgakov and His Father. The Russian Review. Vol. 44, No. 4, 1985. p. 335; Proffer 1984, p. 571; Weeks, Laura D. The Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion. USA: Northwestern University Press, 1996, pp. 147, 156. Булгаков M.A. Белая гвардия. Издательство «Проспект», 2013, pp. 5ñ7. Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991, p. 172. Плещеев А.Н. Полное собрание стихотворений. Библиотека поэта. Большая серия. Москва, Ленинград: Советский писатель, 1964. Ibid. Dobrenko, p. xix. Milne, Lesley. Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 110. Bulgakov, Mikhail. White Guard. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, p. 310. Толстой А.К. Собрание сочинений в четырех томах, т. 2. Москва: Художественная литература, 1964. Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Trans. Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan OíConnor. New York: Vintage Books, 1995, p. 10. Ibid. p. 43. Ibid. p. 44. Чайковский, Модест. Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского. Т 2. Москва: Алгоритм, 1997, p. 97. I am indebted to the assiduous research of V. Nabokov for the discovery of the peculiar provenance of these verses, rejected by Pushkin, but appropriated by Tchaikovsky. I explored the situation in greater detail in my masterís thesis, ìOneginís Path from Page to Stage: A Study of Tchaikovskyís Transposition of Pushkinís Novel in Verse into Novel in Music,î unpublished but available from the University of Arizona, 2002. Pushkin, trans. Nabokov (Vol. III, p. 66). Чайковский П.И. Евгений Онегин. Москва: «Музыка», 1999, pp. 251ñ255. A friend of the composer named Shilovsky offered some assistance with the libretto, but Tchaikovsky did not use all of his friendís material and clearly added other lines. See Чайковский М., p. 167. 145 Славянские чтения XII 18 19 As previously mentioned, Bulgakov was not fond of Stravinsky. Thus it is consistent with this impression that he names the cold, rational director of the psychiatric ward after one of his least favorite composers. Tchaikovskyís brother Modest wrote the libretto. 146