2. "Young Guard" In November 1968, I already worked in the editorial office of the magazine. A week or two later, he gathered a meeting of critics, prose writers, and art historians to discuss a long-term editorial plan for the next year, 1969. The meeting was attended by Oleg Mikhailov, Viktor Chalmaev,

Suffice it to say about the following main changes made in the play "Days of the Turbins" in comparison with the novel "The White Guard". The role of Colonel Malyshev as the commander of the artillery division was transferred to Alexei Turbin. The image of Alexei Turbin was enlarged. He absorbed, in addition to the features of Malyshev, the properties of Nai-Tours. Instead of a suffering doctor, perplexedly looking at events, not knowing what to do, the figure of a convinced strong-willed person appeared in the play "Days of the Turbins". Like Malyshev, he not only knows what needs to be done, but also deeply understands the tragedy of the circumstances and, in fact, he is looking for his own death, dooming himself to death, because he knows that the cause is lost, the old world has collapsed (Malyshev, in contrast from Alexei Turbin, retains some faith - he believes that the best thing anyone who wants to continue the fight can count on is to get to the Don).

Bulgakov in the play, by dramatic means, intensified the denunciation of the hetman. The narrative description of the hetman's escape was turned into the brightest satirical scene. With the help of the grotesque, the puppet's nationalistic feathers, its false grandeur, were torn off.

All the numerous episodes from the novel "The White Guard" (and the first version of the play), characterizing the experiences, the mood of intelligent people, in the final text of "Days of the Turbins" were compressed, condensed, obeyed the inner core, strengthening the main motive in the through action - the motive of choice in conditions, when a bitter struggle broke out. In the last, 4th act, the figure of Myshlaevsky came to the fore with his evolution of views, his decisive confession: "Alyoshka was right ... The people are not with us. The people are against us." He weightily states that he will no longer serve corrupt and mediocre generals and is ready to join the ranks of the Red Army: "At least I will know that I will serve in the Russian army." In contrast to Myshlaevsky, the figure of the dishonest Thalberg appeared. In the novel, he draped from Warsaw to Paris, having married Lidochka Hertz. A new motive appears in the play. Thalberg makes an unexpected appearance in the 4th act. It turns out that he makes his way to the Don to General Krasnov on a special mission from Berlin and wants to take Elena with him. But an affront awaits him. Elena announces to him that she is marrying Shervinsky. Thalberg's plans collapse.

In the play, the figures of Shervinsky and Lariosik were revealed stronger and brighter. Shervinsky's love for Elena, the good nature of Lariosik brought a special color to the relationship of the characters, created an atmosphere of goodwill and mutual attention in the Turbins' house. At the end of the play, the tragic moments intensified (Aleksey Turbin dies, Nikolka remained a cripple). But the major notes did not disappear. They are connected with the attitude of Myshlaevsky, who saw new shoots of life in the collapse of Petliurism and the victory of the Red Army. The sounds of the "Internationale" in the performance of the Moscow Art Theater announced the onset of a new world.

Revolution and culture - this is the theme with which Mikhail Bulgakov entered literature and to which he remained faithful in his work. For a writer, to destroy the old means to destroy, first of all, cultural values. He believes that only culture, the world of the intelligentsia, bring harmony into the chaos of human existence. The novel "The White Guard", as well as the play based on it "Days of the Turbins", brought its author, M. A. Bulgakov, a lot of trouble. He was scolded in the press, various labels were hung on him, the author was accused of complicity with the enemy - white officers. And all this because, five years after the Civil War, Bulgakov dared to show the white officers not in the style of creepy and funny heroes of posters and agitation, but as living people, with their own advantages and disadvantages, their own concepts of honor and duty. And these people, branded with the name of enemies, turned out to be very attractive personalities. In the center of the novel is the Turbin family: brothers Alexei and Nikolka, their sister Elena. The Turbin House is always full of guests and friends. Following the will of her deceased mother, Elena maintains an atmosphere of warmth and comfort in the house. Even in the terrible time of the civil war, when the city lies in ruins, there is an impenetrable night with shooting outside the windows, a lamp under a warm lampshade burns in the Turbins' house, there are cream curtains on the windows that protect and fence off the owners from fear and death. Old friends still gather near the tiled stove. They are young, cheerful, all a little in love with Elena. For them honor is not an empty word. And Alexei Turbin, and Nikolka, and Myshlaevsky are officers. They act as their officer's duty tells them to. The times have come when it is difficult to understand where the enemy is, from whom it is necessary to defend and whom to protect. But they are faithful to the oath, the one as they understand it. They are ready to defend their beliefs to the end. There are no right and wrong in a civil war. When brother goes against brother, there can be no winners. People are dying by the hundreds. Boys, yesterday's schoolboys, take up arms. They give their lives for ideas - true and false. But the strength of the Turbins and their friends is that they understand that even in this whirlwind of history there are simple things that you must hold on to if you want to save yourself. It is loyalty, love and friendship. And an oath - even now - remains an oath, betrayal of it - a betrayal of the Motherland, and betrayal remains a betrayal. “Never run like a rat into the unknown from danger,” the author writes. It is precisely such a rat, running from a sinking ship, that Elena's husband Sergey Talberg is represented. Alexei Turbin despises Talberg, who is leaving Kyiv with the German staff. Elena refuses to go with her husband. For Nikolka, it would be a betrayal to leave the body of the deceased Nai-Turs unburied, and he kidnaps him from the basement at the risk of his life. Turbines are not politics. Their political beliefs sometimes seem naive. All the characters - Myshlaevsky, and Karas, and Shervinsky, and Alexei Turbin - are somewhat similar to Nikolka. who is outraged by the meanness of the janitor who attacked him from behind. “Everyone, of course, hates us, but he is a uniformed jackal! Behind the hand, ”Nikolka thinks. And in this indignation is the essence of a man who will never agree that "all means are good" to fight the enemy. The nobility of nature is a characteristic feature of Bulgakov's heroes. Loyalty to one's main ideals gives a person an inner core. And this is what makes the main characters of the novel unusually attractive. As if for comparison, M. Bulgakov draws another model of behavior. Here is the owner of the house where Turbina rents an apartment, engineer Vasilisa. For him, the main thing in life is the preservation of this life at any cost. He is a coward, according to the Turbins, “bourgeois and unsympathetic”, he will not stop at direct betrayal, and perhaps even murder. He is a “revolutionary”, an anti-monarchist, but his convictions turn into nothing before greed and opportunism. Neighborhood with Vasilisa emphasizes the peculiarity of the Turbins: they strive to become above circumstances, and not to justify their bad deeds with them. In a difficult moment, Nai-Tours can rip off the shoulder straps from the junker in order to save his life, and cover him with machine gun fire, while he himself dies. Nikolka, ignoring the danger to himself, is looking for the relatives of Nai-Turs. Alexei continues to be an officer, despite the fact that the emperor, to whom he swore allegiance, abdicated. When, amid all the confusion, Lariosik comes to visit, the Turbins do not refuse him hospitality. Turbines, despite the circumstances, continue to live according to the laws that they establish for themselves, which their honor and conscience dictate to them. Let them suffer defeats and fail to save their home, but the author leaves both them and the readers hope. This hope cannot yet come true, it is still only dreams, connecting the past and the future. But I would like to believe that, even then, “when the shadow of our bodies and deeds does not remain on earth,” as Bulgakov writes, there will still be honor and loyalty to which the heroes of the novel are so devoted. This idea takes on a tragic sound in the novel The White Guard. The attempt of the Turbins, with a sword in their hands, to defend a life that has already lost its existence, is similar to quixoticism. With their death, everything perishes. The artistic world of the novel is, as it were, bifurcated: on the one hand, this is the world of the Turbins with an established cultural life, on the other hand, this is the barbarism of Petliurism. The world of the Turbins is perishing, but so is Petliura. The battleship “Proletary” enters the city, bringing chaos to the world of human kindness. It seems to me that Mikhail Bulgakov wanted to emphasize not the social and political predilections of his heroes, but the eternal universal that they carry in themselves: friendship, kindness, love. In my opinion, the Turbin family embodies the best traditions of Russian society, the Russian intelligentsia. The fate of Bulgakov's works is dramatic. even people like the Turbins are forced to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, recognizing their cause as completely lost. ” However, Bulgakov showed the opposite in the play: death awaits the force that kills the soul of the people - culture and people, bearers of spirituality.

In the work of M. Bulgakov, works belonging to two different literary genres coexist and interact on an equal footing: epic and drama. The writer was equally subject to both epic genres - from a short essay and a feuilleton to a novel, and dramatic ones. Bulgakov himself wrote that for him prose and dramaturgy are inextricably linked - like the left and right hand of a pianist. One and the same vital material often doubled in the writer's mind, requiring either an epic or a dramatic form. Bulgakov, like no one else, was able to extract drama from the novel and in this sense refuted the skeptical doubts of Dostoevsky, who believed that "almost always such attempts failed, at least completely" .

"Days of the Turbins" was by no means simply a dramatization of the novel "The White Guard", an arrangement for the stage, as often happens, but a completely independent work with a new stage structure,

moreover, almost all the changes made by Bulgakov are confirmed in the classical theory of drama. We emphasize: in the classical, especially since for Bulgakov himself, the dramatic classics, whether it was Molière or Gogol, were the reference point. In the transformation of the novel into drama, in all changes, the action of genre laws comes to the fore, which affects not only the “reduction” or “compression” of the novel content, but also the change in the conflict, the transformation of characters and their relationships, the emergence of a new type of symbolism and the switching of purely narrative elements into the dramatic structure of the play. So, it is quite obvious that the main difference between the play and the novel is a new conflict, when a person comes into conflict with historical time, and everything that happens to the characters is not a consequence of "God's punishment" or "man's wrath", but the result of their own, conscious choice. Thus, one of the most important differences between the play and the novel is the emergence of a new, active, truly tragic hero.

Alexei Turbin - the central character of the novel "The White Guard" and the drama "Days of the Turbins" - is far from being the same character. Let's see how the image changed during the processing of the novel into a drama, what new features Turbin acquired in the play, and we will try to answer the question about the reasons for these changes.

Bulgakov himself, at a debate at the Meyerhold Theater, made an important remark: “The one who is depicted in my play under the name of Colonel Alexei Turbin is none other than Colonel Nai-Tours, who has nothing to do with a doctor in a romance.” But if you carefully study the texts of both works, then you can come to the conclusion that three characters of the novel (Turbin himself, Nai-Tours and Malyshev) united in the image of Turbin in the play. Moreover, this merger took place gradually. You can see this if you compare with the novel not only the latest edition of the play, but also all those that existed before. The image of Nai-Turs never directly merged with the image of Alexei, he was merged with the image of Colonel Malyshev. This happened in October 1926, when processing the first edition of the play, which at that time still bore the name "White Guard". Initially, Nai-Tours took command, covered Nikolka, who did not want to run away, and died: the scene corresponded to the novel. Then Bulgakov handed over Nai-Tours' lines to Malyshev, and they retained the burriness characteristic only of Nai-Tours. In addition, in Malyshev's last remark, after the words "I'm dying" followed by "I have a sister" - these words clearly belonged to Nai-Turs (recall the novel where, after the death of Colonel Nikolka, he meets his sister). Then these words were crossed out by Bulgakov. And only after that, in the second edition of the play, there was a "connection" between Malyshev and Turbin. Bulgakov himself spoke about the reasons for such a connection: “This happened again for purely theatrical and deeply dramatic (apparently, “dramatic” - M.R.) considerations, two or three persons, including the colonel, were connected in one..."

If we compare the Turbine in the novel and in the play, we will see that the changes

touched: age (28 years - 30 years), profession (doctor - artillery colonel), character traits (and this is the most important thing). The novel repeatedly says that Alexei Turbin is a weak-willed, spineless person. Bulgakov himself calls him a "rag". In the play, we have a strong, courageous person with a steadfast, resolute character. As a striking example, one can name, for example, the scene of farewell to Thalberg in the novel and in the play, in which the same events are depicted, but Turbin's behavior represents two opposite facets of character. In addition, Alexei Turbin in the novel and Alexei Turbin in the play have different fates, which is also very important (in the novel, Turbin is wounded, but recovers - he dies in the play).

Let us now try to answer the question, what are the reasons for such a rare change in the image of Turbine. The most general answer is the fundamental difference between epic and dramatic characters, which follows from the difference between these literary genres.

The novel, as an epic genre, is usually aimed at the psychological study of character from the point of view of its evolution. In the drama, on the contrary, it is not the evolution of character that is traced, but the fate of a person in various collisions. This idea is very accurately expressed by M. Bakhtin in his work "Epos and Novel". The hero of the novel, he believes, "should be shown not as ready-made and unchanged, but as becoming, changing, brought up by life." Indeed, in The White Guard we see Turbin's character as changing. This concerns, firstly, his moral character. Evidence can serve, for example, his relationship to Thalberg. At the beginning of the work, in the scene of farewell to Talberg fleeing to Germany, Alexei politely kept silent, although in his heart he considered Talberg "a damned doll, devoid of any concept of honor." In the finale, he despises himself for such behavior and even tears Thalberg's card to shreds. The evolution of Turbin is also visible in the change in his views on ongoing historical events.

The life of Turbin, as well as that of the rest of his family, went on without any particular upheavals, he had certain, well-established concepts of morality, honor, duty to the Motherland, but there was no need to think deeply about the course of history. However, life demanded an answer to the question, with whom to go, what ideals to defend, on which side is truth and truth. At first it seemed that the truth and the truth were on the side of the Hetman, and Petliura brought arbitrariness and robbery, then the understanding came that neither Petliura nor the Hetman represented Russia, the understanding that the former way of life had collapsed. As a result, it becomes necessary to think about the possibility of the emergence of a new force - the Bolsheviks.

In the play, the evolution of character is not the dominant aspect in the portrayal of the hero. The character is shown as established, devoted to one, hotly defended idea. Moreover, when this idea collapses, Turbin dies. We also note that the epic character allows for some rather deep contradictions within itself. M. Bakhtin even considered the presence of such contradictions to be obligatory for the hero of the novel: "... the hero [of the novel] must combine both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious" . The dramatic hero, on the other hand, usually does not contain such contradictions. Drama requires distinctness, the utmost delineation of the psychological picture. Only those movements of the human soul that affect the behavior of people can be reflected in it. Vague experiences, subtle transitions of feelings are fully accessible only to the epic form. And the hero of the drama appears before us not in a change of random spiritual moods, but in an uninterrupted stream of integral volitional aspiration. Lessing defined this feature of the dramatic character as “consistency” and wrote: “... there should not be any internal contradictions in the character; they must always be uniform, always true to themselves; they can manifest themselves either stronger or weaker, depending on how external conditions act on them; but none of these conditions should influence so much as to make black white. Let us recall the scene from the novel, when Turbin was rather rude to a newspaper boy who lied about the contents of the newspaper: “Turbin pulled a crumpled sheet out of his pocket and, not remembering himself, poked it twice in the boy’s face, saying with gnashing of teeth: “Here’s news for you . It is for you. Here's news for you. Bastard! This episode is a fairly clear example of what Lessing would call "inconsistency" of character, however, here, under the influence of circumstances, it is not white that becomes black, but, on the contrary, for some time an image that is attractive to us acquires rather unpleasant features. Yet these differences between epic and dramatic characters are not the most important. The main difference stems from the fact that two fundamentally different categories are fundamental for epic and drama: events and actions. Dramatic action is regarded by Hegel and his followers as arising not "from external circumstances, but from inner will and character." Hegel wrote that in the drama it is necessary to predominate the initiative actions of the characters colliding with each other. In an epic work, the circumstances are just as active as the characters, and often even more active. The same idea was developed by Belinsky, who saw the difference between the content of the epic and the drama in the fact that "in the epic the event dominates, in the drama - the person." At the same time, he considers this domination not only from the point of view of the “principle of representation”, but also as a force that determines the dependence of a person on events in the epic, and in drama, on the contrary, events on a person “who of his own free will gives them one or other connection." The formula “man dominates the drama” is also found in many contemporary works. Indeed, an examination of the above works by Bulgakov fully confirms this position. Turbin in the novel is a philosophizing intellectual, he is more likely just a witness to events, and not an active participant in them. Everything that happens to him, more often than not, has some external causes, and is not a consequence of his own will. Many episodes of the novel can serve as an example. Here Turbin and Myshlaevsky, accompanied by Karas, go to Madame Anjou to enroll in the division. It would seem that this is Turbin's voluntary decision, but we understand that in his heart he is not sure of the correctness of his act. He admits to being a monarchist and suggests that this may prevent him from entering the division. Let's remember what thought slips through his head at the same time: "It's a shame to part with Karas and Vitya, ... but take him, this social division" (my italics. - M.R.). Thus, Turbine's entry into military service might not have happened if it were not for the division's need for doctors. Turbine's wound is due to the fact that Colonel Malyshev completely forgot to warn him about the change in the situation in the city, and also due to the fact that, by an unfortunate accident, Alexey forgot to remove the cockade from his hat, which immediately betrayed him. And in general, in the novel, Turbin is involved in historical events against his will, because he returned to the city with the desire to "rest and arrange anew not military, but ordinary human life."

The examples given, as well as many other examples from the novel, prove that Turbin the doctor is clearly not up to the mark of a dramatic hero, much less a tragic one. Drama cannot show the fate of people whose will is atrophied, who are unable to make decisions. Indeed, Turbin in the play, unlike the novel Turbin, takes responsibility for the lives of many people: it is he who decides to urgently dissolve the division. But he alone is responsible for his own life. Let us recall the words of Nikolka addressed to Alexei: “I know why you are sitting. I know. You are waiting for death from shame, that's what! A dramatic character must be able to deal with adverse life circumstances. In the novel, Turbin could never rely only on himself. A striking proof is the end of the novel, which is not included in the main text. In this episode, Turbin, observing the atrocities of the Petliurists, turns to the sky: “Lord, if you exist, make sure that the Bolsheviks appear in Slobodka this minute!”

According to Hegel, far from every misfortune is tragic, but only that which naturally follows from the actions of the hero himself. All the suffering of Turbine in the novel evokes only sympathy in us, and even if he died in the finale, it would not cause us more feelings than regret. (It should be noted that Turbin's recovery is also shown as having occurred under the influence of an external cause, even a somewhat mystical one - Elena's prayer). The tragic collision is connected with the impossibility of realizing the historically necessary requirement, "the hero becomes dramatic for us only in so far as the requirement of historical necessity is reflected in his position, actions, deeds to one degree or another" . Indeed, Days of the Turbins presents a tragic situation in which the hero comes into conflict with time. Turbin's ideal - monarchical Russia - is a thing of the past, and its restoration is impossible. On the one hand, Turbin is well aware that his ideal has failed. In the second scene of the first act, this is just a premonition: “I imagined, you know, a coffin ...”, and in the first scene of the third act, he already openly speaks about this: “... the white movement in Ukraine is over. He will end in Rostov-on-Don, everywhere! The people are not with us. He is against us. So it's over! Coffin! Lid!" But, on the other hand, Turbin is not able to give up his ideal, to "get out of the white camp", just as it happened with Turbin in the novel. Thus, we face a tragic conflict, which can only end in the death of the hero. The death of the colonel becomes the true culmination of the play, causing not only sympathy, but also the highest moral purification - catharsis. Under the name of Alexei Turbin, two completely different characters appear in the novel and Bulgakov's play, and their differences directly testify to the primary role of the action of genre laws in the process of transforming the novel into drama.

Conclusions on Chapter II

The second chapter is devoted to a comparative analysis of the prose images of the novel "The White Guard" and the dramatic "Days of the Turbins". In order to consider the typology and symbolism of family values ​​in M. Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard" in the context of the spiritual and moral traditions of Russian culture, taking into account the worldview features of the writer's work.

Eighty years ago, Mikhail Bulgakov began writing a novel about the Turbin family, a book of path and choice, important both for our literature and for the history of Russian social thought. Nothing is outdated in the White Guard. Therefore, our political scientists should not read each other, but this old novel.

About whom and what is Bulgakov's novel written about? About the fate of the Bulgakovs and the Turbins, about the civil war in Russia? Yes, of course, but that's not all. After all, such a book can be written from a variety of positions, even from the position of one of its heroes, which is confirmed by the countless novels of those years about the revolution and the civil war. We know, for example, the same Kyiv events in the depiction of the character of the "White Guard" Mikhail Semenovich Shpolyansky - "Sentimental Journey" by Viktor Shklovsky, a former Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist militant. From whose point of view was The White Guard written?

The author of The White Guard himself, as you know, considered it his duty to “stubbornly depict the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country. In particular, the image of an intelligentsia-noble family, by the will of an immutable historical fate, thrown into the camp of the White Guard during the Civil War, in the tradition of "War and Peace".

“The White Guard” is not only a historical novel, where the civil war is seen by its witness and participant from a certain distance and height, but also a kind of “educational novel”, where, in the words of L. Tolstoy, family thought is combined with folk thought.

This calm worldly wisdom is understandable and close to Bulgakov and the young Turbin family. The novel "The White Guard" confirms the correctness of the proverb "Take care of honor from a young age", for the Turbines would have died if they had not cherished honor from a young age. And their concept of honor and duty was based on love for Russia.

Of course, the fate of the military doctor Bulgakov, a direct participant in the events, is different, he is very close to the events of the civil war, shocked by them, because he lost and never saw both brothers, many friends, he himself was seriously shell-shocked, survived the death of his mother, hunger and poverty. Bulgakov begins to write autobiographical stories, plays, essays and sketches about the Turbins, and eventually comes to a historical novel about a revolutionary upheaval in the fate of Russia, its people, and the intelligentsia.

"The White Guard" in many details is an autobiographical novel, which is based on the writer's personal impressions and memories of the events that took place in Kyiv in the winter of 1918-1919. Turbines is the maiden name of Bulgakov's grandmother on her mother's side. In the members of the Turbin family, one can easily guess the relatives of Mikhail Bulgakov, his Kyiv friends, acquaintances, and himself. The action of the novel takes place in a house that, down to the smallest detail, was copied from the house where the Bulgakov family lived in Kyiv; now it houses the Turbin House museum.

Mikhail Bulgakov himself is recognizable in the venereologist Alexei Turbina. The prototype of Elena Talberg-Turbina was Bulgakov's sister, Varvara Afanasyevna.

Many surnames of the characters in the novel coincide with the surnames of real residents of Kyiv at that time or have been slightly changed.

In the now distant 1927, the Riga publishing house Literatura published a new novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Days of the Turbins. Perhaps today, this fact would no longer be of particular interest to all of us, if not for a single interesting detail. The fact is that the publishing house "Literature" not only did not receive permission from the author to publish the novel, but also had only a part of the first volume printed in Russia. But, such an "insignificant" obstacle could not stop enterprising businessmen, and the management of the publishing house instructed a certain follower of "Count Amaury", and maybe himself, to correct the first volume and finish the novel. first appeared in front of the St. Petersburg public at the beginning of the 20th century. The owner of this unusual pseudonym was a certain Ippolit Pavlovich Rapgof. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in piano. Having finished his studies, he founded in St. Petersburg, together with his brother Evgeny, the same connoisseur of music, the “Higher Courses in Piano Playing”. The success of their enterprise was great, and the surname of the brothers became very noticeable in the metropolitan musical world. But the music did not play for long in the same composition: after a few years, the relatives quarreled. The courses remained forever "E.P. Rapgof's Musical Courses", and the indefatigable Ippolit Pavlovich got into a rivalry with his brother. He headed the private music school of F. I. Rousseau, which he brought to a high professional level, while taking away a number of students from his brother. The changes began quite unexpectedly and quite banally: the first gramophone was brought to St. Petersburg. And Ippolit Pavlovich understood: this invention is the future. What did he just not do for the sake of the triumph of the gramophone ?! He traveled all over Russia, lectured about this miracle of technology, opened a record store in the Passage. Contemporaries and descendants fully appreciated his gramophone merits: it was he who, in the unanimous opinion, managed to break the public's distrust of the "mechanical ventriloquist". But he, having already achieved victory, did not know peace. Ippolit Pavlovich was now attracted by literature. In 1898, a certain doctor Fogpari (de Cuosa) appeared to the readers of the capital: the name under which the same tireless Rapgof disappeared. The doctor wrote about the "hygiene of love", thought about "how to live to be a hundred years old", taught magic, described recipes for vegetarian cuisine - in a word, he undertook to write about everything that could interest the layman. Following Fogpari (the year is already 1904), Amaury himself finally came to the fore. The count became the idol of lovers of tabloid literature. Having made his debut in the magazine "Light" with the novel "Secrets of the Japanese Court", he subsequently wrote several novels annually. In addition to favorite adventurous plots, these were also continuations of already well-known works - Artsybashevsky's "Sanin", Kuprin's "Pit", "Keys of Happiness" by Verbitskaya. Each time, a scandal arose around the sequels, the authors boiled over - and the books scattered, bringing considerable income to publishers. So the “count” conscientiously fulfilled the order, Bulgakov’s novel was released in three parts, the first volume was extremely illiterately distorted and shortened, and the third part of the novel - the last 38 pages of the book - had nothing to do with Bulgakov’s text, and was completely invented by a hack . The original text of the novel, the audio version of which we present to you in a brilliant reading by Sergei Chonishvili, was released in Paris, in 1927, by the Concord publishing house. Publication producer: Vladimir Vorobyov ©&℗ IP Vorobyov V.A. ©&℗ ID SOYUZ

Trying to figure out what Sergei Snezhkin had filmed and shown us on the Rossiya channel, I re-read The White Guard itself, and also read an early version of the end of the novel and the play Days of the Turbins. Some of the fragments that, as it seemed to me when viewing, are knocked out of the style of the novel and are present in the film, I found either in an early edition or in the play, but some were not found anywhere: for example, the scene where Thalberg hints to the German leadership about the presence in the palace of valuable paintings, the insane scene with the rooster that Myshlaevsky hacked to death, the pathetic scene of Shervinsky singing farewell to the fleeing hetman Skoropadsky, and some others. But the main thing is, of course, the finale, blatant in its distortion, invented by Snezhkin and not only not fitting into any of the texts I have indicated, but also generally unthinkable for Bulgakov.

(I never tire of being amazed at what self-conceit, what impudence, what impudence one must have in order not only to add, but to rewrite Bulgakov! However, this is discussed in one of the following posts, actually about the film).

In the meantime, a few important notes on the actual literary basis of the film.

Despite the fact that I did not manage to find full information about how Bulgakov worked on The White Guard, I nevertheless got the strong impression that the end of the novel was deliberately rewritten, and the author was not satisfied with the early edition quite consciously. Indeed, there is much more pathos in it, banal and out of the style of the novel plot moves, the language is more weighty, “large” and therefore less elegant. The artistic style of the early edition of the end of the novel is that of the still immature Bulgakov, and I think he fully felt it himself. That is why, despite the fact that some fragments from the early version ended up in the final one, he still rewrote most of the final. I rewrote it in such a way that not a single word makes you shudder: everything is extremely concise and exactly just enough to be understood by the reader, but not to give the impression of spoken vulgarity. In artistic terms, in my opinion, The White Guard is simply flawless.

Talberg is no doubt a scoundrel, but this is written and read only between the lines, and the absence of gross accusations in the text of the novel is very important for understanding the level of Bulgakov's artistic talent. Shervinsky, of course, calls everything, except music, nonsense, but not in a direct speech addressed to other guests, but in the author's text, i.e. as if to himself, which characterizes him in a completely different way.

In the early version, Elena has undisguised sympathy for Shervinsky, and their relationship develops into a romance. In the final version, Bulgakov refuses this move and introduces a letter from Thalberg, who is leaving for Europe from Poland and is about to get married, but Elena keeps her distance from Shervinsky.

In the early version, after Turbin's recovery, the family arranges a traditional Christmas festive evening: in the final version, Turbin simply returns to medical practice without excessive pomp.

Finally, Turbine's novel with Yulia Reiss and the figure of Shpolyansky are written in the early version: in the final version, only silent trips to Malo-Provalnaya remain (just like Nikolka, while in the early version his romance with Irina Nai-Tours was written out more).

The scene with the identification of Nai-Tours in the morgue was also thrown out of the final version - it turned out to be quite Balabanov's in the film, but unthinkable in the aesthetics of the final "White Guard".

In general, the final version is more harmonious, elegant, but at the same time definite: there are no “intelligent” throwings in the characters, they clearly know how and when to act, and they perfectly understand what is happening, and scold the Germans rather out of habit. They are courageous and do not try to hide in the fumes of their own evenings (as in Days of the Turbins). And in the end, they do not even come to the realization of peace and tranquility as the highest good (as in the early edition), but to something even more absolute and important.

A number of differences in the early and final editions are quite convincing that their mixing is impossible, because Bulgakov deliberately abandoned the early edition in favor of the later one, realizing that the early one sinned with a number of unacceptable, from his point of view, primarily artistic weaknesses.

If we talk about the play “The Days of the Turbins” in connection with the novel, then briefly we can say one thing: these are two completely different works both in content and in artistic expression, and therefore mixing them means demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of what a novel and what is a play.

Firstly, completely different characters are written out and brought out in the play, both in character and in formal terms (which is worth one Aleksey Turbin: a colonel and a doctor are completely, not at all the same, even in a sense, opposites).

Secondly, when preparing the play, Bulgakov could not but understand that in order to stage it, certain concessions to censorship were necessary: ​​from here, in particular, Myshlaevsky's sympathy for the Bolsheviks, expressed clearly and categorically, appears. And the whole eccentric atmosphere of the Turbins' house is also from here.

The heroes of the “Days of the Turbins” are really just trying to forget themselves in their narrow circle in the fumes of evening fun, Elena openly sympathizes with Shervinsky, but in the end, Don Thalberg, who is going to visit, returns for her (also, oh, what a discrepancy with the novel!)

In a sense, the decaying company of White Guards in Days of the Turbins has nothing to do with the circle of people shown in the novel (by the way, the author does not call them White Guards either). There is a strong feeling that the heroes of the final edition of The White Guard are in fact not White Guards, their spiritual and spiritual height is already enough to rise “above the fight”: we do not meet this either in the early edition of the novel, and even more so in play. And it is precisely this height that must be realized when filming The White Guard. It is by no means reduced to the “Days of the Turbins” or, even more so, to self-invented and unnatural for Bulgakov finals. This is undisguised literary blasphemy and a mockery of - I will not be afraid of this epithet! - a brilliant novel.

In 1925, Bulgakov published the novel The White Guard in the Rossiya magazine. He talks about a topic closed to the era. In the center is the Turbin family, the House-City (chaos) system is being built. Everything is allowed in the city and he encroaches on the house. The house is the only space in the novel filled with signs of a former life. There is no lie here. There is time in the house. The disintegration of the former world is indicated by the death of the mother. The disintegration of the Turbins' spiritual unity is more terrible than the disintegration of the space around them. Everyone is valued along a vertical hierarchy of values. The highest point is the dream of Alexei. In it, both white and red are forgiven. On the contrary, the “absolute bottom” is the morgue to which Nikolka came for the body of Nai-Tours. Thus, he closes the world of the novel - heaven and hell into a certain unity. But the novel is not Bulgakov's disappointment in everything, because the finale shows not only the divided Turbins and their friends, but also Petka Shcheglov, whose life goes past wars and revolutions. The main law B. considered the law of the Great Evolution, preserving the connection of times and the natural order of things.

"Days of the Turbins" is more hopeless in sound. There are different heroes in it - those who do not think of themselves outside the usual values ​​and those who get along in new conditions. In the play, a greater place is given to Elena and the house.

"White Guard" put B. in the row of the most. significant modern writers, although by that time there were already stories “Notes on the Cuffs” (1922), “Diaboliad” (1924), stories that later became part of the “Doctor's Notes” cycle. And although the printing of "B.g." in the magazine "Russia" broke off (the full text of the rom. was published in Paris in 1927-1929), rom. was noticed. M. Voloshin compared B.'s debut with the debuts of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and called him "the first to capture the soul of Russian strife."

B. portrayed in "B.g." the world “in its fatal moments”, which was emphasized by the very beginning of the narration, sustained almost in a chronicle manner: “Great was the year and terrible year after the Nativity of Christ 1918, from the beginning of the second revolution.” But B., together with the style of chronicle writing, which recorded only extraordinaries. events, chose the position of a writer of everyday life. The latter was traditional for the old Russian. lit., but unexpectedly for the post-revolutionary literature, because life as such has disappeared.

B. defiantly describing. family and the very spirit of the family - commitment to the Tolstoyan tradition, as he himself said in a letter to the government of the USSR: war in the camp of the White Guard, in the tradition of "War and Peace".

Turbines. 2 brothers and sister, left without parents and trying to keep the comfort and peace of the parental home. The eldest - Alexei, a military doctor, 28 years old, junior. - Nikolka, cadet, 17, sister Elena - 24 years old. B. lovingly describing. surroundings their way of life: a striking clock, a stove with Dutch tiles, old red velvet furniture, a bronze lamp under a shade, books in "chocolate" bindings, curtains. Not only comfort and order reign in T.'s family, but also decency and honesty, concern for others, love. The prototype of this homely paradise was the Bulgakovs' house in Kyiv.

However, a snowstorm is raging outside the windows of the house and life is not at all the one described in the "chocolate" books. The motifs of a snowstorm, snowstorms are associated with Kapit. daughter” Pushk., from which the epigraph is taken: “Light snow began to fall and suddenly fell in flakes. The wind howled. There was a blizzard. In an instant, the dark sky mingled with the snowy sea. Everything is gone. “Well, sir,” shouted the driver, “trouble: a snowstorm.” As in "K. etc.", the blizzard becomes a symbolic sign of the loss of the path - the heroes got lost in history.

T. love Russia and hate the Bolsheviks, who have brought the country to the brink of an abyss. But they hate Petliura with his idea of ​​independence. Kyiv for T. is a Russian city. Their task is to protect this city both from those and from others. T. incarnates. morals. pr-py, which have developed in the best layers of Rus. total Islands. Aleksey and Nikolka, who have chosen the military profession, are well aware that they are obliged to enter. to defend the country, and if necessary, to die for it. However, Ros., which they want to defend, is split into “smart reptiles with “yellow hard suitcases” and those who are faithful to their oath and duty. The “smart bastards”, to whom T. unmistakably refers to Elena’s husband, Colonel Talberg of the General Staff, want to live. Others will die - those who are represented not only by the Turbins, but also by the regiment. Nai-Turs, who, together with the junkers, is trying to organize the defense of the city from the Petliurists. When he realizes that they have been betrayed, he orders the junkers to tear off their shoulder straps, cockades and leave, while he himself dies behind a machine gun, covering their retreat.

B. puts a regiment on a par with Nai-Tours. Malyshev, having gathered the last defenders of the city at the cadet school, announced that they had been betrayed and ordered them to leave. The conscience of the officer tells him to take care that people do not die a senseless death.

Alexei Turbin, Nai-Tours, Malyshev - few who understand that they nothing protect. That Russia, for which they are ready to die, no longer exists.

In the chaos of war is collapsing not only old Russia, but also traditions. concepts of duty and conscience. Bulgakov is interested in people who have retained these concepts and are able to build their actions in accordance with them. The moral side of people. personality cannot. depend on any external obst-in. It is absolute.

Alexei Turbin has a dream in which he sees Nai-Turs in paradise: “He was in a strange form: a luminous helmet was on his head, and his body was in chain mail, and he leaned on a long sword, which is no longer in any army with times of the Crusades. This is how the knightly essence of this h-ka is revealed. Together with him in paradise, Alexey sees the sergeant major Zhilin, "obviously cut off by fire along with a squadron of Belgrade hussars in 1916 in the Vilna direction." Zhilin is dressed in the same luminous chain mail.

But the most surprising thing is that the Reds who died near Perekop ended up in paradise with them. Since the action of rum. origin in 1918, and Perekop was taken in 1920 then => Turbin sees the future and the past at the same time. His soul is confused by the presence of the Bolsheviks, who do not believe in God, in paradise: “You are confusing something, Zhilin, this cannot be. They won't let them in." Zhilin in response conveys to him the words of God: “Well, they don’t believe, he says, what can you do. Let it go. After all, I have neither profit nor loss from your faith. One believes, the other does not believe, but you all have the same actions: now others are by the throat. All of you are the same for me, Zhilin. - killed in the battlefield.

This is how the second epigraph to "B.g." - from the Apocalypse: "And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds." =>Morals. the actions of a person are evaluated in some Higher Instance. What is going on in time, estimated at eternity. Grinev's guide to Kapit. etc." was Pugachev, while the heroes of "B.g." there is no other guide but morals. instinct, invested in h-ka from above. The manifestation of this instinct in history is described by B. as a miracle, and it was at this moment that his heroes found themselves in a genuine spirit. height despite the complete impasse of their specific social. fate. Nikolka T. can't. allow Nai-Tours to remain unburied. He searches for his body in the morgue, finds his sister and mother, and the colonel is buried in Christ. rite.

The motif of the stars in the rom. It is not by chance that it has a through character. B. introduces an orienting principle into the chaos of history, so that his stars, using the expression of Vyach. Ivanov, can be called "pilots". If history is nothing but time, and everything that happens in it is temporary x-r, then h-to should. sens. under scrutiny eternity. But in order for eternity to present itself to a person living in time, a rupture of the temporal fabric is needed.

One of the manifestations of such a gap, allowed. to look into eternity is dream. These are the dreams of Alexei Turbin, and at the end - a small dream. boy Petka Shcheglov: a large meadow, on it a sparkling diamond ball-> joy. This dream is about life as it is meant to be and as it could be. But the dream ends, and B. described. night over the long-suffering city, completing the rum. the motive of the stars: “Everything will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain when the shadow of our bodies and deeds does not remain on the earth. There is not a single person who does not know this. So why don't we want to turn our eyes to them?"

Dr. a form of intrusion of eternity into time - miracle. It originated. during Elena's fervent prayer in front of the icon of the Mother of God for the life of the seriously wounded Alexei. She dreamed of Christ "at the ruined tomb, completely resurrected and blessed, and barefoot," and for a moment it seems that the Mother of God answers the prayer addressed to her. Alex is recovering.

The biggest miracle in rum. - it's morals. the choice his characters make in spite of the impasse into which history has driven them. Rum will be built on this later. "M. them.". B. should certainly remember the words of Kant about the two most amazing phenomena: the starry sky above his head and morality. law in the soul h-ka. In a certain sense, this Kantian formula is the key to the Gd.

After the closure of the Rossiya magazine, the printing of the novel was interrupted, and B. remade it. him in play "Days of the Turbins", which was staged by the Moscow Art Theater. The spectacle immediately becomes a fact of society. life, extremely scandalous. Advice. critics saw here an apology for the white movement, and the poet A-dr Bezymensky called B. “a new-bourgeois offspring, splashing poisoned, but powerless saliva on the working class and its communists. ideals." In 1927 the play was excluded. from the repertoire and restored only at the request of Stanislavsky.

The piece is more hopeless in sound. Different heroes act in it: those who cannot imagine life outside of the usual values ​​(Aleksey Turbin), those who were indifferent to them to a certain extent and therefore will easily survive in the new conditions (Shervinsky), and those who try with values general court. refocusing on only family values ​​(Elena). In the play, the role of Elena is more noticeable, the leading place belongs to. A house with an almost complete absence of other spaces.

In the plays of the 20s, the center. the thought became that the era is merciless to everything that is honest, intelligent and high in the black. This is evidenced by the tragic dead ends of the fates of Alexei and Nikolka Turbin, Khludov and Charnota, Serafima Korzukhina and Golubkov. Reality more and more begins to resemble a shameless farce, demonstrating the degradation of the h-ka ("Zoyka's apartment" - 1926; "Crimson Island" - 1927).