The White Guard - Mikhail Bulgakov [142]
1. Published in English translation in 1967 under the title Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel (London: Hodder and Stoughton; New York: Simon and Schuster).
2. Published in English in 1967 (London: Collins/Harvill; New York: Harper and P.ow).
years after the author's death came our first introduction to those hitherto unknown works of Bulgakov. And we were amazed and delighted, though this is not the place to enlarge on it. But I at least was even more amazed and delighted to find The White Guard again. Nothing in it had faded, nothing had aged, as if those forty years had never been. I found it difficult to tear myself away from the novel and I had to force myself to do so, in order to prolong the pleasure. Something like a miracle had happened before our eyes, something which happens very rarely in literature and which by no means every author can pull off - a book had been born again.
With the dramatised version of the story, The Days of the Turbins, this had not happened. No one found the post-war revival of the production at the Stanislavsky Theater particularly thrilling. Perhaps because after such actors as Khmelyov, Dobronravov and Kudryavtsev (to think that not one of them is still alive), after the original Lariosik played by Yanshin when he was young and thin, after Tarasova and Yelanskaya, it would have been extremely hard to mount a revival that said anything new. Perhaps, too, because not all works of art can be copied and it is none too easy to create something original. I await the new M.A.T. production with alarm (with hope, too, but with rather more alarm than hope). Shall I go and see it? I don't know. I'm afraid . . . afraid of so much: youthful memories, comparisons, parallels . . . Yes, I'm afraid for the Turbins, afraid for the play.
But the republished novel has completely disarmed me. It is as fresh and alive as when I first read it - not a wrinkle, not a gray hair. It has survived and conquered.
But I am getting carried away. To return to our topography: where did the Turbins live?
It transpires that the author made no secret of it. The exact address is given, literally on the second page of the novel: No. 13 St Alexei's Hill (for 'St Alexei's' read 'St Andrew's').
'For many years before her [their mother's] death, in the house at No. 13 St Alexei's Hill, little Elena, Alexei the eldest and baby Nikolka had grown up in the warmth of the tiled stove that burned in the dining-room.' Clear and precise. How was it that I didn't remember it? Somehow I just didn't.
So, to No. 13 St Andrew's Hill.
The really funny thing is that it turns out I even have a photograph of that house, although when I took it I had no idea of its significance or of its place in Russian literature. I had simply taken a liking to that little corner of Kiev (I used to be keen on photography and was particularly fond of certain parts of Kiev), and the vantage point from which I had taken the photograph, by climbing up to the top of one of Kiev's many hills, was extremely well chosen. St Andrew's Church, Richard the Lionheart's Castle, the hill, the gardens, the Dnieper in the background, and down below - the steep curve of St Andrew's Hill with the Turbins' house slap in the middle. Incidentally from the hill that I have just mentioned, the courtyard behind No. 13 can be clearly seen. It is most attractive, with its dovecot and its little balcony - I must have pointed it out hundreds of times to my friends when proudly showing them the charm and beauty of Kiev.
And of course I have been to that house. Twice, in fact - the first time for a few minutes in passing, mainly to check whether or not this really was the right house, and the second time for longer.
In the novel the house is described with great precision. 'No. 13 was a curious building. On the street the Turbins' apartment was on the second floor, but so steep was the hill behind the house that their back door opened directly on to the sloping yard, where the