Flight & Bliss

by Mikhail Bulgakov, Mirra Ginsburg (Translator)

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) required the dramatic and fictional forms “as the pianist needs both his left and his right hands.” While he is best known here for his novels, in the U.S.S.R. he is also famous for his plays. Neither of the plays in this volume,  Flight  (1926-28) and  Bliss  (1934), was published until long after the author’s death. By 1929, his persistent refusal to conform to the demands of the Communist government and critics had led to a ban on all his work.  Flight  was not produced until 1957 and  Bliss  has never yet been produced.  Flight  incensed the critics because Bulgakov treated some of the Civil War’s Whites as suffering, doomed human beings rather than stock images of “the class enemy.” This tragicomedy is dominated by the nightmare figure of General Khludov, both executioner and victim, disintegrating as his world disintegrates. Charnota, on the other hand, is the hyperbolic image of a man hellbent for destruction, descending from White Major General to penniless gambler in Constantinople’s cockroach races. In  Bliss , for the first time in English translation, the engineer Rein travels to the past in his time machine and returns with Ivan the Terrible accidentally in tow. Four centuries ahead of his time, the Tsar is stranded in Rein’s attic, bellowing imprecations. The bureaucrat Bunsha (a former prince who, for security in a proletarian state, insists he is the illegitimate son of his father’s coachman) is foiled in efforts to report this tumultuous housing violation by an involuntary trip with Rein to the year 2222. A pickpocket, Miloslavsky, also transported to this serene, policeless future, weeps nostalgically before the museum effigy of a policeman.

Genres: Plays, Russia, Drama, Science Fiction, Literature, Russian Literature

158 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1985

About the author

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: Михаил Булгаков) was a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright. His novel The Master and Margarita , published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.

He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run ), and The Days of the Turbins . He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.

Some of his works ( Flight , all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers ) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this slim volume, translator Mirra Ginsburg presents two of Mikhail Bulgakov’s lesser-known plays.

Flight, “A Play in Eight Dreams and Four Acts”, takes up where Bulgakov’s best-known play The White Guard, the theatrical adaptation of his first novel, left off. It opens during the last hours of the Civil War and follows the defeated and escaping Whites into exile, to Constantinople and then to Paris. Flight also presages Bulgakov’s most celebrated novel, The Master and Margarita, in its surreal humour; I wasn’t surprised to learn that Bulgakov started writing the novel immediately after finishing work on this play.

In her introduction, Mirra Ginsberg says that Flight is as relevant today as it was in 1920s Soviet Russia:

“[In portraying] a tragicomic picture of a man violently uprooted and struggling for some sort of survival… Bulgakov comes close to one of the central problems of our time, the problem of the displaced person, repeated in the course of the past half-century in endless variations — geographic, political, cultural, moral, and philosophic.”

The central character of Flight, Roman Khludov, is based on General Slashchev, a brutal White warrior who had earned the nickname “Slashchev the Hangman”.

The play deftly switches from nightmarish horror in a scene at a train station when a blast of gunfire causes the ice-crusted windows to shatter, revealing the bodies of two men hanging from the platform lampposts — executions Khludov had ordered only minutes earlier — to black humour; to high farce as the Whites, exiled in Constantinople, take part in cockroach races; to pathos as the homesick Khludov wonders if he can ever return to Russia. The fairground farce of the cockroach races becomes ever more Bulgakovian as it is alleged that the favourite, Janissary, has become drunk on beer and “just stands there waving his feet”.

This hilarious scene is followed by one of tragedy when Serafima Korzukhina “a young matron fleeing from Petersburg”, and stranded in Sebastopol, is forced into prostitution. The tone then shifts to high farce as her estranged husband, Korzukhin, having settled in Paris, expects his Russian valet to speak French:

“Antoine, you’re a lazy Russian good for nothing. A man who lives in Paris must realize that the Russian language is good only for obscenities or, even worse, for proclaiming destructive slogans. Neither one nor the other is the thing in Paris. You must try to learn, Antoine, it’s a bore.”

This scene has an poignant undertone, as Bulgakov longed to visit Paris, where his brother lived, but was repeatedly denied permission to travel outside the USSR.

Bliss, presented here in its first English translation, is a far more light-hearted piece. It follows the adventures of Yevgeny Rein, an eccentric engineer, who invents a time-travel machine and accidentally transports himself, a neighbour and a passing pickpocket firstly to the palace of Ivan the Terrible, then to “the part of Moscow which is called Bliss” in the year 2222. Bliss is described in the stage directions as “marble everywhere”.

The neighbour, Bunshin, tries to impress Anna, a denizen of the 23rd Century, with his role as the secretary of the House Management Committee of his building. Anna listens with bemusement but, unsurprisingly, doesn’t understand a word. This seems like very gentle satire to a modern reader, but Mirra Ginsburg writes:

“Bliss, sharply satirical under its playful exterior, obviously had no chance in Stalin’s Russia.”

Bliss, a brilliant part of Bulgakov’s legacy, first appeared in print 26 years after his death in a monthly magazine in Uzbekistan, but is still virtually unknown in Russia; according to the cover notes, it has never been produced.

[Frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The key to understanding the underlying analogies in Soviet literature (referring here to suppressed literature under the Soviet regime), is to understand the censorship they faced. Bulgakov had made a stand regarding his inability to publish anything in book form through the censors, claiming that he would write plays instead and hope for peace with his writing, and for that he was mockingly appointed to a position in the Moscow theater. His plays were more subtle, were often approved, but rarely passed a week before being canceled by the authorities. Written later, Bulgakov's novel Master and Margerita shows his subtlety at its height, but these plays show his bolder, more glaring indignation.

Flight was somewhat permitted to stage for its historical significance, and for the fact that the action of the play has its cast on the run from the Bolsheviks. In fact, the Bolsheviks remain untouched off stage, as it were. One is forced to wonder if they originally played some part in the action, but were later cut for the censors. At first glance it seems a wholesome, Kremlin-safe tale extolling the virtues of the revolution and the idiocy of the fleeing Whites. But the emotion that comes forward by the end is one of sadness. Even the comedic General Khludov is mad for good reason. The plight of the characters is the plight of the whole country, when the revolution "wiped the slate" as it were. We even get a glimpse of a mini KGB through Tikhy's interrogations. The cockroach races in Istanbul… I'm still not sure what Bulgakov meant there, except the standard "caesar's games" for the distraction of the poor.

The second play Bliss is a bit different, but more awkward thematically. This seems to have been his warm-up phase for the magical realism of his novels. Characters travel to the future, where they encounter a Soviet utopia. Of course, this play was truncated then removed completely. I can't imagine a more dangerous concept for Bulgakov than this. Needless to say, he makes the utopia seem wonderful, and his time travelers seem too un-evolved to handle it. They break the future's laws and run back to their past. They're happy to be arrested by the authorities then. What a farce – Bulgakov knew that his audience would sense the irony, the absurdity of the conclusion.

In Flight, p 31. Golubkov says "She doesn't know what she's saying!" To which Khludov replies "That's good. Our people, when they know what they're saying, will never say a word of truth." I love that line, and I believe it's the key to understanding and appreciating the success of Bulgakov's complicity with his then Russian audience.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flight *** – There aren’t as many stories about losers. The winners write the history books, so it’s said. So Bulgakov’s Flight is a moving presentation of the chaos and fear amid the collapse of a government.

The story unfolds in a series of eight dreams or acts, moving from the first hints of loss by the White Army, to the Crimea to Constantinople to Paris and, carried to its conclusion, back to St. Petersburg. And the story is really about the life of a refugee or exile, and the desire to return home.

Overall, it’s very good. I would have liked the characterizations to be a bit sharper. The characters, on the page at least, never really come to life. (Particularly Serafima and Golubkov.) And I thought Charnota and Khludov were a hard to distinguish – both displaying rather odd behaviour. Khludov was obviously more odd. He was actually the most interesting character in the play and the one I would have liked to seen more about. (And less about Serafima and Golubkov. The “love story” is kind of meh.)

Overall, though, a moving play. If you like Bulgakov or Russian history, this is highly recommended.


Bliss *** – In this play, a scientist in Moscow invents a time traveling machine and finds himself, and two unwitting partners, transported centuries into the future in a land or nation called Bliss. The travelers find they don’t belong in this new utopia where they are as controlled as at home.

This is an amusing and entertaining play. It’s interesting that Vladimir Mayakofsy wrote a play called The Bedbug about a future socialist state that was intolerable.

Bliss is entertaining, but it's not a must read.

[Hasan Abbasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

نمایشنامه ای از بولگاکف ، نویسنده روسی که او را به واسطه مستر و مارگاریتا میشناسند . نمایشنامه سعادت ، جزو نمایشهای علمی تخیلی بولگاکف و با لحنی تلخ ولی کمدی نگارش شده است . مساله اصلی بولگاکف همانطور که در اغلب آثارش مانند نستر و مارگاریتا ، دل سگ و ... میبینیم خارج شدن انسان معاصر از شکل اجتماعی خود و عبور از ابعاد فیزیکی زمان و مکان است . انسان تغییر شکل یافته ، سفر در زمان ، شکست فیزیکی مکان و جادو همه جای آثارش به چشم میخورد که در زمینه ی تاریخی روسیه اتفاق می افتد . به همین ترتیب سعادت درباره فیزیک دانیست که به واسطه ی ماشین اختراعیش ازشهر مسکوی دوران ابتدایی شوروی و لنین به مسکوی سی صد سال بعد سفر میکند . در این سفر یک شیاد و یک سرایدار رذل با او همراه میشند . اساس نمایش به نشان دادن تناقض های فرم حکومتی کمونیستی شوروی است . در مسکوی آینده همچون مسکوی زمان بولگاکوف حکومت دم از عدم وجود طبقات اجتماعی میزند ولی این دروغ بزرگ را به شهروندان حقنه میکند . در هر دو زمان دستگاه های پیچیده ای برای کنترل وجود دارد . به طور خلاصه نمایش های بولگاکف به دنبال همین تناقض حکومت دیکتاتوری شورویست . جایی که هیچگاه اجازه نداد نمایشهای بولگاکف چاپ یا اجرا شود تا زمانی که سالها بعد حکومت از هم پاشید . سعادت یک پیشگویی تقریبا واقعی از آینده ی شوروی دارد ، البته در پس کنایه های خود . دو نکته ی جالب اینکه در نمایش که در 1924 نوشته شده است از دستگاه هایی شبیه تلفن های هوشمند ما رونمایی میکند . همچنین در پایان نمایش ایوان مخوف ، پادشاه خونخوار روسی قرن 16 نیز در نمایش حضور پیدا میکند که این پایان در نمایش دیگر او ایوان واسیلویچ ، ایده اصلی نمایش ات .

[Nikon Kovalev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bliss is fun if you are a die-hard fan of Ivan Vasilyevich. In the first version of Bliss Bulgakov introduced Nicolas I instead of Ivan IV which isn't obviously this funny. It isn't very clear why he actually needed Ivan IV here since he appears only in the first and the last scenes. Most of the plot takes place in the future, the year is 22. 2222. I wouldn't want to live in this one. Even one time 22 is enough for me. Evgeny Reyn (in the later versions - Timofeev) is much more nervous and has an open conflict with Bunsha-Okayan-Koretsky since he doesn't pay his rent and Bunsha (in the earlier version - Kirva) never turns his radio off. He speaks to him quite harshly and actually makes much more sense than Timofeev in the later play who is just a puppet to move the plot.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Bliss" only: Humorous satirical look at 1930's Russian. When this translation was published, it had never been produced. Don't know if anyone has produced it since, but I"d like to see it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, Russians are miserable. But they can't half write. I loved Flight. I loved the nightmarish careening of fortunes in a world gone mad.