The master and Margarita were spoiled by the housing problem: a new exposition is dedicated to the Bulgakov family

It was this love story that the organizers used as the main attraction for visitors. Indeed, even a completely outsider for literature at least once in his life was interested in Pushkin’s Don Juan list, mystical events around Bulgakov’s main novel and the fate of his last lover, who became the prototype of Margarita. To be honest, I would like to hear and see more about Shilovskaya, at the same time, the exhibition as a whole turned out to be deeper and more academic, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. But first things first.

Living voice of the era

A fairly “jaded”, but proven and hitting notion – to accompany a certain collection of documents and manuscripts in a lively voice. So, in Brodsky’s “American Study” in the Fountain House in St. Petersburg, the author’s reading of one of the poems leads to a common denominator of a pile of suitcases, typewriters and books.

So the exposition “The Diary of the Master and Margarita” was sounded by a recording of the performance by Elena Shilovskaya of an excerpt from the novel, which tells about the meeting of the main characters. True, during a working personal visit, they forgot to include this entry for me, but these are purely organizational trifles.

It is worth giving advice to museum guests: it is better not to go to the exhibition without a guide, especially if you are not a philologist and not an expert in all the vicissitudes of the literary process. Because for a conditional “ordinary citizen”, especially at a cursory glance, everything collected in a rather modest room in terms of area will say little. Several family photographs, pictures of the interiors of the apartment, a memorial table of the writer, donated by Shilovskaya’s grandson, and a secretary – these are the things that are designed to reveal to the audience the images of Mikhail Afanasyevich and Elena Sergeevna.

The most successful artifact is a secretary with many drawers, in the center of which, in a rectangular window resembling a theater stage, are portraits of the writer and his wife. And in the background is the personal diary of Elena Bulgakova, opened on the page dated September 1, 1933 (marriage anniversary). True, it, like many other things, is exhibited as a copy.

To get more information, you need to be a philologist, listen to a guide or dig deeper. For example, peering into the shadows of the installation objects on the theme of “The Master and Margarita” from the series “Chiaroscuro and Shades of Ivan Golitsyn”. On a picture suspended, as if frozen in the air, is a house in Mansurovsky Lane, which the researchers called the Master’s House. But in the slit leaf and in the contours of the shadow we recognize a lady’s shoe.

The second layer of guessing is the issue of the Moscow magazine for 1966, presented in one of the windows, where the novel was first published. “Punched” into print the manuscript of the book, which took up arms against the Soviet regime, even evil spirits, none other than Bulgakova-Shilovskaya. Konstantin Simonov helped her in this, which is confirmed by a letter to “Darling Elena Sergeevna”, dated 1969.

There is also an illustration for the novel marked by Shilovskaya – “Into the Light”. But these are all disparate pieces of a puzzle that you need to put together in your head.

The play of light and shadow

Undoubtedly, the installation of Golitsyn, who specializes in “shadow screensavers” – if not a high-budget, but spectacular decoration of the exhibition. The play of light and shadow contains many clever references. Here in front of us is a cat-like human face, and on the wall behind is the cunning muzzle of the Behemoth cat.

Here is a drawing with an old truck passing by the monument to Pushkin on Tverskaya. But look at the shadow: comrades with banners appear in the back, and Pushkin has disappeared. That is, a clear alternative is given: either the great Russian culture of the pre-revolutionary past, or people who, in the early years of the existence of the RSFSR, overthrew this past along with the classics, the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, Minin and Pozharsky …

Yes, Bulgakov urged “to become dispassionately above the Reds and Whites”, but in his soul he was hardly with the first, rather with the second. Moreover, when the whites and the “Western partners” supporting them stopped fighting, the leaders of the internal opposition finally gave up. They realized that Soviet Russia would not fall in a year or five years, and a new ally was needed in the fight against it. Therefore, probably, Bulgakov needed all this devilry: “The Devil” (the story was presented in the original volume of the publishing house “Nedra” in 1925), “The Master and Margarita” and its early handwritten and typewritten versions – “The Prince of Darkness”, “The Great Chancellor” ( presented in the form of copies from the originals stored in the RSL).

Give me pills for greed!

As a result, in Bulgakov’s room in the mansion on Zubovsky Boulevard, I lacked “realness” and space. The reprint nature of many, many exhibits was depressing. It’s like an exhibition of reproductions, where the falsity of modern printing reigns, and there is no tangible presence of old masters.

But this nitpick is not indisputable – there is a shirt cuff with the author’s inscription of Bulgakov, furniture, letters, sealed by the Moscow Art Theater certificate of Mikhail Afanasyevich, who held the position of assistant director in the theater.

Yes, not as much as we would like is said about the last love of the writer, but there is food for the meticulous philological mind. And the fact that all this was squeezed into such a small space is symbolic – people of the 21st century should understand in what corners our predecessors huddled. But it still seems that the exhibition about the Master-Bulgakov and Margarita-Shilovskaya was ruined by the “housing problem”. And she loses in completeness and depth of immersion in the context, for example, Bulgakov’s “Good Apartment” on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya.

However, as an organic part of the central building of the State Literary Museum, the “Diary of the Master and Margarita” (permanent exhibition!) Looks much more attractive. In mathematics, under certain conditions, a part can be equal to the whole; but the history of literature is not mathematics.