THE CRIMSON ISLAND BY MIKHAIL BULGAKOV: FROM FEUILLETON TO DRAMA
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2018-2-188-195
The article analyzes for the first time the poetics of Bulgakov’s satirical piece The Crimson Island and transformation of its distinctive features in the play of the same name. The satirical piece The Crimson Island features not only doubling of the object and subject of satire, but also slapstick dramatization and dialog structure of the text. The piece of prose, written in 1924, incorporates in «translation of a novel by Jules Verne» a series of short reports by anonymous American reporter about the exotic island for the Western audience. The principle of coexistence of texts in different genres by «different authors» is represented as «a play inside a play» in 1928. Comparison of texts in different genres with the same name, analysis of the hypothetical island story in the play, with a background story, taking place in a Soviet theatre in 1930s, shows that the comic mode, which is present both in the satirical piece and the play, having the same slapstick nature, is more prominent in dialogs of the play. The article states that Bulgakov uses the literary device, not the genre, and describes its functions. The article focuses on the main character in the satirical piece and the island story in the play, Kiri-Kuki. The «court fraud» in the first variant, who met his bad end, gains artistic volume to its character as a part of complex artistic image of an emerging author Dymogatsky in the play. He is the first proof of the Bulgakov’s growing interest in the fate of an artist under «the arbitrary power».
Keywords: M. Bulgakov, The Crimson Island, poetics, parody, slapstick, power issue, satirical piece
References:
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Issue: 2, 2018
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: PROBLEMS AND POETICS OF THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE XIX-XX CENTURIES
Pages: 188 — 195
Downloads: 1181