From Russia with Love

I am just coming to the end of a personal Mikhail Bulgakov retrospective, during which I was finally able to get hold of a copy of "the White Guard", which I thought was an extraordinary book - a combination of political drama and impressionistic, almost magical realist writing.

Sadly, I am condemned to read Russian writers in translation; my Russian was never more than rudimentary and fades with every passing year. It's as much as I can do now to painstakingly spell out words in Cyrillic. This is depressing as I have always been very fond of Russian literature. It's got this wonderful mixture of hopeless idealism, helpless fatalism, and sudden madness that somehow, seems very apposite for our times.

I have a great affection for Bulgakov. I first read "the Heart of a Dog" twenty years ago, and loved it. I searched out other works by him - "the Diaboliad", "Black Snow"; and of course "the Master and Margarita", which might be my favourite Russian novel. But there are many rivals.

Anyway, I bought his life of Moliere today and, once I read that, I'll have read all his english language published stories. So I'll have to dig out the plays,diaries and letters. It's like mining some scarce mineral. You exhaust the widest of seams eventually and have to dig deeper and deeper for what you want.

Bulgakov being a physician who turned to writing, I started thinking about other medical men who carved new professions in the creative world. Maugham, Chekov, Bulgakov and Celine were all doctors. Can't think of any great literary pharmacists or dentists (Obviously, Doc Holliday was a dentist but his medium was the pistol rather than the pen). But I digress. I wondered whether there was any common theme or thread that might be said to link this group of author-doctors. On balance, I think not. I can't think of any theme or thread that could tie Somerset Maugham to Celine...whereas W.S.Burroughs, who one certainly can tie to Celine, was briefly a medical student in Vienna (as I recall but cannot be bothered to check). Imagine Burroughs as an MD...heh heh heh heh...what a thought.

The Bulgakov retrospective has been part of a wider Russian season at Springheel Towers. I read a biography of Stalin at least once a year (a labour of love). This year I moved straight into Gorky's "Fragments from my Diary" and an extraordinary thing happened. I found myself suddenly appreciating Gorky as a writer, which I confess I never had before. I must have read the book twice in the last decade but never warmed to him. It's an interesting collection of tales...but somehow I felt no empathy. I always thought Gorky a rather unpleasant individual. Now, I seem to be changing my mind. Perhaps I am much more unpleasant myself that I used to be, although that is a challenging prospect.

And I went from Gorky to Gogol. A new translation of his short stories which I enjoyed but found somewhat disturbing at first. Subtle differences in the translator's phrasing, are, in a well-loved story, like seeing an old friend after a spot of plastic surgery: Disarming.

Dear old Nikolai Vaseleyevich was my first discovery. Tolstoy was introduced to me (and loved) at 14. But Gogol I found for myself. And when you are a literary-minded teenager, that adds spice. You don't forget the authors you ferret out alone. I think my abiding affection for Orwell stems from the same process, although the way he wrote about Kipling helped. That was a rediscovery. The dreary old Kipling I read at school turned out, when I was older, to be rather marvellous. The same happened when, twenty years after the fact, I finally returned (In India, in desperation) to Dickens and thought, what a fool I have been to miss this!

I know, I know; no cheap humour or off-colour anectdotes tonight: just the self-indulgent ramblings of an old-school Chekist. But that's the way it is around here. Me, me, me.