Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov
"Black Snow" is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov that intertwines autobiographical elements with sharp satire. The narrative follows Maxudov, an aspiring author invited to adapt his novel into a play, reflecting Bulgakov's own experiences in the theater world of 1930s Moscow, particularly at the Moscow Arts Theater, where the influential Konstantin Stanislavsky reigned. The story begins with Maxudov receiving an interview request from Xavier Borisovich Ilchin, the director of the Academy of Drama, but quickly transitions to his earlier life as a proofreader and the struggles surrounding his unpublished work.
Bulgakov masterfully uses humor and absurdity to portray the frustrations Maxudov faces in the adaptation process, which contrasts with the expectations of success. Instead of achieving his dreams, Maxudov's journey is marked by a series of farcical setbacks, ultimately leading him to a tragic conclusion with his suicide. The novel ends abruptly with an unfinished sentence, leaving readers to ponder the significance of completion and failure in both storytelling and life. Through this layered narrative, Bulgakov explores themes of artistic ambition, existential despair, and the often-unforgiving nature of the creative process.
Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Teatralny roman, 1965 (English translation, 1967)
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Black Snow displays both the autobiographical and the satirical components in Bulgakov’s work. Written in the first person, it tells the story of Maxudov, the author of a novel who has been invited to write a play based on his novel, much as Bulgakov was asked to turn The White Guard into Days of the Turbins. The theater is clearly the Moscow Arts Theater of the 1930’s, guided by Konstantin Stanislavsky, the originator of method acting. Bulgakov skewers the character representing Stanislavsky, whom he clearly found difficult during his own days at the Moscow Arts Theater.
The novel opens with the chapter “How It All Began,” with Maxudov receiving a request for an interview from Xavier Borisovich Ilchin, the director of the Academy of Drama at the Independent Theater. With Bulgakov’s typical fondness for playing with plot structures, however, this turns out not to be the beginning, since the story then shifts back to a previous time, when Maxudov was the proofreader for The Shipping Gazette and had written an unpublished novel in his spare time. He was about to commit suicide when he heard a performance of the opera Faust in a nearby room and was interrupted by a magazine editor, who wanted to publish his novel. For several chapters, Maxudov tells the story of his novel’s publication and then suddenly returns to his meeting with Ilchin.
Instead of bringing success, the dramatization of Maxudov’s novel is an endless series of farcical frustrations. Ultimately, Maxudov does commit suicide by throwing himself off a bridge. The narrative ends in an uncompleted sentence. However, Bulgakov includes an afterword explaining that Maxudov did not finish his novel because of his suicide. Was the novel really unfinished, or was Maxudov’s failure to end the tale the real and intended ending of Bulgakov’s novel about a story about a play based on a novel?
Bibliography
Belozerskaya-Bulgakova, Lyubov. My Life with Mikhail Bulgakov. Translated by Margareta Thompson. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1983.
Curtis, J. A. E. Bulgakov’s Last Decade: The Writer as Hero. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Drawicz, Andrzej. Master and the Devil: A Study of Mikhail Bulgakov. Translated by Kevin Windle. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Haber, Edythe C. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Early Years. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Milne, Lesley. Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.