“The City and the House are the central images of the novel. House of the Turbins. Nekrasov Viktor Platonovich

Analysis of the interior of the Turbins' house in the novel White Guard. The interior of the Turbins' house appears in Bulgakov's novel on the very first pages and will be reproduced by the author many times throughout the novel.

Historical time and the events taking place, great, close in scale to the biblical ones, have already been comprehended by the author in the first sentence of the work. It was a great and terrible year after the birth of Christ, 1918, and from the beginning of the second revolution. History is inscribed in this tragic union of the era and world events. ordinary family Turbins, whose existence becomes the focus of all the key problems and characteristic features of the time and is divided by a milestone revolutionary year in 2 stages BEFORE and AFTER. The death of the head of the family - the mother, the center of the entire former Turbine cosmos - also occurred terrible year, the first coincidence of family and historical catastrophes since the beginning of the revolution becomes for Bulgakov a great omen of future sad events.

And the only protection, a saving ship in a terrible sea of ​​disasters, becomes for the Turbins their home, left to them by their parents as a special spiritual world, an ark that stores lasting, eternal values.

Let's look at the first picture of the Turbino house. By drawing it, the author emphasizes antiquity - tradition, the word translated means transmission, habitability, a long-established way of life and family relationships. The atmosphere of the house is shrouded in childhood impressions, preserved by memory, strengthened by habits that have become part of the character of the Turbin family itself. The center of the interior - and the whole house - is a blazing hot tiled stove, a legendary hearth, a wise rock, a symbol of comfort and well-being, tranquility and the inviolability of family traditions.

She is also the keeper of the family history of the inscription different years, made by the children's hands of the little Turbins, and by guests of the house, and by gentlemen in love with Elena - this is an album-chronicle, a Book from which you can read how the family lived in this house. Warmth, happiness and wise carelessness emanate from these tiles. From this same home stove a person dances in life, Bulgakov believes that what he was taught at home, what he remembered and learned from his parents, in the family, will determine his moral character, his destiny, his purpose.

And the Turbins learn from their home; their life is subordinated to the order that, according to Bulgakov, was given to man from time immemorial by his ancestors and this is how their home was arranged. Each room has its own purpose: a dining room, a children's room, a parents' bedroom, all seven dusty and full rooms that raised the young Turbins are special microcosms, necessary components big world A family, shown through the eyes of not only the author, who recreated the world of his own childhood in this interior, but also the adult Turbins, this tile, and old red velvet furniture, and beds with shiny cones, the best cabinets in the world with books that smell of mysterious ancient chocolate - all this his memories and everlasting memory his heroes.

The image of this particular collective hero - the Turbin family, which formerly included the elders, the founders, the creators of the tradition, and is now beheaded, but still living and preserving its world, is interesting to the author.

But it is not so much the social status of the Turbin family of intellectuals that worries the author, but rather their spiritual state, brought up and raised within the walls of this house. Not only the material wealth of a wealthy family - gilded cups, silverware, but also spiritual treasures fill it, as the book about Peter I was often read near the tiled square of Saardam Carpenter, the historical figures of Alexei Mikhailovich, Louis XIV are well known to Turbin, even if at first the acquaintance took place on the patterns of worn carpets almost Characters from Russian literature, bookcases with Natasha Rostova, the Captain's daughter, became family. Pushkinskoe Take care of honor from a young age, acquired by the Turbins from childhood, will be constantly felt in every action of each of them. The entire interior is built on personification: hot tiles, and the lights of Christmas candles, and ancient photographs taken back when women wore funny sleeves with bubbles at the shoulders, and the hero of the children's book Saardam Carpenter, and even beds with shiny cones Like in fairy tales seem alive Andersen, these things live their own special life, accessible only to a child’s understanding, and respond to every call of our inner voice.

The smell of pine needles from the festive tree and the mysterious ancient chocolate emanating from books, a bronze lamp under the lampshade is another eternal symbol of the integrity and eternity of home comfort, wonderful curls on Turkish carpets and music, the native voice of the clock - this is the unique and fragile world that will be protected Turbines from the terrible destructive misfortunes that surged with the waves of the civil war. An important item in Turbino's home world is a bronze clock with a gavotte in the mother's bedroom, a black wall clock with a tower chime in the dining room.

The symbolism of watches is one of the most telling in world art. In Bulgakov, it takes on new meanings: in the period before the start of the revolution, clocks playing their music were a sign of habitability, movement, seething life within these walls, but now, after the death of their father and mother, their hands are counting down the last hours of a beautiful, but fading former life. But the author does not believe in the possibility of the death of this house. And even in the style of this fragment, in the use of repetitions, the refrain goes through the beating of the tower twice, he affirms eternity, the inviolability of both the material symbols of the clock and the bronze lamp, and the spiritual ones, because the clock, fortunately, is completely immortal, both the Saardam Carpenter and the Dutch tile are immortal , like a wise rock, life-giving and hot in the most difficult times. That's what it is the main objective creating the interior of the Turbins' house. 2.2. SPIRITUAL, MORAL AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS IN THE NOVEL THE WHITE GUARD The theme of preserving spiritual, moral and cultural traditions runs through the entire novel, but perhaps most tangibly and materially it is embodied in the image of the House, which, apparently, is extremely dear and important to the author.

This image, repeatedly criticized in the past by impatient reformers of literature and life, is rightfully rehabilitated and elevated by modern reading.

The Bulgakov House is quite real, it is an apartment where the main characters of the novel live and the main action takes place, where many people converge storylines narratives. Life in this house seems to be in defiance of the surrounding unrest, bloodshed, devastation, and bitter morals.

Its owner and soul is Elena Turbina-Talberg, and beautiful Elena, the personification of beauty, kindness, Eternal Femininity, the one to whom you can dedicate the lines of S. A. Yesenin from the poem Black Man In thunderstorms, in storms, In everyday shame, During heavy losses And when you are sad, Seeming smiling and simple is the highest thing in world of art. The dishonest and two-faced Talberg leaves this house at a rat's pace, and the Turbins' friends heal their wounded bodies and souls in it. And even those who, like the chairman of the house committee - the opportunist and coward Lisovich, nicknamed Vasilisa, hate the residents of the house, seek protection from robbers in him.

The Turbins' house is depicted in the novel as a fortress that is under siege, but does not surrender. Moreover, his image is given a high, almost philosophical meaning. According to Alexei Turbin, home is the highest value of existence, for the sake of which a person fights and, in essence, speaking, one should not fight for anything else under any circumstances. To protect human peace and hearth - this is what he sees as the only goal that allows him to take up arms.

Yes, the author of the White Guard was far from those who in the 20s enthusiastically called for the whole world of violence, we will destroy it to the ground, we will renounce the old world, we will shake off its ashes from our feet. And I believe that it is no coincidence that the theme of his novel was not the renunciation of the entire past, but the preservation and poeticization of all the best that was in him - first of all, the principles of high spiritual culture, morality, with which he own life valued above all else, being a man who did not forgive any betrayal, a knight of nobility and decency. Conscience incarnate.

Incorruptible honor. The idea of ​​high morality was so organic to Bulgakov’s self-awareness and worldview that it could not help but penetrate to the very depths of the White Guard, predetermining not only its theme, but also the nature of the central conflict. The writer passionately defends the House, a stronghold of peace, hope, love, a center of culture, a repository of traditions.

Like a battle cry about an approaching test, Pushkin’s voice reached Bulgakov’s ears through the stormy howl and darkness of a blizzard of another century. The light and warmth of human habitation, especially dear in such bad weather, exuded by Pushkin’s little story, warmed the pages of Bulgakov’s first novel. In the Turbins' house, everything is beautiful - old red velvet furniture, beds with shiny cones, cream curtains, a bronze lamp with a lampshade, books in chocolate bindings, a piano, flowers, an icon in an ancient setting, a tiled stove, a clock with a gavotte.

All this is a symbol of the stability of life. But the clock, fortunately, is completely immortal, the Saardam Carpenter is immortal, and the Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times. On its surface the stove bears inscriptions and drawings made in different time both family members and Turbino friends.

Here are captured humorous messages, words filled with deep meaning, declarations of love, and formidable prophecies - everything that was rich in the life of the family at different times. In the Turbins' house they know and love music. The snow and lights outside the windows remind Myshlaevsky of Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous opera The Night Before Christmas. Following the dying Talberg, the multi-colored Valentin sings in the voices of his brothers, I pray for your sister from the opera Faust by Gounod, in the words of the famous romance by Gliere, Shervinsky encourages Elena To live, let us live. Great Russian

End of work -

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Family values ​​in the novel "The White Guard" by Bulgakov

Family. History Conclusions on Chapter II Conclusion Literature INTRODUCTION Interest in the work of M. Bulgakov has not subsided for several decades now, and about.. Researchers of M. Bulgakov’s work of the 60-80s often assessed.. Many emphasize in their works one of the features creative method writer, who became a methodological...

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Magazine "New World", 1967, No. 8, p. 132-142

“...Glug-glug-glug, bottle
government wine!!.
Ton caps,
shaped boots, -
then the cadet guards are coming...”

Bulgakov House, Kyiv, mid-1960s.
Photo by Viktor Nekrasov

Director Sakhnovsky wrote somewhere that for the new generation of the Art Theater “Turbines” became the new “Seagull”. I think this is true. But this is for the artists, for the Moscow Art Theater - for me, first a professional school boy, then a gradually maturing student, “Turbines” was not just a performance, but something much more. Even when I became an actor, interested in the purely professional side of things, even then “Turbines” was for me not a theater, not a play, even if it was very talented and attractively mysterious with its loneliness on stage, but a tangible piece of life, moving away and moving away, but always very close.
Why? After all, in my life I did not know a single White Guard (I first encountered them in Prague in 1945), my family did not favor them at all (in our apartment, both the Germans and the French, and two Red Army soldiers I really liked, who smelled shag and footcloths, but not a single white one), and in general my parents were from the “left”, who were friends abroad with emigrants - Plekhanov, Lunacharsky, Nogin... Neither the Myshlaevskys nor the Shervinskys were ever in our house. But something else, something “Turbino”, obviously existed. It's hard for me to even explain what. In our family I was the only man (mother, grandmother, aunt and me - seven years old), and we didn’t have any guitars, and the wine didn’t flow like a river, not even a stream, and it was as if we had nothing in common with the Turbins. except for our Ossetian neighbor Alibek, who sometimes appeared in our living room dressed in Caucasian gazyrs (Shervinsky?!) and, when I grew up a little, kept asking if one of my school friends would buy his dagger - he loved to have a drink . But there was still something in common. Spirit? Past? Maybe things?
“... Old red velvet furniture... worn carpets... a bronze lamp with a lampshade, the best cabinets in the world with books that smell of mysterious old chocolate, with Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s daughter, gilded cups, portraits, curtains...”
In a word, Turbines entered my life. They entered firmly and forever. First with a play, the Moscow Art Theater, then with a novel, “The White Guard”. It was written before the play - in a year or two, but it fell into my hands somewhere in the early thirties. And strengthened the friendship. I was pleased with the “resurrection” of Alexei, who was “killed” by Bulgakov, albeit after, but for me before the novel. Expanded the range of action. Introduced new faces. Colonel Malyshev, the brave Nai-Tours, the mysterious Yulia, the landlord Vasilisa with the bony and jealous Wanda - his wife. On the stage of the Moscow Art Theater there was a cozy, lived-in apartment, as pretty as the people inhabiting it, with cream curtains that moved Lariosik to tears, but in the novel the whole “beautiful city, the happy city, the mother of Russian cities” came to life, covered in snow, mysterious and alarming in this terrible “year after the birth of Christ 1918, the second revolution from the beginning.”
For us, the people of Kiev, all this was especially expensive. Before Bulgakov, Russian literature somehow bypassed Kyiv - except perhaps Kuprin, and even then it was very pre-war. And here everything is close, nearby are familiar streets and intersections. Saint Vladimir on Vladimirskaya Hill with a shining white cross in his hands (alas, I no longer remember this radiance), which was “seen far away, and often in the summer, in the black darkness, in the tangled creeks and bends of the old man-river, from the willow trees, boats were seen and through its light they found a waterway to the City, to its piers.”
I don’t know about others, but for me the “geography” of the work itself is always very important. It is important to know where you lived - exactly! - Raskolnikov, pawnbroker. Where the heroes of Veresaev’s “In a Dead End” lived, where in Koktebel there was their white house with a tiled roof and green shutters. At first I was disappointed (I was very used to this idea), and then I was delighted to learn that the Rostovs never lived on Povarskaya in the very house where the Writers’ Union is now (Natasha lived here, and now the personnel department or accounting department...) . Moreover, it was important where the heroes lived and acted, not the author, but the heroes. They have always (now, perhaps to a lesser extent) been more important than the author who invented them. However, Rastignac is still “more alive” for me than Balzac, as is d’Artagnan - old Dumas.
What about Turbines? Where they lived? Until this year (more precisely, until April of this year, when I read “The White Guard” for the second time thirty years later), I only remembered that they lived on Alekseevsky Spusk. There is no such street in Kyiv, there is Andreevsky Descent. For some reasons known only to Bulgakov, he, the author, retained the actual names of all Kyiv streets (Khreshchatyk, Vladimirskaya, Tsarsky Garden, Vladimirskaya Gorka), renamed two of them, most closely “tied” to the Turbins themselves. Andreevsky descent to Alekseevsky, and Malo-Podvalnaya (where Yulia saves the wounded Alexey) to Malo-Provalnaya. Why this was done remains a mystery, but one way or another it was not difficult to guess that the Turbins lived on Andreevsky Spusk. I also remembered that they lived in a two-story house under the mountain, on the second floor, and the landlord Vasilisa lived on the first. That's all I remembered.
Andreevsky Descent is one of the most “Kyiv” streets in the city. Very steep, lined with cobblestones (where can you find it now?), meandering in the shape of a huge “S”, it leads from the Old Town to its lower part - Podol. At the top is St. Andrew's Church - Rastrelli, 18th century, - at the bottom is Kontraktovaya Square (once there was a fair in the spring - contracts - I still remember soaked apples, waffles, a lot of people). The whole street is small, cozy houses. And only two or three big ones. I know one of them well since childhood. It was called Richard's Castle Lion Heart. Made of yellow Kyiv brick, seven-story, “Gothic style”, with a corner pointed tower. It is visible from afar and from many places. If you enter the low, oppressive courtyard arch (in Kyiv this is called a “gateway”), you find yourself in a cramped stone courtyard, which took our breath away as children. The Middle Ages... Some arches, vaults, retaining walls, stone stairs in the thickness of the wall, hanging iron, some passages, passages, huge balconies, battlements on the walls... The only thing missing was the guards, who had placed their halberds in the corner and sulking somewhere on a barrel of dice. But that is not all. If you climb a stone staircase with embrasures to the top, you find yourself on a hill, a delightful hill, overgrown with lush wolf trees, a hill from which you can see such a view of Podol, the Dnieper and the Trans-Dnieper region that you will not be able to drive away those who come here for the first time. And below, under this steep hill, there are dozens of houses clinging to it, courtyards with sheds, dovecotes, and hanging laundry. I don’t know what Kyiv artists are thinking about; if I were them, I wouldn’t get off this hill...
This is what Andreevsky Descent is like. There is and was. There is not a single new house on it. This is how he was - with large boulders, with thickets of wolfberry on the slopes, with two or three American maples planted, no one knows how or why, lying right on the street, with his own small houses - this is how he was ten, twenty, thirty years ago, This is how he was in the winter of 1918, when “The city lived a strange, unnatural life, which, very possibly, will not be repeated in the twentieth century...”.
Where did the Turbins live on this very Andreevsky Descent? I don’t know exactly why, but I convinced myself, and then I began to convince my friends whom I took to that same hill, that they lived in a small house attached to Richard’s Castle. He has a veranda, a nice gate in a blank fence, a garden, and one of those crooked maple trees in front of the entrance. Well, of course, they could only live here. And they lived. “I’m telling you this for sure...”
But it turned out that I was cruelly mistaken.
And this is where the fun begins. Until now it was, so to speak, a saying, but now I’m starting to tell a fairy tale.
It's 1965.
Is it worth talking about the happiness that we all experienced when we read “The Theatrical Romance,” which first appeared in print, and a year later, “The Master and Margarita.” Twenty-five years after the writer’s death, we became acquainted with pages of Bulgakov’s prose that were still unknown to us. And they were amazed. We were delighted and amazed, what can we say? But what made me even more happy and amazed (at least for me) was the second meeting with the “White Guard”. Nothing, it turns out, has faded, nothing has become obsolete. It’s as if these forty years never happened. I could hardly force myself to tear myself away from the novel and did it by force in order to prolong the pleasure. Before our eyes, a certain miracle happened, something that happens very rarely in literature and not to everyone - a rebirth took place.
By the way, this has not yet happened with “Days of the Turbins”. The post-war production of the play at the Stanislavsky Theater did not bring much joy to anyone. Maybe because after Khmelev, Dobronravov, Kudryavtsev (just think, none of them are alive anymore!), after the young, thin Yanshin - Lariosik, after Tarasova and Elanskaya, it is very difficult to create something new and bright. Or maybe because not all works of art can be copied, and creating a new original is not so easy. I'm anxiously (hopefully, no less anxiously) waiting new production at the Moscow Art Theater. To walk or not to walk? Don't know. I’m afraid... I’m afraid of everything: youthful memories, comparisons, parallels... Yes, I’m afraid for “The Turbins”, I’m afraid for the play...
But the novel disarmed me. Alive, alive, completely alive... Not a single wrinkle, not a single gray hair. Survived, survived and won! But I digress. Let's return to geography. Where did the Turbins live? It turns out that the author makes no secret of this. Literally on the second page of the novel the exact address is indicated: Alekseevsky (read Andreevsky) descent, No. 13.
“Many years before (her mother’s) death, in house No. 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk, the tiled stove in the dining room warmed and raised little Elena, Alexey the elder and very tiny Nikolka.” Clear and precise. How did I not remember this? I didn't remember, that's all...
So, Andreevsky Descent, No. 13...
The funny thing is that it turns out that I even have a photograph of this house, although when I took it, I had no idea about its significance and place in Russian literature. I just liked this corner of Kyiv (at one time I was fond of photography, the landscapes of Kyiv in particular), and the point that I found by climbing one of the many Kyiv mountains, was very effective. St. Andrew's Church, Richard's Castle, a hill, gardens, in the distance the Dnieper, and below is the sharp bend of St. Andrew's Descent and right in the middle, under the hill, the Turbins' house. By the way, from this very hill, or rather the mountain, the same one that I already talked about, the courtyard of the house is very clearly visible. The most comfortable and attractive, with a dovecote and a veranda - I showed it to my friends hundreds of times, boasting about the beauties of Kyiv.
Of course, I visited it, in this house. Even twice. The first time was fleeting, a few minutes, mainly to clarify whether it was really him or not, the second time took longer.
The novel gives a completely accurate portrait of him. “Above the two-story house No. 13, an amazing building (the Turbins’ apartment was on the second floor facing the street, and the small, sloping, cozy courtyard was on the first), in the garden that was molded under a steep mountain, all the branches on the trees became palmate and drooping. The mountain was swept away, the sheds in the yard were covered up - and there was a giant sugar loaf. The house was covered with a hat white general, and on the lower floor (to the street - the first, to the courtyard under the Turbins' veranda - the basement) lit up with faint yellow lights... Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich, and on the upper floor - the Turbin windows lit up strongly and cheerfully.”
Nothing has changed since then. And the house, and the courtyard, and the sheds, and the veranda, and the staircase under the veranda leading to the apartment of Vasilisa (Vas. Lis.) - Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich - to the street, first floor, to the courtyard - basement. But the garden has disappeared - just sheds.
My first visit, I repeat, was short. I was with my mother and a friend, we arrived in his car, and we were running out of time. Entering the courtyard, I timidly rang the bell on the left of the two doors leading to the veranda and asked the middle-aged blonde lady who opened it if people named Turbins had ever lived here. Or the Bulgakovs.
The lady looked at me somewhat surprised and said that yes, they lived a very long time ago, right here, and why am I interested in this? I said that Bulgakov is a famous Russian writer, and that everything connected with him...
The lady's face showed even greater amazement.
- How? Mishka Bulgakov - a famous writer? Is this mediocre venereologist a famous Russian writer?
Then I was stunned, but later I realized that the lady was struck not by the fact that the mediocre venereologist became a writer (she knew this), but by the fact that he became famous...
But this became clear after the second visit. This time only two of us came and we had as much time as we wanted.
In response to our call, a young female voice was heard from the depths of the apartment:
- Mom, some guys...
Mom - that same middle-aged blonde lady - came out and after a tiny reminiscent-evaluative pause - in my opinion, she didn’t recognize me at first - she kindly said:
- Please come in. Right here, in the living room. It was their living room.
And this is the dining room. I had to block it, as you can see...
The former dining room, judging by the molded rods on the ceiling, was once very large and, obviously, cozy, but now it has turned into an entrance hall and at the same time a kitchen: on the right side there was a gas stove.
We entered the living room, the hostess apologized for not interrupting her work - she was ironing, though not very diligently, tulle curtains on a long ironing board - and invited us to sit down.
The furnishings in the living room turned out to be by no means Turbino. And not Bulgakov's. On the three windows facing the street, onto the opposite hill with the grass already beginning to turn green, there are curtains sliding halfway across the window, on the windowsill there are flowers - a purple dream in vases. Everything else - like everyone else now - is just the Kiev version: Lviv “modern” of the early fifties, combined with the so-called “Bozhenkov” furniture. (The hero of the civil war, Shchors' comrade-in-arms, Bozhenko, alas, is now associated by most Kiev residents with the mediocre furniture of the factory that bears his name.) On the wall there is something Japanese on black varnish (herons, or what?), near the doors - shining, under piano walnut
We sat down. The hostess was curious about what we were interested in. We said that everything concerning the life of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov is in this apartment.
From the subsequent story, interrupted either by the arrival of a silent husband, who was looking for something in the closet, or by the invasion of his immediately expelled grandchildren (“Go, go, there is no need to listen to you”), we learned that the Bulgakov family was large: the father was a professor of theology, deceased , apparently, even before the revolution, a very economical mother who loved order, and seven children - three brothers, of whom Mikhail was the eldest, and four sisters. They lived in this apartment for more than twenty years and left in 1920. No one ever returned here again. Mikhail included. The family was patriarchal, with certain foundations. With the death of my father, everything changed. Mother, as far as we understood, separated: “up there, opposite St. Andrew’s Church, there lived a doctor, a very decent man, he recently died at an old age in Alma-Ata,” and from then on chaos reigned in the house.
- They were very cheerful and noisy. And there are always a lot of people. They sang, drank, and talked always at the same time, trying to out-shout each other... The most fun was Misha’s second sister. The older one was more serious, calmer, and was married to an officer. His last name is something like Kraube - German by origin. - (So, we understood - Talberg...) - They were later deported, and both are no longer alive. And the second sister, Varya, was extremely cheerful: she sang well, played the guitar... And when there was too much unimaginable noise, she climbed onto a chair and wrote on the stove: “Quiet!”
- On this stove? “We turned around at once, looked into the corner and involuntarily remembered the inscriptions that were once on it. Last Nikolkina: “I still order you not to write foreign things on the stove under the threat of shooting any comrade... Commissioner of the Podolsk district committee. Ladies', men's and women's tailor Abram Pruzhiner. 1918, January 30.”
“No,” said the hostess, “in the dining room.” When you leave, I'll show you.
Next came the story about Misha himself. For some reason it started with the teeth. He had very large teeth. (“Yes, yes,” confirmed the owner’s husband, who sat down on a chair in the corner, “he had very large teeth.” This was the first of two phrases he uttered the entire time.) In general, Misha was tall, light-eyed, blond. He kept pushing his hair back. That's it - with your head. And he walked very quickly. No, they weren’t friends, he was much older, about twelve years. Was friends with herself younger sister Leley. But he remembers Misha well, very well. And his character is mocking, ironic, sarcastic. Not easy, in general. Once even her father offended her. And completely undeservedly.
“Misha had an office there.” The hostess pointed to the wall in front of her. “He received patients, his lueticians.” You obviously know that he retrained as a venereologist. So, for some reason the taps were always open there. And everything overflowed. And it leaked. And everything is on our heads... We looked at each other. - Did you live on the first floor?
- On the first. And everything, you know, is on our heads. The ceiling almost collapsed. Then my father, a very decent, educated man and still the owner of the house - they rented an apartment from us - (we looked at each other again...) - goes upstairs and says: “Misha, we still need to somehow keep an eye on behind the taps, we have a complete flood downstairs...” And Misha answered him so rudely, so rudely...
But we never found out exactly how Misha answered; the owner’s daughter, who suddenly appeared from the corridor with golden hair and was combing her curls, intervened in the conversation.
- Well, why, mom, all these details?
Mother was somewhat embarrassed, although she immediately said that she saw nothing wrong in these details, just one of the traits of Misha’s character, and we looked at each other for the third time.
- So you lived on the first floor? Which one goes out into the basement courtyard?
- Well, yes. That's why it rained on us.
Everything became clear. First floor, homeowner... Absolutely clear. We were dealing with nothing more or less than the daughter of Vasilisa, the owner of the house Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich...
One thing, however, somewhat surprised us (all this later, on the way back, interrupting each other, trying to figure everything out) - when one of us mentioned Vasilisa’s name at the very beginning of the conversation, our hostess didn’t even raise an eyebrow, as if I had never heard such a name.
The subsequent painstaking analysis sowed doubt in us: has the current owner of Bulgakov’s apartment read “The White Guard”? “Days of the Turbins”, obviously, I saw when the Moscow Art Theater came to Kyiv just before the war (my son, in any case, saw it: it was impossible to get tickets, but he said that he was the grandson of the owner of the house where the Bulgakovs lived, and they gave it to him right away). In a word, we will assume that she was familiar with the “Turbins,” but the whole point is that Vasilisa is not in the play, he is not even mentioned. But in the novel there is. Perhaps Vasilisa himself read it, but it’s unlikely that he really wanted the children to read it...
“What can I say,” the hostess smiled sadly, fingering the tulle curtains, “we lived like Montagues and Capulets... And in general...
It then became clear that she had certain complaints not only as a tenant, but also as a writer. The fact is that when gold was confiscated in the late twenties or early thirties, one of the neighbors - who lived across the street - remembered that in some novel Misha wrote about a certain homeowner who had something stored somewhere; so, if it really exists... But it didn’t exist. There was nothing anymore... And yet somehow it turned out badly. Why so direct?
We both involuntarily looked out the window: where was that tree, that acacia from which the Petliura bandit spied on Vasilisa’s operations with the hiding place in the wall? No, we were not able to find it - neither now nor later. After all, forty years have passed. But the gorge between two houses, thirteenth and eleventh, where Nikolka hid a tin candy box with pistols, shoulder straps and a portrait of Alexei’s heir that later disappeared, was found. And even the boards were broken, as if the bandits only crawled out of this very gorge today or yesterday.
Today? Yesterday? Day before yesterday? Everything suddenly got mixed up, shifted, shifted...
In this very room where we are now sitting, with three windows onto the street, with the same exact view of the opposite hill, which has not changed at all since then (only the acacia trees that darkened the living room have disappeared), in this very living room then lived a tall blue-eyed man was walking with a quick step, throwing his hair back, ironic and sarcastic, who later left for Moscow and never returned here again... In this very living room, then pinkish, with cream curtains, many, many years ago on a cold December night three an officer, one cadet and an absurd young man from Zhitomir, abandoned by his wife, were playing vint, and in the next room a typhoid man was raving, and downstairs, on the first floor, at that very time the Petliurists were cleaning out the homeowner, and then he, poor thing, ran here and fell into fainted, and they doused him with cold water...
In this very room, in this apartment, it once smelled of pine needles at Christmas, paraffin candles crackled, on a white starched tablecloth in a vase in the form of a column stood hydrangeas and gloomy sultry roses, a clock with bronze shepherdesses played a gavotte every three hours, and the dining room responded they had black walls, and on the piano lay the open notes of “Faust,” and they drank wine and vodka here, and sang the epithalamus to the god Hymen, and something else that horrified the homeowner who looked like Taras Bulba and his wife: “What is this? Three o'clock in the morning! I’ll finally complain!”
And all this is missing. There is no more “book room”, no falcon on the white mitten of Alexei Mikhailovich, no Louis XIV in paradise on the shore of a silk lake, no bronze lamps under a green lampshade, and cold, carefully washed (Nikolka began) Saardam tiles look sadly at the blue lights and gas stove pans. And the lower floor moved to the upper one, and Vasilisa, apparently, died (for some reason, confused, we didn’t ask anything about him), and in Nikolka’s corner room (twenty-six meters, as the hostess told us) lives Vasilisa’s golden-haired granddaughter. ..
And Nikolka?
Yes, Misha had two brothers. Nikolai and Vanya. Nikolai is the eldest, second after Misha, calm, serious, the most serious of all. He died in January of this year in Paris. He was a professor. It means something to be a professor in Paris, especially for a Russian emigrant. He was smart. Back then he was still smart... And Vanya? Vanya is also in Paris, but not a professor... In some kind of balalaika ensemble or whatever they call it there. He was the youngest, probably still alive... Of the sisters, two remained, both in Moscow. One is seriously ill, the other, with Nadya, occasionally corresponds. When I was in Moscow, I visited her. There was a photograph of her somewhere recently. Against the backdrop of Misha's library. Still preserved. But Misha is not here...
Here the hostess, looking up from the iron, looked at us inquisitively and yet incredulously:
- So you say you became famous?
- Became... She shook her head.
- Who would have thought? After all, he was so unlucky... Nadya, however, recently wrote to me that they have now published something of him and everyone is reading them a lot... But how many years have passed...
The children burst in again - a boy and a girl. They were driven away again. The husband listlessly looked for something in the closet and sat down again, although he had to go somewhere. The daughter, continuing to comb her curls, tried to enter into a conversation - why doesn’t her mother say anything about Lancia? But the mother, for all her talkativeness, suddenly balked - there was nothing interesting, they say. The daughter assured me that it was very interesting; in any case, she was very interested. But the mother showed incomprehensible persistence. We only managed to find out that Lancia, the owner of the European Hotel on the former Tsarskaya Square (this explanatory phrase was the second and last uttered by the hostess’s husband), had a dacha in Bucha opposite Bulgakov’s, and he had a greenhouse there... So everything, as you see, nothing interesting... We understood that there was something interesting, but for some reason they didn’t want to tell us some kind of complexity that obviously existed in the Bulgakov-Lanchia-Vasilisa triangle, and they didn’t insist.
In general, as it turned out, my friend and I turned out to be useless reporters. They didn’t take a camera with them, they sat as if tied, I was in the chair, my friend was in the sofa, they didn’t go to other rooms, they didn’t learn anything about Vasilisa’s fate... However, maybe that’s how it should be. In the end, we really are not reporters - what we found out is what we found out. And I will always have time to photograph the house - both from below, and from the side, and from the mountain - it will live for a long time.
That's all.
We said goodbye and left. They promised to come again. But this is hardly necessary.
Now I’m interested in one thing: will the residents of this house clinging to the mountain read or not about the events that took place there almost fifty years ago?.. 1

Bulgakov's house,
Kyiv, mid-1960s.
Photo by Viktor Nekrasov

Climbing up Andreevsky Descent, excited and saddened, we tried to draw some conclusions. Why? Yes, that's it, everything. Past, present, non-existent. In the summer of 1966, in Yalta, we read Ermolinsky’s memoirs about Bulgakov, now published in the Theater magazine - very sad, very tragic. Now we have visited the places of Bulgakov’s youth and we will also go to the 1st gymnasium (now there is a university), on the steps of which, in the lobby, Alexey died (on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater), we will go to the “deli” on Teatralnaya, where he once was “ Chic Parisien” by Madame Anjou with a bell on the door, then once again we’ll try to find the house on Malo-Provalnaya. Around the bend of “the most fantastic street in the world” - a mossy wall, a gate, a brick path, another gate, another, a lilac garden in the snow, a glass lantern of an ancient entryway, the peaceful light of a tallow candle in a chandelier, a portrait with golden epaulettes, Julia... Yulia Alexandrovna Reiss... She is gone. And this is not at home. I have already climbed all over Malo-Podvalnaya. There was once a similar one, in the back of the courtyard, made of wood, with a veranda and colored glass, but it is long gone. In its place is a new one, stone, multi-story, absurdly alien on this hunchbacked, “the most fantastic in the world” street, and next to it is a television tower - two hundred meters of iron going into the sky... We climbed up Andreevsky Descent... Why never again Bulgakov was drawn here? Neither him nor his brothers or sisters? However, the brothers would hardly have succeeded. Nikolai died and was buried somewhere in a Parisian cemetery, but Vanya... Or maybe I saw him, maybe even met him? I was in Paris in a Russian restaurant, not far from the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It was called “At the Vodka”. And they really drank vodka there, which is not very practiced in other restaurants, and at the next table, tipsy elderly people sang “ Prophetic Oleg” and “Tell me, uncle, it’s not without reason...”, and in the corner on a small stage, six balalaika players in blue silk blouses performed “Dark Eyes...” for the third time by order. I talked to them. Except one, all were Russian. They did not give their last names. Everyone asked how they could return to their homeland... Maybe Vanya Bulgakov was among them, but for me, for all of us, Nikolka Turbin? In the eighteenth year, the guitar, “Bul-bul-bul, bottle”, now the balalaika and “Dark Eyes”...
Oh, how I want to continue the novel. Childishly, I want to know what happened next, how the fate of the Turbins turned out after the eighteenth year. Run? For Nikolka, obviously, yes. For Myshlaevsky - I don’t know. And Shervinsky, Elena? And Alexey? Wrote “Days of the Turbins” and “The White Guard”? Died in the fortieth year, without waiting for the triumph that came twenty-five years after death?
How I regret now that I was not acquainted with Bulgakov. How I would like to know what, where, how and why was born.
In the twenty-third year, his mother died of typhus. And in the twenty-third year the “White Guard” was started. And it begins with the mother's funeral. “Mom, bright, queen, where are you?..”
I’m re-reading “The Master and Margarita” now, and now it becomes especially clear to me why and “where” the flood caused by Margarita in Latunsky’s apartment came from.
And Maksudov in “ Theatrical novel” he writes not “Black Snow” at all, but “The White Guard”... “... evening, the lamp is burning. Lampshade fringe. The notes on the piano are open. They are playing Faust. Suddenly “Faust” falls silent, but the guitar begins to play. Who's playing? There he comes out the door with a guitar in his hand...”
Nikolka... Nikolka again... Hello, Nikolka, old friend my youth...
So I agreed - the friend of my youth, it turns out, was no more and no less than a white officer, a cadet... But I don’t deny it. And his older brother too. And sister. And brother's friend...
Yes, I loved these people. He fell in love for his honesty, nobility, courage, and finally for the tragedy of the situation. I fell in love with them, just as hundreds of thousands of spectators of the Moscow Art Theater performance loved them. 2 . And among them was Stalin. Judging by the theater records, he watched “Days of the Turbins” at least fifteen times! But he was hardly such an inveterate theatergoer...
In 1941, the Turbino apartment in Minsk burned down. And although thirteen years later it again emerged from the ashes, this time not in one, but in three guises (in Moscow, Tbilisi and Novosibirsk), for me there was only the one in the scenery (how I hate to say this word!) by the artist Ulyanov . She doesn't exist and never will. Just as there will never be more Khmelev, Dobronravov, Kudryavtsev - the first who made us fall in love with the non-fictional (and maybe fictional, half, quarter fictional, hell, I'm confused again!) heroes of Bulgakov.
Our acquaintance took place a long time ago - forty years ago (by the way, we are now separated from the last Moscow Art Theater performance by the same amount of time, even three years more, than this same performance separated from the events depicted in it). Why, after so many years, our friendship not only did not fade (new friends also appeared), but, on the contrary, grew stronger? Why did I love them even more when I met them again?
At first I couldn't give an exact answer. I can now.
I fell in love with the Turbins even more because they, it was they, who first introduced me to Bulgakov.
Then, forty years ago, to be honest, Bulgakov (both as a writer and especially as a person) interested me much less than his heroes... Now, when there are many, many times more heroes, and among them even devils and witches, I mentally go back to the year twenty-eight, I sit down on the steps of the balcony of the first tier of the Moscow Art Theater and thank, thank Alexei, thank Elena, Nikolka, even Hetman Skoropadsky for the fact that they were the first to tell me: “Mikhail Bulgakov Afanasyevich, playwright...”

Mikhail Bulgakov on the right, 1930s.
Photo from the archive of Viktor Nekrasov

I have not seen “Molière,” but I have read “The Life of M. de Molière.” Bulgakov did not have “patrons”, there was no Prince de Conti and the Duke of Orleans, just as Moliere did not have artistic directors, but both of them equally knew what the difficult path of true art means.
Fame came to Bulgakov early - with all its difficulties - and at the same time late, but here I have to put an end to it - this is a topic for a separate study, I am not ready for it.
My topic is geography. I am proud (and I’m only surprised that no one has done this before me) of my discovery of the “Turbin House” and I invite everyone who visits Kyiv to go down the steep Andreevsky Descent to house No. 13, look into the courtyard (on the left, under the veranda, please pay attention to the stairs, it was there that poor Vasilisa felt a chill run through her stomach at the sight of the beautiful milkmaid Yavdokha), and then climb back through the “knightly” courtyard of the Castle of Richard the Lionheart, make her way onto the hill, sit on the edge of its cliff, light a cigarette if you smoke , and admire the City that Bulgakov loved so much, although he never returned to it.

_______________________

1 Events? What events? “The White Guard” is a novel, fiction. But you see what a fiction it is if I wrote the above phrase in all seriousness. And I decided not to touch it, not to change it, to add only this footnote.

2 I think no less than a million. (For fifteen years, from 1926 to 1941, there were 987 performances. At least a thousand spectators at each.)

Literary and Memorial Museum of M. Bulgakov in Kyiv.
St. Andreevsky Descent, 13

I pulled my barracks lamp as far as possible to the table and put a pink paper cap over its green cap, causing the paper to come to life. On it I wrote the words: “And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” Then he began to write, not yet knowing very well what would come of it. I remember that I really wanted to convey how good it was when it was warm at home, the clock chiming like a tower in the dining room, sleepy slumber in bed, books and frost.<...>Writing in general is very difficult, but for some reason it came out easy. I didn't intend to print this at all. M. Bulgakov, “»

To a secret friend

The main difference between the Kyiv Bulgakov Museum and the Moscow ones is this.

If your interest in Bulgakov is based on “The Master and Margarita” or you just want to see the famous house on Sadovaya where Woland’s gang stayed, then welcome to Moscow, to the “Bulgakov House” and “Bad Apartment” museums. I don’t know if you are welcome to apartment 34, which is described in the novel under the name apartment 50, but I promise to find out next time.

But in the Kiev museum, people who have not read “The White Guard” (or at least have not watched “Days of the Turbins”) have nothing to do. Well, they won’t feel the main thing. In the best case, they will take a tour of the second floor, listen to the guide’s story, and then go home. They won’t see that same green lampshade on the lamp, they won’t see the Saardam Carpenter in the tiled stove, and they won’t notice the cream curtains on the windows.

On the left in this photo you can see the corner of the stove, located in the corner of the living room and heating three adjacent rooms at once. This is the same Saardam on whose tiles the famous inscriptions were applied by guests and owners of the house. Only these inscriptions were not here, in the living room, but on the other side of the stove - on the side that goes into the dining room behind the wall (we’ll get there later). And the remaining side of the triangular tiled pillar opens into Elena’s room. Let's go out there too.

Elena's room (half of the Thalbergs)

Here it is, the side of the same stove - in the corner of the room, and below there is a cast-iron door-damper: through it the stove is heated.

In Elena's bedroom, wood is burning in the stove. Spots jump out through the curtain and dance hotly on the wall.

The tiled stove fascinated me, but it’s not surprising. But let's still take a break from it and look around. The previous photo shows a chest of drawers with family photographs hanging above it. The central frame is for a portrait of Helen herself, but the frame is empty. This is because four of Bulgakov’s sisters merged in the image of Elena: Vera, Nadezhda, Varvara and Elena. Draw a portrait in an empty frame with the power of your imagination.

But the portrait of her husband, Captain Thalberg, can be seen even without imagination. He has only one prototype: this is Varvara Bulgakova’s husband, Leonid Karum. Leonid Karum with his wife Varvara (prototype of Talberg and ¼ prototype of Elena Turbina)

There are three doors in Elena’s room: one is from the living room, we entered through it, through another you can get into the dining room, and the third leads to Nikolka’s room. But if we carefully read the “White Guard”, we will find there that we cannot go through this very last door to Nikolka: “From the next room, dully, through the door closed by the closet, Nikolka’s thin whistle could be heard.” The door is still closed by the closet today. The guide stops in front of this cabinet and, smiling mysteriously, offers to take a break from the Turbins for a while and move to Moscow’s “bad apartment” - the famous apartment number fifty from “The Master and Margarita.” Then the closet swings open - and, lo and behold, we see a door with a sign “50” and we step through this door into the closet, as if into Narnia.

True, to be fair, we don’t get into any of the fiftieth apartments through it, but we end up where we should – in Nikolka Turbin’s room; so why the preamble about the Moscow apartment from “The Master and Margarita” is unclear. Well, that’s right, it seems to me: let’s not mix two such different books together.

Nikolka's room

This small room is special among all the special rooms in the house. She was shared with her brothers by the young Misha Bulgakov himself, first a high school student and then a medical student. In the not so numerous Turbin family, Nikolka received a room as his sole possession.

On this bed, next to the tiled stove, the younger Turbin slept. This is a different oven, not the one we saw before. The White Guard says nothing about the drawings on the stove in Nikolka’s room - only on the stove in the dining room. But the museum staff, apparently, decided not to let the place go to waste, and on the tiles of this stove they reproduced drawings by Bulgakov himself.
But on this narrow sofa on the opposite side Shervinsky snored when he had the chance to spend the night under the roof of this house.
Photo by Elena Sharashidze

But Shervinsky is Shervinsky, and we are much more interested in the true inhabitant of the room. Look at this photo - very rare, by the way. It depicts a young, elegant medical student, immersed in some thoughts. The photo was taken by the future writer’s younger brother, Nikolai, who was fond of photography at that time. The Bulgakovs loved this card very much; in the family she was called “Misha the Doctor.”
Mikhail Bulgakov at his desk in a house on Andreevsky Spusk

In general, you experience a strange feeling when you look at this photo while standing in Bulgakov’s room. You can’t get rid of the irrational feeling that Mikhail Afanasyevich was sitting at this table just a minute ago - so accurately the picture before your eyes coincides with the photograph. The furnishings of the room were repeated by the museum staff down to the smallest detail - it seems that this hundred years did not exist after the click of Nikolka’s camera.
Photo fairykat

On the table there is a bronze lamp with a green lampshade - perhaps, for its sake alone, fans of the writer would be worth making a pilgrimage to Kyiv. Probably, you can talk about it endlessly - apparently, it would be quite possible to write an entire dissertation on the topic “The role and place of the green lampshade in the work of M. A. Bulgakov.” It was the green lampshade of his father’s old lamp - along with books and the notorious cream curtains - that was for Mikhail Afanasyevich the most important coziness-creating link, turning a simple home into real Home, filling his existence with meaning. Namely, home, perhaps, is the most important thing in human life.

And here is the very window behind which the inventive Nikolka guessed to hide weapons in case of a search - Alyosha Browning and a Colt Night Tours.

An unexpected obstacle occurred: the box with the revolvers inside did not fit through the window.

The wall of the neighboring house comes almost close to the Turbins’ house - so a box of pistols was hung in the narrow gap between the houses.

The hiding place is truly excellent: it is completely impossible to notice it by chance from the street. It took me a while to spot this box myself, although I was specifically looking for it. Well, yes, the box is still hanging, but of course. Did you have any doubts? The Turbins' house is on the right. Come on, try to make out the hiding place.
Photo by Elena

Let's now go to the next room - the book room, but when leaving Nikolka's room, we will definitely turn towards the door frame along left hand. In memory of the brave colonel, a cross and an uneven signature are carved there: “p. Tours." “Nai,” as we remember, Nikolka threw it away in case of a Petlyura search - for secrecy.

Bookroom (Lariosik's room)

A small room with two blind windows (because they face the wall of the neighboring house) served as a library in the family of Professor Afanasy Bulgakov. There were cabinets with books, without which it was impossible to imagine either the Bulgakov family or the Turbin family.

The Zhitomir cousin Lariosik, a walking misfortune, pale Pierrot, who had fallen on Turbin’s head, was settled in this room. Almost all the space free from bookcases here is occupied by a bed of a complex folding system, allocated to the guest. It was between its doors that on the very first day he managed to pinch Nikolka’s hand - exactly between shattering the set and breaking the window glass while setting up a hiding place in the next room.

Karum’s nephew, Nikolai Sudzilovsky, actually lived in this tiny room for some time (however, Bulgakov’s first wife claimed that his name was also Larion, so who knows).

“Eyes, dull and mournful, looked out from the deepest orbits of an incredibly huge head, cropped short.”

In the photo - Nikolai (and maybe Larion) Sudzilovsky, prototype of Lariosik From Lariosik’s room we finally find ourselves in the dining room, the best and most comfortable room in the mansion. Here he is, the Saardam Carpenter - the stove, reverse side

which we have already seen in the living room.

This is the heart of the Turbino house. On the wonderful tile work, which was life-giving and hot in the most difficult days, by the hands of old Turbino friends, it is written: “Lenochka, I took a ticket to Aida,” “June. Barcarolle”, “It’s not for nothing that all of Russia remembers Borodin’s Day”...

There is an armchair next to the hot tiles, and it is very easy to imagine the young doctor Alexei Turbin settling down in it with his legs. In the warmth and silence of home, he reads “The Carpenter of Saardam”, and at his feet on the bench, with his legs stretched out almost to the sideboard, thoughtfully plucks the strings of Nikolka’s guitar. The old clock with a tower chime ticks steadily, and in response to its tower chime, the gavotte clock from Elena’s neighboring bedroom plays. The most comfortable place is in the kitchen behind cream curtains that reliably hide the snow-covered veranda, the patio, and the whole crazy world. Live only behind cream curtains.

The floors are shiny, and in December, now, on the table, in a matte column, in a vase, there is a sultry rose, affirming the beauty and strength of life.

And in a few days, the fragile comfort will shatter into pieces, the ticket to Aida will turn into a ticket to Hades, and the wounded Doctor Turbin, pale to blue, will lie on the sofa under the old clock, and Elena will rush about next to him. Alexei's bedroom is here, across the wall, and lying in his bed, the dying doctor will suffer in heavy, hot, sticky delirium. Once upon a time, Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov died in this room, and now Turbin is destined to die.

The tour of the Turbins’ house ends with seeing the stars in the mirror. But let's not rush to leave it. If we wait until all the other visitors have gone down and approach the guide, he will probably not refuse our request to stay here for a while.

Cabinet

We were lucky: they not only allowed us to take another circle around the apartment, but even as a special courtesy they opened a corner room with access to a balcony - for some reason we did not go through this room during the tour (it seems that it is undergoing restoration). Thanks to its convenient position - a separate entrance from the stairs - this room was used by him to receive patients after Doctor Bulgakov returned to Kyiv in 1918. Now, however, there is no longer a separate entrance - the door is bricked up, and you can only get into the office from the living room. However, I remember that in the novel, Doctor Turbin’s visitors also entered the office through the living room, so who knows when the entrance from the stairs actually disappeared? On the apartment plan, I drew a translucent wall in place of this door - either there is a passage or not.
The door was (or wasn't) in the wall next to the couch
Photos

If we entered through this ghostly door, we would see this view:
To the right of the table is the door to the balcony
Photos

Yes, needless to say that Dr. Turbin chose the same office as Dr. Bulgakov? Now in this room you can see a sign that jumped out into reality from the novel - it hangs on the back of a chair:

Doctor A.V. Turbin
Sexually transmitted diseases and syphilis
606 – 914
Reception from 4 to 6

Mikhail Afanasyevich himself dealt with sexually transmitted diseases in this office. Generally speaking, Bulgakov (presumably Turbin along with him) received the famous diploma of “doctor with honors” in the specialty “childhood diseases,” but the First World War made its own adjustments to his profession. Namely: the consequence of the war was a rapid surge in venereal diseases among soldiers, and not only among them. The demand for venereologists significantly exceeded the demand for pediatricians: there was still a quarter of a century left before the discovery of antibiotics, so venereal diseases were treated poorly, difficultly and for a long time. The advanced treatments for syphilis were arsenic compounds (by the way, the numbers 606 and 914 on Dr. Turbin’s plate are not a telephone, as you might think, but numbers of arsenic compounds) and mercury injections.

However, we were not allowed to go into the doctor’s office so that we would not trample on the parquet floor there that was being restored.

Bulgakov parquet

Yes, by the way, about parquet. For Bulgakov scholars, only a small portion of the parquet flooring in the house is of homeopathic value: a piece of plinth that still belongs to Bulgakov is kept on the first floor of the museum. It is kept in a frame under glass as a shrine - perhaps not in a special casket-ark. As follows from the attached certificate, the acquisition of a piece of Mikhail Afanasyevich’s true plinth was thanks to Alexander Krylov, who presented such a gift to Bulgakov’s house.

A hologram with the number S-1426 is attached to the relic, certifying the authenticity of the rarity. The museum is ready to give it free of charge to a person who will donate 10,000 hryvnia to the Bulgakov Foundation. Are you not interested?

But I’m thinking: if a piece of Bulgakov’s plinth the size of a matchbox costs more than a thousand euros, then how much will a whole Bulgakov’s apartment cost - well, the same one, number 34 in the building on Sadovaya? It has not yet been turned into a museum, which means you can buy it and settle in the same place where Woland once settled. But it will probably be a little difficult to save up for it, at such and such prices. And if so, then God bless her, with the writer’s Moscow apartment, let’s return to Kyiv.

Since we're talking about parquet, let's talk about one more thing. If, when visiting the museum, you do not have money for the above-mentioned plinth, do not be upset. Better pay attention to the first step of the stairs leading to the Turbino apartment. This is the only step preserved from the beginning of the last century; Bulgakov used it to climb to his second floor. And you can stand on it completely free.

The novel is based on M.A. Bulgakov's "The White Guard", written in 1925, became real events tragic time: Civil War in Ukraine. Much is autobiographical here: The city is beloved Kyiv, the address is House No. 13 on Alekseevsky Spusk (in fact, the Bulgakovs lived in house 13 on Andreevsky Spusk, where the M.A. Bulgakov Museum is now). The atmosphere of the Turbin family, large and friendly, but going through difficult times, is also autobiographical.

Turbines love their home, cozy and warm. Its entire environment seems to be inspired by the memories associated with it. The tiled stove in the dining room is a symbol of the warmth of the hearth - “it warmed and raised little Elena, Alexey the elder and very tiny Nikolka.” “The Carpenter of Saardam” was read near the blazing heat of the stove, “the grease played for hours, and always at the end of December there was a smell of pine needles, and multi-colored paraffin burned on the green branches.” Things are valuable not in themselves, but because of what is associated with them: a watch - a memory of a deceased father, “the best cabinets in the world with books that smell of mysterious ancient chocolate”, speak of spiritual world growing children, a bronze lamp under the lampshade gives an idea of ​​the warmth and comfort of the evening twilight." Terrible trials also affected the Turbin family - the mother died, who bequeathed to the children to live together. And the destruction of time could not but affect their usual life: the mother's festive service went to everyone day, a meager treat for tea. The tiled stove is covered with “historical records” and drawings on topical topics: the revolution, the offensive of Yetlyura, the expression of political sympathies and antipathies. “It’s alarming in the City, foggy, bad...” And although the tablecloth “is still there. white and starchy,” because Elena cannot do otherwise, and the flowers affirm “the beauty and strength of life,” one feels that the former comfort is fragile and fragile, that at any moment an insidious enemy “could break the snowy beautiful City and trample the fragments of peace with his heels.”

It is difficult for children without their mother; they involuntarily feel the possibility of the collapse of their usual good world. “The walls will fall, the alarmed falcon will fly away from the white mitten, the fire in the bronze lamp will go out, and “ Captain's daughter"will be burned in the oven." Turbines value their home; they preserve its traditions and the relationships that have developed in the family. Here the brothers love and take care of their sister, for her sake they agree to tolerate her husband, whom they themselves do not like, and they console Elena when she is worried about her husband. Friends are always welcome here: how frostbitten Myshlaevsky comes to the Turbins’ home after - unsuccessful defense on the approaches to the City, and he is truly received as a welcome guest. Shervinsky, who is caring for Elena, and Karas, Myshlaevsky’s gymnasium friend and colleague, come here. Lariosik, who came from Zhitomir, at first doesn’t understand why he likes it so much in the Turbins’ home, but he likes it here so much that he feels like his soul “comes to life.” External world behind the cream curtains is “dirty, bloody and senseless,” and “wounded souls seek peace perishably behind such cream curtains.” This explanation by Lariosik clearly proves that all the Turbins’ friends value in their home, first of all, the warmth of friendly relations, an atmosphere of trust, mutual assistance, and the cordiality of the owners. Even Vasilisa, the apartment owner, greedy and cowardly, in a moment of danger comes to the Turbins for protection and support.

So, the Turbins’ house is not just a home, “my fortress” that Vasilisa dreams of, having been robbed in her own apartment. It's not just the comfort and warmth of home - it's... special atmosphere love and mutual understanding. In a cruel and disturbing world, this is an island of goodness, a reliable place, protected from dangers, where you can believe that everything will finally be good and happy.

The image of the house in the novel “The White Guard” is central. It unites the heroes of the work and protects them from danger. Turning events in the country instill anxiety and fear in the souls of people. And only home comfort and warmth can create the illusion of peace and security.

1918

Great is the year one thousand nine hundred and eighteen. But he is also scary. Kyiv was occupied by German troops on one side and the hetman's army on the other. And rumors about Petlyura’s arrival instill increasing anxiety in the already frightened townspeople. Visitors and all sorts of dubious characters are scurrying around on the street. Anxiety is even in the air. This is how Bulgakov depicted the situation in Kyiv in Last year war. And he used the image of the house in the novel “The White Guard” so that its heroes could hide, at least for a while, from the impending danger. The characters of the main characters are revealed within the walls of the Turbins’ apartment. Everything outside of it is like another world, scary, wild and incomprehensible.

Intimate conversations

The theme of home plays an important role in the novel The White Guard. The Turbins’ apartment is cozy and warm. But here, too, the heroes of the novel argue and conduct political discussions. Alexei Turbin, the oldest resident of this apartment, scolds the Ukrainian hetman, whose most harmless offense is that he forced the Russian population to speak a “vile language.” Next, he spews curses at representatives of the hetman’s army. However, the obscenity of his words does not detract from the truth that lies within them.

Myshlaevsky, Stepanov and Shervinsky, Nikolka’s younger brother - everyone is excitedly discussing what is happening in the city. And also present here is Elena, the sister of Alexei and Nikolka.

But the image of the house in the novel “The White Guard” is not the embodiment of a family hearth and not a refuge for dissident individuals. This is a symbol of what is still bright and real in a dilapidated country. A political change always gives rise to unrest and robbery. And people, in peacetime, seemingly quite decent and honest, in difficult situations show their true colors. Turbines and their friends are few of those who have not been made worse off by the changes in the country.

Thalberg's betrayal

At the beginning of the novel, Elena's husband leaves the house. He runs into the unknown in a “rat run.” Listening to her husband’s assurances that Denikin will soon return with the army, Elena, “old and ugly,” understands that he will not return. And so it happened. Thalberg had connections, he took advantage of them and was able to escape. And already at the end of the work, Elena learns about his upcoming marriage.

The image of the house in the novel “The White Guard” is a kind of fortress. But for cowardly and selfish people, it is like a sinking ship for rats. Talberg flees, and only those who can trust each other remain. Those who are not capable of betrayal.

Autobiographical work

Based on own life experience Bulgakov created this novel. “The White Guard” is a work in which the characters express the thoughts of the author himself. The book is not national, since it is dedicated only to a certain social stratum close to the writer.

Bulgakov's heroes turn to God more than once in the most difficult moments. There is complete harmony and mutual understanding in the family. This is exactly how Bulgakov imagined his ideal house. But perhaps the theme of the house in the novel “The White Guard” is inspired by the author’s youthful memories.

Universal hatred

In 1918, bitterness prevailed in the cities. It had an impressive scale, as it was generated by the centuries-old hatred of peasants towards nobles and officers. And to this it is also worth adding the anger of the local population towards the occupiers and Petliurists, whose appearance is awaited with horror. The author depicted all this using the example of the Kyiv events. But only parents' house in the novel “The White Guard” is a bright, kind image that inspires hope. And here it’s not only Alexey, Elena and Nikolka who can take refuge from the external storms of life.

The Turbins’ house in the novel “The White Guard” also becomes a haven for people who are close in spirit to its inhabitants. Myshlaevsky, Karas and Shervinsky became family to Elena and her brothers. They know about everything that happens in this family - about all the sorrows and hopes. And they are always welcome here.

Mother's testament

Turbina Sr., who died shortly before the events described in the work, bequeathed her children to live together. Elena, Alexey and Nikolka keep their promise, and only this saves them. Love, understanding and support - the components of a true Home - do not allow them to perish. And even when Alexey is dying, and doctors call him “hopeless,” Elena continues to believe and finds support in prayers. And, to the surprise of the doctors, Alexey recovers.

The author paid much attention to the interior elements in the Turbins' house. Thanks to small details a striking contrast is created between this apartment and the one located on the floor below. The atmosphere in Lisovich's house is cold and uncomfortable. And after the robbery, Vasilisa goes to the Turbins for spiritual support. Even this seemingly unpleasant character feels safe in Elena and Alexei’s house.

The world outside this house is mired in confusion. But here everyone still sings songs, sincerely smiles at each other and boldly looks danger in the eyes. This atmosphere also attracts another character - Lariosik. Talberg's relative almost immediately became one of his own here, which Elena's husband failed to do. The thing is that the arriving guest from Zhitomir has such qualities as kindness, decency and sincerity. And they are mandatory for a long stay in the house, the image of which was depicted so vividly and colorfully by Bulgakov.

"The White Guard" is a novel that was published more than 90 years ago. When a play based on this work was staged in one of the Moscow theaters, the audience, whose fates were so similar to the lives of the heroes, cried and fainted. This work became extremely close to those who lived through the events of 1917-1918. But the novel did not lose relevance even later. And some fragments in it are unusually reminiscent of the present time. And this once again confirms that the present literary work always, at any time relevant.