lights, comfortable operating-rooms,” being the only physiciannfor dozens of snowy miles around, he worked without sparingnhimself, 12 to 14 hours a day, often without accepting a pennynfrom his benighted peasant-patients.nBy his very being, by his doctor’s hands (and not by ideasninvented in big cities), trying to do for them everything hencould, he, at the same time, did not entertain any idealisticnillusions regarding the people, the “muzhiks.”nIn his brilliant novel The White Guard, the intelligent andnbrave artillery captain Myshlaevsky (having spent a dreadfulnJanuary night in the snow, in the trenches near Kiev, where he,nwith a unit of officers as idealistic as he, defended the city fromnthe nationalist bands of ataman Petlyura) exclaims when he isnasked about the fires in the city’s outskirts: “… and that’s,ndammit, your God-bearing people of Dostoevsky’s torchingnthe city!”nThis sober statement is Bulgakov’s answer to all the propagatorsnof the idea of “God-bearing peoples,” as well as all thenprosecutors shouting about “Murderer peoples.”nThere are no “God-bearing peoples,” Bulgakov says; eachnnation is capable of producing the cutthroats of atamannPetlyura (or Ernst Kaltenbrunner or Pol Pot, we might add).nJust as there are individual murderers but no nation murderers,nthere are no “God-bearing” nations, only “God-bearing”nindividuals.nBulgakov, as, perhaps, only Chekhov, was remarkably freenfrom that infection which afflicted all great Russian writers —nthe infection of the Utopian idealization of “the muzhik.” Withnthe clear, calm eye of a doctor he looked at this benighted,noppressed, superstitious people he loved and attended.nAt that time, working as a country doctor, Bulgakov startednwriting. As he afterwards recalled, “One night, in the bleaknautumn of 1919, traveling in a derelict train, by the light of ansmall candle stuck in a kerosene bottle, I wrote my first littlenstory.”nLater, when he was a famous writer, someone asked himnwhat one needs in order to write well. “Just two things,”nBulgakov answered, “first—you should write only what youncan see vividly in your mind, and second—you must truly lovenyour characters.”nBulgakov is often compared with Gogol. But this is notnentirely correct. Yes, his feats of imagination, surrealisticnjuxtaposition of episodes, even his at times hurried, slightlynbreathless narrator’s voice do remind one of Gogol. However,nGogol anything but loved his characters. He, indeed, loved tonvivisect them. Bulgakov, on the other hand, relates to hisncharacters passionately. But it is not the passion of Dostoevsky,none of the main ingredients of which was pity (quite oftennrather hysterical). One of the main ingredients of Bulgakov’snpassion is respect, and the admiration for human dignity.nIt was dignity that gave Captain Myshlaevsky, ColonelnNay-Turs, the Turbin family from The White Guard, thenstrength to live through the savage years of the civil war; it wasndignity that sustained the life of Bulgakov’s favorite hero (henwrote a novel and a play about him), Jean Baptiste Poquelin denMoliere; it was dignity that maintained Bulgakov’s own existencenwhen he, as a young doctor, was struggling with what heneloquently called the “Egyptian darkness” (“No . . . I’ll fight.nI shall . . . I . . . And sweet sleep envelopes me after thennight’s trials. Egyptian darkness enshrouds me like a fog . . .nand I’m within it . . . either with a sword, or with a stetho­nscope. I’m walking . . . I’m fighting …” he writes in ThenNotes of a Young Doctor) and later, when he, as a well-knownnwriter, was trying to survive in the ghastly Moscow of then1930’s.n* * *nIn his themes, world view, style, Bulgakov is a distinctivelynmodern writer. Yet there is one crucial moment whichnseparates him from the mainstream of what is commonly callednmodern prose and makes him a direct descendant of the greatnclassical narrative tradition.nAs David Hume said, writing should be simple, but notnobvious. (What a simple but not obvious statement itself!) Innthe works of great writers—be it Cervantes or Swift, Balzac ornGoethe, Dickens or Flaubert, Tolstoy or Chekhov—ideas,nthoughts, and emotions are profound and complex {hownprofound and how complex depends, of course, upon thengenius of the individual writer), but the style, almost withoutnexception, is clear, direct, and simple. Sometimes, as in thencase of later Tolstoy, even deliberately simplified for maximumnaccessibility.nOne of the prominent traits of “serious” modern writing isnexactly the opposite. Emotions, thoughts, ideas most often arenuncomplex, banal, or even plainly stupid, but the style isncontrived, tangled, and baroque. An ordinary reader is confusednand perplexed. It seems to him that in order tonunderstand it, he must have a Ph.D. in psychology and a deepnexperience in psychoanalysis. And frustrated, he plunges intonthe kind of writing where all these platitude ideas and mediocrenthoughts are expressed in a style simple and obvious. Then,nLove Story supplants for him The Sorrows of Young Werther,n2001: A Space Odyssey takes the place of Gulliver’s Travels,nand the stories of Ann Beattie replace the stories of AntonnChekhov.nComparing the prose of Turgenev (which he truly enjoyed)nand Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov once observed that when younread Turgenev you continually admire his writing virtuosity,nbut reading Tolstoy you so entirely live in his prose that youndon’t even notice his mastery, and you have to “step back” innorder to appreciate his dazzling craftsmanship.nThe same may, in a way, be said about Bulgakov’s prose. Incannot resist quoting here an excerpt—describing a birth onnthe bank of a stream — from The Notes of a Young Doctor.nEarly one spring morning, when the doctor-narrator is in hisnbedroom shaving, the hospital janitor Yegorych, wearing bignbattered boots, charges in and announces that “a birth is takingnplace in the bushes above the stream.”nI remember wiping my left cheek with a towel andndashing off with Yegorych. And the three of usnrunning to the stream, which was muddy and swollennamong naked clumps of willow — the midwife withnher forceps, a bundle of gauze and a jar of iodine; I,nmy eyes popping out of my head, and behind us,nYegorych.nEvery five steps he squatted down on the groundnand, cursing, tugged at his left boot: its sole had tornnloose. The wind flew into our faces, the sweet, savagenwind of the Russian spring; the midwife PelageyanIvanovna’s comb fell from her hair, her bun camenloose and flapped against her shoulder.n”Why the devil do you drink away all yournnnJANUARY 1988 / 9n