Bulgakov’s play Bliss

 

Today’s topic

We will discuss Bulgakov’s play Bliss, which sets the stage for the later Soviet film that we’ll be watching for next week. How do Bulgakov’s satires—and subsequently the film adaptation of one of them—treat the Soviet project as science-fictional?

Course management

Your SF definitions (part 2) will be due by 5pm on W 3-3! Analyze a work of SF through the lens of our definition.

How does your work estrange?

What novum (or nova) in your work can you identify?

What is the work’s cognitive element? This question will require the most analysis!

Your work may fall short of reaching Suvinian potential! Selected texts are available on Canvas.

I’ll select a number of model papers to share with everyone.

A comment on Suvin’s definition

In RUR (but unlike in Aelita), we saw that the estrangement and the cognitive (return) are tightly integrated with each. For Suvin, this close link is essential.

 

We could imagine a case where a strong link exists, but the work still falls short of reaching the full potential of what SF can do: my brief analysis of Star Wars.(I own all the Star Wars films! It’s just not what SF at its best can do.)

Let’s go over the quiz on Bliss

1.  Engineer Rein invents: (a) a laser; (b) a spaceship; (c) a bomb; (d) a time machine.

2.  Bliss is: (a) a part of Moscow; (b) a drug; (c) the name of the engineer’s cat; (d) the name of the engineer’s lover.

3.  Miloslavsky is: (a) the engineer’s neighbor; (b) a resident of Bliss; (c) a thief; (d) the engineer’s relative.

4.  At the end of the play, the engineer returns home to a hero’s welcome: true or false.

5.  Briefly describe one specific feature of Bliss. Multiple possibilities, which we’ll discuss below.

Start-of-class discussion

1.  Howell’s “The Heart of Dogness” for a follow-up discussion of Heart of a Dog.

2.  Guide questions to the play.

1.  Where is the humor in the play? Is humor typical of SF or Fantasy works, and what purpose does it serve when it is used in these works and what purpose might it serve here?

2.  What function does time travel serve in the play? How does it facilitate Bulgakov’s satire?

3.  What points of contrast does Bulgakov set up between Moscow of the 1930s and Moscow of the future (year 2222)? Are they similar in any way?

4.  How do you read the message(s) of this play?

5.  How does this work fit into Suvin’s framework for SF as cognitive estrangement?

Note on Russian names

The Russian middle name is called a patronymic: David Ivanovich (“David, son of Ivan”); Anna Arkadievna (“Anna, daughter of Arkady”); Ivan Vasilievich (“Ivan, son of Vasily”).

Discussion of Bliss: contextualizing the play Bulgakov seemingly began writing it in 1929. He reworks it from 1933 onward.

One draft had an alternate title: The Dream of Engineer Rein.

March 1934: the play is contracted to the Moscow Satire Theatre

In April of that year, Bulgakov read the play to the theatre ensemble.

It is hard to imagine “mixing the incompatible: Bulgakov and the glorious Communist future.” The ensemble did like the character of Ivan the Terrible.

Bulgakov undertook a rewrite of the play, shifting its focus.

Bliss wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1966.

 

Main characters

Rein, an amateur scientist whose wife just left him.

Rein’s neighbor, whose apartment is robbed by… the actor-thief Miloslavsky. Bunsha, the housing bureaucrat or upravdom.

Ivan the Terrible, a tsar from Russia’s past. Avrora, Rein’s future lover.

Radamanov, her father and the People’s Commissar of Inventions in in 23^rd-century Bliss. Savvich, Avrora’s lover and director of the Institute of Harmony in 23^rd-century Bliss.

Anna, Radamanov’s secretary who falls in love with (and is exploited by?) Miloslavsky.

 

Bliss is still staged

One example is a 2014 production by School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. Gender-bending of roles here.

One reviewer writes that Rein “accidentally teleports from Moscow in the 20^th century to Moscow in the 23^rd century with a geriatric apartment supervisor and a kleptomaniac.” One emphasized theme in this staging is the “machinery of society” as a construct.

If we’re staging a play, how can/should we bring the written text to life?

 

Humor in the play

There’s lots: the actor-thief, the petty apparatchik Bunsha.

Humor is not all that typical of SF works, but it is strongly present in the Slavic tradition. Humor entertains, but is also use for satirical critique.

This play is “a sharply satirical work under its playful exterior.”

 

Time travel and satire

The play is a “satirical-romantic romp through history” that mocks the past, present, and a supposedly “ideal” future.

Bulgakov creates “an Everyman’s story of the desire to escape the false promises of the Revolution.”

 

Moscow in the 1930s versus Bliss in 2222

Are the Soviet ideals actually realized in Bliss?

It’s terribly boring: everything is planned and ritualized. It’s also rather bourgeois, which is deeply ironic.

The play warns about the dangers of trying to fully “organize humanity.”

Bunsha bears a resemblance to the “housing director” of the Soviet project as a whole. In mocking Bunsha, Bulgakov implicitly mocks Lenin(ism).

 

Bulgakov’s SF the SFness of the Soviet project

Bulgakov tries to answer the same question that the Soviet project: what if…? In doing so, he exposes it as a fraud.

He uses SF techniques to deny the SFness of the Soviet project itself.

 

Previewing next Tuesday’s film

The full title is Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession (1973).

We’ll see the same themes, and many of the same characters, as in Bliss. But we’ll also some key differences.

There are two characters in the film who are both named Ivan Vasilievich. These characters are played by the same actor! So who are they?

The film was/is hugely popular.

How does it help us trace the development of attitudes toward the Soviet project?

 

Texts for end-of-class discussion

1.  Meek, “The Hound of Hell” for more on Heart of a Dog.

2.  Materials on our Canvas page devoted to Bulgakov.

 

 

Your homework is on the week-by-week syllabus, but… watch the film Ivan Vasilievich (look at the guide questions first) and be sure to take the Canvas quiz on it before the start of class next Tuesday.