City in the 1920s drama of Mikhail Bulgakov (“The days of the Turbins”, “Zoyka’s apartment” and “The flight”): an intermediate link between “one’s own” and “other’s” spaces

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of different images of cities in Bulgakov's plays of
the 1920s “The Days of the Turbins”, “Zoyka’s Apartment” and “The Flight” as a public ambivalent
space, included in the opposition “one’s own / home vs. other’s / world”, and the discovery of their
differentiation and typology. In these plays two kinds of city are distinguished, i.e. imaginary (in
the memories or dreams of the characters), which they perceive as their ideal place, and “real”
city as a place of action, which the heroes consider alien and hostile. Interesting in this aspect are
the cities of Paris and Constantinople in the play “The Flight”, which appear in two ways: they
were first imagined by the protagonists as the ideal destination of their wanderings, and then,
after the action was directly put in these cities, they turn out to be quite different from those in
the dreams of the protagonists. The ideal cities that emerge in the dreams and memories of the
characters are like a garden of paradise and a home space. And the urban spaces where the action
takes place are characterized by a number of common features, such as the intrusion of natural
forces into cultural space; the disruption of administrative functions; the disruption of social balance and the breakdown of cultural unity; a general atmosphere
of grotesque infernality. It is concluded that the city in Bulgakov's
drama of the 1920s can act as one’s own space, analogous to home,
and can also be included in a hostile world. This type of alternative
character of city allows it to become a unique component of the
opposition “one’s own vs. other’s”, which is a marked principle of
the playwright's construction of his artistic world.

Keywords:

Mikhail Bulgakov, сity, archetype one’s own vs. other’s, Russian drama of the 1920s, The Days of the Turbins, Zoyka’s Apartment, The Flight