The influence of M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” to Yu Hua’s novel “Brothers”: carnivalization as a way of forming a novel narrative

Bao Likhun ORCID: 0009-0004-1448-7056 Postgraduate student; Department of Russian and Foreign Literature; Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 6, of. - lihong.bao@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Chinese culture has a great tradition of interaction with Russian literature, dating back to the second half of the XIX century. Researchers talk about the dialogue between Chinese and Russian cultures, that in Chinese fiction of the XX – early XXI centuries, in the works of various Chinese writers, the traditions of A. I. Herzen ^[1], I. S. Turgenev ^[2], L. N. Tolstoy ^[3], A. P. Chekhov ^[4] and other Russian authors. It appeared in Chinese culture in the twentieth century. Russian Russian Russian Russian literature is still alive; being original, embodying deep national and cultural traditions, Chinese literature, nevertheless, largely follows the Russian tradition, and Chinese writers perceive Russian predecessors as mentors and even older brothers, which is due to their deep respect for the Russian culture of the "golden" period – the second half of the XIX – first half of the XX century. Mikhail Bulgakov is also known in China, as well as many of his famous works, including the novel "The Master and Margarita".

Literature review

There is a separate branch in Chinese literary studies – Chinese Bulgakov studies, within which long-term traditions of studying the work of M. A. Bulgakov have developed. The acquaintance with the writer in China took place quite late – in the late 1970s - 1980s, which is associated with the return of M. A. Bulgakov's legacy to Soviet and Russian culture during this period. As Yu. Han notes, from that time to the present day, interest in the writer in China, including in literary circles, has constantly increased ^{[5, p. 113]}. According to the characteristics of Ts. Guo and A.V. Chistyakova, the stage of acquaintance with the writer's work was replaced by the stage of initial research, and since the 2000s by the stage of in-depth study ^{[6, p. 83]}.

The work of M. A. Bulgakov attracts Chinese and Russian literary critics for various reasons. Firstly, there is a peculiar refraction of the "Chinese" theme in it, since the Russian writer repeatedly turned in his works of fiction to the theme of China and the images of the Chinese. This aspect of cultural relations is considered by L. Bao ^[7], C. Yao ^[8], I. S. Uryupin ^[9] et al. Secondly, Chinese writers and literary critics see in the works of M. A. Bulgakov something culturally close, corresponding to the worldview, mentality, views of representatives of Chinese culture on life, the world, man and society, providing an intercivilizational dialogue ^[10]. Carnivalization turned out to be one of these common cultural dominants.

The purpose of the article is to identify the elements of carnivalization in the novels of M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" and Yu Hua "Brothers", to assess the continuity in the use of this technique by the Chinese writer. The texts of these novels became the material for the study.

The results of the study

Yu Hua was born in 1960, and his youth fell at a time when the legacy of M. A. Bulgakov gained wide popularity in China. Yu Hua's acquaintance with the work of M. A. Bulgakov is beyond doubt, and this acquaintance can be called deep, since Yu Hua was engaged in the analysis of Bulgakov's texts, in particular, he published the essay "Bulgakov and the Master and Margarita" in the magazine "Reading" for 1996 (No. 11). Ch. Xie calls Yu Hua, together with Yu Jie, two Chinese writers who contributed to "the perception of M. Bulgakov's work and the spread of the fame of the Russian writer among mass Chinese readers" ^{[11, p. 127]}.

The famous Russian philosopher and literary critic M. M. Bakhtin began to speak about carnivalization as a process of changing consciousness, worldview and culture, observed in Modern times and reflecting the traditions of the Middle Ages, who defined it as "complete liberation from Gothic seriousness in order to pave the way to a new, free and sober seriousness" ^{[12, p. 226]}. The carnival tradition has firmly entered into aesthetics, poetics, and the worldview of man and manifested itself in a laughing culture, the cult of physicality and eroticism, parody, debunking ideals, demonstrating anti-morality, anti-norm, violations of generally accepted rules, ridicule of death, demonstrative desacralization of the sacred and much more. The deep roots of carnivalization in culture, its vivid manifestation in literature and language are noted by many modern researchers. In particular, M. N. Krylova believes that it has become the most important way of a person's reaction to strange, incomprehensible, illogical phenomena occurring in the surrounding world ^{[13, p. 31]}. In China, M. M. Bakhtin's theory became famous in the 1980s and turned out to be surprisingly consonant with the Chinese tradition of describing reality.

A number of researchers write about the manifestations of carnivalization in the works of M. A. Bulgakov in general and in the novel "The Master and Margarita", in particular. G. M. Ibatullina and R. A. Baranova note the "grotesquely fantastic eccentricity" of the novel ^{[14, p. 48]}, N. Sanai characterizes the scenes of the "carnival" in the novel "The Master and Margarita" as an illustration of M. Bakhtin's theoretical constructions ^[15]. The fact that carnivalization is part of the aesthetics of the novel "Brothers" by Yu Hua is also noted by some literary critics. Thus, Y. Lee reveals the writer's adherence to the principles of carnivalization in the depiction of meaningless and ridiculous situations, "the accentuation of unconscious instincts (sexual attraction), the predominance of the material and bodily beginning of life" ^{[16, p. 148]}. At the same time, in a comparative aspect, in an attempt to establish genetic connections, carnivalization in the novels "The Master and Margarita" and "Brothers" has not yet been considered.

In the novel "The Master and Margarita", the reader sees Moscow in the post-revolutionary period, in the 1930s. The novel "Brothers" describes the life and relationships of two stepbrothers against the background of time, in the context of historical events, and the author covers an important period for Chinese history from the 1960s to the 2000s. The image of a portrait of a man against the background of an epoch is characteristic of both writers.

In both M. A. Bulgakov and Yu Hua, carnivality is manifested through the organization of a narrative according to the laws of carnival action. Writers create carnival chaos on the pages of their novels, in which what happens in the future, the actions of the characters, often insane, and their future are difficult to guess. The Russian writer embodies chaos with the help of the image of Woland, in whose actions the moral and immoral, the present and the unreal, the modern and what happened a long time ago, are closely intertwined, as well as with the help of constant movement of action from one space and time to another. Woland does what he wants, freely moves from one location to another, including from the real to the unreal, manipulates characters, openly mystifies, is present everywhere at the same time, brings chaos to the orderly Moscow world and at the same time surprisingly organizes it. For example, he captures the essence of the changes that have happened to Muscovites surprisingly quickly and accurately: "Well, they are frivolous... well, well ... and mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts... ordinary people ... in general, they resemble the former ... the housing issue only spoiled them..." ^{[17, p. 143]}. In the Chinese author, chaos is present in the descriptions of daily events that happen to the characters; life itself is chaos, in it no one knows who will succeed, who will not, who will rise from the bottom to the very top, and who will face a terrible fall.

The narrative of both authors is characterized by the grotesque. If something is described, then the image will necessarily be brought to the point of absurdity, not only to the edge, but also beyond the edge of the narrative, moral, behavioral norm. The narrative is also associated with the combination and simultaneous opposition of high and low. The prevalence of the low, bringing it to the fore, show that high words, a pompous benefactor are just a mask behind which the true, very base, thoughts and desires of the heroes are hidden. The base always becomes apparent, no matter how carefully it is hidden behind the sublime. In the novel by M. A. Bulgakov, all the women who gave preference to overseas outfits during the performance in the Variety Show end up naked. In Yu Hua's novel, the collapse of the high symbolizes a beauty contest among virgins, in which not a single virgin took part. All the participants "went in friendly rows to the gynecological departments of different clinics and performed an operation to restore their virginity" ^{[18, p. 413]}.

In the novels "The Master and Margarita" and "The Brothers", there is a blurring of boundaries, firstly, between the ridiculous and the tragic, and secondly, between the real and unreal worlds. Homeric comical and ridiculous scenes are interspersed with descriptions of dramatic and touching events. In Yu Hua, they do not just alternate, but combine, find unity, for example, in the scene where Song Fanping brings the body of the husband of a pregnant Li Lan who drowned in the toilet. This act is both shameful and heroic, it shows how low the heroes have fallen and how high they are able to rise.

The narrative moves between the real and unreal worlds. In the novel by M. A. Bulgakov, this is a quite visible movement from the ordinary world of Moscow to the world of wonders of Woland, where witches exist, where you can become invisible and fly on a broom, where eternal life is possible. In Yu Hua's novel, the world itself seems to be fabulous, absurd, and everything described by the author does not fit into the framework of ordinary Chinese life. What is worth is the scene in which a Shaved Li is seriously armed with mining equipment to explore Lin Hong's newly acquired virginity: "Naked Li in a miner's helmet with a flashlight was belted with a leather belt on which hung a battery. A wire stretched from her back to the helmet, like a traditional braid" ^{[18, p. 515]}. In this description, we see vivid manifestations of carnivality: the naturalness of obscenity, the introduction of the element of the bottom into human everyday life, characteristic of Yu Hua's novel.

In both works, one of the manifestations of the carnival element is the image of the crowd. Carnival is a crowded, nationwide event in which many people take part. M. A. Bulgakov portrays a crowd of spectators at the Variety theater. The people in this crowd (Muscovites) are united in their desire to have beautiful clothes, apartments; they are united by common needs and intentions. The crowd in the novel The Master and Margarita is a separate hero who does something in a single impulse, there are no personalities, individual people with their own opinions: "The crowd was buzzing around, discussing an unprecedented incident; in short, there was a nasty, vile, seductive, pig scandal..." ^{[17, p. 75]}. The writer also presents an interesting version of the crowd in the depiction of the Satan's ball, where each guest is full of his own evil, is a violator of norms. Yu Hua, at the very beginning of the novel, draws a carnival procession of people leading home a fourteen-year-old Shaved Li, who was caught spying on women in the bathroom. This image of the crowd, united in their thoughts and hostile, understandable and scary, will appear in the novel more than once. For example, when Li Lan "walked with the children through the streets of the Great Cultural Revolution, between the red flags and shouts that flooded the village, as if there was not a soul nearby. Many people pointed at her with their fingers, but Li Lan did not see her" ^{[18, p. 138]}. In both works, people in the crowd enjoy having fun, showing not their best qualities and readily forgetting about the rules of decency, humanistic values and their human essence.

In the crowd, in accordance with the aesthetics of carnivality, images of buffoons stand out – people who seem to exist in order to amuse the crowd, shade what is rational in it and demonstrate the element of the irrational. In M. A. Bulgakov's novel, the buffoons are characters from Woland's retinue (Koroviev, the Cat Behemoth, Gella, Azazello), and in Yu Hua's novel, such a buffoon is Shaved Lee himself, the main character. The authors also use a similar carnival technique – the transformation of the jester in the finale, the loss of his basic buffoonish, "stupid" qualities and the acquisition of completely different, opposite ones. At the end of the novel "The Master and Margarita", Woland's buffoonish retinue transforms into beautiful knights. Here is an example of one of the transformations: "The night tore off the fluffy tail of a Hippopotamus, stripped off its fur and scattered its shreds across the swamps. The one who was the cat who amused the prince of darkness now turned out to be a thin young man, a page demon, the best buffoon that ever existed in the world. Now he also became quiet and flew soundlessly, exposing his young face to the light pouring from the moon" ^{[17, p. 434]}. Yu Hua's Bald Li turns from a ridiculed, excrement-stained, constantly beaten poor man on the street into an idol of men, an object of women's dreams and a rich billionaire: "Many years later, Shaved Li became our Liuzhen billionaire and decided to fly into space as a tourist" ^{[18, p. 28]}.

The carnival images of madmen created by the authors become part of the aesthetics of carnivalization. M. A. Bulgakov pays a lot of attention to the motive of insanity: Ivan Bezdomny goes crazy, the Master is in a madhouse, the world itself is mad, all its details and even the waltz: "... And a completely crazed waltz flew after her" ^{[17, p. 268]}. In the novel "Brothers", the epithets fool, idiot, idiotic are among the most popular and help the author describe the madness of what is happening: "... Factory workers were still standing around with idiotic grins, as if they were incapable of any other facial expression" ^{[18, p. 200]}.

Carnival is also a deliberately calm attitude towards death in the novels, a carnival depiction of a "cheerful", grotesque, "fearless" death in a comical situation. This is especially evident in Yu Hua, at the very beginning of whose book we learn that the father of the Shaved Li drowned in the toilet, spying on women: "This dear daddy of his, after looking at women's asses in the toilet, fell inadvertently into the gutter, and drowned" ^{[18, p. 4]}. However, M. A. Bulgakov also has no indisputable, unquestionable piety before death, and a series of ridiculous deaths begins with the Komsomol member Annushka, who "cut off Berlioz's head": "... The tram covered Berlioz, and a round dark object was thrown onto the cobblestone slope under the lattice of the Patriarchal Alley. Rolling down this slope, he jumped on the cobblestones of Bronnaya. It was Berlioz's severed head" ^{[17, p. 53]}.

The element of the carnival, manifested in the works under consideration, leads the characters to liberation, illustrates their desire for inner freedom. Real freedom in the conditions described in the novels turns out to be impossible, and only carnivalization helps to achieve, even if not freedom itself, but its illusion. Having passed through serious trials, the Master is free at the end of the novel "The Master and Margarita". Margarita gets freedom from her husband, now she can always be with the Master, however, she was also free flying on a broom over Moscow. Frida is freed from her eternal torture. In Yu Hua's novel, it turns out that only death can be true freedom, and a person can achieve it by himself, by suicide. This motif is manifested not only in the key scene of Song Gang's death, but, for example, in this description of the voluntary death of the deceased Sun Wei's father: "Tortured, at that moment he did not feel pain at all. The one going to death was suddenly freed from his lifelong torment. After sitting down properly, he took a couple of deep breaths, took a nail with his left hand and stuck it into his forehead" ^{[18, p. 158]}. Turning to the story of the Master and Margarita, we understand that they managed to free themselves only after death by taking poison. They did not receive eternal immortality and eternal love in this world. This attitude to death looks quite carnivalesque, representing the reverse side of carnival – gloomy and hopeless, which life-long unrestrained fun tries to hide and overcome.

The element of carnivality in the stories described by the writers also concerns the attitude of the characters to power, to those who represent it in the real world and therefore oppose ordinary people. The ridicule of the authorities, the loosening of the existing order, and the blurring of differences between people of different positions are associated with carnivalization. In the world of carnival, the differences between people are determined not by their position in society, in the power pyramid, but by completely different qualities.

In M. A. Bulgakov's novel, the main opinion about power is expressed in the words of Yeshua: "Among other things, I said <...> that such power is violence against people and that the time will come when there will be no power of the Caesars or any other power" ^{[17, p. 35]}. In Yu Hua's novel, the essence of power is smugly explained by the Shaved Li: "Chairman Mao correctly said: the rifle gives birth to power" ^{[18, p. 238]}. Disillusionment with power correlates with carnival disillusionment with lofty ideals; for the heroes, it is obvious that not the best people are in power, and their presence there does not improve the lives of all other members of society at all.

In addition, carnivality in the novels "The Master and Margarita" and "The Brothers" is expressed through polyphony, carnival polyphony, forbidden jokes, carnival bullying, which may become the subject of our further research.

It cannot be said that the application of the principle of carnivalization is carried out by Russian and Chinese writers identically, on the contrary, a number of differences can be found. For example, Yu Hua constantly immerses the reader in an environment of obscenity and abuse, and M. A. Bulgakov does not follow this path. In the depiction of bodily excrements, organs, viscera, and physicality, Yu Hua turns out to be closer to Rabelais than M. A. Bulgakov, through whose text he perceived carnival culture. These ways of expressing carnivality turned out to be close to traditional Chinese naturalism. The similarity in the application of the technique is not external, but internal, genetic and typological, manifested at the level of an idea, as a result of the authors' desire to show the absurdity of the surrounding reality.

Conclusion

Carnivalization in the works of both authors is consistent with the principle of avant-garde aesthetics, as well as with the idea of linking the creativity of writers with reality, its dependence on the historical situation. Both M. A. Bulgakov and Yu Hua needed carnivalization to show the absurdity and absurdity of the world order, to contrast and vividly depict the main problems of the time. We believe that the writers did not turn to the aesthetics of carnivalization by chance. Both novels were created in the context of the breakdown of the previous world and the beginning of the construction of a new one, and this new world turned out to be far from as rosy as it was imagined, based on the idea implemented by the revolutionaries. In the course of social transformations, people in the reality surrounding the writers showed not their best qualities, and the chaos into which the revolution turned out to be closely connected with the carnival nature of humanity.

Undoubtedly, M. M. Bakhtin's theory of carnival and carnivalization has its own cultural significance and demonstrates that a variety of cultural phenomena and products can be subjected to carnivalization independently of each other. However, we argue that Yu Hua's novel "Brothers" absorbed the carnival foundations not only from the general cultural space, but also from the space of Russian literature, in particular, from the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". The work of M. A. Bulgakov became for Yu Hua a kind of textbook of carnival aesthetics, demonstrated how carnivality becomes an integral and important component of the narrative space, influencing the events depicted, the characters.

At a time when closer and closer contacts are being established between Russian and Chinese literary critics, the prospects of the research conducted in this work consist in identifying an increasingly wide range of dialogical comparisons, interactions, and echoes between the works of M. A. Bulgakov and Chinese writers. Modern Chinese literature is able to concentrate all the achievements of world artistic culture and embody them in original artistic texts in which traditions and innovations are creatively intertwined.