Prologue-1 (Cracked Wristwatch)

I think it is going to be really interesting to see what sorts of messages Bulgakov sends with this book, seeing as he worked on it for almost the entirety of his life (and never even finished it).  From what the introduction says of Bulgakov, it seems that he dealt more directly with the Russian government than any of the other Russian authors we have read so far (though they were all political satires).  Because he has such insight, I am excited to see what Bulgakov has to say (although I think it’s safe to say it won’t be too positive), and how his opinions compare to those of the other political satirists.

            One of the things that stuck out to me in this first chapter was the difference between Berlioz and Homeless.  In the glimpses we get into their thoughts, they seem to have quite different (nearly opposite) reactions to nearly every event that occurs.  The first time we see this in their respective reactions to the foreigner.  As the narrator says, “the poet was repelled by the foreigner from his very first words, while Berlioz rather like him” (page 8).  Other than that, there are many other differences in opinion.  For instance, Berlioz assumes the foreigner is German while the poet thinks he is English, and later on Berlioz thinks him to be French and the poet thinks he is Polish.  There is also the fact that Berlioz does not smoke, and that while Berlioz maintains that they are both atheists, the poet never states his own views for himself.  Instead, all we know about the poet’s religious views is from the poem he wrote, which argues not that Jesus never existed, but rather that he was a bad person.  I do not know if these differences between the two men really signify or amount to anything, but they simply stuck out to me, and hopefully the rest of the story will provide some explanation.

            I also found the foreigner’s argument for why God existed quite interesting.  The idea that humans cannot control the world (meaning that God must) because they can die unexpectedly reminded me of Ivan Ilych.  What I took away from Ivan Ilych was the idea that since we can die suddenly and unexpectedly, we should live full genuine lives.  While the foreigner does not necessarily mention the idea of living life to its fullest, he does mention sudden death and even references the same sense of denial that surrounds death in Russian culture.  He speaks of how everyone around a dying man from the doctors to his family will ignore reality and continue acting as if nothing is wrong (“Your relatives begin to lie to you” page 11).  Maybe I’m just fixated on the idea of the “bear suit”, but as with all the works we have read, I see more references to the idea of Russians living life in a bear suit in this story.

-Cracked Wristwatch