Bulgakov's Last Decade: The Writer as Hero by J.A.E. Curtis (review)

Book Reviews 76). While he is stating this by way of comparison with "the decaying intellectuals who keep recurring in the earlier plays" (p. 76), it still rings false. "Average" hardly describes a half-buried heroine dreaming of "the happy day to come when flesh melts"; nor does "world-loving" do justice to someone preoccupied with suicide much of the time. Play is discussed briefly as yet a further refinement of Beckett's dramaturgical craft, perhaps supreme in "the ultimate diminishment of dramatic character, action and dialogue" (p. 92), Kennedy appears more at home with Beckett's prose works, which are the focus of the shorter second section of the book. Unfortunately. as in the first section, Kennedy has chosen the most well-known of Beckett's works - in this case the trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unllamable. Speaking of the three pieces as a unit, Kennedy states that' 'the very fonn and texture of the novels embody the cycle of decline .... As the narrator's body and mind diminish, so the resources of writing diminish too" (p. 105). This is most graphically illustrated in Malone Dies " where the narrator's constantly diminishing pencil and consciousness finally peter out" (p. 105) simullaneously. Kennedy 's analysis concentrates on this sly relationship between the pen, the penner and the penned, forcing our attention toward the "omnipresent though impotent narrator.' t This is the strongest section of the book, particularly in Kennedy's eloquent step-by-step tracing of the trilogy's pattern of "failing and falling" as Molloy's relative bulk and mobility deteriorates into the shapeless and motionless soliloquy of The UmiQmabfe , This book will be of great value for those being introduced to ~eckett . but dated to the already initiated. Kennedy appears to recognise this shortcoming, explaining his exclusion of Beckett's recent works as an executive decision: " Most of these [recent] works require repeated and very attentive close reading (which is one reason why the publishers fell that a proper study of the late fiction and drama would go beyond the aims and scope of the book)" (p. 160). Though it is true that Beckett's later works do require close reading, does this justify another familiar treatise on Beckett's betterknown works? It seems almost obligatory, given the surplus of Becketteers, that new avenues of criticism be explored and developed. This, however, is c1early not Kennedy's aim, KEN TALLMAN, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO l,A,E. CURTIS. Bulgakov's Last Decade: The Writer as Hero, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987. Pp. xii, 250. $44.50. Mikhail Bulgakov is now the most frequently performed of Soviet playwrights both at home and abroad. This was not the case during the author's lifetime (t891-1940), when almost all his works were under a ban and he was forced to write "for the drawer." In 1930 Bulgakov sent a letter to Stalin asking for permission to emigrate. "Am I conceivable in the USSR?" the writer asked, complaining that he was "afflicted Book Reviews 157 by misery. penury, and ruin." Although his request was denied, Bulgakov was spared the horrors of trial and imprisonment because Stalin took a personal interest in his career. But he was the victim of cultural bureaucrats and censors who made his life a nightmare. Bulgakov's triumph today is in direct proportion to his f~ilure then. Bulgakov's Last Decade by l.A.E. Curtis recounts the author's losing battle with the Stalinist regime, which accused him of being a class enemy of Soviet reality. Undoubtedly. this charge was true. Bulgakov was a literary conservative who rejected the Soviet literature and theatre of his time. He particularly disliked Mayakovsky and Meyerhold and proclaimed his allegiance to the cultural traditions of the past. In the playhouse, he argued, there should be curtains that rise - without them, "all the mystery of the theatre vanishes." Bulgarkov was a writer who wrote passionately about other writers. A community of feeling bound him to his literary predecessors. What Bulgakov considered essential to represent was not the creative process (something intuitive and subjective), but the destiny of the artist. He was more interested in the creators than in their creations...