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Skyscrapers, Consular Territory, and Hell: What Bulgakov and Eizenshtein Learned about Space from Il'f and Petrov's America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Anne Nesbet
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Abstract

The Soviet comic writers Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov traveled across America in late 1935–36, gathering material for the travelogue published upon their return as “Odnoetazhnaia Amerika” (One-Story America) in the journal Znamia and then as a book in 1937, just at the time of Il'f's death. The book was a popular success and remarkably influential: the architectural structures of “One-Story America“—its skyscrapers, staircases, one-story bungalows—reappear in literary and cultural monuments of the 1930s and 1940s, namely Mikhail Bulgakov's novel about the Devil's eventful visit to Moscow, The Master and Margarita, and Sergei Eizenshtein's essays on montage. These works share an interest in the construction of space and perspective: paradoxical spatial constructions, embedded spaces, verticality, the “trick of the skyscraper,” and what Eizenshtein referred to as the “charm” of “acrobatic points of view.“

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 377 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2010

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References

1. Il'f, Il'ia and Petrov, Evgenii, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, vol. 4, “Odnoetazhnaia Amerika” (Moscow, 1996), 12.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 4:413.

3. Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, “Odnoetazhnaia Amerika,” Znamia,1936, no. 10: 3–187 and no. 11: 3–116; Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Moscow, 1937); Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, “Amerikanskie fotografii,” Ogonek, 1936, no. 11: 2 - 6 ; no. 12: 5–9; no. 13: 10–14; no. 14: 10–13; no. 15: 13–17; no. 16: 9–13; no. 17: 11–15; nos. 19–20: 18- 22; no. 21: 13–17; no. 22: 14–17; no. 23: 5–9; Erika Wolf, ed., Ilfand Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue ofTiuo Soviet Writers, trans. Anne O. Fisher (New York, 2007).

4. Sergei Mikhailovich Eizenshtein, Metod, vol. 2, Tainy masterov (Moscow, 2002), 71.

5. Bulgakova, E. S., Dnevnik Eleny Bulgakovoi (Moscow, 1990), 371 Google Scholar, note to entry of 15 April 1937. In the second edition of her diaries, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova removed this anecdote.

6. Mikhail Bulgakov, Moi dnevnik, in Dnevnik. Pis'ma. 1914–1940 (Moscow, 1997), 50–51.

7. Ardov, V., “Il'f i Petrov (Vospominaniia i mysli),” Znamia, 1945, no. 7: 142.Google Scholar

8. Alain Préchac, “Une oeuvre litteraire, mais aussi politique,” Lettres d'Amérique, Correspondance etjournaux, trans, and ed. Alain Préchac (Paris, 2004), 23, 293. It is true that Il'f was evidently prone to depression, but still I am skeptical about the “suicide“: the cover-up would have had to extend to Petrov making up stories about oxygen being brought in for Il'f to breathe at the end, and so on. In any event, the suicide stories point at least to the abrupt nature of Il'f's death, whatever its cause.

9. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 126 (26 November 1936).

10. Ibid., 240.

11. For a detailed account of Bulgakov's drafts, see Viktor Losev's introduction to Mikhail Bulgakov, Velikii kantsler: Chernovye redaktsii romana, “Master i Margarita” (Moscow, 1992), 5–21. The dictation of the “Cabaret” chapter is mentioned in Bulgakova's diary entry for 8 November 1934: “M. A. diktoval nine roman—stsenu v kabare.” See Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 78–79.

12. Il'f and Petrov's play was itself intended to be a Soviet replacement for the customary translated fare of the Music Hall. See Ianovskaia, Lidiia M., Pochemu vy pishete smeshno? (Moscow, 1969), 177.Google Scholar

13. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 79. The exact identity of the “play” Il'f and Petrov were discussing with Bulgakov is not clear (in 1935, some months later, they would be working, again with Kataev, on a play called Bogataia nevesta but the conversation with Bulgakov in November 1934 undoubtedly touched on the similarities between their current projects. For Bogataia nevesta, see Ianovskaia, L. M., Pochemu vy pishete smeshno? Ob I. Il'fe i E. Petrove, ikh zhizni i ikh iumore (Moscow, 1963), 150-51.Google Scholar

14. These bicyclists may have been inspired by the Pol'di brothers, who performed on the Moscow Music Hall stage. See Bulgakov, Velikii kantsler, 475–76.

15. “The original scenario, written on a theme taken from the life of a Soviet circus, took place on a low level and abounded with cheap comic devices of a low-minded sort and peculiarly ‘Odessan’ turns of phrase.” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 2450, op. 2, e/x 1518, 1. 8; this document not dated.

16. Letter signed for Mosfil'm by Vice-Director Sokol'skaia, dated 17 March 1936. Ibid., 11. 33–34.

17. Ibid.

18. Letter from Il'f to his wife, dated 29 October 1935, from New York, in Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, Odnoetazhnaia Amerika, ed. A. I. Il'f (Moscow, 2007), 440. A censored version of this letter (without the line about Aleksandrov) appears in Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:418.

19. Aleksandrov's interest in showgirls is reflected in the extravagant dance number late in Circus, in which flocks of girls in spangled outfits make patterns worthy of Busby Berkeley. The different aesthetic responses of Aleksandrov, on the one hand, and Il'f and Petrov, on the other, to spectacles involving showgirls become evident if one compares the radiant Circus set-pieces to the striptease described in an early chapter of Il'f and Petrov's Odnoetazhnaia Amerika: “The master of ceremonies came out on the pjoscenium, an athletic sort of man in a dinner jacket: ‘Applaud louder, and she'll take something off!’ […] The remaining ten girls in turn did the same thing. […] This pornography is so mechanized that it takes on a kind of factory-industrial character. In this spectacle there is as little eroticism as in the serial production of vacuum cleaners or calculating machines.” Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:38. The striptease can also be a kind of razoblachenie, later made literal in the undressing of the Muscovites taken in by the Variete “fashion show” in The Master and Margarita.

20. Bulgakova, Dnevnik, 95–96. See Parshin, Leonid, Chertovshchina v Amerikanskom posol'stve vMoskve, Hi 13zagadok MikhailaBulgakova (Moscow, 1991)Google Scholar, and Aleksandr Etkind, Eros nevozmozhnogo: Istoriiapsikhoanaliza v Rossii (Moscow, 1994). Etkind's book, which contains a chapter dedicated to the connection between the Bulgakovs and the American embassy, has also been translated into English as Eros of the Impossible: The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia (Boulder, Colo., 1997).

21. Bulgakov, Mikhail, Master i Margarita. Sobach'e serdtse (Moscow, 2006), 247, 251–52, 258.Google Scholar

22. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:40–41. As a model for the reception of foreigners in America, Il'f and Petrov probably also had Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit in mind.

23. Ibid.

24. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:16. These are the lines Mephistopheles sings upon his first appearance in the opera. Charles Gounod's Faust played regularly in Moscow; in Bulgakova's diaries there are several mentions of Faust performances.

25. Ibid., 4:120, 126.

26. Il'ia Il'f, Zapisnye knizhki, 1925–1937: Pervoe polnoe izdanie, ed. A. I. Il'f (Moscow, 2000), 447.

27. Gor'kii, M., “Gorod zheltogo d'iavola” [1906], Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1950), 7:8–9.Google Scholar

28. Il'f and Petrov appear to have gotten their American states confused. As Erika Wolf has discovered, this “Moscow” is almost certainly located in Michigan, not Ohio. Erika Wolf, personal communication, 17 February 2010.

29. Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, 233, 234, 234–35.

30. Eizenshtein finds a particularly vivid example of the embedded detail in Jan Van Eyck's painting The Arnolfini Portrait, a painting in which the detail of a mirror becomes a portal into another world: “And even more charming appears in ‘close-up’ the spherical minor from the family portrait of the Arnolfinis (Van Eyck), in which finally one can see the artist himself, reflected between the mirrored backs of the two spouses!” Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:64. Note that Eizenshtein seems to be drawing most of his examples from Kenneth Clark, 100 Details from Pictures in the National Gallery (London, 1938), in which details are presented independently from their original pictures. Eizenshtein's work on Dickens and Griffith fills the first three chapters of Tainy masterov: “Dikkens i Griffit,” “Peripetii pars pro toto” and “Griffit i my.“

31. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:77–78, 349. It is rather surprising, too, that elevators would get so much attention in the description of a ride on a ship; but their presence speaks to the verticality captured within the finite space of the boat.

32. Ibid., 4:15.

33. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:24

34. Evgenii Petrov, cited in Vliublennyi Valentin. Vliublennyi v Valentinu (Odessa, 1998), 124.

35. See Aleksei Loginov, “Fotonabliudeniia II'i Il'fa,” at www.fototools.ru/history/128869/ (accessed 20 November 2007; no longer available).

36. V. Ardov, “Il'f i Petrov (Vospominaniia i mysli),” Znamia, 1945, no. 7: 133.

37. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:413.

38. Wolf, ed., I If and Petrov's American Road Trip, 57.

39. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:194–95.

40. Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:104.

41. Ibid., 2:48.

42. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:78.

43. Il'f and Petrov, “Amerikanskie fotografii,” as cited in Wolf, ed., Rf and, Petrov's American Road Trip, 27.

44. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:159.

45. Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Ilya Ilf's American Photographs,” trans. Erika Wolf, in Wolf, ed., Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip, 151.

46. Ibid., 149.

47. Rodchenko, as cited in Aleksei Loginov, “Fotonabliudeniia Il'i Il'fa.“

48. Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 4:40.

49. Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:9–10. A shortened version of this essay appeared as “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today,” in Sergei Eisenstein, FilmForm:Essays inFilm Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York, 1949), 196–97.1 am using Leyda's translation here.

50. Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:11. Again this translation is Jay Leyda's in Eisenstein, Film Form, 197–98.

51. Intolerance (1916) was shown to invited audiences in Russia in 1918 and 1919, and in 1921 at the Congress of the Comintern in an edition that included the Christ story (we can tell from the special prologue written for the film then). See Vance Kepleyjr.'s explanation in “Intolerance and the Soviets: A Historical Investigation” and the prologue itself, translated by Richard Taylor, in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds., Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (New York, 1991), 54, 56–59.

52. Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:51.

53. One could see The Master and Margarita as a kind of corrective to Intolerance: the different worlds there—the streaks in that particular bacon—eventually interrupt and interact with each other, Bulgakov's Christ tale finally meeting up with his Modern Story.

54. Eizenshtein, Metod, 2:71.

55. Ibid.

56. For an account of the desire to find architectural structures that would produce a particular point of view in their visitors, see the description of Eizenshtein's visits to the Chartres cathedral in Anne Nesbet, “'The Building to Be Built': Gogol, Belyi, Eisenstein, and the Architecture of the Future,” Russian Review 65, no. 3 (July 2006): 491–511.

57. Gor'kii, “Gorod zheltogo d'iavola” [1906], 7:8. Another example of opacity can be found in the poster produced for Griffith's Intoleranceby the Stenberg brothers in 1925, which features a gray skyscraper with dark windows (and in the building's shadow, the Russian title of the film: Zlo [Evil]).

58. Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, 254.

59. As described in a note dated 13January 1927: “Today I thought it out: an American film should be made with [Upton] Sinclair. ‘The Glass House’ (an idea I had in Berlin, Hotel Hessler, Kantstr., Room 73, mid-April 1926)—a glass skyscraper. Through the walls a look at America.” Oksana Bulgakowa, ed., Eisenstein und Deutschland: Texte, Dokumenle, Briefe (Berlin, 1998), 17–18.

60. Ibid., 18. Emphasis in the original.

61. Ibid., 28. Note dated 9 February 1928.

62. Ibid., 23. Note dated 18 September 1927.

63. Lev Gladkov, “I. Il'f i Evg. Petrov—Odnoetazhnaia Amerika, Goslitizdat, M. 1937,” Novyi mir, 1937, no. 4: 278–79, 279–80.

64. Review signed A. Margolina, “Odnoetazhnaia Amerika,” Zvezda, 1937, no. 4: 180.

65. Loginov, “Fotonabliudeniia Il'i Il'fa.“

66. Evgenii Petrov, “Izvospominaniiobll'fe (K piatiletiiu so dniasmerti ll'fa)” (1942), in Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii, 5:442.

67. Ibid., 5:444.

68. Rimgaila Salys, “Art Deco Aesthetics in Grigorii Aleksandrov's The Circus,” Russian Review 66, no. 1 (January 2007): 23–35. The list of vertical aspects of Circus can be found on 35; for the claim that the “pandus” is related to the Palace of Soviets, see 29–30. For the story of the Palace of Soviets, see Sona Stephan Hoisington, “'Ever Higher': The Evolution of the Project for the Palace of Soviets,” Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 41–68.

69. For a discussion of the influence of American architecture on Soviet skyscrapers, and in particular on the Palace of Soviets, see Hoisington, Sona S., “Soviet Schizophrenia and the American Skyscraper,” in Blakesley, Rosalind P., ed., Russian Art and the West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts (DeKalb, 2006), 156-71Google Scholar. She discusses the trip made by Iofan, Shchuko, and Gel'freikh in 1934 on 159–63.

70. Prokofiev, A., The Palace of Soviets (Moscow, 1939), 5, 28Google Scholar, as cited in Hoisington, “'Ever Higher,'” 65.