Essays in Idleness

Not only can I now recite the whole Roman alphabet — and in the correct order, from ay to zed, the way I did as a clever little boy in a Pakistani kindergarten (which supplied good, “British class” cookies) — but I have been avoiding the Internet, while attempting to read beuks. These turn out to be so much better, even in translation from Slavic languages.

Mikhail Bulgakov (the inventor of the “bandy legs sign” as a young venereologist) is my necessary author for this purpose. His interactions with one Joseph Stalin in later life (though not much later, for he perished well before old age) interfered with his career as one of that violent century’s most talented writers, and also a droll humourist, almost equal to Gogol. His great posthumous novel, The Master and Margarita, remains in paperback print, and also a wonderful array of surreal tales and plays, to those who speak Russian. I am envious of them. Too, he could sing baritone in the opera.

But he was born in Kiev, of a Russian family, and so has been “unpersoned” by the counter-revolutionary Ukrainians. They seem to have removed his statue, and possibly the Bulgakov Museum behind it, entirely without the help of Russian drones. His satirical works usefully made not only Communism, but general liberal nihilism, into farce, but they did not win prizes. Mr Stalin, one of the more consistent opponents of white oppression, disliked his celebration of the White Guards, against the Red Guards; and Mr Bulgakov had a preternatural propensity to political incorrectness. Nevertheless, Stalin was afflicted with a tiny particle of literary taste, and so did not immediately have Bulgakov shot.

The Master novel accomplishes something not attempted since the inept Immanuel Kant. Rather than wasting time, trying to prove the existence of God, Bulgakov proves the existence of the Devil. What a perfect concession to the times! Philosophical readers should examine this treatise, immediately.