Beatitud, Iván Vasilievich and La Isla Púrpura: Mijail Bulgakov’s plays as uchronia, trip through time and metatheatricality

Abstract

Mikhail Bulgakov’s dramatic work allows us to discover in this canonical figure in universal literature an unexpected theatrical career sheltered in the shadow of his novel. In this article I focus, to begin with, on two closely related pamphleteering plays, since one is a continuation of the other, not only from a thematic point of view, but also from a constructive point of view: Ivan Vasilievich and Beatitude. Then I tackle a third farce, The Purple Island, due to its particular theme, focused on the essay process of a theatrical company. All three can be ascribed to the genre that Lionel Abel [2003] defines as tragedy or comedy of reflexivity, that is, to metatheatre, but also to uchrony, a term coined by Charles Renouvier [Alkon: 1987], where a slight correction of the events assumed as historical allows a rewriting of the story of those events and a rethinking of History as a discipline of fiction. In a time of political harassment, of limitation of expressive freedoms by the Soviet regime, Bulgakov draws attention to his work as a construction or elaboration, but also as a theatrical game conceived to be represented. It uses the uchrony, alternative and counterfactual history as a retrospective or prospective projection of satirical criticism and by avoiding censorship. In short, with this type of analysis the aim is to break with the stagnant notion of gender, be it dramatic, literary, or fictional, and reconstruct part of the minor production of the playwright from a more unknown perspective.