Kirillova N.B. The Macroworld of Mikhail Bulgakov in the Mirror of Screen Culture

Abstract: Based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary heritage (both narrative and dramaturgical), the author of the article explores the problem of the screen adaptation of literary works. The author interprets screen adaptation as a “translation” of a given artwork between the two different art languages. This means that an interpretation of any literary source for screen purposes (both for the cinema and for TV) is a creative action that stands closer to a philosophical and cultural analysis that to a work of a copyist or an illustrator. The author also argues that interpretation of the classics may be also understood as a “dialogue of cultures” (using M. M. Bakhtin’s term); in this case – a dialogue between the print (book) culture and the screen (audio and visual) culture. Analyzing the problems of screen interpretation of Mikhail Bulgakov's works, the author bases her research on historical-comparative and interdisciplinary methods combining art history and cultural analysis with the method of the philological analysis of texts. The importance and novelty of the topic are caused not only by the growing role of screen (audio visual) culture as the phenomenon of the information epoch but also the increasing academic interest in the screen interpetation of literary works. 'Screen culture' is a broad term. It covers all screen forms of creativity: cinema, television, video, computer technologies, Internet, network art, etc. This is what makes the problem of the screen interpretation (film adaptation) of literary works (epic, poetic and dramaturgical) so important. Screen adaptation is nothing else but a 'translation' of an artwork from one art language to another. Analyzing the works of screen culture (films by A. Alov and V. Naumov, V. Basov and L. Gaidai, V. Bortko and Yu. Kara, S. Snezhkin, A. Efros etc.) that were based on the M. A. Bulgakov’s literary heritage, the author comes to the conclusion that the interpreter’s task is extraordinary difficult: using audio and visual images, he or she has to transmit not just the content, but the original idea, the “soul” of the literary work, at the same time bringing it closer to the contemporary perception of the artwork.

Keywords: