GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXVII.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“We recognized each other in a crowd,

We came together and we’ll part again.

There were no joys in our love,

The parting then will be without grief.”

 

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 

…And so, Master loved to take walks around Moscow, and in one of such walks something out-of-ordinary happened to him, when he spotted Margarita on Tverskaya Street. It was the same Tverskaya where…

“…Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, tilting his head, attentively watches Tverskoy Boulevard, buzzing at his feet. What he is thinking about--- nobody knows.” [Bulgakov: Red-Stone Moscow.]

We very well know what Alexander Sergeevich was thinking about on that day, and not just thought, as it was precisely Koroviev-Pushkin who picked Master as the author of the Pontius Pilate novel, and Margarita as the hostess of Woland’s Ball, both of which picks received the approval of Woland himself. In Margarita’s case, Woland approvingly observes: “Yes, Koroviev is right: how whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!” and: “Blood is a great thing!”

And in Master’s case, Woland shows his approval by reciting his Pontius Pilate novel from memory to Berlioz and Ivanushka on the Patriarch Ponds, already on the 7^th page of Master and Margarita.

And now, on this day, it is precisely Koroviev-Pushkin who unites these Russian Tristan and Isolde on his own Tverskoy boulevard.---

“Ivan found out that the guest and his secret wife had come to the conclusion already in the first days of their affair that it was fate herself that had brought them together on the corner of Tverskaya and a side street, and that they had been created for each other for all time.”

The very first thing which struck Master unpleasantly in that first meeting were the flowers in Margarita’s hands:

“She was carrying in her hands some disgusting, disturbing yellow flowers. The devil knows what they are called, but for some reason they are always the first ones to appear in Moscow. And these flowers contrasted very sharply against the blackness of her spring coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a good color!”

Once again, Bulgakov is trying to send the reader on a false trail. The color is not the point. We need to figure out what kind of “devil’s flowers” they were. Bulgakov gives their name in the chapter on Margarita, and he also provides us with additional information, which is indispensable for our understanding of what and how transpires during their first meeting:

“What was she after, this woman in whose eyes a certain incomprehensible little fire was always burning? What did she need, this slightly squinting in one eye witch, who had adorned herself that spring with acacia?”

At last we find out what kind of flowers Margarita was carrying in her hands on that day, fateful for them both. Now, before I had become engrossed in homoeopathy, I studied botany, that is, the properties of the medicinal plants. Botany is interesting because it gives us an understanding of history, geography, religion, mythology, symbolism, and folklore of different peoples. The English word “acacia”  in the passage above corresponds to the Russian word “mimosa,” actually used by Bulgakov. Indeed, “mimosa” is a type of acacia, and probing into this matter we can easily find out that---

“…according to Near-Eastern Christian legend, a thorny species of acacia was used for Christ’s crown of thorns.”

And also:

“Acacia was a sacred wood for the ancient Hebrews. According to God’s instructions, Moses used acacia wood in the building of the Ark of the Covenant and the sacred Tabernacle (Exodus, chapters 25-40).”

(Both quotations are taken from Dr. John Lust’s The Herb Book. Section Legend and Lore. Acacia.)

It is thus for the reason of their connection to the Passion of Jesus Christ that these “disgusting, disturbing yellow flowers” must be evoking such negative emotions in Master, whose novel, as we know, deals precisely with that subject. No wonder then that Bulgakov devotes so much space to the flower scene. He focuses the reader’s attention on the flowers, returning to them again and again. Margarita throws out these flowers not just once but twice, as after the first time she does it, Master picks them up and carries them for her. Yet, Master doesn’t fail to mention to Margarita that his favorite flower is the rose, after which Margarita would no longer allow Master to carry acacia for her, and throws the flowers away the second time, this time for good. By contraposing the rose to acacia, Master wins. Curiously, both flowers have deep religious significance. Bulgakov’s rose in all probability comes from Pushkin’s poem (contained in his unfinished play Scenes from the Times of Knights, and undoubtedly influenced by Dante) about a certain knight receiving a secret vision from the Mother of God. The vision was utterly---

“…impenetrable to mind,

And the deepest of impressions

It cut straight into his heart.

Lumen Coeli, Sancta Rosa,

He would cry out, wild and zealous…”

 

There is also a peculiar Christian legend about roses without thorns, growing peaceably in the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Adam and Eve, but following the Fall, thorns appeared on the rose to remind people of their sinful imperfect nature.

How engrossing is Bulgakov’s writing! The flowers dialogue contains a deep religious meaning. Acacia is coming from the Bible, and the rose from Dante’s Commeddia Divina.

Bulgakov is unequivocal. The devil does not receive the souls of Master and Margarita. Master draws the poor woman out of her condition, as the demonic force even at that early time of their first meeting had succeeded in turning her into a witch without her knowledge. Margarita is now saved by Master.

“She was saying that she went out that day with the yellow flowers in hand in order to be found by me, and if that had not happened she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.”

Bulgakov stresses the importance of the whole situation.

Knowing now that Margarita had already become a witch during her first meeting with Master, it will be easier for us to understand what was going on. We become witnesses of a struggle of good and evil.

Here Bulgakov illustrates the struggle through the symbolism of flowers. This time the good side wins. Yet there are many temptations ahead, especially after Margarita is left alone.

(To be continued tomorrow…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXVI.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“All red-headed men who are sound in body and mind and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible. Apply in person.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

At this time, we are about to resume the Master and Margarita line. The Third Rome discussion, and, more specifically, how Bulgakov’s Woland fits in it, will follow this unusual romantic love story.

 

As I already said, Bulgakov is an enigmatic writer, and he cannot be approached with the regular yardstick. Besides, it is much greater fun to read him with the realization that he is constantly playing with his reader.

And what could be more interesting in the novel Master and Margarita than the very first meeting of our Russian Tristan and Isolde? (In both cases, the supernatural is unquestionably involved.)

Chronologically the first appearance of the demonic force can be gleaned from Master’s tale to Ivanushka-the-poet, about his and Margarita’s first meeting.

“…Only once there can be such a meeting,” the great Vertinsky used to sing.

Bulgakov masterfully describes this once-in-a-lifetime meeting. The demonic force doesn’t explicitly enter the picture, in the way it does on the Patriarch Ponds, where the devil incarnate physically talks to Berlioz and Ivanushka, but on Tverskaya Street, the air itself is saturated with it, so thick that one could practically slice it with a “Finnish knife.”

By that time, Master had already been writing his Pontius Pilate novel for a whole year. (The action takes place in spring.) According to Bulgakov, Master loves taking walks around Moscow and, an amazing thing, the specific area which he is particularly fond of describing is that of the Christ the Savior Cathedral where incidentally Ivan Grozny gave quarters to his secret police, the Oprichnina [Supreme Police for the Cases of State Treason]. The following comes from Klyuchevsky’s Course of Russian History.---

“…A troop of 1000 enlarged to 6000 would become a corps of watchers of internal dissent…The tsar asked for himself from the clergy, the boyars, and all Russian land, a police dictatorship to fight this dissent…An Oprichnik had a dog’s head tied to his saddle and also a broom, symbols of his occupation: to track, to sniff out, and to sweep out treason, and to bite to death the state’s malefactors-dissenters… Oprichnina used to be called pitch-black darkness. An Oprichnik rode all clad in black from head to foot.” (This is exactly how Bulgakov describes Woland and Azazello. He did not take the devil out of Goethe’s Faust!)

At the head of this sinister corps Ivan Grozny put the notorious Malyuta Skuratov [name at birth: Grigori Yakovlevich Pleshcheev-Belsky], relative of the canonized Metropolitan of Moscow St. Alexius. The story of Malyuta Skuratov seems to underscore my correct assessment of the novel Master and Margarita (that is one of the four novels constituting the whole) as a spy novel. Two men arouse strong emotions in Margarita --- Meigel, whom she happens to know personally and who can positively identify who she is; and Malyuta Skuratov, whose name is known to every Russian. There was a good reason why his face out of many stuck in Margarita’s memory…

“The Oprichnina was allotted a number of very well-known Moscow streets: Prechistenka, Sivtsev Vrazhek (where I used to live with my husband Alexander), Arbat…”

These are precisely the places which Bulgakov loved so much and wrote about. Here he placed Margarita in her upper-storey mansion, and, likewise, Master, in his basement apartment... How much, I wonder, was Russian history involved in this?

 

(To be continued tomorrow…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXV.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

A mountain gave birth to a mouse;

A mare gave birth to a cat…

 

Anonymous.

 

 In my mind, I built a different world,

Giving existence to a different set of images;

And tying them together by a chain…

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 

So, where does this Koshkin clan, which had given Russia the Romanov dynasty, come from? Once again I am turning to Klyuchevsky.---

 During the reign of Ivan Kalita (14^th century), there went to Moscow from the Prussian lands a nobleman, who in Moscow was given the name of Kobyla [mare], Andrei Ivanovich. From his fifth son Fedor Koshka [cat], took its origin the Koshkin clan. [He must have been given such a feline nickname due to an uncommon agility of his mind, as the Koshkins were able to keep themselves in the first rank (of four) of the Boyars, being the only ones left untouched among the titled nobility [dukes, or princes]…

At the beginning of the 16^th century, very prominent at the royal Court was the Boyar Roman Yurievich Zakharyin, scion of Koshka’s grandson Zakhary. It was he [Roman], who became the originator of the new branch, the Romanovs [obviously, by lending his first name to the subsequent family].

 

The first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, was a descendant of Ivan Grozny, by virtue of being the nephew of his son Fedor Ioannovich. This was the main reason why the Don Ataman of the Cossacks submitted a petition to the Boyar Council, selecting Russia’s new tsar in 1613,  in favor of the “natural tsar Mikhail Fedorovich.” Curiously, it was this Cossack Ataman who “settled the matter” in that momentous decision. Incidentally, the first Romanov’s selection to the throne of Russia was the underlying theme in the first Russian opera, Glinka’s 1836 A Life for the Tsar.

(Once we have touched upon the subject of the Cossacks, for anyone decently familiar with Russian history it would not come as a revelation that the Cossacks in Russia frequently had a “decisive voice” in national affairs. The tsar himself wore the Cossack uniform, and his personal guard were all Cossacks.)

 

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Bulgakov’s idol, had been inspired by the “Koshkin clan,” in the writing of his Lukomorye. This peculiar poem, dear to every Russian, was written as a preamble to Pushkin’s romantic long poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, which, in turn, served as an inspiration for the already mentioned earlier, in connection with his wonderful first opera (I consider it among the best operas ever written) A Life for the Tsar, great Russian composer Glinka, in the writing of his revolutionary in the musical sense (even today!), 1846 opera Ruslan and Lyudmila.

 

There’s a green oak by the Lukomorye,

A golden chain is on that oak.

Both day and night, a learned cat

Walks all around along that chain.

When right he walks, a song he’s singing;

When left, a fairytale he tells,

There’s magic, there’s wood spirit wandering,

A water-maiden’s sitting in the tree…

There, on the never fancied trails,

The footprints of unfathomed beast,

A cabin there, on chicken legs,

Stands without windows and no doors.

A princess, pining in a dungeon,

Has a red wolf as loyal servant…

A mortar, with a Baba-Yaga in it

Walks and wanders all by itself.

There Tsar Kashchey rots over his riches,

There is a Russian smell there, it smells of Russia…

Here in Lukomorye, Pushkin shows himself in a dual function. He is both the storyteller and the learned Cat telling fairytales to the storyteller.

In his Reminiscences, namely in the section Beginnings of an Autobiography, Pushkin explains that because of the Decembrist affair, “at the end of 1825, after the wretched plot had been exposed, I was forced to burn those notes, that is, my biography, which I had started back in 1821…”

Here is a very curious passage from Pushkin’s Beginnings of an Autobiography, having a direct bearing on our subject.---

 

“We [the Pushkins] trace our origin to a certain arrival from Prussia, by the name of Radsha or Racha, an honest man, as our annals say, that is, a propertied nobleman, coming to Russia during the Princely tenure of Saint Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky [in whose honor Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin got his first name]. He became the progenitor of the Musins, the Bobrishchevs, the Myatlevs, the Povodovs, the Kamenskys, the Buturlins, the Kologrivovs, the Sherefedinovs, and the Tovarkovs. The name of my ancestors can be encountered all throughout Russian history.”

 

This is of utmost interest as the ancestors of both the Romanovs and the Pushkins came out of Prussia. This is what Koroviev-Pushkin must have in mind when he talks to Margarita-Romanova about “blood.”

 

Klyuchevsky writes that “in those times they were thinking not in terms of ideas but in terms of images, symbols, rites, legends.” “Apparently the following legend may have originated in early 16^th century. Right before his death, Augustus, the Caesar of Rome, installed his brother Prussus on the banks of the Vistula all the way to the banks of the Neman river, which is why up to now this land is known as Prussia.” And here is the conclusion made in the old annals of the time:

“…And from Prussus, the fourteenth generation was the great sovereign Rurik. ” (Who was the progenitor of the first, Rurikovichi dynasty of Russia, preceding the Romanovs.)

...Why would Bulgakov be so much interested in Russian history in general and in the reign of Ivan Grozny in particular?

The first question is very easy. Each citizen is supposed to be interested in and to actually know the history of his or her nation, and how it relates to other nations and states. Moreover, during his relatively short life Bulgakov lived through direct experiences of World War I [he served as a military surgeon], the two Revolutions of 1917, and the Russian Civil War, which could not fail to affect his interests and literary works.

The second question is also easy. During the Soviet times, directly on Bulgakov’s watch, a major reassessment was taking place of the historical significance of Ivan Grozny. The persona of Ivan Grozny and his whole reign were then represented in a far more positive light than before.

Bulgakov wrote two plays with Ivan Grozny in them as a character: Bliss and Ivan Vasilievich. Thus, it should come as no surprise that he was keen on introducing Russian history into his works. He clearly sees Pushkin’s Lukomorye as an allegory. The gold chain in the hand of his dark-violet knight has deep roots, as in Russian history the gold chain is an attribute of the Tsar’s, that is, supreme power. Pushkin on a stallion and holding the gold chain in his hands is the symbol of Pushkin’s supremacy.

To sum this up, the golden chain, as well as the hat of Monomach, and the sardonyx cup, from which the great Sovereign of the Universe Augustus Emperor of Rome allegedly drank according to the legend recorded in the Russian annals of the year 1547, in which year Tsar Ivan Grozny wedded the Russian Tsardom --- had been given to Vladimir Monomach of Russia by his grandfather the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire Constantine Monomach.

This was all devised in order to provide special solemnity to the introduction of the title of Tsar and Autocrat. The main thrust of the legend was to convey the preeminent importance of the rulers of Moscow as the ecclesiastic and political inheritors of the Byzantine Emperors, based on the joint rule of the Greek and the Russian autocrats over the whole Orthodox Christian world, as established in the reign of Vladimir Monomach in the late 11^th-early 12^th century.

The monk Philotheus hardly expressed an original idea of his when he wrote to Ivan Grozny’s father that---

1.      all Christian kingdoms converged in one, his own;

2.      in the whole world he was the sole Orthodox Sovereign;

3.      that Moscow was the Third [after Rome and Constantinople] Rome. Sic!

 

(To be continued tomorrow…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXIV.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

The young face is hiding

At will both joy and grief.

Her eyes are bright like the sky,

Her soul is dark like the sea!

 

M. Yu. Lermontov

 

…Before we move on from here, let us summarize a few things.

1.      Bulgakov is Russian = a Russian nationalist.
2.      Bulgakov mentions only two historical dates in Master and Margarita: the sixteenth century and the year 1571, which happens to be in the sixteenth century.
3.      In connection with Margarita, Bulgakov introduces a very important historical personage, namely, Malyuta Skuratov.
4.      Woland’s knee has been hurting incessantly ever since the year 1571 (which was in the sixteenth century).
5.      Bulgakov keeps comparing Margarita to a cat.
6.      Margarita is not on very good terms with Kot-Begemot.
7.      Before Margarita becomes involved with the demonic force, she wants to poison herself, and on a different occasion to poison the critic Latunsky. Thereafter she wishes to drown herself rather than to use poison. She is of “cat” stock, and drowning is the manner of death associated with cats.
8.      Woland is a collector of celebrities. He is reported to have had a breakfast with Kant, he witnessed the crucifixion of Christ, he was present when Medea fed hers and Jason’s children to Jason, etc.

Whom would Woland want to add to his collection in Russia?

Thus Bulgakov points to the sixteenth century three times, and one of these has a real historical name attached to it. [Not merely a mention of some French queen of the sixteenth century or of a “charming witch” in 1571, which is also a date in the sixteenth century.] Malyuta Skuratov was a favorite of Tsar Ivan Grozny. But even without his name, ask any Russian what the sixteenth century is most famous for, and he will tell you: Ivan Grozny.

It makes sense to dwell on Russian history now for a short while, which Bulgakov knew well, and inserted into his works. (I. e., the chess game between Kot-Begemot and Satan, illustrating the disastrous abdication of the Emperor Nicholas II, etc.) It had to be Russian history and Russia’s foremost celebrities, that Woland could be interested in, on his visit to Moscow.

Why would Bulgakov be so much interested in Russian history in Master and Margarita? Here is Bulgakov’s own answer:

“Historian by education, just two years before, he [Master] had been working at one of Moscow’s museums.”

Bulgakov makes his main character a historian not only to explain why he had been chosen to write a novel about Pontius Pilate, but also to deliver a very transparent hint to the reader that in Master and Margarita, Bulgakov incorporates, albeit in his own inimitable way, much of Russian history.

Now, we have come to dwell on the person of Tsar Ivan Grozny, at whose birth, as the annals of history put it, “thunder rolled across the Russian land and lightning glared; the earth shook.” [Kostomarov.] We are later going to observe the high significance of thunderstorm in Bulgakov’s narrative.

(Incidentally, only one more Russian prince of the early 12^th century, Dimitri Mikhailovich Tverskoy, has a nickname which includes the word Grozny: Fearsome Eyes.)

Now, how does Bulgakov trace his heroine from Ivan Grozny?-- Through Grozny’s beloved wife Anastasia Romanovna, whom he chose as his wife when he was sixteen years of age, and later called her a ewe, taken from him by the Boyars whom he would accuse of poisoning her. Anastasia Romanovna was from Koshkin (“Cat’s”) clan.

Alluding to the legend about the presumably surviving daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, Bulgakov traces his Margarita Nikolaevna to the Romanovs, whose royal dynasty had ruled Russia for more than three hundred years.

The first Romanov Russian Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov called Ivan Grozny his grandfather, in his official papers, because Anastasia Romanovna [Romanova] had been Grozny’s first and favorite wife, who was chosen by the young tsar when he was sixteen. Mikhail’s other grandfather was Nikita Romanovich [Romanov], the tsaritsa’s brother, the only boyar of the 16^th century who is featured in a folk epic “bylina,” as a “benevolent intercessor between the people and the angry tsar.” [Klyuchevsky: A Course of Russian History.]

Tsaritsa Anastasia and her famous brother came from the “Koshkin clan.” Here is another piece of evidence which explains why in two places in Master and Margarita, Bulgakov compares Margarita to a cat [koshka in Russian]. I will be talking more about this later in this chapter.

(To be continued tomorrow…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXIII.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Continues.

 

“C’est très commun,” exclaimed the royal demon,

With a derisive smile upon his face.

“Your gift [the loose woman] could have been splendid,

But novelty’s the queen of these new times.

I think that even these walls have heard the tales

Of all these endless betrayals.”

 

Asmodeus’ Feast. Lermontov

 

Now, because novels are not written in a day (Master worked on his for more than a year and finished it in August of the next year), the troika had to linger in Moscow throughout all this time. Furthermore, the decision was made by Woland , who ordered the Troika to use this occasion to prepare the annual Spring Ball of the Full Moon, to take place in Moscow. Woland himself was expected in the city for the Grand Finale in May of the following year, linking his visit to the Russian Orthodox Easter, which in the year 1937 fell upon the month of May.

For this annual ball, they were to find the Queen-hostess: necessarily Moscow-born and named Margarita. Koroviev was made responsible for this, and, as we find out later, his choice was successful, like everything else that Koroviev was doing…

Bulgakov’s Margarita is a remarkable woman. She is not only “intelligent, beautiful, and proud,” but also loyal, brave, selfless, and, most importantly, interesting. The devil himself becomes interested in her, and registers his approval of her on several occasions.

“Yes, Koroviev is right: how whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!”

And in a different place---

“Blood is a great thing!”

Blood… The question arises right away: what kind of bloodline does Bulgakov have in mind for his heroine? He is not a plagiarizer, so it cannot be a Tatiana Larina, or a Natasha Rostova, or an Anna Karenina, or devil take it!--- Queen Margot. You remember, of course, that even her housemaid Natasha calls Margarita, on account of her name, “My French Queen.” As for Koroviev, he tells Margarita that she is a descendent of a French queen of the sixteenth century, and calls that queen Margarita’s “great-great-great-great-grand-mother.” The first thing to ask, how come some four centuries have elapsed, yet only five generations separate them, rather than, say, twelve? A discrepancy here? Once again Bulgakov poses a puzzle for his reader. Bulgakov was a Russian writer. Whether or not he would leave for the West, whether or not he would stay in the West, the fact remains that having been born Russian, he would die Russian. A Russian writer would be thinking in Russian, whichever language he would be writing in, and he would be looking at the world as a Russian, too.

I am discharging the French great-great-great-great-grandmother to the care of Sherlock Holmes, and focus on the sixteenth century. What was it famous for, in Russia? What happened in Russia then? After all, don’t we know that some famous blood flows in Margarita’s veins. Woland with his “Blood is a great thing!” is not going to allow us to dismiss Koroviev’s banter about it as some lie, to “drown in a marsh,” like his circus attire.

Moving forward-- Eureka! Bulgakov leaves no doubt about it. No matter how many famous foreign “dusts” must Margarita meet at the ball, they are of no interest to her.

“…All their names got mixed up in her head, and the faces got glued together into one huge patty of dough, and only one face got painfully stuck in her memory, framed by a truly fiery beard,--- the face of Malyuta Skuratov.” …Who--- what a coincidence!--- lived in Russia in the sixteenth century. His name is inseparable from that of Ivan Grozny, and almost just as famous.

Psychologically, this moment is very interesting, as though Margarita’s soul remembers Malyuta Skuratov subconsciously via her ancestors.

On the other hand, at this so-called “ball of 100 kings” Bulgakov makes no mention of a single king. What is even more remarkable, Koroviev doesn’t introduce Margarita to her great-great-great-great-grandmother, or to any other French relatives of hers, for that matter.

Generally speaking, I do not think that Woland could become interested in some descendant of a profligate French queen:

“C’est très commun,” exclaimed the royal demon,

With a derisive smile upon his face.

“Your gift [the loose woman] could have been splendid,

But novelty’s the queen of these new times.

I think that even these walls have heard the tales

Of all these endless betrayals.”

Asmodeus’ Feast. Lermontov

 

Satan cannot be impressed with the old stuff; he requires novelty. When in Rome, do as Romans do. Which in this case means that the blood flowing in Margarita’s veins must necessarily be Russian blood.

(To be continued tomorrow…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXII.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita Begins.

 

“This is going to be such a novel that heaven itself will feel the heat.”

Mikhail Bulgakov.

We struggle onward, ignorant and blind,

For a result unknown and undesigned;

Avoiding seeming ills, misunderstood,

Embracing evil as a seeming good.

Theognis of Megara. 6^th Century BC.

From the very beginning of the novel, Bulgakov sets the reader’s mind into the fantastic frame: the appearance of “the checkered one,” as if woven out of thin air, inundating right and left without ever touching the ground; as well as of an enormous black cat walking on his hind legs along the boulevard, and by himself riding on the back arch on the outside of a tram…

Giving Bulgakov his due, he is very successful in leading the reader off track toward the purely fantastic. All the more then is the blow at the end of the novel when a radical transformation takes place of the two supernatural characters of Master and Margarita, into the dark-violet knight and the youth-demon.

Allegory is present in each of Bulgakov’s creations, his fantasy knows no limits. Everything and anything is possible where he is coming from. On a whim, an armchair appears out of thin air. A rain of money starts pouring down. Margarita, the complete novice in the arts of magic, becomes invisible just by saying “Invisible!” In one split second, his heroes turn into animals and birds.

The flight of Bulgakov’s thinking is unthinkable.

And so, I now intend to approach the fantastic novel itself, especially those parts of it which otherwise can hardly be explained, such as, say, Margarita’s family tree.

As I wrote earlier already, being deeply concerned about the rise of atheism in his beloved Russia, Yeshua approaches Woland with a request to find a Russian writer who would describe his last day on earth.

And so, two years prior to the events depicted in the novel, there appears in Moscow Satan’s “right hand man,” the demon-tempter Azazello, accompanied by two Russian celebrities, higher than which cannot be found in Russian literature: Koroviev-Pushkin and Begemot-Lermontov… Once again, what can I say? The flight of Bulgakov’s thought is unthinkable.

The main mission, like so many other things, is entrusted to Koroviev. In Master and Margarita he is the walking encyclopedia, indeed, he is the one to whom Satan addresses most of his questions.

Getting himself acquainted with the literature of that time, Koroviev is deeply disappointed. No wonder then that on leaving Moscow after their mission has been otherwise accomplished, he and Begemot burn down the so-called “House of Writers” to the ground. Bulgakov uses this fire as an allegory, showing the need not just for a better building, but for a better quality of the writers themselves.

Finding no professional Russian writer adequate to the task, Koroviev decides to find merely a properly educated man in Moscow, a dinosaur, so to speak.

Bulgakov does not specify the particular museum where Koroviev finds Master, but it may be easy to suppose that it is a museum of history, as history is closely connected to religion. Bulgakov is particularly interested in history, having been a participant in two world-historical events: World War I and the Russian Civil War, in both cases as a surgeon-physician. The Great Russian Revolution of 1917 also happened in front of his eyes, although he wasn’t in Peterburg at the time.

Having found the writer for the novel, the rest is not that difficult. Azazello, the demon-tempter, who is capable of giving ideas to Satan himself, wouldn’t find it beyond his ability to influence the Master. A few examples of his skill will do. When Azazello says that Kot ought to be drowned, Begemot pleads with him:

“Have mercy, Azazello, do not lead my master [Woland] into this thought.”

And in a different place, if you may remember:

“Once, Azazello visited him [Chief of Soviet secret police Yagoda] and over a glass of brandy whispered in his ear his advice on how to get rid of a certain man whose damning evidence against him, Yagoda had been very much in fear of, after which Yagoda ordered a subordinate of his to spray the wall of that man’s study with poison.”

(Incidentally, it is perfectly clear from this, whose side Bulgakov is on, in this matter. With regard to the so-called “show trials,” the sarcastic implication of their critics shows a misnomer of sorts. Otherwise, Bulgakov would never have treated these trials with an attitude that reveals his unequivocal sympathies for the position of the Soviet Government.)

Well, getting back now to Azazello’s skill at influencing people, it has to be an easy job for him to whisper the idea about Yeshua to the Master, over a cup of tea, so to speak.

As they say in Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina, “large deeds require large funds,” so, lo and behold!---Master becomes the winner of 100,000 rubles in a bond lottery. (In the USSR there was a regular practice of selling compulsory government bonds as part of the employees’ salary. To make this practice more palatable, these bonds were occasionally used like lottery tickets, and the bond bearer could actually win some more or less considerable money from such a lottery.) The won money allows Master to quit his job at the museum, move into better lodgings, and buy himself the necessary books. All of this, of course, not without some gentle assistance from the supernatural “troika.” Just write, write, write!..

“Historian by education, just two years before, he [Master] had been working at one of Moscow’s museums…” This is what Bulgakov writes when Master is already a patient in the psychiatric clinic. It is a very important fact that two years have elapsed, since from the way Bulgakov describes how Master had come to win 100,000 rubles from a bond given to him at the museum as part of his salary, it becomes clear that this could not have been accomplished without the participation of the demonic force. (Curiously, their mission accomplished, the troika would not help Master either with his subsequent arrest or his commitment to a psychiatric clinic.) It also shows that once Koroviev had “chosen” him to write the novel about Christ’s passion, nothing would depend on Master’s own choices anymore. Had he been on his own, he would definitely have continued working at the museum using the spare time to write his book. He would have rented for himself a lodging nicer than the basement, and would have become a man of considerable means. Why and where would he have to hurry? As for the Troika [Koroviev, Azazello, Begemot], “but for ‘poker,’ their life in Moscow would have been unbearable.”

(To be continued tomorrow…)

POSTSCRIPT TO THE MILESIAN TRIAD

Summarizing the greatest achievement of the Milesian Triad, all three of them, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were monists, that is, proponents of e uno plures (paraphrasing the familiar American phrase e pluribus unum in reverse). In several places elsewhere, I have been extolling the genius of Greek monism, directly connected in the philosophical consciousness with an espousal of monotheism, despite its seeming conflict with the preponderant polytheistic religion of Ancient Greece. It is therefore a significant personal accomplishment of each of the three that they have been such outspoken champions of monism, and it is to their individual credits, each one of them, regardless of their comparative value.

It is also to their credit that each of them was an original thinker. Thales apparently paved the way for all of them. Anaximander was not intimidated by the towering genius of his older contemporary and probably his teacher, but came up with an original system of his own. Anaximenes rejected his older contemporary and probably his teacher, and substantially returned to Thales, but he also rejected Thales’s specifics and came up with specifics of his own. All three of them deserve much credit for treading their own unique paths.

Academic profiles of the Milesians represent Thales and Anaximenes as physical monists, because of their respective choices of water and air, specific substances, as the original sources of everything. Apparently, Anaximander’s boundless does not qualify as a specific substance, although I categorically refuse to see it as something abstract. For me, in so far as the significance of the boundless is concerned, Thales’s water is clearly “boundless,” as earth itself floats on water, and, apparently, water has no end. Anaximenes’ air, too, is boundless by his own admission (“Air is the nearest to an immaterial thing; for since we are generated in the flow of air, it is necessary that it should be infinite and abundant, because it is never exhausted.”). So, if these two “specific” substances are both infinite and inexhaustible, what makes them so different in their physical principle from Anaximander’s unnamed substance, which, I believe, can be treated exactly as the algebraic x, the latter as we know, can stand for pretty much anything specific except for being concrete in its identification. That’s why Anaximander said that his boundless was nothing in particular. I hope that my good analogy with the algebraic x clears up this issue enough, so that the reader has by now figured out my point, and any further explanation on my part should be either pointless or a waste of time.

With this in mind, I find a curious misconception of the idea of the boundless in Professor W T. Jones’s A History of Western Philosophy (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952). Not that I am using this particular work as an authority on the subject, but Professor Jones was an established academic and author of an important academic work, for which good reason his apparent misconception deserves to be pointed out, and analyzed.

Here is the paragraph titled Criticism of Anaximander (on page 36 of his History):

Anaximenes actually had good grounds for rejecting Anaximander’s boundless. Consider: the boundless is an indefinite: it is everything, but nothing in particular. But what sort of thing is something that is nothing-in-particular? It has temperature, but no particular temperature; it has color, but no particular color; and so on for all other specific qualities. We have seen why Anaximander thought he had to say that boundless is nothing in particular: if it is a particular thing it is impossible to understand how it becomes its opposite. But we now see that this solution is itself open to criticism. When we examine it closely we see that the term boundless really conveys no meaning; there is nothing corresponding to it in our experience. So, instead of solving a problem, it merely hides the fact that a problem exists, the problem, that is, of understanding how one can become many. Either the boundless is simply a grab-bag collection of the specific stuffs (in which case, it is not really one at all, and monism is abandoned), or it is an indefinite something, which, being nothing in particular, is not anything at all.

Much of this criticism is already rebuffed by my algebraic x analogy: Dr. Jones asks us, What sort of thing is something, which is nothing-in-particular?, and answers it this way: Being nothing in particular, is not anything at all. The secret of x is of course that it cannot be pinpointed as one of the particulars, but being able to be any one of them, it cannot possibly be nothing at all.

My next objection to Dr. Jones’s analysis is that according to him the word boundless conveys no meaning because there is nothing corresponding to it in our experience. I wish he could be reminded that induction, which he has in mind, is not the only game in town, but there is also deduction, which does not depend on experience, and then, of course, there is such a thing as intuition…

Returning to our Milesian triad proper, the final thing to discuss is whether all three of them were mystics in the Nietzschean sense. Whereas it is fairly obvious with Thales and Anaximander, the case is not quite clear with Anaximenes, as I cannot quite figure out the thinking underlying his claim that the soul is like air in its nature. Taken literally, this demystifies the soul, but there is no ground to transfer the mystique of the soul onto his conception of air. Other instances of his reasoning are even less conclusive in this regard, and one may suspect that Nietzsche’s total omission of Anaximenes from the list of his pre-Socratics throughout all his works may be an indication that he failed to uncover a fellow mystic in him as well. But in my own appreciation for Anaximenes I find undoubted respect for this great man, and I am willing to extend to him the broadest benefit of the doubt, meaning that since I haven’t found anything in him which denies him the mantle of a philosopher mystic, he has surely earned it honoris et antiquitatis causa.

ANAXIMENES IN RUSSELL AND NIETZSCHE

(See my previous entry Out Of Thin Air.)

Thales was the first philosopher, and thus deserving of special attention. Anaximander was by far the most interesting specimen of the “Milesian trio.” Which leaves us with Anaximenes, the last of the three, and as Bertrand Russell puts it, not so interesting as Anaximander, but (he) makes some important advances. His own section on Anaximenes is very short and pointed, and the following three paragraphs are good enough to be quoted in full:

The fundamental substance, (Anaximenes) said, is air. The soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed, air becomes first water; if further condensed, earth, and finally, stone. This theory has the merit of making all the differences between different substances quantitative, depending only upon the degree of condensation.

He thought that the earth is shaped like a round table, and that air encompasses everything: “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so breath and air encompass the whole world.” It seems that the world breathes.

Anaximenes was more admired in antiquity than Anaximander, although almost any modern would make the opposite valuation. He had an important influence on Pythagoras and on much subsequent speculation. The Pythagoreans discovered that the earth is spherical, but the atomists adhered to the view of Anaximenes, that it is shaped like a disc.

Nietzsche’s opinion of Anaximenes is sufficiently well expressed in this already quoted sentence from his Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks, where the name of Anaximenes is missing from his list of major pre-Socratics:

Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates.

In so far as I’ve been able to establish, the name of Anaximenes is never mentioned once in all Nietzsche’s works. This does not mean, however, that he is not worth being mentioned. I would say, far from that. For this reason, I have written a separate informative entry, which precedes this one.

OUT OF THIN AIR

Anaximenes of Miletus lived from 585 BC to 525 BC. He wrote at least one book, which has not reached us, but it is known to us from an extant fragment and obliquely from the description of his style (“he used simple and unextravagant Ionic speech”) by Diogenes Laertius. In Metaphysics, Aristotle makes a note of his major contention: “Anaximenes and Diogenes make air rather than water, the material principle above the other simple bodies.” Considering that Diogenes of Apollonia lived a century later than Anaximenes, it is clear that the prize for the originality of this idea goes to the Milesian.

Here are a few more testimonies concerning Anaximenes:

“Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, of Miletus, a companion of Anaximander, also says that the underlying nature is one and infinite like him, but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature by rarity and density. Being made finer, it becomes fire, being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest come into being from these. He too makes motion eternal, and he says that change also comes about through it.” (Simplicius.)

“From it, he said, the things that are and have been and will be, the gods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come from its offspring.” (Hippolytus.)

“It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and condensation.” (Theophrastus.)

“And the form of the air is as follows. Where it is most even, it is invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture and motion make it visible. It is always in motion; for if it were not it would not change so much as it does.” (Hippolytus.)

“When it is dilated so as to be rarer it becomes fire; while wind on the other hand is condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by felting and this still further condensed becomes water. Water condensed still more turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it can be, to stones.” (Hippolytus.)

And now here is the extant fragment accredited to Anaximenes: Air is the nearest to an immaterial thing; for since we are generated in the flow of air, it is necessary that it should be infinite and abundant, because it is never exhausted. The form of the earth is like a table. Earthquakes are caused by the dryness of the air, due to drought, and by its wetness, due to rainstorms… The soul is like air in its nature.

Like Anaximander, Anaximenes turns to his principles to account for various natural phenomena: lightning and thunder result from the wind breaking out of clouds; rainbows are the result of the rays of the sun falling on clouds; earthquakes are caused by the cracking of the earth when it dries out, after being moistened by rains. He gives an essentially correct account of hail as frozen rainwater.

Generally speaking, Anaximenes appears to be a lesser figure than his two great compatriots, and Nietzsche has a valid point to leave him out of his consideration. But in the historical sequence of the pre-Socratics, it is impossible to leave him out of the picture. Without him, there is no such thing as the Milesian triad, to which we are sufficiently, and legitimately, accustomed. It is perhaps because of his lesser prominence that we may try to look at him more attentively than at the rest, both in our points of criticism, but in terms of favorability as well. In this regard, it is worthwhile to examine his thinking more closely, as he poses this intriguing question: Inasmuch as one becomes many, how does ‘becoming’ occur? Is it at all possible that a change in quantity can result in a change in quality? He thought that he found a positive answer in his choice of air as the stuff from which all things originate. He was unquestionably wrong in his answer, but at the same time magnificently right about the question, and posing that question alone makes him worthy of being included in the company of his greater colleagues. Examining his question further, and in-depth, will be my major task in the next stage of work on these comments. In the meantime, this section, covering all pre-Socratic philosophers, both major and minor, cannot be complete without paying enough attention to Anaximenes, who may be called a minor major much more than a major minor, which fact must not be disregarded in his overall assessment.

ANAXIMANDER AND NIETZSCHE’S MYSTICISM

This is my third and last Anaximandrian entry, devoted to Nietzsche’s analysis of him. Not surprisingly, it is on my part not only an entry on Anaximander, but on Nietzsche as well. I believe that in discussing the pre-Socratics Nietzsche reveals his natural mysticism and a penchant for looking for the mystical in others. In fact, mysticism for him is an essential ingredient of true philosophy and of the authentic philosophical mind. On a general note, in my future radical revision of this entry, I must explore much deeper into the mystical element, which Nietzsche now finds in Anaximander, and earlier, in Thales. (“Seek and ye shall find…”)

Nietzsche, in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, claimed that Anaximander was a pessimist. Anaximander stated that the primal being of the world was a state of indefiniteness. Accordingly, anything definite has to eventually pass back into indefiniteness. In other words, Anaximander viewed “all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong, for which destruction is the only penance.” The world of individual objects in this way of thinking has no worth and should perish. Here is essential pessimism for you!

Yes, we are now discussing Anaximander in Nietzsche’s interpretation, and, to put this entry in full swing, we need to get back where we left off in the previous Anaximander And Russell entry.

Scientific and rationalistic are two Russellian compliments to Anaximander, which would not be much to Nietzsche’s heart, as they are not to mine. Yet, he, apparently, admires Anaximander, so, he and Russell are looking at the great Greek somewhat differently, and their assessments are interesting to compare. Here is a lengthy quotation from Nietzsche, which shall include, without doubt, his interpretation of Anaximander’s famous fragment.

Whilst the general type of the philosopher in the picture of Thales is set off rather hazily, the picture of his great successor already speaks much more distinctly to us…

Now, let us understand that there must be a reason why Thales’s picture is hazy, whereas Anaximander’s is much more distinct. This difference cannot be attributed to either chronology (these two were less than one generation apart, and as some say, were even relatives!) or locus (they both lived in Miletus and were close neighbors). Thus we cannot really ascribe this difference to different circumstances of transmission of their works to the posterity. Apparently, Thales was a more practical man, and his general theories appeared less exciting to the subsequent generations than those of Anaximander the fanciful dreamer, who after all left us with an actual model of the Universe, no matter how wrong and silly it may seem to us, armed with several millennia of scientific progress. At least, Anaximander raised the big question about the Universe, and also contemplated on the unknown, naming it as the primary substance of matter...

Anaximander of Miletus, the first philosophical author of the ancients, writes in the way that typical philosophers will always write, as long as they are not alienated from ingenuousness and naiveté by odd claims: in the grand lapidarian style of writing, sentence for sentence, a witness of new inspiration, and an expression of the sojourning in sublime contemplations. The thought and its form are milestones on the path towards the highest wisdom. With such a lapidarian emphasis, Anaximander once said: “Whence things originated, thither according to necessity, they must return and perish; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustices, according to the order of time.” Enigmatical utterance of a veritable pessimist, oracular inscription on the boundary stone of Greek philosophy, how shall we explain thee?...

Bravo, Anaximander is a pessimist! Nietzsche’s invocation now of Schopenhauer’s name (here is another great pessimist close to Nietzsche’s heart) is supremely predictable.---

The only serious moralist of our century, in the Parerga (Volume ii chapter 12, Additional Remarks on the Doctrine about the Suffering in the World, Appendix of Corresponding Passages), urges upon us a similar contemplation.--- The right standard by which to judge all human beings is that they really are beings who ought not to exist at all, but who are expiating their existence by manifold forms of suffering and death:—What can one expect from such beings? Are we not all sinners condemned to death? We expiate our birth firstly by our life, and secondly by our death. He who in the physiognomy of our universal human lot reads this doctrine and already recognizes the fundamental bad quality of every human life, in the fact that none can stand a close and careful contemplation, although our time, accustomed to the biographical epidemic, seems to think otherwise and loftier about people’s dignity, one who, like Schopenhauer, on the heights of the Indian breezes has heard the sacred word about the moral value of existence, will be with a difficulty kept from making an extremely anthropomorphic metaphor, and generalizing that melancholy doctrine at first only limited to human life— and applying it by transmission to the general character of all existence. It may not be very logical, it is, however, at any rate, very human, and, moreover, quite in harmony with the philosophical leaping described above, now with Anaximander to consider all Becoming as a punishable emancipation from eternal Being, as a wrong that is to be atoned for by destruction. Everything that has once come into existence also perishes, whether we think of human life, or of water, or of heat and cold; everywhere where definite qualities are to be noticed, we are allowed to prophesy the extinction of these qualities— according to the all-embracing proof of experience.

A most excellent interpretation of Anaximander’s doctrine! But what else can we expect from Nietzsche?

Thus, a being, possessing definite qualities, and consisting of them, can never be the origin and principle of things; the veritable ens, the “Existent,” Anaximander concluded, cannot possess qualities, for, otherwise, like all other things, it would necessarily have originated and perished. Therefore, in order that Becoming may not cease, the Primordial-being must be indefinite. Its immortality and eternity lies not in an infiniteness and inexhaustibility, as the expounders of Anaximander usually presuppose, but in this that it lacks the definite qualities which lead to destruction, for which reason it bears also its name: The Indefinite. The thus labeled Primordial-being is superior to all Becoming and for this very reason it guarantees the eternity and unimpeded course of Becoming. This last unity in that Indefinite, the mother-womb of all things, can, it is true, be designated only negatively by us, as something, to which no predicate out of the existing world of Becoming can be allotted, and/or might be considered a peer to the Kantian thing-in-itself. Of course, he who is able to wrangle persistently with the others as to what kind of thing that primordial substance really was, whether maybe an intermediate thing between air and water, or, perhaps, between air and fire, has not understood our philosopher at all; this is, likewise, to be said about those, who seriously ask themselves, whether Anaximander had thought of his primordial substance as a mixture of all existing substances. Rather, we must direct our gaze to the place where we can learn that Anaximander no longer treated the question of the origin of the world as purely physical; we must direct our gaze towards that first stated lapidarian proposition. When, on the contrary, he saw a sum of wrongs to be expiated in the plurality of things that have become, then he, as the first Greek, with a daring grasp caught up the tangle of the most profound ethical problem. How can anything perish which has the right to exist?! Whence that restless Becoming and giving-birth, whence that expression of painful distortion on the face of Nature, whence the never-ending dirge in all realms of existence? Out of this world of injustice, of audacious apostasy from the primordial-unity of things, Anaximander flees into a metaphysical castle, leaning out of which he turns his gaze far and wide, in order, at last, after a pensive silence, to address to all beings this question: “What is your existence worth? And-- if it is worth nothing-- why are you there? It is by your guilt, I observe, you sojourn in this world. You will have to expiate it by death. Look how your earth fades; the seas decrease and dry up, the marine-shell on the mountain shows you how much already they have dried up; fire destroys your world even now, finally, it will end in smoke and ashes. But again and again such a world of transitoriness will ever build itself up; who shall redeem you from the curse of Becoming?”

Not every kind of life may have been welcome to a man who put such questions, whose upward-soaring thinking continually broke the empiric ropes, in order to take at once to the highest, superlunary flight. And willingly we believe tradition, that he walked along in especially dignified attire and showed a truly tragic hauteur in his gestures and his habits of life. He lived as he wrote; he spoke as solemnly as he dressed, he raised his hand and placed his foot as if this existence was a tragedy, and as if he had been born in order to cooperate in that tragedy by playing the role of hero. In all that he was the great model of Empedocles. His fellow citizens elected him the leader of an emigrating colony, perhaps, they were pleased at being able to honor him and at the same time to get rid of him. (How insightful!) His thought also emigrated and founded colonies; in Ephesus and in Elea they could not get rid of him; and if they could not resolve upon staying at the spot where he stood, they nevertheless knew that they had been led there by him, whence they now prepared to proceed without him…

Now here comes Nietzsche’s definitive comparison of Thales and Anaximander, which may serve us as the clue to their difference. Mind you, I am totally opposed to asserting some kind of mental superiority of the pupil over his teacher. It is imperative to appreciate that Thales came first, and that Anaximander, granted, brilliantly, still only capitalized on Thales’s “principal.” Indeed there must have been an abundance of very wise men preexistent to Thales, but Thales was the one to become known as “the first,” and consequently it seems only logical to consider Thales as the cause of Anaximander, and Anaximander as the effect of none other than Thales. Logically, the effect needs to be more significant than the cause, since it incorporates the cause, and moves on from there. Thus Anaximander is a move forward from Thales, but this objective fact takes nothing away from Thales. There can be no reaching for the stars without a stepping stone, and Thales happened to be that stepping stone.

Thales shows the need of simplifying the empire of plurality, and of reducing it to the mere expansion, or disguise of the one single existing quality, water. Anaximander goes beyond him with two steps. Firstly, he puts the question to himself: How, if there exists an eternal Unity at all, is that Plurality possible? He takes the answer out of the contradictory, self-devouring, and denying character of this Plurality. The existence of this Plurality becomes a moral phenomenon to him; it is not justified, but it expiates itself continually through destruction. Then the questions occur to him, Why has not everything, that has become, perished long ago, since, indeed, quite an eternity of time has already gone by? Whence the ceaseless current of the River of Becoming? He can save himself from these questions only by the mystic possibilities: the eternal Becoming can have its origin only in the eternal Being, the conditions for that apostasy from that eternal “Being” to a Becoming in injustice are ever the same, the constellation of things cannot help itself being thus fashioned, that no end is to be seen of that stepping forth of the individual being out of the lap of the Indefinite. At this Anaximander stayed; that is, he remained within the deep shadows, which like gigantic specters were lying on the mountain range of such a world-perception. The more one wanted to approach the problem of solving how out of the Indefinite the Definite--- out of the Eternal the Temporal--- out of the Just, the Unjust, could by secession ever originate,--- the darker the night became.

We will return to Nietzsche’s inspired and inspirational interpretation of Anaximander in a later revision of this entry, when I shall concentrate my attention on my own comments on Nietzsche’s comment, and in this way I will, hopefully, lift this entry out of its present derivative condition into the rarefied air of originality. This is however the task for the next round of my work, which means that for now this entry stays the way it is. I have just a few last things to add, though. One of them is the following passage from Nietzsche. It is taken from a later analysis of Heraclitus, who, according to Nietzsche, had subordinated himself to the importance of Anaximander as a physicist and had been a follower of Anaximander in some matters, while in opposition to him in several others. These matters will be properly discussed in our Heraclitean subsection, but here is this excerpt pertaining to Anaximander in particular.---

In order to elucidate the introduction of fire as a world-shaping force, Anaximander further developed the theory of water as the origin of things. Placing confidence in the essential portion of Thales’s theory, and strengthening and adding to the latter’s observations, Anaximander, however, was not to be convinced that before the water and, as it were, after the water, there was no further stage of quality: no,-- to him out of the Warm and the Cold the Moist seemed to form itself, and the Warm and the Cold, therefore, were supposed to be the preliminary stages, the still more original qualities.

With their issuing forth from the primordial existence of the “Indefinite,” Becoming begins.

Whereas Heraclitus is a follower of Anaximander in the most important conceptions, e.g. that the fire is kept up by the evaporations or herein that out of the water is dissolved partly earth, partly fire; he is, on the other hand, independent and in opposition to Anaximander in excluding the Cold from the physical process, while Anaximander had put it side by side with the Warm as having the same rights, so as to let the Moist emerge out of both. More important than this deviation from Anaximander’s doctrine is the further agreement; he, like the latter, believes in an end of the world periodically repeating itself and in an ever-renewed emerging of another world out of the all-destroying world-fire. The period, during which the world hastens towards that world-fire and the dissolution into pure fire, is characterized by him most strikingly as a demand and a need; the state of being completely swallowed up by the fire as satiety; and now remains the question, how he understood and named the newly awakening impulse for world-creation, the pouring-out-of-itself into the forms of plurality. The Greek proverb comes to our assistance: Satiety gives birth to crime (the hybris), and one may indeed ask oneself, for a minute, whether perhaps Heraclitus has derived that return to plurality out of hybris. Let us just take this thought seriously: in its light, the face of Heraclitus changes before our eyes, the proud gleam of his eyes dies out, a wrinkled expression of painful resignation, of impotence, becomes distinct, it seems that we know why later antiquity called him the “weeping philosopher.” Is not the whole world process now an act of punishment of the hybris? Is not the plurality the result of a crime? Is not the transformation of the pure into the impure, the consequence of injustice? Is not the guilt now shifted into the essence of things, and, indeed, the world of Becoming, and of individuals, accordingly exonerated from guilt; yet, at the same time, are they not condemned forever to bear the consequences of guilt?

And with this added interpretation of Anaximander via Heraclitus we come to the end of this entry and of the Anaximandrian subsection.