GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XV.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

Kot-Begemot.

 

Immortality is a calm bright shore.

Our path is a striving toward it.

Rest thou, who hath finished the run…

[NB: The Russian word for “run” is “beg.”]

Vasili Zhukovsky: The Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors.

…scarce from his mould

Behemoth, biggest born of Earth, upheav’d

His vastness…

John Milton: Paradise Lost; Chapter VII.

He is the most mysterious personage in the book. Bulgakov introduces him already in the first pages, taking place on Patriarch Ponds.---

“In this company [of Woland and Koroviev] there happened to appear, as if out of nowhere, a cat, huge as a hog, pitch-black like soot or a rook, and wearing an atrocious cavalryman’s moustache.”

Bulgakov right away draws our attention to the fact that this character is larger than life. As the reader may see from the two epigraphs to this chapter, the emphasis here ought to be more on “Begemot [Behemoth],” than on “Kot [Cat].”

…Beg, Begemot, Behemoth… Immortality and vastness. This is the reason for the two epigraphs that I’ve chosen for this chapter. One comes from a Zhukovsky poem, which curiously provides Bulgakov with his own epigraph to his play Beg [Run]. I borrowed the second epigraph from the great Englishman John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.

Why does Bulgakov give the name “Begemot” to this particular character? Ironically, it must be the same reason why I have chosen my two epigraphs above. According to Zhukovsky, “Beg” [Run] is a man’s life, and its purpose is his striving towards immortality. According to Milton’s description, Behemoth is the “biggest born of earth.” Bulgakov definitely lets us know that the man hiding under the guise of Kot-Begemot is immortal. He also tells us, by his choice of the Miltonian name, that here, in the person of the cat, we are encountering a giant, a truly great mind.

I understand how tempting it is to somehow originate Kot-Begemot from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Kater Murr, but I can assure the reader that Bulgakov never borrowed his cat from the great German. Russian literature and history are rich in their own examples of famous cats.

I am thinking right away of Pushkin’s Lukomorye, serving as an introduction to his enchanting fairytale in verse 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…

And indeed, those who have read Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita must agree that Kot Begemot is without doubt a learned cat.

In his back-and-forth with Woland, when the latter called Kot’s talk “verbal soiling,” Begemot responds, to the effect that his talk is nothing like soiling, “but a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms that would have been greatly appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, and what if perhaps even Aristotle himself?” Which is obviously done in the spirit of the great Rabelais, who also loves to pepper his immortal work Gargantua and Pantagruel with very famous names.

Kot-Begemot is not the only representative of the feline breed in Master and Margarita. In two places Bulgakov refers to Margarita as a cat, which is by no means a coincidence. Bulgakov is very careful in his hint, of which connection of Margarita to a “cat” I will be writing in the fantastic novel.

Incidentally, people have been called he-cats and she-cats for very understandable reasons: resourcefulness, agility, uncommon cunning, certain moral deficiencies, etc.

Bulgakov directly points to Kot-Begemot as the one who stole the severed head of Berlioz from the coffin. Azazello:

“…They are all thinking about where-to the head has gone… I propose that Begemot be asked about that. A terribly nifty steal. Such a scandal!”

As if that was a fish head or a chicken head, which are delicacies to cats.

When Margarita keeps suspecting Azazello of dishonorable intentions, Azazello blows up:

“…To hell with all this! Let them rather send Begemot! ... Difficult people women are! Why did they send me here? Let Begemot go, he is enchanting.” Begging the question that Begemot is a ladies’ man.

And one more thing. Kot-Begemot is inseparable from Koroviev and rhymes with one of the latter’s names: Fagot.

What else do we learn about the cat? He is a musician. Remember, at the spring ball of the full moon, Kot-Begemot was responsible for the music.

“She [Margarita] was pounded by a roar of trumpets, and the soaring wave (vzmyv) of the violins showered her body as though by blood. The orchestra, some one-hundred-fifty strong, was playing a Polonaise.”

The orchestra conductor was Johann Strauss, the King of the Waltz, the concertmaster, Henri Vieuxtemps.

So, why does Bulgakov make the King of the Waltz open the ball with a Polonaise? And then, why does the music have such an effect on Margarita, as though her body has been showered by blood? More about it in my chapter on Bulgakov.

Meanwhile, here is our Kot again, immensely proud of his musical achievement:

“Let them hang me on a liana in some tropical forest, if any other ball at any other time could boast of such an orchestra! It was I who invited them! And mind you, no one reported sick, no one declined!”

Those who read Master and Margarita surely remember the words of Master: “It seems to me that you are not quite a cat.” We shall return to these words later in this chapter, but, meantime, do trust my word that Kot’s immortal prototype was a musician, and he played three instruments: piano, violin, and flute.

Bulgakov offers another riddle to the reader regarding the frog orchestra, which was also organized by our trickster. I will be writing about this “orchestra” in the chapter on Bulgakov. This is what particularly stuns me in Bulgakov. Everything looks so simple, but as you are giving it a thought, a multitude of questions arise, and you want, you very much want to find answers to all.

For instance, why is it Kot-Begemot, who is playing chess with Satan? How did he earn such an honor? This is going to be our subject of interest in tomorrow’s posting…

(To be continued…)