Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.
Kot-Begemot Continues.
And the defeated Demon cursed
His senseless dreams,
And as before he stood so
proud
And so alone, in the whole
universe,
No hopes, no love!
M. Yu. Lermontov. Demon.
(So,
why does Bulgakov assign such a serious role (playing chess with Satan himself)
to such a frivolous, at first sight, character as Kot-Begemot? Let us leaf over
several pages to the place where he writes about the broken deceptions.---)
“…When
a full purple moon started rising towards them over the edge of a forest, all
deceptions vanished, fell away into the marsh beneath, just as their magic, ephemeral
clothing faded into the mists.
Night
stripped away… Begemot’s fluffy tail, ripped off his fur, and scattered its patches
over the marshes. He who used to be a cat for the amusement of the prince of
darkness was revealed as a slim youth, a page-demon, the greatest jester who had
ever lived. (Bulgakov takes this idea of a duality of a man who is
also a cat from Pushkin’s Lukomorye
where Pushkin reveals a duality of his as both the storyteller and the learned
cat, that is, the poet who tells all his fairytales to the storyteller.) He, too, was now silent and flew without a sound, holding
up his young face toward the light pouring from the moon.”
Master
was right when he said: “For some reason it seems to me that you are not quite a cat.”
I
am instantly reminded of the words of the Russian philosopher-mystic, historian,
literary critic and poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky: “in human form, yet not quite a human: a
being of a different order and of a different dimension.” Who does
Merezhkovsky say this about? Whom has Bulgakov picked as Alexander Sergeevich
Pushkin’s friend, comrade-in-arms and confidant in the other world? Whom does
Merezhkovsky call the “nighttime luminary,” as opposed to Pushkin, whom he
calls the “daytime luminary” of Russian poetry? “All
of it [Russian poetry] oscillates between the two of them like between the two
poles: contemplation and action.”
And
now, whose verse is this?---
“Not
for the angels, not for heaven
Was I created by Almighty
God;
Just like my demon, I am the
chosen one of Evil,
Just like a demon with a
proud soul…”
Bulgakov’s
choice is topnotch: the other great Russian poet Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov,
the author of Demon and of three more
poems about demons, where he compares himself to a demon:
“…The
proud Demon, while I am living,
Will never, never let me go,
He will illuminate my being
By a beam of wondrous light.
He’ll show me an image of
perfection,
And suddenly will take it all
away,
And giving me a foretaste of
eternal bliss,
Will never give me happiness.”
Compare
these two passages now. One is from Master
and Margarita:
“So, do believe me, added
the cat, that I am a bona fide prophet.”
The
other is from Lermontov’s poem Prophet:
“…Since the eternal Judge of all
Has given me the foresight of a prophet.”
Here was yet another corroboration of the fact that Kot-Begemot is Lermontov.
(To
be continued tomorrow…)
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