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…)