HERACLITUS THE ASCETIC MYSTIC AND MISANTHROPE

In his most interesting essay on Heraclitus, Bertrand Russell inadvertently clarifies why this particular pre-Socratic is so dear to Nietzsche’s heart. On the one hand, Heraclitus was a peculiar mystic, which in itself establishes him as an excellent philosopher, in Nietzsche’s eyes. On the other hand, his ethic, according to Russell, is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche’s. Having set this up as a nice preamble for our next entry’s discussion of Nietzsche’s opinion of Heraclitus, we shall remain with Bertrand Russell for the rest of this entry.

Russell thinks that Heraclitus was not a nice man, and he comes to this opinion on the basis of the Greek’s extant fragments only. He is much too much addicted to contempt, for Russell’s liking, and is the reverse of a democrat. Being a native of Ephesus, he speaks not very nicely of his compatriots, even if they deserve it: Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown person of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, the best person among them, saying, “We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.” Had this been an isolated instance of his contempt, this could have passed as a flash of angry sarcasm, but, as Russell points out, he speaks ill of all his eminent predecessors, be that Homer or Hesiod or Pythagoras or Xenophanes, etc. The only exception is Bias (this is not a joke!), mistakenly identified by Russell as Teutamas from the following Fragment 112: In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas who is of more account than the rest. (He said, Most people are bad.) With a delightfully understated humor, Russell explains Heraclitus’ praise of Bias by the latter’s opinion of humanity. At any rate, Bias would have appreciated Heraclitus view that only force will compel people to act for their own good: Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows. No wonder, then, Russell says, that Heraclitus believes in war: War is the father of all and the king of all, we must know that war is common to all, and that strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away in strife.

Russell points out as well that Heraclitus’ attitude toward the religion of his time is hostile, “but not with the hostility of a scientific rationalist. He has his own religion, and in part interprets current theology to fit his doctrine, in part rejects it with considerable scorn.” This corresponds to my own earlier expressed view that Heraclitus does not attack religion as such, but only the polytheistic mythology and the anthropomorphic theology of his age, as opposed to his personal espousal of monotheism, where fire is more or less symbolic of the One Deity.

Heraclitus believes in perpetual change, Russell asserts, but “sometimes he speaks as if the unity were more fundamental than the diversity… But, nevertheless, there would be no unity if there were no opposites to be combined: It is the opposite, which is good for us.” In this peculiar doctrine, Russell sensibly finds the germ of Hegel’s dialectics. Not surprisingly, of course, Heraclitus is often called the father of dialectics.

Russell’s essay ends with a return to the question of permanence and change, which he calls painful:

The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science can do nothing to refute it. One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes (of permanence) that science seems to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly, have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides.

Parmenides is of course another story, to follow this one later. But on the question of permanence, Russell, happily, does not deny it to Heraclitus completely, rightfully referring to the already quoted Fragment 20: Heraclitus himself, for all his belief in change, allowed something everlasting. The conception of eternity, as opposed to endless duration, which comes from Parmenides, is not to be found in Heraclitus, but in his philosophy the central fire never dies: the world was ever, is now, and ever shall be, an ever-living Fire.

Having come to the end of our discussion of Russell’s Heraclitean essay, we have seen that Russell treats his philosophy with seriousness that it deserves, but his opinion of Heraclitus the man is not good at all. It is therefore extremely intriguing now to find out what exactly attracts Nietzsche to this scornful man, why he exhibits so much warmth toward this cold misanthrope, whose nickname the weeping philosopher puts it all too mildly. So, welcome to the next entry, and to Nietzsche’s royally secluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus.

THE WEEPING PHILOSOPHER

In the “wonderfully idealized company of philosophers,” Heraclitus is incontestably a giant among giants. Nietzsche mentions him affectionately in almost every one of his works. Russell devotes to him the biggest chapter in the pre-Socratic section of his History of Western Philosophy. He lived around 535-475 BC, and is commonly referred to as the weeping philosopher, because of his gloomy disposition, and thus contrasted to Democritus, who is called the laughing philosopher.

Heraclitus’ answer to Thales’ monistic question is neither water nor air, but an ever-living Fire. His often quoted fragment, for which he is called a materialist, asserts that “this world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or humans has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever will be an ever-living Fire.” As far as I can see it, this is not a rejection of theism as such, but a definite repudiation of polytheistic mythology. We may argue, of course, whether the ever-living Fire can be identified with One God, thus making Heraclitus an implicit monotheist, and, in fact, when we look at his extant fragments later on, we will see that this view is consistent with everything he says about Fire. He actually says the following in his Fragment 36: God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the taste of each. But even if we choose to judge this opinion inconclusive, we can still say about him without any doubt that what he rejects in particular is the religious anthropomorphism, rather than theism, and that in his treatment of fire he reveals himself as an accomplished religious mystic, definitely in the mold which is much to Nietzsche’s liking.

Heraclitus is generally recognized as the first philosopher to transcend physics in search of a metaphysical foundation and of moral applications. He is also given credit as the first pure metaphysician, he is believed to have solved the problem of change, which Anaximenes had identified with a question mark, but failed to find an answer to. How can one change into many?! And if the world is many, how can we talk of oneness at all?! For Heraclitus the answer comes in the different characters of one and many. Many are material in their composition, but over and above the many there is a oneness of the world order. In my opinion, he is the first structuralist, who is able to distinguish the single comprehensive structural organization from the components within the structure, which are many, and diverse, but all of them are governed by that single organizing structure.

The question of one versus many thus morphs into the recognizable philosophical question of permanence and change. ‘One cannot step into the same river twice’ is undoubtedly the most famous and recognizable of Heraclitus’ dictums, which reveals the fine subtlety of his approach to the immensely complex problem of permanence and change. On the one hand, everything is in a flux (another world-famous dictum of his is “Panta rhei,” that is, Everything flows, nothing stands still), but taking this flux to an extreme, it denies any kind of permanence to the world, which in itself is absurd. There must therefore exist different orders, one identified with change, the other, with permanence, and the order of permanence is far superior to the order of change and governs it. Hence his opening dictum numbered as Fragment 1: It is wise to listen not to me, but to the Logos, and to confess that all things are one.

There are other supremely important elements in Heraclitean philosophy, which we will get to in time, but not here, so as to avoid redundancy. In the meantime we shall find out what Bertrand Russell thinks about him, and also why Heraclitus is so dear to Nietzsche’s heart. We shall end the Heraclitus subsection by our own analysis of some of the most interesting of his extant fragments.

ONE FOREVER AT REST

Going through the list of Xenophanes’ extant fragments, arranged numerically, according to their official commonly accepted classification, I shall start with the very first one, which illustrates one of Nietzsche’s points regarding Xenophanes, namely that he was a great rhapsodist and poet, but also a moralizer and an astute teacher of propriety.

(1) Now is the floor clean, and the hands and cups of all; one sets twisted garlands on our heads, another hands us fragrant ointment on a salver. The mixing bowl stands ready, full of gladness, and there is more wine at hand which promises never to leave us in the lurch, soft and smelling of flowers in the jars. In the midst the frankincense sends up its holy scent, and there is cold water, sweet and clean. Brown loaves are set before us and a lordly table laden with cheese and rich honey. The altar in the midst is clustered round with flowers; song and festivity fill the halls.

But first it is proper that people should sing to the god with joy, with holy tales and pure words; then after offerings and prayer made that we may have strength to do right, for that is in truth the first thing to do.

The next sequence of fragments has been quoted by historians of philosophy most frequently as it contains Xenophanes’ criticism of amoral polytheism and anthropomorphism, and lays down his monotheistic idea of One God, neither in form nor in thought bearing any resemblance to mortals. Observe, however, his use of the masculine He in reference to God. We may find it normal in man-controlled society but having said that God is totally unlike the mortals in every respect, his use of He in talking about God is at least worthy of being noticed.

(11) Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things which are shame and disgrace among mortals, stealings, and adulteries, and deceivings of one another. (12) Since they have uttered many lawless deeds of the gods, stealings, and adulteries, and deceivings of one another. (14) But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form. (15) Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as people do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and they would make their bodies in the image of their several kinds. (16) The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. (18) The gods have not revealed all things to people from the beginning, but by seeking, they find in time what is better.

(23) One god, the greatest among gods and humans-- neither in form like unto mortals, nor in his thought. (24) He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over. (25) But-- without toil-- he sways all things by the thought of his mind. (26) And he abides always in the selfsame place, one forever at rest; nor does it befit him to go about now here, now there.

The next series of fragments talks about the origin of all things and about their ultimate destination. (27) All things come from the earth, and in earth all things end. (29) All things are earth and water that come into being and grow. (33) For we all are born of earth and water. Compare the last fragment to this passage in the Bible: For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return (Genesis 3:19). It goes without saying that we are dealing not exactly with the familiar pre-Socratic cosmological statement about the particular origin of all things, but rather with a profound contemplation of the character of life and death, akin to the Biblical statement also quoted here.

And finally, Fragment 34 is concerned with the epistemological certainty of God and complete (absolute) truth. The fact that such certain knowledge cannot be available without destroying the essence of faith has been discussed by me in several places, and what remains for me here is only to express my admiration for Xenophanes’ profundity, from which, regrettably, the fathers of Christian theology did not choose to profit and instead, spent lifetimes of inspiration and thorough scholarship, trying to prove what was never meant to be subjected to a rational scientific probe.

(34) There never has been, nor will ever be, a person who has certain knowledge about the gods and about all the things I speak of. Even if he should chance to say the complete truth (by sheer accident, but not as a result of the specific intent), yet he himself knows not that it is so. But all may have their fancy.

As I said before, and as the historiography of philosophy never fails to mention in its own right, only very few fragments of Xenophanes’ works have reached us over the ages, and there are fewer still which I have chosen to discuss in this entry. But they alone are sufficient to establish Xenophanes as a philosopher who can stand his ground among the bigger, more established names. For, as Nietzsche writes in his Preface to Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks:

This attempt to relate the history of the earlier Greek philosophers is distinguished from similar attempts by its brevity. This has been accomplished by mentioning only a small number of the doctrines of every philosopher, i.e., by incompleteness. Those doctrines, however, have been selected, in which the personal element of the philosopher re-echoes most strongly; whereas a complete enumeration of all the possible propositions handed down to us, as is the custom in textbooks, merely brings about one thing, the absolute silencing of the personal element. It is through this that those records become so tedious, for in the systems which have been refuted it is only this personal element that can still interest us, for this alone is eternally irrefutable. (And now comes the big punch line!) It is possible to shape the picture of a person out of three anecdotes. I endeavor to bring into relief three anecdotes out of every system and abandon the remainder.

And of course the reader may have noted that for the purposes of this entry I myself “endeavored to bring into relief three anecdotes” out of Xenophanes’ small, but important legacy, and I do agree with Nietzsche that it is possible, on such a limited basis, to shape the picture of a genius, to which Xenophanes certainly measures up.

XENOPHANES THE MYSTIC SINGER

As I said in the previous entry, neither Nietzsche nor Russell attach very much importance to Xenophanes as an independent thinker, but he is surely treated by Nietzsche with considerable respect if not as a philosopher, then at least as a “rhapsodist, singer of mystic nature deification.” But having attributed philosophical value to Homer, Hesiod, and several other such “rhapsodists,” I am not going to parse words as to what Nietzsche’s determination on the philosophicality of the Colophonian precisely is.

Nietzsche seems to be of two minds about Xenophanes, which underscores his exceptional sensitivity with regard to genius, and implicitly confirms the purported change of mind about the great Greek’s importance, which may have occurred as late as in the 1950s.

On the downside, Xenophanes is not included in Nietzsche’s “idealized company of early Greek masters,” nor is he given a separate chapter, being discussed as a sideshow to Parmenides. But, on the other hand, he is showered with epithets which, as we know, have been particularly close to Nietzsche’s heart, and we can say with some assurance that in Xenophanes he has recognized a fellow mystic and a kindred spirit and has paid him tribute. The following are excerpts from the Parmenidean Chapter 10 of Nietzsche’s master work on the pre-Socratics, Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks:

There came the day when a strange insight befell Parmenides, which seemed to withdraw the value from all his old combinations. It is assumed that some external influence shared in the invention of that fateful day. This external event is thought to be Parmenides’ acquaintance with the theology of that ancient far-traveled rhapsodist, singer of mystic nature deification, the Colophonian Xenophanes…

In this assumption already hides the explanation of why both Parmenides and Xenophanes are claimed as the founders of the Eleatic school of philosophy. Having provided such a powerful stimulus to Parmenides, Xenophanes must really have some share in the historiographic spoils.

Throughout an extraordinary lifetime, Xenophanes lived as a traveling poet, and became a widely informed and widely informative person through his travels, who understood how to ask questions and to tell stories. Heraclitus counted him among the polyhistorians, and among “historical” natures in general. Whence and when he picked up the mystical tendency toward the One, and the “One forever at rest,” no one can now reconstruct. Perhaps, it was the concept of an old man finally settling down,--- one, before whose soul there appeared, after all his wanderings and after all his restless learning and looking, the highest and the greatest thing of all, a vision of divine rest, of the permanence of all things within a pantheistic archetypal peace. To me, by the way, it seems no more than accidental that in the same place-- in Elea-- two men should be living for a while, who both carried in their minds a concept of unity. They did not form a school; they had nothing in common, which one might have learned from the other and then passed along to others in turn. For the origin of their concepts of unity was a totally different one in each case, a downright opposite one, in fact. If one of them did know the doctrine of the other, he would have had to translate it into a language of his own even to understand it. But even in such translation the specific importance of each would surely have been lost. While Parmenides came to the unity of the existent purely by adherence to his supposed logic, spinning it out of the concepts of being and nonbeing, Xenophanes was a religious mystic who, with his mystic unity, belongs, very typically, to the sixth century (BC). Even though he was not as cataclysmic a personality as Pythagoras, he shared his tendency and compulsion to improve human beings, to cleanse and to heal them, as he wandered from place to place. He is a teacher of ethics still on the rhapsodic level; in later times he would have been a Sophist. In his daring disapproval of the current mores and values he has not his equal in Greece. And to disapprove, he by no means withdraws into solitude, like Heraclitus or Plato, but he stands up before that selfsame public, whose jubilant admiration of Homer, whose passionate yearning for the honors of the gymnastic festivals, whose worship of anthropomorphic stones he scourged wrathfully and scornfully, yet not in the quarrelsome fashion of a Thersites. The freedom of the individual finds its high point in Xenophanes, and it is in this almost boundless withdrawal from all conventionality that he relates more closely to Parmenides, not in that ultimate divine unity which he once saw in a vision befitting his era, and which has hardly the expression, or terminology, in common with the Parmenidean One Being, not to mention the origin.

And now, in order to understand and appreciate what Nietzsche has in mind, concerning Xenophanes, the time has come to introduce Xenophanes himself through his surviving fragments, which are not many, but are enough to reconstruct his basic ideas as expressed in his own words.

BETWEEN PYTHAGORAS AND HERACLITUS

[Beginning with the present entry, my PreSocratica Sempervirens sequence resumes.]

With the pre-Socratic philosopher, poet, social commentator, and religious critic Xenophanes of Colophon (570 BC-480 BC) we are returning to the proper chronological order, disrupted by our detour into latter-day Pythagoreanism of Philolaus and Archytas (see my entries on them posted on December 18^th – 19^th, 2013.)

Xenophanes is often considered as the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophical thinking, whose most famous alumnus was Parmenides, who is himself often described as the school’s founder. We are however better off treating him separately from the Eleatics, both on his own merit and to avoid the controversy as to whether he was an Eleatic or not, which is totally unnecessary. (Let the aspiring scholars debate this PhD fodder…)

Xenophanes is most renowned for having explicitly rejected Greek polytheism and anthropomorphism, and his development of the concept of One God, who is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile, and forever present. For this reason, he is often seen as the first explicit monotheist in Western philosophy of religion. I am, however, convinced, as I have asserted throughout all relevant sections of this work, that monotheism has been the religion of the Greek philosophers from the very start, which ought not to diminish, of course, his, Xenophanes’s, personal accomplishments as a champion of explicit monotheism.

Modern historiography of philosophy points out a curious fact, namely, that until the 1950’s, there existed some controversy over many aspects of the Xenophanes phenomenon, including whether or not he could be properly characterized as a philosopher. In today’s philosophical and classics discourse, it is asserted that he is recognized as one of the most important pre-Socratic philosophers. This is an interesting claim, and I am going to investigate it further at a later date, but so far it is true that among my glorified staple sources of philosophical historiography, Nietzsche and Russell, Xenophanes, although favorably mentioned, does not occupy a place among the greatest. As the reader may have noticed, Nietzsche does not include him in his wonderfully idealized company of the early Greek masters Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Socrates. Bertrand Russell does not give him a separate chapter either, mentioning Xenophanes in his big chapter on Heraclitus. But this mention is in itself worth taking a look at, and here it is, slightly contracted for the purpose of brevity:

“Between Pythagoras and Heraclitus there was a philosopher of less importance, namely Xenophanes. His date is uncertain, mainly determined by the fact that he alludes to Pythagoras, while Heraclitus alludes to him. He believed all things to be made of earth and water. He believed in one God, unlike men in thought and form, who “without toil swayeth all things by the force of his mind.” He made fun of the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration, and believed it impossible to ascertain the truth in matters of theology (which is exactly my point, as expressed in my aphorism “if theological proof were available, who would then need the faith?!”). Xenophanes has his place in the succession of rationalists who were opposed to the mystical tendencies of Pythagoras and others, but as an independent thinker he is not of the first rank.”

This rather unflattering characterization, given to Xenophanes by Russell, needs further investigation in the light of the more recent claim concerning Xenophanes’ preeminent greatness, which will be done at a later date, as I have promised. In the meantime, let us next examine what Nietzsche has to say about Xenophanes in his Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks, which examination will certainly require a separate entry. As we are going to find out in tomorrow’s entry, Nietzsche and Russell sharply differ on the question of Xenophanes’ rationalism versus mysticism. Who is right?..

OPIUM.

(With the posting of this short, but pointed entry, where the absence of formal comment constitutes the best comment that I can think of, I am returning to my own blog entries for a while, after which Galina’s Bulgakov will return for the next installment.)

“Religion… is the opium of the people.”

Karl Marx.

“Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.”

Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), English physician, called English Hippocrates.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXVI.

Man and the People Concludes.

“The world for me is but a deck of cards,

Life is the bank, fate deals, and I am playing.”

M. Yu. Lermontov.

Bulgakov compares the unexpected and ominous appearance of Petlura on the Ukrainian national stage to a chess game.

“So that’s what. Completely out of the blue, there appeared a third force on the giant chessboard.” ---Yes, Petlura. The other two forces?--- “Here are the Germans, and there, beyond the faraway line, where the bluish woods are, there the Bolsheviks are, only two forces.”

If the figurehead hetman and his German puppeteers unleashed a ‘third force’ against the Bolsheviks in Petlura, as a provocative move in anticipation of their imminent departure from Ukraine, to continue the internecine bloodshed and the pogroms for as long as the Russians could be held back, the Bolsheviks on their part had a ‘third force’ of their own, as represented by the already known to us M. S. Shpolyansky, and the ‘unknowns’ who supported him and his dissipated way of life. This ‘third force’ supported the Bolsheviks by no means owing to its being “pro” workers and peasants but because it was staunchly against the pogromshchiks:

“They are all scoundrels. Both the hetman and Petlura. But Petlura is, in addition to this, a pogromshchik,” Shpolyansky was saying. (Curiously, when he says “They are all scoundrels,” he neglects to count among them the German occupiers of Ukraine, who were the ones to install the “scoundrel” hetman, who acted under German orders when he released from prison “the other scoundrel and pogromshchik” Petlura.)

Bulgakov accuses Shpolyansky that for him even this (Petlura being a pogromshchik) isn’t a conviction worth fighting for, but merely an opportunistic adventure, by giving him the following line:

“But the most important thing however isn’t even this. I just got bored, having not thrown bombs for a long time.”

In other words, in Shpolyansky we are dealing with an unprincipled terrorist: a terrorist without a cause…

…The point is that there are people who do not stand for something, but they always have something to be against, and in Shpolyansky’s case, he merely objects to the pogromshchiks. With a punishing truthfulness, Bulgakov draws our attention to the parallel that by the same token as the pogromshchiks are coming clothed in wholesome German-made fabric (that is, wearing German uniforms), the anti-pogromshchik Shpolyansky is smoking German cigarettes…

This Shpolyansky “became known [in Kiev] immediately upon his arrival from St. Petersburg... He had lots of money and generously lent it out... He kept a ballerina from the opera house, and another lady too... He became famous for being a superb reciter of his own poetry, and as an excellent organizer of poets... He drank white wine, lived in the best hotel Continental, wore an expensive coat with beaver collar and a top hat... He had a small gold cigarette holder containing German cigarettes without mouthpiece.”

It is to him, Shpolyansky, that the poet Rusakov( who had been corrupted by Shpolyansky for a short period of time, but managed to return to the right path in time), tells the following:

“You are somehow too healthy… You are lacking that noble wormhole in you, which could have made you a truly outstanding person of our days…”

A wormhole cannot be “noble.” Nobody else would have put these two words together. Vintage Bulgakov! Calling Shpolyansky “too healthy,” Bulgakov means that during the hard times there can always be found people who, regardless of the devastation around them, manage to live large, taking advantage of other people’s misery, and generously supported by their sponsors, who find them useful. But this particular quality: knowing how to live large, deprives them of the ability to become genuine leaders. They are always at best stuck in the middle, the right word for them being “go-betweens.”

Bulgakov shows this discrepancy by creating the image of the “man of light, with a cock of blond hair jumping over his forehead,” who ascends the frozen fountain in a black cap, and leaves the scene in a Cossack papakha, thus evading the mob which fails to recognize him as the speaker.

It is actually this “man of light,” in a Cossack hat, that Shpolyansky and Co. are going to support from now on. Thus, the Bolsheviks, together with Woland, can repeat his singular phrase:

“Granted, there can be exceptions; among the characters sitting down with me at the festive table, there were, on occasion, some amazing scoundrels.”

Bulgakov’s newly coined phrase “a noble wormhole” means a human shortcoming of some sort, which the person struggles to overcome, realizing that he has it, and in the process of that struggle, he becomes a better man. In the case of the Poet Rusakov, this role is played by syphilis, the disease Rusakov contracted having stepped on the path of licentiousness and dissipation. Near the end of White Guard, Bulgakov writes that---

“As he [Rusakov] was reading this terrific book [the Book of Revelation], his mind was becoming like a gleaming sword piercing ever deeper into the darkness. Ailments and sufferings appeared to him insignificant, unimportant. His infirmity was peeling off like the bark from a broken dried branch left behind in the forest. He saw the blue bottomless haze of the ages, the corridor of the millennia. And he felt no fear, for the past was gone.”

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXV.

Man and the People Continued.

“Let him be the devil himself,

But he is still a useful man.”

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 

In his poem Prediction, Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov does not call the devil Demon, as he does in several of his works, but he calls him the mighty man. From this Bulgakov takes the idea that there are people who are worse than the devil and he develops this idea in his works. Hence, he creates the characters of Berlioz, Meigel, Shpolyansky, Latunsky, Lavrovich, Ahriman, the two Kalsoners, etc.

In White Guard, we already have the prototype of Ivanushka, also a poet, a certain Rusakov, son of a librarian. However, if Ivanushka in Master and Margarita was lucky to have met Woland, who converted him onto the “path of truth,” alas, Ivanushka’s prototype Rusakov happens to meet a certain Shpolyansky, who beckons him onto the path of debauchery and perversion, which ends shamefully, with the poet contracting syphilis.

Mind you, according to established Russian literary research, Shpolyansky is not a fictional character. His prototype is a real person, namely, Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984).

Here is the curious portrait of Shpolyansky, painted by the poet Rusakov to his attending physician Alexei Turbin, in the novel White Guard:

“…The evil genie of my life, the precursor of the Antichrist, he has left for the city of the devil… I am talking about his precursor, a man with the eyes of a snake… He is young, but he has as much filth in him as a thousand-year-old devil. He tempts married women into adultery, young men into sin, and here already are blustering the war trumpets of wicked hordes and over the fields the countenance of Satan can already be seen, following in their step.”

Here comes the most interesting moment, when Alexei Turbin, the physician and protagonist of White Guard, instead of continuing to dissuade Rusakov from such thoughts that can easily land the poet in a lunatic asylum, in his opinion, suddenly supports the demented conversation by a serious question-answer, concerning the identity of Satan:

“Trotsky?”

“Yes, such is the name he has assumed. But his real name is in Hebrew Abaddon, which in Greek is Apollyon, meaning the Destroyer.”

This should tell the reader that even syphilis is being used by Bulgakov allegorically: the product of corrupting the population. This brings to mind an apt quotation from the Russian historian Kostomarov:

“If Satan wanted to think of something to spoil humanity, he wouldn’t be able to devise anything more successful.”

By the same token as the Great Napoleonic Wars of “liberation” spread gonorrhea all across the European continent, the First World War brought syphilis to Russia. There are things worse than death: brainwashing, disintegration of society, venereal diseases, causing an erosion of moral principles, destruction of the primary cell of society: family.

In the systematic corruption of society Bulgakov saw a deliberateness on the part of the destroyers of religion, and for this reason both his “poets” -- Rusakov in White Guard and Ivan Bezdomny in Master and Margarita – are blasphemers, writing blasphemous verse under the guidance of Shpolyansky and Berlioz respectively. And in this blasphemy Bulgakov shows that there are people who are worse than the devil: people corrupting other people.

In such times, Lermontov writes in his Prediction,---

“…the food of many will be death and blood,

When children and innocent women

Will no longer be protected by the deposed law…

Bulgakov depicts such times in White Guard, when…

“…a paper signed by proper authorities of the Hetman’s Administration was received by the city jail, which decreed that the prisoner in cell #666 be released from jail.

…That’s all. Because of this piece of paper… such calamities and misfortunes happened, such marches, bloodsheds, fires, and pogroms, despair and horror…

The released prisoner had the plainest and most insignificant designation: Semen Vasilievich Petlura. Yet he called himself, and with him the city press between December 1918 and February 1919 called him Simon, somewhat according to the French manner…”

The infamous name of Petlura is known to every Jew. Having assigned to him the number 666, Bulgakov shows that there are people who are worse than the devil. He was released just before the hetman himself, together with his patrons, the German occupiers of Ukraine, fled the country under the cover of night, and Petlura’s function was presumably to counterbalance the incoming Bolsheviks. In White Guard Bulgakov writes about the much oppressed Ukrainian people to the effect that against the Germans and the hetman’s army there were “four times forty times four hundred thousand peasants (muzhiks) with hearts burning with an unquenched malice. Oh, how many memories had accumulated in these hearts: the sequestered horses, the requisitioned bread, the landowners returning under the hetman, the rumors of the masters’ rotten reform. There were tens of thousands men coming back from the war and knowing how to shoot… Hundreds of thousands of rifles buried in the ground, and millions of pieces of ammunition in that same ground… and thousands of former prisoners of war, Ukrainians returning from Galicia...

…As for what was happening outside [the City, that is, Kiev], in that real-life Ukraine, which is a place larger than France, with tens of millions of people living in it,-- nobody knew that. No, they just didn’t know, they knew nothing not only about some distant places, but even—ridiculous to say—about the villages located in fifty kilometers from the City itself. They didn’t know but they hated with all their souls. And when some vague news would arrive from the mysterious regions, known as the countryside, that the Germans were robbing the peasants and chastening them ruthlessly by machinegun fire, not a single voice was raised in defense of the Ukrainian peasants, but even worse, more than once there were teeth bared in the wolves’ manner under the silken lamp shades in the drawing rooms [of the privileged], and the muttering could be heard: ‘It serves them right...and that’s too little. I would have given them more. Let them remember the Revolution. Let the Germans teach them--- they didn't want to take it from their own, so let them take it from foreigners!’”

To which Bulgakov has this response of a Ukrainian peasant woman in White Guard:

“Chi vony nas vyuchut, chi my ikh razuchimo.” [“Either they teach us, or we unteach them.”]

And the Ukrainians did “unteach” the Germans! Bulgakov writes that “only they who were defeated themselves know how this word looks! It is like a room, in which green mold creeps over the wall paper, full of sickly life, and, in a word, much resembling death.”

It so happened that “killed in broad daylight on Nikolayev Street... was none other than the commander in chief of the German forces in Ukraine Field marshal Eichhorn, the untouchable and proud general, fearsome in his power, deputy to Emperor Wilhelm himself! He was naturally assassinated by a blue collar worker, who was naturally a socialist. In twenty-four hours, the Germans hanged not just the assassin, but also the cabbie who had brought him to the scene of the incident. But this in no way helped revive the famous general...”

“…Yes, sir, death did not tarry. She swept along the autumnal, and later wintry, Ukrainian roads together with the dry blowing snow. She started tapping in the copses with the machinegun fire. She wasn’t seen as such, but clearly seen was its precursor, a certain coarse peasant rage. He ran in blizzard and freezing cold in torn sandals, with hay in the uncovered clotted hair, and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which no beginning can take on in Russia. And then there started to flutter slight red roosters… One needed to lure this peasant rage along one road of some kind, for this is how bewitched everything works in this world, that no matter how long he would be running, he always turns up fatefully at exactly one and the same crossroads…

Alas! They all knew already fairly definitely. The word Petlura! --- Petlura!! In the morning it was dripping from newspaper pages into the coffee, and the divine tropical drink would instantly be transformed in the mouth into most filthy waste…”

Bulgakov describes the bloody entrance into Kiev of Petlura and his army, clothed in wholesome, albeit German-made fabric, in an ominous-poetic manner:

“All of a sudden, the gray background in the cut between the cupolas burst open, and out of the murky gloom, a sudden sun showed itself. It was so large as never seen before in Ukraine, and it was all red, like pure blood. From the sphere making an effort to shine through the cover of the clouds, measuredly and far out there stretched the strips of dried blood and ichor. The sun painted red the main dome of Sophia, and a strange shadow was cast from it across the square, turning Bogdan [the giant statue of Bogdan Khmelnitzky, the erstwhile scourge of Ukrainian Jews] violet, while the restless crowd of people was made even darker, even thicker, even more restless.”

(To be continued…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXIV.

“The war, my friends, is all aglow,

And banners of honor are unfurled;

With fateful trumpet sound, war

Lures to the fields of bloody vengeance.”

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 

Man and the People.

My chapter Chelovek i Narod (Man and the People) is written on the basis of Bulgakov’s early novel of genius White Guard, which in its subject matter (its events take place in Ukraine during a terribly chaotic time at the end of World War I, witnessed by the author) is strikingly current in our time, along with his Diaboliada (1923, depicting a case of stolen identity), Rok’s (Fateful) Eggs (1924, alluding to foreign intervention and biological warfare), and Adam and Eve (a 1931 play about the use of chemical weapons with a glimpse of a nuclear explosion), to name just these few.

…The hand of genius never goes out of style!

Speaking of geniuses, M. Yu. Lermontov is second to none. In his astonishing poem Prediction, the great poet foresees the Russian calamities of the twentieth century eighty years in advance. It fell upon the great Bulgakov to live through Lermontov’s prophesy: World War I, the vacuum left by the Emperor’s (Nicholas II) criminally irresponsible abdication, the October Revolution, and the Civil War. Having relived this awful time in real terms, Bulgakov takes the relay baton from Lermontov, and makes his own, this time optimistic prediction, and he makes it during a terrible time for Russia in the 1920’s, in his novel White Guard.

In Prediction, Lermontov shows the coming of the devil, whom he calls a “mighty man.”

“And on that day a mighty man [chelovek] will come,

Him you will recognize, and understand

Why he is holding in his hand a knife:

And woe is you! Your tears, your groan,

Will be appearing laughable to him;

And everything in him will be as terrible and dark

As his dark cloak with elevated brow.”

The word “chelovek” is special in the Russian language. It means a person, rather than literally a man. (Unlike in the English language, there is another word, “muzhchina,” to signify a male person.) Thus, in the Russian language both a man and a woman can be called a chelovek, which is not possible in English.

Bulgakov’s devil is never called a chelovek. This word is used by him very sparingly, almost like an honorary title. This nuance is of utmost importance for the understanding of his novel Master and Margarita, where Yeshua is called a chelovek. (A subtle and superbly elegant allusion to Ecce Homo of the Gospels…)

“A man (chelovek) of twenty-seven or so years of age was brought onto the balcony, and straightened up there. This man was wearing an old torn-up light-blue cloak... Under the man’s left eye there was a large bruise; in the corner of his mouth there was a cut covered by dried up blood… The man’s hands were tied…”

This is how Bulgakov introduces into his novel Master and Margarita Yeshua Ha-Nozri [Jesus Christ], ecce homo, who himself indiscriminately calls everybody, including Pontius Pilate, and even a ruthless Roman executioner, a “good man,” following a good Christian Russian tradition. Bulgakov deliberately makes this contrast between his own reserved use of “chelovek” and Yeshua’s presumption of goodness in man. After all, Yeshua’s ministry was about saving man from evil, by appealing to man’s good side, to the chelovek in him. Bulgakov, on the other hand, makes no claim that all men are good…

Lermontov in Demon, calls Paradise “the dwelling place of light.” Bulgakov, in Master and Margarita, once again takes his cue from Lermontov, unequivocally referring to Paradise as “Light.” This is by no means a new conception for him, ‘coming to light’ in his last novel. White Guard, written much earlier, in the early 1920’s, introduces the term “svetly chelovek,” “man of light.”

In White Guard, the honor of being called a man [chelovek] is first bestowed on a Bolshevik orator. (Apparently, Bulgakov sincerely believed that Christianity and Communism have quite a lot in common…) ---

“…Above the buzzing crowd, onto the frozen slippery cup of the fountain, people’s arms raised a man… The raised man glanced inspiredly over the thousands-strong thicket of heads, somewhere where ever more clearly the sun disk was climbing up, gilding the crosses with thick red gold. He waved up his hand and in a weak voice shouted: ‘To the people—glory!’ … ‘Glory to the people!’ repeated the man, and instantly a strand of blond hair jumped and fell on his forehead... The voice of the bright man grew strong and could be heard clearly through the roar and the crackle of feet, … through distant drums… The bright man pointed to the sun with a certain terrible anguish, yet at the same time with a determination…’Like the Cossacks sang: The Sergeants are with us, with us, like with brothers. With us! With us they are!’ [He was speaking to the crowd in Ukrainian.] With his hat, the man struck his chest, which was flaming with an enormous wave of a red bow. ‘With us because these sergeants are with the people, they were born with them and will die with them.’”

The man was speaking in Ukrainian to a crowd that had gathered there to listen to Petlura, thus he was putting his life in a terrible danger of being torn to pieces by the angry crowd.

The similarity between these two images is unmistakable. Both Yeshua and the brave orator are standing under the sun, which gives life to every living thing. But in the case of the man of light the sun is already lighting up the crosses. Yeshua stands near a fountain with water in it, and water, according to Thales is the source of all life, which Yeshua is bringing to the people. The man of light is perched upon the frozen water of a fountain, but the time will come when the ice melts and the water is released.

All of this shows that Bulgakov is also making his prognostication, that Russia will rise from her physical, moral, and mental devastation, under the leadership of a man of light, who will bring glory to his people. From the orator’s speech it becomes clear that this is going to happen, like everything happens in Russia (from the election of the first Romanov Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, to the formation of the State Giant Company Gazprom by the Russian Prime Minister, a hereditary Cossack, Colonel of the Orenburg Cossack Army, and General of the Zaporozhe Cossack Army Victor Chernomyrdin) with the help of the Cossacks…

Lermontov’s prediction came true in less than a century. Bulgakov’s has not been fulfilled yet, but it is getting there.

An astonishing image of a man of the people can be found near the end of the novel White Guard. More about him, but under a different angle, and in connection to his guardian angel… Sergeant Zhilin, in the Per Aspera ad Astra segment of the Bulgakov chapter. The man is a sentry guarding an armored train, but Bulgakov uses no other words to describe him, rather than chelovek.---

“Near the armored train… there walked like a pendulum a man in a long soldier’s overcoat, wearing torn felt boots [valenki, a peculiar knee-high Russian winter footwear without soles] and a sharp-topped hood. The man was very tired and freezing savagely, inhumanly. His hands, blue and cold were in vain burrowing with their wooden fingers into the tatters of the sleeves, in search of shelter. From inside the hood, revealing a shaggy frost-bitten mouth, stared the eyes, in snowy bushes of the eyelashes. These eyes were blue, suffering, sleepy… The man was walking methodically, with the bayonet hanging down, and there was only one thought on his mind: when would the frosty hour of torture at last expire, so that he might leave the beastly outdoors and find shelter inside. The man was looking for any kind of fire and could find it nowhere; clenching his teeth, having lost hope to warm up his toes and trying to wiggle them, he was unswervingly casting his glance toward the stars. Occasionally, exhausted, the man would lower his rifle, sticking its butt into the snow, and having stopped, he would immediately and transparently doze off. In his dream he saw an unseen sky dome… The soul of the man was immediately filled with happiness…

By a completely superhuman effort, the man would pull up the rifle, place it on his arm; reeling, he would tear out his feet from the ground, and keep walking again…A reddish Venus was playing, and reflecting the light from the blue lantern of the moon, there glistened on the man’s chest a responding star. It was small and also five-pointed…”

Bulgakov’s symbolism is simple and clear. The freezing sentry in torn valenki represents the people. The brave orator perched on the frozen fountain is the leader. Both are looking for each other, and when they come together under the banner of Orthodox Christianity, as represented by Yeshua, the combination is unbeatable.

(To be continued…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXIII.

“…Quidquid latet, apparebit,

Nil inultum remanebit.”

Thomas de Celano. Dies Irae.

 

Woland’s Justice.

 

The other half of Bulgakov’s devil in Master and Margarita is the spitting image of the notorious and fierce chief of secret police under Ivan Grozny, known to history as Malyuta Skuratov. This Malyuta (which was in fact his nickname, indicating his small height, amply compensated for by an uncommonly broad span of shoulders… just like--- what do you know!--- Azazello!) was a no-nonsense fellow, always fighting in the front ranks of Ivan’s soldiers in war, and never delegating the murder business to his underlings. (He strangled with his bare hands St. Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow and the most outspoken critic of the Tsar.)

One of the most striking characteristics of Malyuta Skuratov, at least according to the latter-day Russian painters who have left us with images of him was his flaming-red hair. Bulgakov through Margarita makes a note of that too, at Woland’s ball.

It should come as no surprise then that Bulgakov borrows the external characteristics of Woland and Azazello from Russian Oprichniks (the erstwhile Russian secret service under Ivan Grozny). In the case of Azazello, Bulgakov goes out of his way to convey to the reader his acute sense of Russian history by giving him--- predictably, I must say,--- that selfsame red color of hair [not so useful for an assassin, who must prefer to look inconspicuous] that characterized his bloody prototype.

Master’s impression of Azazello focuses not on the color of his hair, nor on the broadness of his shoulders, but on his manner of dress:

“Just that his dress was not quite ordinary: some kind of cassock or cloak.”

Bulgakov writes that “Azazello was dressed like Woland in black” and Woland himself “was sitting… dressed in his black soutane.”

We also know that Azazello never parts with his knife which he always has conspicuously tucked behind his belt. It is also perfectly clear that Azazello put his knife to use in Moscow, which I am writing about in my chapter on Cannibalism.

Bulgakov’s Woland has a long and broad sword. Although Bulgakov does not equip him with a dog’s head and a broom: to sniff out, chew up, and sweep away treason from the Russian State, it is none other than Woland who “sniffs out and sweeps away” Berlioz and Meigel. Their meeting with Woland brings grief to both of them. In Berlioz’ case---

“…The eyelids of the slain man lifted up, and in his dead face Margarita, shuddering, saw eyes very much alive, full of thought and suffering.”

Only now do we understand why Woland’s retinue unquestioningly obeys him…

“Your tears, your groan,

Will be appearing laughable to him;

And everything in him will be terrible and dark…”

(From M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Prediction.)

 

This scene is not merely representative of Woland’s peculiar macabre humor. Here he stands as he truly is, no compassion, an evil demon. A terrifying scene.

It is also remarkable how Bulgakov chooses to combine the two lethal scenes: the transformation of Berlioz’ head into a chalice and the killing of the “former baron” Meigel, whose blood fills the newly-made cup. What is striking in both scenes is that even though Woland in both cases makes fairly lengthy speeches, both Berlioz and Meigel are silent. Remembering the chapter on Andrei Fokich the buffet vendor, we can come to the conclusion that Woland possesses the power to deprive not just people, but even his own demonic retinue of the ability to speak, if such is his wish. This is how Bulgakov describes the death of Meigel:

“The guest was literally shaking with anxiety. Bright spots were burning on his cheeks, and his eyes shifted restlessly in great alarm. The guest was stupefied, and that was quite natural: he was struck by everything [he saw], and especially, Woland’s attire. [He was wearing a “dirty patched up nightshirt.”]”

Here is how Woland himself explains the murder of the “former baron”:

“‘Yes, by the way, baron, said Woland in a suddenly intimate lowered tone of voice, ‘rumors are going around about your excessive curiosity. They say that, in conjunction with your no less developed talkativeness, it has started attracting general attention. Furthermore, wicked tongues have already dropped the word--- a snitch and a spy. And even more, there is a supposition that this is about to bring you to a sad outcome no later than in a month. So, guess what, in order to spare you from the depressing anticipation, we have decided to come to your assistance, taking advantage of the circumstance that you insinuated yourself on me to be a guest of mine, precisely with the purpose of spying and eavesdropping on everything you can.’

…The baron became whiter than Abadonna... who took off his glasses for a second... At that very moment something sparked with fire in the hands of Azazello… The baron started falling down backwards, scarlet blood gushed from his chest…”

Bulgakov clearly shows that neither Berlioz nor Meigel were some innocent victims. In so far as Berlioz is concerned, his case is obvious: Taking advantage of his being a magazine editor, Berlioz brainwashes not just the “virgin” poet Ivan-Durák [Ivan-the-fool], but also the whole reading public, which has the misfortune of reading his magazine. Such brainwashing of other people’s heads is an unforgivable crime, in Bulgakov’s eyes, deserving the punishment by decapitation. What goes around, comes around.

As for the “former baron” Meigel, Bulgakov also treats him in a beastly fashion. It is not enough to simply kill him. Bulgakov burns his corpse: only his burnt bones were found under the burned parquet wooden floor of the apartment. Why is he being punished like that?

The only way how we can interpret this Aesopian language is that Meigel, who loved to live large and did not discriminate between us and them, wrote denunciations on his compatriots, who were then investigated and prosecuted on the basis of such reports, leading to their imprisonment and execution by the firing squad. So, once again, what goes around, comes around… The following passage points to that:

“…a snitch and a spy. And even more, there is a supposition that this is about to bring you to a sad outcome no later than in a month. So, guess what, in order to spare you from the depressing anticipation, we have decided to come to your assistance…”

Bulgakov here makes it perfectly clear that even if some of Meigel’s insinuations were true, there were false ones as well, and having checked them and found them false, the investigators figured out what was going on, and Meigel was about to be arrested and tried for bearing false witness. In Stalin’s time, Meigel’s crime was punishable by the firing squad. “To each according to his faith” was Woland’s motto, that is, an eye for an eye. Meigel had to pay with his life for the lives of the people whom he foulmouthed and robbed of their lives. Prewar time, wartime laws.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXII.

Yeshua and Woland Concludes.

“To good and evil shamefully indifferent,

From the onset of life we wilt without a fight;

Dishonorably fainthearted before danger,

And before power wretched slaves.”

 

M. Yu. Lermontov.

…Everything changes with the birth of Christ. Both God in human incarnation and the devil are now on earth, and Christ offers “resistance” to Lucifer. [The temptation in the desert, etc.] Now is the devil’s interest greatly aroused. After all, this is what he says about himself:

“I am the king of knowledge and of freedom,

I’m Heaven’s foe, I’m Nature’s evil…”

Obviously, it is impossible to imagine that having met Him after instants-ages, Lucifer would not be anxious to “perceive” Christ. Lermontov depicts such a meeting in powerful terms:

“Speechless, he was looking at his friend,

And blood was freezing in the veins,

He trembled, he sat down, he got up,

He walked, he paled, and suddenly sat down again.

In madness, he then wrung his hands,

Yet all the time kept silent…”

As we see, this passage starts with the word “speechless” and ends with “silent.” It is very strange that the other one makes no attempt to comfort his friend or otherwise help his young friend. This is certainly an allegory of friendship, but in reality there is no friendship. Lucifer the devil watches Christ, but does not interfere, as he knows only too well that this will be useless. He exhibits very strong emotions because all that Christ has been doing interests him greatly for the first time in countless ages. And when Christ’s death comes at last, Lermontov depicts the highest level of desperation in the older friend. This is how some people lose their mind.---

“…Like a madman, arms held crosswise,

There stood his friend,

He wished to laugh…

And froze, with his mouth open…

His glance then stiffened…”

Following in Lermontov’s footsteps, Bulgakov leaves unabated the devil’s [Woland’s] interest in Yeshua. Woland flies in to witness the interrogation and the crucifixion, not even trying to influence Yeshua, but affecting Pontius Pilate, as he offers him the usual way to go: by drinking a cup of poison (he makes the same offer to Andrei Fokich, and certainly to countless others), having first set Yeshua free.

Pontius Pilate is a strong personality, and although he is well aware that something very strange is happening to him, he puts up a strong defense against Woland’s attempts at intimidation. Being a Roman soldier, as he is, Pilate does not succumb to pressure, or, maybe, it is the other way round, and Bulgakov’s Russian Woland merely mocks the Roman procurator for his incapacity to see the truth (that is, to become a Christian), and for his cowardice.

There is yet another Lermontov poem where the Christ theme comes out strong, even though the poem Epitaph is ostensibly written on the occasion of his father’s death. Mark these words, however, which undoubtedly point in that Christological direction:

“You were yourself persecuted by the world,

And only evil discovered you in people.”

Unless these words are addressed to Christ, they sound ostentatious and out of place. But who is the one, in the poem, who is standing in the crowd all by himself and is not weeping? Whom does the crowd accuse of Schadenfreude, if it is not the devil?

“…But by one only was he understood.

And that one only, when the crowd, weeping,

Bent over you, he just stood there

Without wiping his eyes, immobile, cold, and speechless.

And all of them, not knowing the reason,

Were blaming him in daring rage,

As if the moment of your passing

Was a moment of bliss for him.”

Twice in his poems Lermontov makes the point that even if the devil is not directly accused of killing Christ, he is accused of gloating over Christ’s death; meanwhile, Lermontov’s devil is silent. In Bulgakov’s 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita, the devil engages in disseminating the first chapter of Master’s novel Pontius Pilate, meaning that he is by no means silent in this matter. It goes without saying that Bulgakov offers an exceptionally interesting account of Christ’s last day on earth.

Bulgakov’s devil in Pontius Pilate differs from the devil in Master and Margarita, as in the first instance he wanted to establish as an eyewitness that God was capable of the ultimate sacrifice.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. LXI.

Yeshua and Woland Continued.

 

“The blood of kin,

The blood of old men, trampled children,

Weighed heavily upon my soul.”

 

M. Yu. Lermontov.

 After his fall, everything in Lucifer is set against God…

“While reigning over the paltry earth,

He sowed evil without pleasure,

Nowhere he met resistance to his art,

And he got bored with evil.”

He got just as bored with evil on earth as previously he had become bored with goodness in Paradise. That’s why Bulgakov splits the devil in two: Woland, capable of magnanimity and Azazello, pure evil. Bulgakov’s Woland practically does not do anything by himself: he delegates. But then in Prediction Lermontov writes:

“…And on that day a mighty man will come,

Him you will recognize, and understand

Why he is holding in his hand a knife…”

Azazello, the killer-demon in Master and Margarita, never parts with his knife, tucked under his belt, and as we know, not only is he threatening others with it, but also puts it to use, cutting people with it into meat of first freshness.

In his extraordinary poem The Plague, Lermontov raises the question about the relationship of the devil with Christ. He intrigues the reader by the presence there of two friends…

“Their lives, their origin, were guarded by the silence of ignorance.”

From the very first lines, one wishes to know who they are.

“One was young in years and in soul…”

(Just like the first celestial warrior in Lermontov’s poem Combat.)

“…His glance was quick and shining.

Occasionally, blood was playing in his cheeks.

He was swift in movements and in thoughts,

And manly in his face, but with anguish

And horror was he looking at the pestilence.

He prayed and wept, rejecting sleep and food…”

At first sight, why shouldn’t one experience anguish and horror at the sight of the plague. But Lermontov writes that the first friend was manly, healthy, intelligent. People like that should be far away from thoughts of death. From this discrepancy we can only suppose that to Lermontov, the plague is merely an allegory of human life. (In my Rooster chapter, which follows Man and the People, I am writing precisely about how Bulgakov uses Lermontov’s allegory of Plague, to create his own “plague allegory,” in the story of Rok’s [Fateful] Eggs), and --- oh boy! --- what an allegory that is!)

And it is clear from the beginning that the young friend is destined to die. Thus, in the person of the young friend Lermontov shows us Christ, living in flesh through human torments. This is corroborated by the description of the older friend:

“The other, as it seemed, had learned the wickedness of life,

And by himself he tore up all his hopes...

His high and pale brow…”

 

In this older friend, Lermontov clearly depicts Lucifer, who had rebelled against God, and by doing this, he had indeed “by himself torn up all his hopes.” His “high and pale brow” also points in that direction.

(To be continued…)