Demonic Transformations.
Swallow.
“For, one swallow, or one day, or a short time, does not
make a fortunate or happy man.”
Aristotle
Using
the swallow in the scene between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua, Bulgakov shows how
everything changes with its arrival:
“The wings of the swallow sniffled right over the head of the
igemon; the bird rushed toward the cup of the fountain and flew out, to
freedom. The procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw a burning
pillar of dust near him.”
There
are several curious puzzles in the passages above, from the altogether puzzling
behavior of the swallow to the mysterious burning pillar of dust at the side of
Yeshua, and we are going to discuss them all, one by one, as we move on. But
first things first. How can the image of a swallow be associated in Bulgakov’s
riddle both with Woland and Azazello? The answer is easy, and it is threefold:
1. Bulgakov just loves to mystify and confuse the reader. This is a general comment, naturally.
2. As we may remember, the role of Margarita’s rook-chauffeur is played, on the two different occasions by both Begemot and Koroviev. Thus there is no rigid link in Bulgakov between a single personage and a single bird.
3. Not to mention the fact that Woland appears at the end of this chapter in the form of… a very unusual swallow.
So,
is the swallow associated with Woland or Azazello in this particular passage? Bulgakov uses two words here, which
indicate that the association in this case is with Azazello, rather than with
Woland. One word is “sniffled” [how
can a bird’s wings sniffle?], and the
other one is “burning,” referring to
the pillar of dust.
In Master and
Margarita, Azazello says this remarkable sentence:
“Then, fire! Fire, which was the beginning of all and which we end
it all with.”
I
already wrote that Azazello must himself perish in the fire and the earlier
mentioned Russian legend about Princess Olga connects Azazello, the sparrow, to
fire... Also with Azazello, we find the connection with the word “sniffle”:
“Azazello skewed an ironic right eye on Margarita, unobtrusively
shook his red-haired head, and sniffled.”
Even
more proof connecting Azazello to the swallow can be gleaned from Woland
himself.---
“‘So, you will do it?’
quietly asked Margarita.
‘By no means,’ replied
Woland. ‘The point, dear queen, is that
each department must do its own business… What’s the point of doing something
that’s supposed to be done by a different… how did I call it?..—department?’”
Woland
delegates. He likes to travel with a retinue which is the one that does
everything for him. If for him the Crucifixion of Yeshua was so important that
he attended it personally, let us be assured that he was not there by himself,
to work on his own in such heat. Most likely, he was accompanied by Azazello,
or perhaps in company with some other demons just as “precise and meticulous,”
who would be ascertaining that “everything had been done as necessary,” that
“everything was in order.”
I
already wrote in the sub-chapter Sparrow that
Azazello, having transformed himself into a sparrow, flew over to the
tourniquet to make sure that all would be going according to the plan there, and that indeed a young Russian
woman, a Komsomol member in good standing, was just about to cut off Berlioz’s
head.
…While
he delegates chores, Woland keeps entertainment to himself. He loves to be
amused, to which there is plenty of corroboration in the pages taking us to the
Patriarch Ponds, where he explicitly
pokes fun at Berlioz and Ivanushka. Few have probably noticed that Woland
continues to amuse himself at Ivan’s expense in the next chapter, which follows
the one on the Patriarch Ponds. (More
about it, later.)
By
the same token, there is no doubt that Woland entertains himself with Pontius
Pilate as well, surely being responsible for the strange thoughts churning in
the Procurator’s head. Here is how Bulgakov describes it:
“Was it some dark blood flushing to his neck and face, or something
else must have happened, only his skin lost its yellowish hue and grew
reddish-brown, and his eyes as if sunk.”
What
“something else must have happened,”
if not a demonic interference and influence? Who else but that selfsame Woland
could it have been, albeit rendering himself invisible?---
“...Only something happened to the Procurator’s eyesight. Thus he
had a hallucination that [Yeshua’s] head had floated away, giving way to
another head [that of Emperor
Tiberius, whom Bulgakov next quite vividly describes]… And something happened to his sense of
hearing too, as though somewhere faraway, trumpets played softly and
menacingly…”
{…That
last sentence was Bulgakov’s undisguised allusion to the Last Judgment. The trumpet is also associated with Woland:
“…And then, over the mountains rolled as though a trumpet voice, a
fear-inspiring voice of Woland...” (We
will have more on this in the chapter on Woland’s transformations on the pages
of Master and Margarita.)}
“…[Pilate’s] thoughts were rushing feverishly, short, unrelated,
and extraordinary: ‘Lost!..’ [singular],
then: ‘Lost!..’[plural]. And another
one among them, totally absurd, was about some kind of immortality, and for some reason this “immortality” was causing him an unbearable anguish.”
Here
we may notice Bulgakov’s special way of thinking and his unique humor. The
reference is to the following line in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic.
“For, one swallow, or one day, or a short time, does not make a
fortunate or happy man.”
Pontius
Pilate suffers not for a day but for two millennia for his cowardice, and,
according to Bulgakov, he curses his immortality and fame.
To be continued...
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