“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…)
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