Margarita's Maiden Flight.
Can it be that I was writing
for this crowd?
Can it be that to a
self-important buffoon
I was dedicating my
inspiration,
Outpouring the fullness of my
heart?
M. Yu. Lermontov.
Now,
do you really believe that none of the big troika (Azazello, Koroviev, and
Kot-Begemot) would be there to protect their valuable investment, with so much
depending on her performance in the upcoming festivity?
Although
the first impression may be that they just let the demonstrably reckless woman
fly zigzagging over the city of Moscow on her own, on the verge of the Ball,
for whose unadulterated success they were all answerable to Woland, do you
really believe that she indeed had no backup and could utterly destroy the
apartment of the critic Latunsky without an implicit go-ahead on the part of
her watchful guards?
So
here is one telling detail. When Woland asks the company who this Latunsky was,
“Azazello, Koroviev, and Begemot sort of shamefully
dropped their eyes.”
(Not
only does Bulgakov provide us with an explicit confirmation that the troika had
indeed accompanied Margarita all the way, but he gives us a most transparent
hint to the fact that it wasn’t some dumb luck, but their deliberate guidance
that brought Margarita to the wretched apartment building.)
No,
it wasn’t possible for our troika to let Margarita fly unattended, besides,
with no experience whatsoever of flying a broom or a brush or any similar means
of transportation. Too much depended on her successful performance of her
forthcoming assignment as the mistress of the ball: the ball itself, the fates
of Koroviev and Begemot, and also of Master. Let us not forget either that
Margarita and her company were invisible, and, besides, each of the three aides
to Woland could assume any shape or no shape at all.
At
the riverside Margarita, just like Alice before, her finds adventures with some
utterly bizarre personages: the Backenbarter, the goat-legged host, and the
rook-chauffeur.
Can
you guess who these three are?
The
goat-legs is the easiest one. It must be Azazello, that is, Azazel, aka Satyr, aka Pan, the goat
deity.
The
other two are more complicated. One has to be familiar with Bulgakov’s other
works, particularly with his Notes on the
Cuffs, where he writes about one very famous Backenbarter, comparing him to
the notorious gambler Nozdrev, from Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. (The idea for Gogol’s novel was suggested to Gogol by
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, and having sprouted from this idea may have been
Bulgakov’s own inspiration to introduce into the novel Master and Margarita two very special “dead souls,” namely, Pushkin and Lermontov.)
There,
in the Notes on the Cuffs, Bulgakov
writes:
“The littérateurs of the capital [Moscow] allowed themselves to
depict this hero [Pushkin] in the likeness of a landowner-serf-owner with
sideburns [Backenbart].”
If
that were not enough, Bulgakov adds:
“A. Pushkin. Lumen Coeli.
Sancta Rosa. And like thunder is his threat. Am I going mad, or what? A
shadow is running away from the lamppost. I know it’s my shadow. But it’s
wearing a tall-hat. And I am wearing a cap.”
Thus,
in Bulgakov, a tall hat becomes an
attribute of Pushkin. But there is a vital connection between Bulgakov and
Pushkin, even though Bulgakov “wears a mere cap.” He explains why:
“As for my tall hat, having nothing to eat, I’ve already taken it
to the market. Good people bought it… and made a chamber pot out of it.”
“Hungry”
and “drunk with despair,” Bulgakov, at his last strength, is trying to pull
himself up to Pushkin:
“My heart and my brain--- these I am not taking to the market, even
if I die.”
What
is Bulgakov saying here? The meaning of the top hat in Bulgakov’s symbolism is integrity. He is ashamed of the kind of
literary work he had been reduced to in the Caucasus, in order not to starve.
For this reason, he is calling his sold tall hat a chamber pot. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin never reduced himself to
writing to order:
“A slave or a buffoon--- I
shall not be!”
(To
be continued…)
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