Who ~ R ~ U, Margarita? Continues.
“Oh loneliness, oh
poverty!”
Apukhtin. A Fragment
from Musset.
…Not
only does Master fail to describe the appearance of his lover, but he does not
even give out her name, calling her merely “she.”
“She, however, later insisted that this was not at all how it was,
that we surely had loved each other since long-long ago, without yet
knowing each other, having never seen each other...”
The
first thing that catches the eye here is the word “never.” Naturally they have “never
seen each other” because they live in one body. “Since long-long ago” is like “all
my life.” People are born with both the paternal and maternal side.
“We talked like we had just parted yesterday, like we had
known each other many years.”
“Many
years” is exactly the same song as “long-long ago” and “all life.” By this
repetition, Bulgakov wishes to reinforce in our mind the thought that we are on
the right track.
“It became known to Ivan that Master and the mystery woman fell in
love with each other so strongly that they became totally inseparable.”
This
happened to be my hint in the Fantastic
Novel regarding who was the real Margarita. Surely, they had to be inseparable,
both living/subsisting in one and the same body. Parting only at night, when they
both were asleep, and “she” would come to him at midday, because Master
woke up at that time. We know it for a fact that as she would come to see him,
she would immediately start preparing breakfast. Mind you, breakfast is the
meal taken after waking up, while their breakfast time is after midday, which
in Russia is the time for having “dinner.” This only means that Master, like
Maksudov in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel,
was going to bed very late at night, waking up also late, which was shortly
before noon.
Yet
again Bulgakov confuses the reader into believing that we are dealing with two
separate people here, the word “breakfast” being our principal clue.
“…[Master] and his secret wife had come to the conclusion, already
in the first days of their liaison, that it was fate herself that had brought them together on the corner of
Tverskaya and a side street, and that they had been created for each other for
all time.”
Bulgakov underscores that people do not choose their fathers and mothers.
It is fate that does. As for the meaning of “for all time,” death alone
stops that state of duality.
Again,
if we follow the dialogues of Master and Margarita with enough attention, they
too appear strange at times, and somewhat artificial.---
“Yes, threads, threads, the
head being covered with snow in front of my eyes… Ah my head, my so
much-suffering head...” ---this is
what Margarita is saying about Master’s head.
Bulgakov
does indeed put a large emphasis on the head.
Here Margarita is holding Master’s head, there he [Master] is holding Margarita’s
head, elsewhere they are holding each other’s head at the same time. It is
somehow strange to read these lines, though, because this is how people
normally talk only about their own head.
Master
tells Margarita:
“I know that we are both
victims of our mental illness, which I must have passed on to you.”
But we know that one cannot
pass on a mental illness to another. These things are not contagious.
Margarita
tells Master:
“I swear to you by your life...”
How
strange. Usually people swear by their own life, which means that Margarita has
no life of her own in separation from Master.
Then
Master tells Margarita:
“Of course when people have
been robbed, like we have been...”
But
Margarita has not been robbed! On the contrary, she has rather been robbing her
husband, by leading a double life with Master... that is, if she, Margarita,
exists at all...
Master
tells Margarita:
“Let us suppose that nobody
will discover us missing...”
How’s
that? The husband does not discover that his wife is missing? “Especially, a
husband who adores his wife?..
Such
absurdity can only happen if Margarita is someone who exists only in Master’s
head, in other words, she is a figment of his imagination.
I
recall the relevant description given by the great American homoeopath Dr.
Kent, M.D.---
“…A peculiar kind of mental confusion. He seems to feel that there
are two of him. He realizes a dual existence, whenever he is roused up...”
There
are places in the novel where Master does not seem to realize Margarita’s
presence near him:
“‘Am I to go there, after
him?’ asked Master disquietedly, pointing toward Pontius Pilate.”
Observe
him talking in singular number, never using the plural “we.”
And
finally the scene of “their” parting with Woland:
“Farewell!—responded
Master and Margarita to Woland in one cry...”
Let
us compare this farewell scene with a previous farewell of Master and Margarita,
as they are leaving the “no-good” apartment #50.---
“Margarita softly exclaimed: ‘Farewell!
Farewell!” for both of them.
Depending
on the angle under which we choose to look at Master and Margarita, we can see different compositions, as I
already observed before:
1. The best spy novel ever written.
2. A fantastic novel filled with the supernatural, where
everything is possible.
3. And now a psychological thriller about a man with a
dual personality… and this list is by no means complete.
It
is quite probable that Bulgakov first noticed a split personality in Pushkin’s Lukomorye, which is familiar to every
Russian child. Pushkin splits himself in Lukomorye
into the storyteller and the learned cat. [Here is where Bulgakov came up with
the idea of representing the other great poet, Lermontov, as a cat.]
The
storyteller comes out secondary here, as it is the learned cat who tells him
all sorts of fairytales. However, the idea of dichotomy came to him from
philosophy, as it is basic to dialectics and to the general principle of
presence of two elements in one.
I
am writing more about duality and split personality in other segments of my
chapter on Bulgakov.
Master
invents Margarita out of the despair of loneliness, as Bulgakov writes about
himself in the Notes on the Cuffs: Footcloth and Black Mouse. “I am drunk with despair.” Overwhelmed by the despair
of his loneliness, Bulgakov walks “in the darkness through puddles of water, in
his torn boots and remnants of socks,” mumbling to himself a Pushkin poem and
seeing the poet’s shadow.
Where
are his friends? Where is his wife? He is all alone.
Before
we look at the real appearances of Margarita in Master’s life (and there are
three of them in all), we must become acquainted with the main proof of
Master’s split personality, which is provided by Bulgakov himself.
The Splitting of Ivan.
The
main proof of Master’s split personality is provided by Bulgakov himself in the
eleventh chapter titled The Splitting of
Ivan. Ivanushka gets committed to the psychiatric clinic on account of his
“hallucinations” and “delirious interpretations,” which has nothing to do with
a split personality. He ends up attempting to describe what happened on Patriarch Ponds in a letter to the
police. Even here, in the scene at the psychiatric clinic, Bulgakov instills it
with humor. Ivanushka is tormented by the existence of two men with the same
name Berlioz, one a French composer who lived a century before, and the other
not a composer, but a Soviet literary editor, who just a short time ago had his
head cut off. All this mental activity makes his condition worse, but having
been administered a helpful injection, Ivan starts seeing things in a different
light. No longer does he care about Berlioz with his cut-off head. He rather
regrets that he did not talk more to the foreigner about what happened next to
Pontius Pilate and HaNozri.
The
former Ivan goes on resisting: “About Berlioz’s head
about to be cut off... but he knew about it before it happened.” And
here Bulgakov, with his inimitable sense of humor, compares the old and new
Ivan with the Old and New Testament. Mind you, the Russian word Vetkhiy, specifically signifying the Old
Testament [Vetkhiy Zavet] can mean
both “old” and “decrepit.”
He
finishes however with an undivided, one Ivan, without calling him either old or
new, and in the process, poses yet another riddle to the reader.
At
the end of the chapter on the Splitting
of Ivan, there appears “a mysterious figure hiding
from the moonlight.” It is our
notorious Master. Knowing how Bulgakov loves to confuse the reader, we may
suggest that he is presently hinting about the duality of Master, all the more
that we cannot even suppose that our Ivan, being under the influence of the
injection which relaxes him and makes him reasonable, is somehow undergoing the
effects of a split personality. It is not by accident that in the original
Russian text the word Master is
spelled with lowercase “m,” although this word must be a proper name, as Master
has no other name in the novel... Well, perhaps, he does have a proper name,
and that name is... Margarita?
To
be continued tomorrow…
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