Cats
Continues.
“Here’s Bacchus, peaceful, ever youthful…
A sovereign’s thyrsus in his hands;
A wreath of grapes is glittering yellow
In his black curly hair…
Behind him a throng is crowding
Of goat-legged fauns and Satyrs…”
A. S. Pushkin. Apotheosis
of Bacchus.
Connected to Guessard, is also the very interesting
story of the Amethyst. It would be a
great pity not to mention it.
In his works, Bulgakov is playing with several
precious stones, beginning with the Diamond
in White Guard (1923) [see my
posted Segment CII], followed by the Agate
in Cockroach (1925) [See Segment CX],
and later by the Emerald, Pearl, and Gold in Master and Margarita (1940) [see Segment CIX].
The name of Guessard is introduced as a clue in
chapter 21, The Flight, while the
story of the amethyst appears in chapter 23, The Great Ball at Satan’s.
Bulgakov is precise with his clues; he leaves nothing
unexplained.
And so, in order to have her meet and greet the
guests, “Margarita was installed in her place, and
under her left arm she found an amethyst column. The arm can be put on it if things become hard, whispered Koroviev.”
Thus the amethyst in Bulgakov relates to A. S. Pushkin
(so do the diamond and the agate), taking into account that the amethyst is of
violet color, and so is the “dark-violet knight,” that is, A. S. Pushkin.
And it is Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin again, who
comes to the rescue of the heroine of Master
and Margarita.
There is an even more interesting connection that
points to the Backenbarter, whose role is again played by Pushkin. Without the
story of the amethyst, it would remain unclear why M. Bulgakov shows his idol
nude. Calling Guessard his friend, the Backenbarter indicates that he himself
has a connection to poetry, that is, he is a poet. And here is also revealed
the other side of this double-play: the French poet Remy Belleau (1528-1577),
yet again of the 16th century, wrote a charming poem under the title
L’Amethyste ou les Amours de Bacchus et
d’Amethyste. In this stylish ‘myth’ of his own creation…
Bacchus, the god of intoxication, of
wine, and grapes was pursuing a maiden named Amethyste, who refused his
affections. Amethyste prayed to the gods to remain chaste, a prayer which the
chaste goddess Diana answered, transforming her into a white stone. Humbled by
Amethyste’s desire to remain chaste, Bacchus poured wine over the stone as an
offering, dyeing the crystals purple.
Now it becomes clear that, despite the appearance at
the river bacchanalia of the “goat-legged,” that is Azazello, the role of the
drunken Bacchus is allotted by Bulgakov to the Backenbarter, that is A. S.
Pushkin, and to our heroine Margarita, who meets the advances of this “Bacchus”
with an “unprintable long obscenity” belongs the role of the Maiden Amethyste.
[See my posted segments XLVI and XCVII.]
Introducing Guessard, who wrote an anthology of French
poetry, Bulgakov clearly lets the reader know that in his own works, poets are present as prototypes of his characters,
and running ahead of myself, I can assure the reader that Bulgakov wasn’t going
to stop at A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov…
***
As for Azazello, the killer demon, Bulgakov, with his
special sense of humor (especially considering who Azazello is in reality [the
true identity of his prototype will be revealed in my chapter Two Adversaries]), shows him as a
“kitten.”---
“The beret meowed, turned into a black
kitten, and jumping back onto the head of Andrei Fokich, stuck all his claws
into his bald head…”
Mind you, this selfsame Azazello followed Andrei
Fokich to the physician’s office where it “meowed over
a saucer of milk,” and after that it turned into an impudent “sparrow,” and then it turned into a nurse with
leeches. [See my chapter Birds,
Segment Sparrow.]
The proof that the kitten is Azazello can be
gleaned from his intolerance of the sign of the cross.
When the kitchen maid of the developer “with a groan wanted to raise her arm to cross herself…
Azazello yelled frightfully: Will cut off
your arm!”
The very same situation occurs with Andrei Fokich:
“His head for some reason felt
uncomfortable and too warm in his hat; he took it off and jumping up in fear,
cried out in a low voice. In his hands he was holding a velvet beret with a
worn-out rooster feather stuck in it. The buffet vendor crossed himself…”
This is why the kitten attacked Andrei Fokich and
scratched up his whole head.
As for Andrei Fokich himself, he was marked by the
demonic force having been doused in wine, having been fed fresh human flesh,
and his head having been bloodied profusely by a demon’s claws. All this turned
him into a demonic creature himself. Bulgakov shows it with the following
words:
“The buffet vendor took out 30 rubles and
put the money on the table, and then suddenly, softly, as if he was operating
with a cat’s paw, he put on top a tinkling column of gold coins wrapped in a
piece of newspaper.” To which “the professor, proud of himself, said: Put away your gold!”
There are three points of interest here, in connection
with Andrei Fokich. He was presented with a beret adorned with a worn-out
rooster feather, in appreciation of his courage of showing up all by himself in
Woland’s wolf’s den. Although he refused the “sword with a dark handle”—“Not mine!”—yet
this sword already shows that he had been turned into a demonic creature.
The second point is even more interesting, as it
connects him to the macabre story Cockroach:
“Then Cockroach slapped down a five-note, and everything started
swimming along Novinsky Boulevard, when Voice’s claw, looking like a raven’s
claw, swept the fiver off the board…” [For
more on this in Cockroach see my
posted segment CX.] Here is where the “cat’s paw” of Andrei Fokich comes
from. But Bulgakov does not stop there:
“C-cockroach!.. Mistaken
identity, citizen!” sweetly observed Kepochka [Cap]… “Hey, get away from me, you pest!” suddenly snorted [Cap] in a cat’s voice and, just like a
cat, he started walking away, ever so lightly, lightly…
[If we think about it, these two characters, namely
the baker Cockroach (that is Vasili Rogov) and the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich
Sokov in Master and Margarita,
resemble each other even in the kind of life they lead: Being a buffet vendor,
Andrei Fokich was poisoning people buying food from his buffet, and he ate that
food himself. And while we know little about Vasili Rogov, it was at his place
of work where he earned for himself the offensive nickname Cockroach. Perhaps, the baker was baking bad bread?—Ill-baked bread
is bad for one’s health!—And the way these two characters end up is also very
similar: a hard death awaits them both.]
…Hidden under the mysterious guise of Kepochka [Cap]
with a “cat’s voice” and a feline manner of walking is the very famous figure
in Russian literature: M. Yu. Lermontov [see more about this in the Cap segment of my chapter Cockroach, postings CV-CVII].
But before we move to the Intelligent Cats of Intelligence, we shall discuss Bulgakov’s
interest towards real cats, in his enchanting Notes of a Dead Man… oops! I mean the Theatrical Novel, which Bulgakov wrote in 1937-1938, that is, not
long before his death.
To be continued in the next posting tomorrow…
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