Ivanushka Through the Looking Glass Continues.
“I will clamp my
mouth,
Not one cry shall I let out
for them
From my bitten lips…”
V. Mayakovsky.
The
idea of tying the authorship of the novel to two persons, namely, the writer
himself (Bulgakov) and his own creation, a character in the novel (Ivanushka),
so that the dividing line between the two authors cannot be distinctly drawn, comes
from Pushkin’s Lukomorye, where the
“learned cat” walks right singing a song, and walks left telling a fairytale,
thus ostensibly making him the author of Ruslan
and Lyudmila, yet there is a narrator there as well, and the story no less
ostensibly comes from him even though in this case Pushkin splits the poet
(that is, himself) in two. Bulgakov already tried this technique in his plays,
calling the narrator “Reader” in the play War
and Peace, and “First” in the play Dead
Souls. Both these plays, like probably all his other works, were his
preparation for Master and Margarita.
Throughout
the novel Master and Margarita,
Bulgakov inserts himself as the narrator on its pages, but the most interesting
place, where he does it explicitly, comes at the end of Part I, where he
directly invites: “After
me, reader!” followed by the beginning of Part II, where he summons
him: “After me,
my reader, and only after me!,” offering to show the reader “real, faithful, and
eternal love.”
And
Bulgakov does show “such love” with Ivanushka’s help, who is told about it by master,
and, thanks to his vivid imagination, Ivanushka paints the fantastic side of
this love, and also many other fantastic parts of the novel. Part of this
fantastic content is revealed through Ivanushka’s dreams. Even the chapter The
Execution (The Crucifixion of Yeshua) is presented as Ivanushka’s dream.
(As I already happened to mention before, in his play Beg/Run, Bulgakov calls its Acts/Scenes “Dreams.”)
I
am thus pointing the reader’s attention to the thoroughly unusual structure of
the novel Master and Margarita, that
is, to the fact that not only does Master
and Margarita consist of three novels, but its structure is undoubtedly its
distinguishing feature. The Epilogue
is also written from the person of the narrator, and he ends the novel Master and Margarita with Ivanushka
(remember that it begins with Ivanushka as well!), thus making Ivanushka a very
important character…
It
is at the very end of the novel, in Ivanushka’s last dream, that Bulgakov
describes that “most important discovery
of great national significance,” made by Margarita’s nameless husband. Very
skillfully Bulgakov shifts from one narrator to the other and back, introducing
new dramatis personae and new storylines, new situations, that can or cannot be
attributed to Ivanushka as the narrator. For instance, the Execution comes to Ivanushka in a dream, as he did not have a
chance to persuade master to reveal what happened to Yeshua in the novel.
Ivanushka
falls in love with Margarita in his dream, when she comes to him alongside master
to bid him the final farewell and kisses him on the forehead; Ivanushka’s last
dream ends with Margarita, which makes it easy to imagine that he depicted and filled
in all her adventures with the demons. His dream about Yeshua being executed,
elicits such a violent reaction in the generally peaceable Ivanushka that later
on, with time, he, also remembering master with his convulsions and “fear and
fury in his eyes,” becomes capable of finishing the chapter Yeshua’s Execution, which a pleased
Margarita reads in that basement apartment before her transformation.
Ironically,
even the transformation itself would not have been possible without Ivanushka’s
direct participation. It is Ivanushka who supplies the reader with the missing
pieces, putting which together is the only way for us to reconstruct what is
going on in the first place, so is this story convoluted.
It
is the “schizophrenic” Ivanushka who suspects the “foreigner” on Patriarch Ponds of espionage and
intensely regrets that he had not asked him many more questions. With the help
of the demented Ivanushka, in his last “happy” dream, Bulgakov describes the
explosion of an atomic bomb, that “most
important discovery of great national significance”---
“…But the executioner in the
dream is not as terrifying as the unnatural lighting, coming from some kind of
cloud, which boils and overpowers the earth, like it happens in times of world catastrophes…”
…The
Second World War… Looking years ahead, Bulgakov was here predicting an atomic explosion…
(Also
about Bulgakov’s depiction of atomic and chemical weapons, see my chapter Nature, posted segments LXXX-LXXXI, Adam and Eve.)
***
The
fact that Ivanushka is the author of Master
and Margarita can also be corroborated by his wife. On the night of spring
full moon Ivanushka “returns home completely sick. His
wife pretends that she doesn’t notice his condition, and hurries him to go to
bed. But she herself doesn’t lie down and sits by the lamp with a book in hand,
looking with bitter eyes upon the sleeping man. She knows that at dawn Ivan
Nikolayevich is going to wake up with a painful shriek, he will start crying,
and flouncing in bed. That’s why there is a syringe dipped in alcohol in front
of her, and an ampule with a liquid of thick tea color. The poor woman who is
thus tied to a very sick man will now be free and get some sleep without worry.
After the injection, Ivan Nikolayevich will be sleeping till the morning with a
happy expression on his face, dreaming some dreams unknown to her, but they
must be exalted, happy dreams…”
This
scene triggers a reminiscence in me of another one, namely, the words of Margarita
to master, when they are approaching their last retreat, the house with the old
manservant and the candles.---
“You will be falling asleep with a smile upon your lips. The sleep
will strengthen you, you will be reasoning wisely. And you will never be able
to chase me away: I will be guarding your sleep.”
This
is precisely what Ivanushka’s wife has been doing: she guards his sleep, and
after the injection, he is sleeping “until morning with a happy smile on his
face”, and dreaming “happy and exalted dreams,” which are later transformed by
his pen into the magical pages of Master
and Margarita.
***
If
the preceding was not proof that Margarita and Ivanushka’s wife were the same
person, then I invite the reader to the scene of Ivanushka saying farewell to master
and Margarita at the psychiatric clinic, when they are about to leave Moscow on
their magical horses toward their final retreat.
Ivanushka
finalizes the farewell scene in his head:
“From the white wall there separated a dark Margarita, and
approached his bed…
How beautiful! – without envy, but with sadness and with
some quiet tenderness said Ivan,--- See
how everything turned out well for you. Not so with me. Here he thought and
pensively added. --- But come to think of
it, perhaps with me too…
Yes, yes ---, whispered Margarita and bent toward the
lying man, --- Here, let me kiss you on your forehead, and everything will turn out
well for you, the way it should…”
(More
about it in my chapter Two Adversaries.)
Having
invented Margarita, Ivanushka fell in love with Margarita, and decided to find
her and to marry her. No, he did not meet his Margarita in a multitudinous
crowd, like master [whom he also invented] did. Ivan’s meeting with his
Margarita was far more prosaic, but it was also more solemn for the historian
Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, whom he had become. It was his own meeting with
Margarita that Ivanushka describes as taking place under the Kremlin Wall…
Where else would a Russian historian meet the love of his life?
Naturally,
Ivan does not reveal his actual conversation with his future wife during their
first meeting, but it is quite obvious that her interest in him was
intellectual. We do not know whether this Margarita was a married woman, it is
quite possible that she was, if she was “so
beautiful.” But if Ivanushka made up such romances in his head, there is no
doubt that a bored Margarita would find it very interesting to be with him.
What
else speaks in favor of this version of events, that is, in favor of this kind
of train of thought in Bulgakov, is the absence of the name for Ivanushka’s
wife. A most interesting combination this turns out to be: we are dealing with
two couples, but only with two, not four names: Ivan and Margarita. Master and his
secret wife are nameless, because they do not exist.
To be continued tomorrow…
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