master… Continues.
“But there’s
Aspasia!..
How hot is that mouth, how
flaming are those speeches,
And, dark as night, those
curls so casually
Fall upon the breasts,
Upon the white-marble
shoulders…”
N. V. Gogol. Hans
Kuchelgarten.
Bulgakov’s
master has many fathers, and N. V. Gogol is just one of them, as he introduces
an ironworks master of German origin
and named Schiller, in his story Nevsky
Prospekt. Already in his short story Outloud,
Bulgakov introduces, if not a railroad master,
then at least his wife, who later travels to the Theatrical Novel as simply a “master’s wife.” But it is precisely because
of the wife of the ironworks master
that Nevsky Prospekt is turned by
Gogol from tragedy to comedy, in a most unexpected way.
It
is also quite possible to envisage that even when Bulgakov was writing his
sketches basing them on the actual reports from “workers’ correspondents,” he
enriched this material with special details, designed to amuse his person only.
(See Margarita’s Maiden Flight,
posted segment XLVI.)
N.
V. Gogol’s humor was bound to attract Bulgakov just as much as he was attracted
by supernatural fantasy in general.
N.
V. Gogol produced a huge influence on Bulgakov’s creativity, just as he was
influenced by A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, both of whom were considered
by Gogol “poets of the first rank.” [More on this in my chapter The Magus.] Bulgakov unites all three of
his idols in his Master and Margarita,
doing this, as always, with an exceptional, unique to him sense of humor.
Two
“Dead Souls,” namely, Pushkin and
Lermontov, arrive in Moscow to save “one
master,” as Margarita calls her lover to Woland. It is master, of course,
whose prototype is N. V. Gogol. As another Russian poet Vladimir Vysotsky
sings,---
“Our dead are not going to abandon us in
peril,
Our fallen are like our sentries…”
This
aspect is very interesting. And even though I prove quite convincingly, in my
chapter Who R U, Margarita?, that
Margarita does not exist in at least one of the three novels contained in Master and Margarita, namely, in the
psychological thriller about a man with split personality,--- Bulgakov managed
to create a striking character of a young woman in love.
The
fact that Bulgakov chose N. V. Gogol as master’s prototype, also supports the
assertion that there was no such person as Margarita, considering that there
was no woman either, in Gogol’s life.
In
order to find a suitable candidate for the role of Margarita, Bulgakov,
naturally, could turn to the world of the great dead. And there he found his
ideal, which he valued so much in Margarita: beauty and intelligence. This
woman was Gogol’s contemporary, and she was interested in Gogol as a writer.
Her letters to Gogol are extant. She was indeed an extraordinary woman. Natalia
Nikolayevna Pushkina was jealous of her being around her husband. M. Yu.
Lermontov was reportedly in love with this woman…
And
she was a woman of the world, who married not for love. Her high position in
society allowed her to enter the literary circles of that society. Having lost
her father early in life, she was sent away by her mother, who remarried, to an
institute for noble girls, where she received a good education, judging by the
results. She was endowed with natural intelligence, and she understood that she
could not advance herself by beauty alone…
So, if Bulgakov’s Margarita could have a prototype,
here she was: Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova
nèe Rosset.
But here is the problem: although she was not averse
to having lovers, Rosset was interested in Gogol only as a writer.
Shortly
before his premature death, N. V. Gogol had a desire to marry, and in the spring
of 1850 he proposed to a certain A. M. Vielgorskaya, receiving a rejection,
despite the fact that by that time he was already established as a famous
writer. No wonder. The bride’s mother was born as Princess Biron, and Mlle.
Vielgorskaya herself married none other than the illustrious Prince
Shakhovskoy.
Gogol’s pride
suffered a crushing blow:
“At least something should I
be in respect to you. It is for a reason that God brings together people in
such a wondrous way. Perhaps I ought to be with regard (to you) nothing else
than a loyal dog, obligated to guard in some kind of corner the property of his
owner.”
In
the relationship of master and Margarita it is Margarita, who despite being
married to a VIP, here plays the role of a loyal dog to master. Yes, we can
definitely say that “it was for a reason that God brought together in such a
wondrous way” master and Margarita. However, there was no reciprocity in Gogol’s
relationship. Judging by Gogol’s lines, we can say that this is hardly a declaration
of love, and even not a friendly gesture. And here one remembers another
letter, written by a 20-year-old Gogol to his mother. This is a completely
different kind of letter, and it is directly relevant to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, as the idea of the
image of Margarita comes to Bulgakov, among other sources, from Gogol, joining
together A. O. Smirnova-Rosset’s interest in Gogol’s literary work with the
young Gogol’s love for a woman unknown to us. Once again, a peculiar one, but
still a split…---
“No, this being was not a
woman. With all the power of her charm she could not have produced such
terrible, indescribable impressions,” writes
the 20-year-old Gogol in 1829, that is, twenty years prior to his letter to
Vielgorskaya, having undoubtedly experienced for the first time in his life the
pangs of love at first sight.
With
his sharp eye, Bulgakov notices the word “being,” and he starts building his
heroine Margarita accordingly.
Gogol
hardly expected to find such passion in himself:
“…In a fit of rage [sic!] and
most horrific torments of the soul, I was yearning, boiling, to imbibe just one
glance [of her]; just one single glance did I desire…”
…And
apparently he did not get it. That was a cry of his soul:
“…She is too high for anyone,
not just for me. I would have called her an angel, but this expression is base
and out-of-place toward her…”
“Base” can be understood as “too common,”
and then “out-of-place” also becomes
understandable, because this word can also be found quite often in common talk.
Whereas what happened to Gogol can by no means be called “common.” It happens
to few. Gogol writes:
“It was a deity created by
Him, a portion of His own self.”
So,
this is how Gogol, smitten by perfection, expresses his feelings. And
considering that this was a letter written to his mother, it is impossible to
doubt the sincerity of his affections.
Bulgakov
picks it up and creates the meeting of master and Margarita through the
23-year-old Ivanushka, dreaming of love. In the course of their meeting, it is
Margarita, as we know, whose glance is searching for master, and it finds him.
Because
of Gogol’s letter, Bulgakov endows Margarita, his “being,” with rather odd for
an earthly woman qualities, characteristics, such as her low, breaking voice,
and also the strange little light burning in her eyes. Bulgakov clothes his
heroine in springtime [sic!] in a black coat, black stockings, black gauntlet
gloves, and black shoes with snap-buckles, calling her a “witch.”
In
other words, if Gogol saw “a deity created by Him, a portion of His own self,”
obviously meaning God, then in Bulgakov, Margarita is turned into a witch.
Apparently,
Bulgakov saw, felt, in Gogol’s words, something different, something invisible
to a common eye, about which later in this chapter.
I
already wrote elsewhere (The Fantastic
Novel, posted segment XXXVI) that in Russia such was the attitude of the
people toward Sophia Paleolog, the last Byzantine Princess, whose marriage to
the grand duke Ivan III of Russia gave a special weight to the Russian claim of
being the Third and Last Rome, which had effectively originated with the father
of Vladimir Monomach, who had also married a Byzantine princess.
The
word which was used toward Sophia Paleolog was “enchantress,” and not “witch,”
used by Bulgakov toward Margarita. But the essence of these two words is
basically the same.
Curiously,
Sophia Paleolog has something in common with Pericles’s Aspasia. Both women
were considered foreigners in the countries where their husbands ruled, which
did not hinder them a bit due to their unique nature and the stature of worldly
women, in ruling over their powerful husbands. Bulgakov fashions Margarita
after their type. It is precisely Margarita who preyed on master’s vanity,
saying “that in this novel was her life.” She “promised fame... spurred him on,”
and it was then that she started calling him master.”
To
be continued tomorrow…
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