master… Continues.
“I do not want the
world to learn
My tale of mystery;
Of how I loved and how I
suffered,
The judge of these is only
God and my conscience.”
M. Yu. Lermontov.
“I do not want the world to learn my tale of
mystery; of how I loved and how I suffered, the judge of these is only God and
my conscience.” [M. Yu. Lermontov.]
In
contrast to Lermontov, Bulgakov’s master in Master
and Margarita relates the story of his love, and also of his life, to the
complete stranger Ivanushka. Bulgakov’s genius squeezes them into a single
chapter. The connection between master and Ivanushka is very interesting, and
as we already know from my chapter Ivanushka,
“master” is a figment of Ivanushka’s imagination.
In
chapter 13, The Appearance of the Hero,
instead of having another conversation of Ivanushka with himself (the old Ivan
and the new Ivan, see posted segment XCVIII, Who R U, Margarita?)), like he does it in chapter 11, The Splitting of Ivan, “the clever” (“umnitsa”)
Bulgakov turns this monologue into Ivanushka’s dialogue with his imaginary neighbor.
Here
Bulgakov stands firmly with both his feet on the ground of the New Testament,
with its precept to love your neighbor like you love yourself.
If
Azazello reflects the split personality of Ivan himself, his macho side, so to
speak, then master is his role model, his teacher, his mentor, he is what Ivan
would have liked himself to become. Hasn’t St. Augustine said:
“Are you multiple or single?
I know not.”
This
theme of the teacher is also important in Bulgakov because it runs parallel to
the line of Yeshua and Matthew Levi in Pontius
Pilate. (More on this in my upcoming chapter The Garden.)
After
his adventures on Patriarch Ponds with the foreigner interested in the polemics
in Moscow’s papers (See Master and
Margarita: The Best Spy Novel Ever Written. Posted segment II, etc.),
Ivanushka realizes his complete lack of proper education. Having found himself
in the psychiatric clinic, Ivan creates in his imagination a friend, a neighbor
from the next room # 118, considerably older than himself. The more Ivan thinks
about his life, the more he wants to change it.
As
is his custom, Bulgakov confuses the reader, but doing it, he also supplies
clues which are to help figure out what is going on in reality. This elaborate
game of the mouse [the reader] chasing the cat [Bulgakov] will occupy us in
this chapter.
And
the theme of the neighbor, coming from the New Testament, and being so much in
tune with the soul of the Russian nation, is a good place to start.
As
we already said, Bulgakov comes from the Christian precept to love your
neighbor like you love yourself. If the reader remembers, Bulgakov introduces
this theme already in the Theatrical Novel:
“I felt hungry,
and my kind neighbor, master’s wife, made me some broth,” says Maksudov.
In
his theme “the neighbor” Bulgakov was inspired by two poems of M. Yu.
Lermontov, both titled The Neighbor.
As
the reader may well remember, Ivanushka happens to be the only source of
information about master and his “secret wife.” None of the other dramatis
personae, except for the fantastic ones, like Woland and his retinue, plus
Annushka-the plague, who spreads gossip, but cannot be called a credible
witness by any stretch of imagination (see my posted segment XXXI),--- has ever
seen master. He is all by himself, no relatives, no friends, no acquaintances,
if we can only imagine something like this.
The
most striking thing in all this situation is not only that Ivanushka and master
both get themselves confined in the psychiatric clinic of Professor Stravinsky,
but that they both get there because of… Pontius Pilate. And what is absolutely
incredible, they become neighbors. If this is not proof that the whole story is
a product of Ivan’s imagination, nothing can be.
Master
says this to Ivanushka:
“Let us look the truth in the
face… --- both you and I are insane, and there is no denying it.”
From
all of this it is possible to make two conclusions. In the first place, it is
clear that the prototypes of these two characters are religious men. [The theme
of Neighbor.] Secondly, there was
something tragic in the lives of these prototypes, there must have been some
mental disorder about them.
The
idea of Neighbor is very interesting
because not only do Ivanushka and master get into the psychiatric clinic
together and both on account of Pontius Pilate, but they are neighbors
there, too. In the earlier of his two Neighbor
poems, M. Yu. Lermontov writes:
“What occupies my neighbor? In his window
A light is glistening; his simple cell
Is alien to worries and to worldly
merriment,
Which is precisely why I like him so…
And I imagine that we understand
each other,
That I and my poor neighbor
Are suffering and waning under the same
burden,
And that we’ve known each other for ages.”
As
we know, master and Ivanushka have a common interest in Pontius Pilate, in
other words, in religion. In so far as their common burden is concerned,
that burden is their insanity, which also brings them together.
And
all this happens for the only reason that Ivanushka has created master out of
his loneliness and boredom.
M. Yu. Lermontov’s second
poem Neighbor opens for us an even
larger window into the world of Ivanushka.---
“Whoever you are, my doleful neighbor,
I love you like a friend of my young years,
Yes, you, my accidental comrade,
Even though by a game of perfidious fate
We are forever separated---
Now by this wall, and afterwards by mystery.”
So,
here we are with “Love your neighbor like
you love yourself.” There is indeed a wall between master and
Ivanushka. Ivanushka can hear that there must be someone there, behind the
wall. He cannot see that person under any circumstances under the conditions of
a psychiatric clinic. Bulgakov gives us no description of any other patient
either in the corridor or in the doctor’s office. Even during his meals
Ivanushka is restricted to his room. He has no communication except with the
authorized personnel working in the clinic during his whole stay there.
That’s why, under the influence of medications,
because of his loneliness and boredom, and also due to his natural disposition
to fantasize like a poet, Ivanushka conjures up for himself a real friend, a
kindred spirit. Inside the psychiatric clinic Ivanushka remembers having read
some time before certain articles in newspapers and magazines concerning
Pontius Pilate. And so, he starts thinking about the man, whose name he no
longer remembers, and fantasizes how interesting it would have been to talk to
him.
And,
as we already know, Ivanushka is in the habit of talking to himself, which
makes it unsurprising that gradually he “weaves up,” to use his own expression,
the whole story of “master,” which we know so well.
You
surely remember how, having heard the foreigner’s story told on the Patriarch
Ponds, he thought to himself: “How could I fail to notice that he had managed to weave up a whole story
there?”
And
at the end of the novel, saying farewell to master, Bulgakov writes:
“Margarita could not see herself, but she could well see how master
had changed. His hair was shining white now in moonlight, and at the back of
his head it formed into a braid, which was flying in the wind…”
Bulgakov
here clearly shows that the novel as such has been finished, in other words,
“weaved up.” [We are going to discuss who it was who inspired Bulgakov to come
up with this allegory in the chapter Two
Adversaries.]
It
is not just the separating wall, but also the mystery, which
Bulgakov takes from Lermontov. Master and Ivanushka are joined not only by the mystery
of the “secret wife,” but also by a real secret, which we the readers
are not privy to, although we may take some educated guesses.
Bulgakov
writes:
“…The guest started telling something into Ivan’s ear so softly
that what he said would remain known only to the poet, with the exception of
the first phrase: ‘A quarter of an hour
after she left me, there was a knock on my window…’ The subject of what the
patient was whispering into Ivan’s ear must have been upsetting to him a lot. Spasms
now and then were distorting his face. In his eyes there swam and flounced fear
and fury.”
We
are talking here about the mystery of master’s arrest and his subsequent
interrogations. It is starting with this event that master’s story is more and
more resembling that of the “man in the
iron mask.”
To
be continued tomorrow…
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