Oil, Wine, and Blood.
“Long
was I in a foreign land,
White-haired
singer of the Dnieper’s troops…
In
the deserted place, where the enemy appeared,
Was
I carrying my old head,
And
each of my steps was trampling
Upon
the bloody grass.
Packs
of beasts and flocks of forest birds
Were
gathering toward the abandoned bones,
Because
the number of the dead
Was
greater than of those alive.”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Bard’s Song.
The
theme of wine is very interesting in Bulgakov’s works.
“The wine was sniffed, poured into glasses, peered through, against
the light from the window, fading away before the storm. They saw how
everything seen through it was receiving the color of blood.”
And
indeed, in the novel Master and Margarita,
which everybody seems to see as a fantastic love story, blood flows in
torrents. Starting with the third chapter, The
Seventh Proof, where it pours from the severed head of M. A. Berlioz,
continuing in chapter twenty-three, The
Great Ball at Satan’s, where it comes from the chest of Meigel, shot
through by Azazello, as well as in chapter twenty-six in the Pontius Pilate sub-novel, titled The Burial, where blood poured like a
wave from the heart of Judas.
...Already
in White Guard, Bulgakov writes about
the human blood of the slain, seeping into the soil, asking this provocative
question:
“No one will say. Will
anyone pay for the blood? No. No one. It’s just that the snow will
melt, green Ukrainian grass will spring forth, covering the earth... rich
harvests will rise... summer heat will quiver over the fields, and no trace of
blood will be left. Cheap is blood on the golden fields, and there will be no one there to ransom it. No one…”
Here
we are interested in two themes. The first is contained in the word no one, frequently repeated by
Bulgakov for a reason. And the second one is linked to the word blood. Both these themes travel from White
Guard to Master and Margarita. Bulgakov
plays with the words no one [nikto]
and one [kto] throughout the novel Master and Margarita.
Let
us start with the first death, with which Master
and Margarita opens: the death of the brainwasher Berlioz. In the third
chapter The Seventh Proof Berlioz tells Woland:
“No one can prove… that
what you told us was taking place in reality.”
“Oh, no! One can prove
it…” the professor responded with great assurance.
Considering
that Berlioz has his head cut off by the tram because he is guilty of brainwashing
millions of people, not just Ivan, who have the misfortune of reading his
magazine, someone (kto-to, that is, Woland!) makes Berlioz
pay for his crime. The question asked by Bulgakov in White Guard (Who will pay?)
receives its answer in Master and Margarita.
Seeing
brainwashing as a heinous crime, Bulgakov returns to the death of Berlioz
several times. The first time the detail is scarce.---
“…and under the grid a round-shaped dark
object was thrown… it was the severed head of Berlioz.”
Bulgakov
can afford to be so charitable this time, because he unleashes his mockery of
the dead man already in the fifth chapter It
Happened at Griboyedov’s.---
“There on three
zinc tables lay what used to be quite recently Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz.
On the first table was the naked, covered in dry blood body with a
broken arm and collapsed rib cage; on another, the head with missing front
teeth, with dimmed open eyes, impervious to the bright lights; and on the third
table, a pile of blood-soaked rags.”
Here
is Bulgakov’s “vengeance under the sun”
for you, and, oh boy, is he having a good time doing it!
Take
that scene alone at the Griboyedov’s restaurant, where Woland amuses himself
among the litterateurs.---
“And suddenly from one of the tables there flew up the word ‘Berlioz!’ All of a sudden the jazz fell
apart and went silent, as if one
had brought a fist down on it. What,
what, what, what? --- Berlioz!!! And the place started jumping up, started
screaming… One was making a
fuss and shouted… Must make up a telegram!
And why would he need a telegram, he whose squashed back of the head was
presently residing in the rubber hands of the dissector, whose neck was being
pierced with hooked needles by the professor?”
I
already wrote in my chapter A Beardo with
a Rolly (posted segment LVIII) that having left Ivan in his predicament,
swimming in the Moskva River, Woland was waiting for him at Griboyedov’s to
make sure that Ivan’s next stop would be at Professor Stravinsky’s psychiatric
clinic. While waiting for Ivan’s arrival, Woland had unleashed all that havoc,
in order to prepare a “proper ground” for his arrival.
Bulgakov
reveals this to the reader through the use of the key word kto-to, one. I come to
such a conclusion on the basis of the word jazz
in connection to the word one. As I
am writing in my chapter Woland in
Disguise [posted segment LV], Woland appears as the jazz band conductor
twice in The Great Ball at Satan’s,
chapter twenty-three of Master and
Margarita.
My
next proof is in conjunction with Woland’s suggestion to Berlioz moments before
his death:
“Would you want me to order a
telegram to be sent to your uncle in Kiev?”
I
omit Bulgakov’s use of the word “professor”
at the morgue, in the passage quoted earlier, as too obvious for Bulgakov.
The
direct references to the horrible death of Berlioz are apparently not enough
for Bulgakov. In order to show that Berlioz’s blood was flowing in a torrent
during his beheading, Bulgakov, in the twelfth chapter Black Magic and its Exposure has another beheading shown, that of
the lying-lips compere Bengalsky. Here, very skillfully, Bulgakov shows that
Begemot did indeed have a hand in stealing the head of Berlioz prior to the
funeral.
Using
his professional knowledge of anatomy, Bulgakov presents a thoroughly gruesome
picture of an actual beheading.
Rip off his head? Here’s an
idea! Begemot!--- he
shouted to the cat. Do it! Ein,
Zwei…Drei!! And then an unseen thing happened. The fur on the black cat
stood up, and he meowed ear-piercingly. Then he contracted into a lump, and, like a panther, jumped straight onto
Bengalsky’s chest, and from there shifted to his head. Growling, with his puffy paws, the
cat tore into the compere’s receding hair, and howling savagely, in two twists ripped this head
from the thick neck…
Blood gushed upwards from the torn neck arteries…
There
is a good reason why in the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate Yeshua says the following signature words to the procurator of
Judea:
“It is so easy and pleasant
to speak the truth.”
Clearly,
Bulgakov did not like brainwashers and liars…
To
be continued tomorrow…
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