Triangle.
“An empty name, a
shadow ---
But can a shadow tear off my royal
mantle?..
I am a madman! What was I
afraid of?
Blow on this ghost, and it
will disappear.
It’s settled then, I won’t
show any fear,
But neither can I take
anything lightly…
Oh, heavy art thou, Crown of
Monomach!”
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Boris Godunov.
The
present chapter is called Triangle,
where I attempt to show the reader a particular interconnection of great
writers’ influences on one another. In this case, it is the direct influence of
A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov on M. A. Bulgakov.
Bulgakov
never merely read poetry and prose, his brain at the same time analyzed
everything he read, not to mention his prodigious ability to retain the
information he needed, sending it on to his “storage” so to speak.
Aside
from this, Bulgakov possessed a rare combination of an analytical mind with an
artistic temperament. In spite of this, he was never carried away; all his
works are as sharp as a good chef-knife, not a single superfluous word. It is
by no coincidence that Bulgakov chooses scientists as protagonists of his
fiction, and even the main character of Master
and Margarita is given the name master.
In
addition to intellect and an artistic temperament, Bulgakov possessed a rich
imagination, which allowed him to conceive a new idea of presenting his
thoughts. Namely, without ever crossing the line leading into plagiarism, he
was keen on using what had been written before, but always doing it under his
unique, inimitable angle.
This
is what I am going to explore in this Bulgakov
chapter, subtitled Triangle.
***
Bulgakov’s
quintessential mystery, which becomes the culmination of his creative work as
such, is the dark-violet knight in Master and Margarita.
“The night was thickening… exposing the deceptions… all deceptions
disappeared; the transitory magical vestments fell into a swamp, drowned in the
fog… You would hardly recognize Koroviev-Fagot now, that self-proclaimed
interpreter to the mysterious foreigner who needed no interpreter… In place of
the one who had left Vorobievy Hills in tattered circus clothing, under the
name of Koroviev-Fagot, there was now galloping, softly jingling the golden
chain of the rein, a dark-violet knight
with a most somber, never-smiling face. He stuck his chin into his chest, he
did not look at the moon, he was not interested in the earth, he was thinking
of something of his own…”
The
“golden chain” comes from Pushkin’s Lukomorye:
“…A
golden chain is on that oak.
Both day and night, a learned
cat
Walks all around along that
chain.
I
already suggested before that such was how Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin saw
himself: the poet-creator of Lukomorye, chained
to Russian Autocracy (the Imperial Court). Bulgakov changes it all. His Pushkin
the Poet does not walk “all around along that chain”; he is no longer tied by
the golden chain to the oak of autocracy. The golden chain is now the rein in
Pushkin’s hands. He is finally free!
[The golden chain is a symbol of the autocratic power, passed
on, according to the legend, by the Byzantine Emperor Konstantin Monomach to
his grandson the Russian Prince Vladimir Monomach. By placing the golden chain
in Pushkin’s hands, Bulgakov awards this symbol of power to the great Russian
poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.]
The
“somber, never smiling face” echoes
some other lines in Pushkin’s Scenes from
the Times of the Knights: “somber,”
“reticent,” “silent,” “sad,”- these
are the epithets Pushkin uses to describe his knight.
“He did not look at the moon.”--- This is
already D. S. Merezhkovsky, who called Pushkin the “Daytime Luminary,” borrowing this phrase from Pushkin himself.
“Gone
was the light of the daytime luminary;
The evening fog fell over the
blue sea.
Blow, blow, you docile wind,
Stir under me, you sullen
ocean…”
Sometimes,
Bulgakov writes these things with greater humor.---
“Let us look the truth in the
eyes,--- and the guest [master] turned his face toward the nighttime
luminary, running through the clouds.--- Both
you and I are madmen, why deny it? You see, he overwhelmed you and you cracked,
because you have the proper ground in you for that.”
In
such a manner Bulgakov plays up, in the conversation between master and the
poet Ivanushka Bezdomny, Merezhkovsky’s article about the great Russian poet
Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, which he titled Nighttime Luminary, where Merezhkovsky wrote this famous phrase:
“Through the dusk of Pushkin’s day, Lermontov twinkles mysteriously
like the first [evening] star. Pushkin is the daytime, whereas Lermontov is the
nighttime luminary of Russian poetry.” (Dmitry
Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky [1866-1941] was a Russian writer, philosopher, mystic,
etc.)
This
should explain why Bulgakov writes near the end of his novel Master and Margarita:
“The one who used to be the cat quieted down, and he was flying
soundlessly, placing his young face under the light flowing from the moon.”
Occasionally
when Bulgakov wishes to play with the reader, sending a hint as to who his
fictional character may be, he alters the words, like in this case of the
selfsame Merezhkovsky, who wrote the following about Lermontov:
“In human form, yet not quite
human: a being of a different order and of a different dimension, a meteor of
sorts, tossed at us from some unfathomed spaces.”
And
here is how Bulgakov serves this dish in Master
and Margarita:
“…But forgive me, that was,
that, you-- he [master] faltered, not knowing how to address the cat-- you that same cat who got on the tram?—
Me!—confirmed
the flattered cat and added: It is gratifying
to hear how so politely you are
treating a cat. Cats, for some
reason, are usually addressed as ‘thou’, although there hasn’t ever been a cat
who drank with anybody to Bruderschaft.--
For some reason it seems to me that
you are not quite a cat, replied master with some hesitation.”
How
right was he! There was a good reason why Bulgakov called his cat Begemot. Note Milton’s---
“…scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of Earth, upheav’d
His vastness…”
John Milton: Paradise
Lost; Chapter VII.
(More
about Kot Begemot in my eponymous
chapter, see my posted segment XV, etc.)
Describing
Woland during his first meeting with Margarita, Bulgakov writes:
“…and the left [eye] was empty and black, something like the narrow
eye of a needle, like an entrance to a bottomless well of darkness and
shadows…”
We
all know it from the New Testament (Matthew
19:24)---
“It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God.”
Bulgakov
offers us a tremendously interesting description of hell, using Woland’s eye, “empty and black,” as “an entrance to a bottomless well of darkness
and shadows,” having taken Pushkin’s “and those appearing in darkness into
darkness shall be hurled.”
…Of
other examples of Bulgakov’s use of the knowledge he had accumulated at all
times from a variety of different sources, the most important among them is the
introduction of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, and
other Russian greats into the novel Master
and Margarita. Bulgakov got this idea from Pushkin himself, considering
that the idea of Dead Souls was
Pushkin’s in the first place, and it was Pushkin who passed it on to Gogol.
In
his early poem Little Town (1814) A.
S. Pushkin addresses this theme:
“Hiding
in my study,
I am not bored in my
loneliness…
My friends are dead souls…
Over a simple shelf…
With me they live…
On the shelf behind Voltaire
Are Virgil, Tasso, and Homer…
Rousseau and Karamzin,
With Moliere the giant,
Fonvizin and Knyazhnin...”
How
much does the situation in the House of Writers change when a female “citizen
in slippers” talks about the dead Dostoyevsky not realizing that she has standing
in front of her two dead great Russian poets: Pushkin and Lermontov. Indeed,
knowing who the main characters of Master
and Margarita are, makes reading the novel far more fun.
There
is one more, tragicomic, character in Bulgakov’s novel, namely, Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy, who gets himself into big trouble by renting the apartment of
the “departed” to Yalta Stepa Likhodeev to Koroviev. Because of his greed, Nikanor
Ivanovich asks Koroviev for two free theater passes and thus allows him to
foist a bribe on him as well, which unbeknownst to Nikanor Ivanovich transforms
from regular Soviet currency into foreign money, bringing the power of State
Security on against him.
As
a matter of fact, Bulgakov is merciless toward Nikanor Ivanovich for a
different reason than his greed. It is the man’s penchant for “saying the name
of Pushkin in vain.” This is how Bulgakov puts it:
“[Nikanor Ivanovich] did not know the works of the poet Pushkin at
all, but as for the man himself, he knew him very well…”
How
can one help admiring Bulgakov’s humor here? How much fun must he have had
writing such phrases with a double meaning! Knowing that Koroviev is Pushkin, these phrases read totally
differently.---
“What is all this, I say? Nikanor
Ivanovich was saying bitterly, while he was given an injection,--- I haven’t got any of it, I haven’t! Let
Pushkin surrender currency to them, I haven’t got it!”
The
interesting thing here is that Bulgakov manages to squeeze in a clue to the
effect that Koroviev is Pushkin, because it was Koroviev who imposed the rubles
turning into dollars on Nikanor Ivanovich, and he was also the one who ratted
on him, calling the police.
And
there is a bonus reason to this story. It allows Bulgakov to make a twist,
uncannily echoing Mussorgsky’s opera Boris
Godunov, based on Pushkin’s drama in verse.---
“And Koroviev, he is a devil!
Here the room filled with Nikanor Ivanovich’s wild roar, who jumped up from
his knees [he had been praying]. There he
is! There, behind the cupboard! There, grinning!..”
Compare
this to Mussorgsky’s [he largely followed Pushkin’s text from memory in his
opera]---
“…There, there, what is
that?.. what?.. there, in the corner! Quivering, growing, approaching…”
Ironically, calling Koroviev
“a devil,” Bulgakov alludes to none other than Pushkin himself:
“But
our Zhukovsky fell asleep,
…Pushkin slipped away like a
devil,
And Krylov ate too much…”
From
Mussorgsky, it’s just one step to A. N. Vertinsky. There was a good reason why
I. V. Stalin used to say appreciatively: “There
is only one Vertinsky.” It is from Vertinsky that Bulgakov borrows his Purple Negro, when he writes in White Guard about a “famous theater” in
Kiev, bearing this name [no record of a theater with this name exists in
reality], which already in the early 1920’s points to Bulgakov’s intention of
developing the novel Master and Margarita,
where the Purple Negro becomes the dark-violet knight.
Incidentally,
here is how the Purple Negro appears
in Vertinsky’s eponymous song:
Last time I saw you, it was
so close,
Into the maze of streets you
were rushed by an auto.
I dreamt that now in the
haunts of San Francisco
A purple negro serves you
your manteau.
(To
be continued…)
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