Triangle Continues.
“I’m bored, devil!
---What can be done, Faust?
…All rational
creatures are bored:
Some from laziness, others
from toil;
Some do believe, and some
have lost their faith;
…And all are living
with a yawn,---
And there is a yawning coffin
waiting for you.
So, keep on yawning.”
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. A Scene from Faust.
Being
a bona fide Russian, Bulgakov appropriated everything that was the best in
Russian literature, history, and philosophy, and he had an unquestionable right
to such ownership. Being an outstanding Russian writer, he used this treasure
trove so artfully and so inimitably, that we, Russians, must be immeasurably
grateful to him.
Not
only did Lermontov determine Bulgakov’s creativity, but even his life itself.
Bulgakov’s decision to be cremated after death (because
of his father’s early death, Bulgakov sensed the sword of Damocles hanging over
his own head as well, and for this reason he decided not to have children; he
died in 1940 at the age of forty-eight from the same disease as his father had
died from!) may well have been caused by his childhood memory of
Lermontov’s poem Night I, profoundly
affecting his imagination.
If
for A. S. Pushkin the night is ---
“…that
golden time
When in a bonnet and an
ancient garb,
My nanny, having chased away
the spirits by her prayer,
Would cross me with great
care,
And would start telling me in
a whisper
About the dead, about the
feats of Bova…
In horror, I would hardly
stir,
Hardly breathing, I would
tuck myself under the covers,
Feeling neither my feet nor
my head…
Everything invited
involuntary fear into my soul.
I trembled…
Wizards and enchantresses
descended,
And charmed my sleep with
ruses…
And my young mind was
dwelling among fictions…”
---
M. Yu. Lermontov’s punished soul has been forced to sit inside his own interred
coffin, watching his dead body being eaten by worms.---
“Son
of dust, you sinned, and punishment
Must strike you, like the
others:
Go down to earth, where your
dead corpse
Is buried; Go there and live
there from now on,
And wait until the savior
comes --- and pray…
Pray --- suffer --- and by
suffering earn forgiveness…
And I descended into the
dungeon of the narrow coffin,
Where my corpse rotted, ---
and there I stayed;
Here I could see the bone,
and here the flesh,
Blue flesh hanging in pieces
---there the veins
Could I discern, with clotted
blood in them…
And in despair was there I
sitting and seeing
How quickly the vermin
swarmed,
Devouring greedily its food;
A worm now crawled out of an
eye socket,
Now disappeared again inside
the gruesome skull,
And its each movement
Tormented me with a spasmodic
pain…”
On
a serious note, Bulgakov was intensely interested in the idea of transformation
of human bodies after death, which is consistent with the Christian tradition
which says that human souls would leave the decaying corpses they had inhabited
in life, to receive new imperishable bodies for the eternity. Lermontov’s soul,
according to Night I, was to stay
with its old rotting body for a while only as punishment, waiting for the
coming of the savior, when the debts would be paid up, and a new eternal body
would be issued as a result. Bulgakov hated the idea of his body being devoured
in the coffin by vermin, and he wanted to have that body burned to spare it
such a gruesome fate. The transformation of master and Margarita in the
eponymous novel, counting two sets of bodies, is therefore not an oversight on
Bulgakov’s part, but a conscientious creative fiat. It goes without saying that
I have never found anything like this in world literature.
Another
example from Lermontov’s Night I, has
a direct bearing on Master and Margarita:
And then I hurled wild curses
at
My father and my mother and
at all mankind,
And then I wished to raise my
curse at heaven,
Wanted to say: …………….
But my voice froze, and I
woke up.
This
is precisely how Bulgakov describes the mental state of Levi Matthew, in Pontius Pilate, watching the sufferings
of Yeshua on the Cross, and unable to help him:
“…He cursed himself, growled, spat, foulmouthed his father and
mother, demanded an immediate miracle from God, so that God send Yeshua death
that same moment. [Having seen that nothing happened of what he demanded] Levi
yelled: I curse you, God! and
continued shouting venomous and insulting speeches addressed to Heaven…”
Another
example comes from Lermontov’s Night II,
when Death offers him the choice between two of his closest friends as to who
shall be taken, and Lermontov categorically refuses to choose, declaring
instead:
Exclaimed I to the Skeleton:
Both! Both!
I do believe there is no
meeting and no parting,
So let them die, my friends,
let them both die!
The only sorrow shall I weep
upon,
Wherefore are they no
children…?
…And for a long, long time,
Wringing my arms and
swallowing my tears,
I murmured at Creator,
fearing prayer!..
And
now here is Bulgakov:
“Margarita could discern a small female figure lying on the ground,
and beside her, in a pool of blood, with arms spread out, was a tiny child. This is it, said Woland, smiling, he didn’t have the time to sin.”
There
is a clear-cut parallel here with Lermontov’s “Wherefore are they no children…?” In
both cases, the meaning is the same: children being sinless are going to
Paradise, escaping the Last Judgment and Hell.
Bulgakov’s
Woland has virtually nothing in common with Goethe’s Mephistopheles. First of
all, Bulgakov picked the epigraph to Master
and Margarita from Faust just to
throw the reader off the Pushkin-Lermontov track.
Secondly,
Bulgakov sort of immunized himself against a potential attack from Soviet
censorship. Goethe’s name was flying high in the USSR, so if the great German
chose to tackle such a theme, no one must be forced to give it a wide berth.
Bulgakov’s
Woland isn’t some lustful pervert enjoying pandering and peeping, like he is
depicted in Faust. Bulgakov’s idea of
Satan comes from Lermontov’s satire Asmodeus’
Feast. There is a good reason why a 19th-century Russian critic
M. A. Antonovich, with the reputable literary journal Sovremennik [Contemporary] titles his article about I. S.
Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons,-- Asmodeus of our Time. The title is
derived from two titles by M. Yu. Lermontov:
Feast at Asmodeus and Hero of our
Time.
Curiously,
in his poem A Scene from Faust, A. S.
Pushkin enumerates the devil’s “gifts” to mankind:
“A
Spanish three-mast ship,
Ready to dock in Holland:
With some three hundred
scoundrels on board,
Two monkeys, a barrel of
gold,
A rich load of chocolate,
Plus a certain fashionable
disease,
Which is a recent gift to you
people.
In
Lermontov’s Feast at Asmodeus, three
demons bring their master various gifts vying for pleasing him the most. The
first gift, the heart of a loose woman,
is turned down by Asmodeus:
“C’est
très commun,” exclaimed the royal demon,
With a derisive smile upon his face.
“Your
gift [the loose woman] could have
been splendid,
But novelty’s the queen of
these new times.
I think that even these walls
have heard the tales
Of all these endless
betrayals.”
The
second demon brings Asmodeus “the wine of
freedom.”---
“…None
could quench their thirst with it.
The people of the earth got
drunk on it,
And started breaking crowns
into pieces.
But how can this be helped?
Who can stand against the general fashion?
And is it ours to put to
sleep destruction?..
Here all the kings got
anxious volens-nolens,
And with their plates jumped
off their seats,
Afraid that should the demons
get too drunk,
They might evict them from
this place as well…
But the chief fiend
[Asmodeus] with a heroic effort
Splashed that sweet beverage out,
to earth.”
Thus,
according to M. Yu. Lermontov, villains feel safe only in hell, whereas on
earth they can expect retribution for their villainies from their own people.
What is also implied here is that all revolutions come from the second gift to
the devil, who would not tolerate the drink of freedom in his Hell, but the
earth is a different matter.
Having
rejected the first two gifts, Asmodeus settles on the third one, namely,
chlorine, courtesy of a certain physician,---
“…One of them, to whom some
time ago
We rendered service,
remembered us in time,
And he forced chlorine on a
patient of his,
Sending him healthy to the
forefathers.”
Asmodeus
reaction to this story is quite predictable:
“I thank you. Although tired
since midnight,
But best of all I’ve liked
your jolly gift.”
Thus Asmodeus spoke and kept
on laughing,
While the nocturnal feast was
going on.
Before
we get to the main point in Lermontov’s poem that inspired Bulgakov in
connection to Master and Margarita,
it is necessary to discuss what Lermontov himself is saying in it. A few things
must be noted. To begin with, in the Book
of Tobit (Canonical in Russian Orthodox and Catholic Bibles) Asmodeus is
presented as a lustful lecher. Lermontov has it quite contrarily. Rather than
being a lecher, Asmodeus finds this vice particularly vulgar (“C’est très commun”). In Bulgakov, Woland
is sexually “harmless.” (“I am inviting you to a foreigner, totally harmless. [Azazello]”)
No wonder. In his poem Gavriiliada,
A. S. Pushkin made the devil harmless by depriving him of his male organ.
(Hence Bulgakov’s hilarious joke in Master
and Margarita: “But watch it, watch it!” came Woland’s stern voice. “No member-maiming tricks.”-- “Messire
[says Koroviev-Pushkin], believe me, just as a joke, solely as a joke!”)
On
the other hand, Lermontov in his long poem Demon
deprives the devil of the capacity to love. Having promised the beautiful
Tamara that he was going to sacrifice himself for her (that is, that he would
be reconciled with God, the “proud Demon”
breaks his promise.)
Bulgakov
picks up the challenge and goes even farther. He offers the devil a woman who
is not loose, but cannot be called virtuous either. This woman is ready for
self-sacrifice for the sake of her love for master, even though she feels and
understands the precariousness of her situation.---
“You are hinting to me that I
may find out something about him there?... I’m going!,-- vehemently
exclaimed Margarita, and grabbed Azazello’s hand. Going wherever you say, into the devil’s den, if that’s what it takes…”
In
such a manner Bulgakov makes his own gift to the devil, who becomes so much
interested in it that Margarita herself realizes it well during their first
meeting. “He is
studying me, thought Margarita, and tried to use her willpower to stop the
trembling in her legs.”
(To
be continued…)
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