Triangle Continues.
“What is boiling in
that cauldron?
---Faust, ha-ha-ha…
Alive! --- He is alive and
long ours.”
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
Bulgakov’s
devil possesses a sense of humor, just like in Lermontov’s Asmodeus’ Feast. During Woland’s first appearance on Patriarch
Ponds, he comes across as a great jester.---
“…And Jesus did not exist
either?.. Astounding!.. exclaimed their interlocutor [Woland], and, for
some reason stealthily looked around… And
you do not believe in God, too? He made frightened eyes--- Don’t be afraid, I won’t tell a soul… The
foreigner then asked, even screeching with curiosity: Are you atheists?”
“He sent a frightened glance from building to building, as though fearing
to see an atheist in every window.”
Woland
plays the role of jester with a gusto, and virtually mocks both the “virginal”
Ivanushka and the seasoned Berlioz. From time to time his humor becomes
outright macabre.
“Imagine that you start
governing yourself… and others… and come to enjoy it… and then you get
khe-khe-khe… sarcoma of the lung… Here the foreigner grinned sweetly, as if
the thought of sarcoma of the lung gave him pleasure--- yes, sarcoma, screwing up his eyes like a cat, he [Woland] repeated
the sonorous word…”
Keeping
him as part of his company, Woland has “the very best jester who has ever
existed in the world.” Bulgakov gives Lermontov such a characterization not so
much for his humor, as he cannot forgive Lermontov for virtually letting
himself be killed at such a young age. (At the duel, he deliberately made his
shot into the air, after which his opponent killed him without any scruples.)
Life was priceless to
Bulgakov. His father died when the boy was sixteen, and Bulgakov knew it
himself, being a physician, that he could die prematurely due to that same
disease, which is exactly what happened…
Bulgakov’s
idea of Satan’s Ball may well come from Lermontov’s Asmodeus’ Feast.
The devil has a feast, and rushing for an
introduction,
Comes a lesser host of demons and souls of
the dead.
The kitchen chefs are toiling over dishes…
Lo and behold, a lackey serves Kartoffel
(potatoes),
Because the autocratic Mephistophel’
Was German, and he loved Kartoffel.
Even
the title Ball of a Hundred Kings may
have been inspired by the following lines from the same poem:
“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 hero of Goethe’s Faust, Dr. Faust
himself receives the hardest time from Lermontov, who seats Faust next to the
devil at the festive table.---
“…And on his left, the chief of all physicians
Great Faust, a man of splendid rules…”
Who
is on God’s side here: who is the enemy of hypocrisy, the friend of justice?
Lermontov’s sarcasm is quite palpable here. His disagreement of principle with
Goethe is regarding whether Dr. Faust can be pardoned or not at all for his
evil deed, no matter how many “good deeds” he may have performed after the
death of Gretchen. Mocking Goethe, Lermontov compares Great Faust’s deed to the
third gift which Asmodeus liked so much, and “the chief of all physicians” to---
“---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 his
forefathers.”
Next,
Asmodeus says:
“So,
here’s the vessel [glass], pleasing and unhappy,
Another token of physicians’
science…”
Lermontov
is obviously mocking Dr. Faust, comparing what he did to the innocent Gretchen (seducing
and abandoning her, ending with her shameful execution by hanging) to what
another doctor did, administering chlorine to a perfectly healthy man, and thus
dispatching him to the other world.
As
if that weren’t enough, Lermontov questions the mental competence of Dr. Faust:
“To spread around opinions of fools
He left us a primordial prescription.”
It
is on account of all these accomplishments that ‘the
chief of all physicians, Great Faust, man of splendid rules’ is now
sitting at the left hand of Asmodeus at the banquet table, which also means
that unlike Goethe, Lermontov deservedly sends Faust to hell. It is also
obvious that another great doctor will earn his seat at Asmodeus’ right hand
when his time comes because he is dearer to the devil than even Faust: not
everyone can make the devil laugh!
M.
Yu. Lermontov’s Asmodeus uncannily
echoes A. S. Pushkin’s 1825 Sketches to a
Thought about Faust, where Pushkin pokes fun at Goethe’s Faust.
“What
is boiling in that cauldron?
---Faust, ha-ha-ha.
Look, there’s some fish soup,
Look, some tsars are in it!
Go ahead, boil this, boil
this!”
And
then --- what a surprise! --- to “Satan’s Ball” during a card game a guest
arrives:
“I’ve
brought a guest with me. – Ah, Creator!..
Here’s Dr. Faust, a friend of
ours.
Alive! [After all the
boiling!]
He is alive, and he’s long
ours!”
And
here is another Faustian treat from A. S. Pushkin, which speaks for itself:
“Doctor
Faust, do be braver,
There we’ll find a merrier
place!
---Where’s the bridge? ---
What bridge, you say?
Here, sit down on my tail.”
Lermontov
called Asmodeus’ Feast a satire. As I
said before, he mocks both Faust and his creator Goethe. The idea of seeking
justice for the innocent is very strong in the Russian soul. One must not
corrupt the innocent, as this sin can never be forgiven by God. Both Pushkin [Water Maiden] and Lermontov [Demon] follow this line in many of their
works. And as we see, Bulgakov takes this line a step further. His Woland, like
Lermontov’s Asmodeus, has nothing in common with Goethe’s Mephistopheles, whom
even Faust accuses of being a lecher, when he spies on the tryst of Faust and
Gretchen. Bulgakov disagrees with Goethe that by doing good deeds a man can be
forgiven a past evil. Margarita stands for Frieda not because she condones the
murder she committed, but because Frieda was a victim of rape, and the man who
committed this violence did not pay for his crime.
When
master falls as a result of his consent at the end to seek demonic help, Yeshua
intercedes for him. Woland and Co. never do good things except when they meet
with resistance. An example of this is the episode with the head of Bengalsky,
ripped off by Kot Begemot, on Azazello’s order given from the theater gallery
during the séance of black magic at Variety Theater. When the head is torn off,
a commotion begins until a woman’s voice cries out from a theater box: “For God’s sake, stop torturing him!”
Woland is the only one who reacts to this voice:
“…And the magus turned his face toward this voice.”
Having
observed this interested reaction on the part of Woland, Fagot, who has been
all this time holding the head by the hair and showing it to the public, goes
on to ask the public if they wanted the compere to be forgiven. Seeing
unanimity in the audience’s plea for clemency, Fagot, only at this point, asks
Woland about his orders. The magus is in no hurry to answer, delivering instead
a little speech about the times and mores of the Muscovites, and only after
that does he order that the compere’s head be put back on.
What
is remarkable in this passage is that Bulgakov’s Woland keenly registers human
emotions. He is actively interested in them.
What
is this? Sheer curiosity about man’s emotion of compassion for his fellow man?
We shall return to this passage in my chapter Woland Identity.
Woland
himself is incapable of emotions, as he is incapable of love:
He repudiated pure love,
He denies all prayers,
He sees blood with indifference.
(Lermontov. My Demon.)
The
head-ripping scene is also interesting. The honor of performing this act goes
to Kot-Begemot. Bulgakov delivers it in a jocular form, if I may say so. The
most important thing here is to know who is the actor, namely, Lermontov, as Bulgakov alludes to the
poem Mtsyri, and specifically, to the
leopard’s jump.---
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…
[And
here is Lermontov’s Mtsyri:
“…And a long howl, abject like a groan, then sounded… stood
rampant… and the first mad jump threatened me with a terrible death… he jumped
upon my chest… you can see on my chest the deep traces of claws. They have not
scarred yet, and have not closed…”]
Bulgakov
compares the cat’s jump to that of a panther (pantera), which is only a slightly different word for essentially
the same animal. (The Russian word bars,
Latin: uncia, can be translated into English both as leopard and as panther.)
Lermontov’s Mtsyri naturally kills the leopard, and that is the end of the
leopard. In Bulgakov’s novel the cat rips off Bengalsky’s head, but this is not
the end of Bengalsky. Master and
Margarita is a fantastic novel where anything is possible. Nobody dies in
this episode.---
“The cat, taking a better mark, slapped the head onto the neck, and
it instantly locked into its proper place, like it had never been gone from
there. And most importantly, there was no scar on the neck. The cat lightly
brushed Bengalsky’s tuxedo with his paws… and all traces of blood disappeared.”
We
are not saying farewell to this scene, as its triple twist will return in my
chapter The Bard.
(To
be continued…)
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