GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLVI.

Triangle Continues.

“Wasn’t all of Europe here,

And whose star was leading it?”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Even the question of Woland’s (the devil’s) nationality, in Bulgakov’s novel, is taken from Lermontov.---

Lo and behold, a lackey serves Kartoffel (potatoes),

Because the autocratic Mephistophel’

Was German, and he loved Kartoffel.

Throughout the opening chapter of Master and Margarita, Berlioz and Ivanushka are going out of their way to guess where the foreigner [Woland] can be from. Finally, to Ivanushka’s direct question: “Are you German?”---

“Me?” repeated the professor, and he suddenly sank into thought.--- Yes, I am probably German, he said.

By saying “sank into thought,” Bulgakov shows the incongruity of the question. The allusion to Goethe’s Mephistopheles and Lermontov’s identification of him as German is obviously satirical. Had Ivanushka named any other nationality, the answer would have been the same. The devil has no nationality.

And finally, the most important item, namely, the extraction of master from the psychiatric clinic, is also connected to Lermontov’s Asmodeus’ Feast, specifically, to the third gift which Asmodeus liked so much.

Here is Lermontov:

“…And he forced chlorine on a patient of his,

Sending him healthy to his forefathers.”

He [the third demon] said it and now offers the fatal glass

To the sovereign, with a hurried hand.

“So, here’s the vessel [glass], pleasing and unhappy,

Another token of physicians’ science…”

Compare that to Bulgakov’s---

The sick man [master] lowered his head and stared at the ground with brooding sick eyes.

“Yes, spoke Woland after a pause of silence, that was quite a job they did on him. He ordered Koroviev: Won’t you, Knight, offer this man a drink!”
Margarita was begging master in a trembling voice:
“Drink it, drink it! Are you afraid? No, no, trust me that they will help you!”
The sick man took the glass and drank what was in it, but his hand shook and the empty glass shattered at his feet.
“It’s for good luck! It’s for good luck!” whispered Koroviev to Margarita. “See, he is already coming to.”
And indeed, the glance of the sick man was no longer as wild and restless as before.
“More!” ordered Woland.
After master had downed a second glass, his eyes became alive and sensible…

But when Woland produced the burnt copy of the manuscript of master’s novel Pontius Pilate, on account of which master “lost” his life, master---

“…for some unknown reason fell into melancholy and anxiety, got up from the chair, wrung his arms, and addressing himself to the faraway moon, started mumbling, his body convulsing:

Even at night, under the moon, I have no rest… Why did you disturb me? O, gods, gods…
Margarita… herself started mumbling in angst and tears:
My God, why isn’t the medicine helping you?
It’s all right, all right, all right, whispered Koroviev, wriggling by the side of master. All right, all right… Another glass, and I’ll keep you company…
And the glass winked, sparkled in the moonlight, and this glass did help. Master was seated down in his chair, and his face acquired a serene expression.”

In order to lighten up this heavy atmosphere and also to demonstrate that Bulgakov never lost his inimitable sense of humor and thought everything through to the minutest detail, we must note that Bulgakov borrows the idea of the “glasses” from A. S. Pushkin, who writes the following in a 1833 letter to his wife:

“Do you know what they are saying about me?.. This is how they describe my work: How Pushkin writes his poems --- Before him is a carafe of a most glorious liqueur --- He downs a glass, another glass, a third one --- And then does he start writing! --- That’s glory.”

Personally, I have no doubt that this was how Bulgakov (and other Pushkin admirers whom I will be writing about) got their own divine (or should I say di-wine?) inspiration.

Koroviev, that is, Pushkin, is a healer. Only thanks to him, master is cured of his illness. In such a way, Bulgakov shows Pushkin’s power and his influence over Russian society. “Pushkin’s poems wondrously soften embittered souls [sic!]. Be done with spite, Russian writers!” writes Bulgakov in his Notes on the Cuffs. Why does this comparison fit the third gift in Lermontov’s Asmodeus Feast?

Because only too often does Bulgakov write contrarily. A good illustration to this will be this scene in his White Guard. Its main character Alexei Turbin dreams, and in his dream he sees Paradise, and talks there about God with an acquaintance of his, Sergeant Zhilin, who has seen God face to face.---

“So, what is He like?”

“Kill me, but I can’t explain. A radiant face, but what it is, it’s impossible to understand… Sometimes you’d look and freeze. You’d imagine that He looks just like you. A fear catches you, and you think: what is that? And next, nothing, you come to. A variegated face.”

So, Bulgakov takes this from the Bible that God created man in His own image. But he expresses this thought in a different way, the other way around. This technique can be found in Bulgakov’s works quite frequently, as his task is to confuse the reader, as well as to make the text even more captivating.

Bulgakov did not write poetry, but his prose is occasionally so poetic that it reads like verse. In his works, he uses poems of Russian authors. The epigraph to his play Beg [Run] is taken from Vasili Zhukovsky:

Immortality is a calm bright shore.

Our path is a striving toward it.

Rest thou, who hath finished the run…

(Vasili Zhukovsky: The Bard in the Camp of Russian Warriors.)

For Zhukovsky, life means running, and the purpose of life ought to be striving toward immortality.

In his play Alexander Pushkin, Bulgakov emphasizes the following poem by Pushkin:

No happiness in life, but there is rest and freedom.

I’ve long been dreaming of one enviable lot,

A tired slave, I’ve long been plotting my escape [run]

To a faraway retreat of toils and purest pleasures.

Tired, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin yearns to “escape, run,” in order to “toil” in “rest.”

For Bulgakov himself, running is no longer enough. He flies. This is how he puts it in his novel Master and Margarita: “He who flew over this earth carrying upon himself an unbearable burden…”

Bulgakov’s motto is Per aspera ad astra. The stars are present everywhere in his works: in White Guard, in Master and Margarita, etc.

Once again, he finds this idea in Lermontov:

“Why are you unhappy?”---

People will ask me.

What makes me unhappy,

Good people, is that the stars and the sky are---

The stars and the sky!--- and I am a man.

People have envy

Toward one another,

But I am different:

I only envy the beautiful stars,

Only their place would I wish to take.”

M. Yu. Lermontov amazes by his numerous poems about stars. A. S. Pushkin does not have as many of them, but what he has is striking in its deep meaning, like the epigraph to this posting:

“Wasn’t all of Europe here,

And whose star was leading it?”

…as well as the epigraph to my next posting:

“Comrade, believe that it shall rise,

The star of captivating joy…”

For Bulgakov, the stars in the sky are the immortal souls of great people. The same idea is present at the end of White Guard, closing the novel:

“…The last night blossomed… Its heavy blue curtain of God, enveloping the world, became covered with stars. It looked like they were serving vespers. Lights were being lit in the altar… Into the black gloomy loftiness soared the Vladimir Cross… From a distance it seemed that the cross bar disappeared, merging with the vertical, and because of it the Cross turned into a threatening sharp sword.

But fear it not. All shall pass. Sufferings, torments, blood, and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain, when even a shadow of our bodies and deeds will not remain on this earth. There is not a single person who does not know that. Then why are we reluctant to turn our glance to them. Why?”

With these words Bulgakov ends his White Guard. Yet again, per aspera ad astra. There is a time for wars, and there is a time for “organizing humanity,” as Bulgakov puts it in his play Adam and Eve, that is, to move humanity forward. Bulgakov is Russian. He is progressive. Bulgakov looks ahead and upwards. Having seen enough of two wars and the revolution, Bulgakov was dreaming of peaceful times. Peace however was not to be. On June 22, 1941, soon after his untimely death, Germany attacked Russia in what would become the bloodiest war in Russian history.

(To be continued…)