Triangle Continues.
“Comrade, believe that
it shall rise,
The star of captivating joy…”
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
Bulgakov
uses the stars even for his description of war in White Guard.---
“…and above was the black sky, with playing stars... the star of
Mars over the settlement near the city suddenly erupted in the frozen
loftiness, splattered fire and ear-piercingly clapped. Following the star, the
black expanse beyond the Dnieper, in the direction of Moscow, struck with
thunder, heavily and long. And immediately after that another star cracked, but
this one was lower, right over the roofs buried in snow.”
And
here is how poetically Bulgakov describes the retreat of Petlura under the
attack of the Red Army. He writes about a sentry guarding the armored train Proletarian. The man is terribly tired
and he is ghastly, inhumanly cold.---
“The man had been looking
for some kind of fire, any kind of fire, but could not find it anywhere;
clenching his teeth, having lost all hope to warm up his toes, wiggling them,
he was unswervingly casting his glance to the stars…” [Per aspera ad astra!] “…It
was the easiest for him to look at the star Mars, gleaming over the settlement.
And so, he was looking at it. His glance ran millions of miles from his eyes,
never even for a minute losing the sight of the reddish live star. It
contracted and expanded, it was alive for real, and it was a five-point star…
Occasionally, the man, exhausted,
would suddenly doze off… In his dream he saw a growing sky dome, unseen before,
all red and sparkling, all clad in Mars’s, in their living glow. The soul of the man was immediately filled with joy…
A reddish Venus was playing… and on the
man’s chest glistened a responding star. It was small and also
five-pointed…”
The man was a Red Army soldier. The question arises right
away: why is the reddish Mars transformed into a reddish Venus? Bulgakov writes
that in his dream the sentry sees not only a never seen before sky dome, but an
extraordinary vision as well.
The
touching image of the sentry, as well as his wondrous vision of a “paisano,”
come to Bulgakov inspired by the Lermontov poem Neighbor.
“…And
propping himself on the sonorous rifle,
Our sentry falls asleep,
Dreaming about his old life…”
This
Lermontov poem Neighbor is the key to
the understanding of the characters of Ivanushka and master in Master and Margarita, about which see my
chapter master…, posted segment
CXXXIV.
Bulgakov
writes in White Guard:
“A mysterious and unfathomable horseman clad in mail came out and
in a brotherly way flowed at the man...”
Instead
of the armored train the sentry saw in his dream his village, and coming toward
him was a neighbor, a fellow countryman…
“Zhilin?” asked silently,
without lips, the man’s brain, and
immediately the fearsome sentinel voice in his chest pounded three words: “Post… sentry… will freeze…” The man… kept on walking…
How
wonderfully do these lines echo Lermontov’s lines in Mtsyri:
“Then
suddenly a faraway bell’s toll.
It seemed that the toll was
coming out
Of the heart, as though
someone
Was beating into my chest
with iron…”
A
variety of questions arises here. Who is this stranger? Why is he clad in mail?
Who is Zhilin? Why is the man’s brain saying “Zhilin,” and the pounding in his chest knocks: “Post… Sentry… Will freeze”? What is
going on here?
This
is how Bulgakov depicts the creation of a miracle. Falling asleep, the freezing
man would’ve surely frozen to death had he not woken up. but there appears to
him his guardian angel Sergeant Zhilin, “cut
down by machinegun fire together with a squadron of Belgrade hussars in 1916,
on Vilna direction.” We know this from the dream of the main character of
Bulgakov’s immortal novel White Guard doctor
Alexei Turbin, who dreamed of Paradise, where he saw two of his acquaintances:
Colonel Nai-Turs, a Serb, and Sergeant Zhilin, whose fatal wound Alexei had personally
dressed. Nai-Turs was dressed in a strange uniform: “on his head he had a
radiant helmet, his body was clad in mail armor, and he was leaning on a very
long sword, which no longer exists in any army, ever since the crusades.” Responding
to Alexei’s question about the uniform, Sergeant Zhilin says:
“Them is in crusader brigade
nowadays.”
“The sergeant was standing tall, like an enormous ancient warrior,
and his coiled mail radiated light… The sergeant’s eyes where completely identical
to those of Nai-Turs: clear, bottomless, lit from inside.”
So
this was that selfsame warrior who saved the life of his neighbor and fellow
countryman, by appearing to him in a dream. The sentry recognized his fellow
countryman in his mind. In his heart, that is, by his love for the neighbor,
the warrior knocked the words: “Post… sentry… will freeze,” and woke him out of
his stupor. That’s why the reddish Mars turned into a reddish Venus as war gave
way to one’s love for the neighbor.
***
Using
the example of the “sentry,” whom Bulgakov unerringly calls “chelovek,” I
demonstrated that Bulgakov is using several poems of M. Yu. Lermontov. The idea
of using Lermontov poems in his creative work comes from Lermontov himself.
Having no equals and experiencing a permanent state of loneliness, Lermontov
frequently communicates in his works with his one and only peer: A. S. Pushkin.
Sometimes providing his own endings to Pushkin’s poems, or offering his own
versions, occasionally arguing with Alexander Sergeevich, introducing a
satirical element, and in some cases enclosing in patently Pushkinian form
Lermontov’s own storyline, served in a jocular fashion. A good example of this
brings us to Pushkin’s poem Prisoner of
the Caucasus. M. Yu. Lermontov wrote his own version of Pushkin’s story,
without even changing its title. The two poems have different endings.
Pushkin’s story has the Circassian maiden in love with the Russian prisoner
help his successful escape, after which she drowns herself. In Lermontov’s
version the Russian prisoner dies, having been shot by the girl’s father during
the attempted escape.
This
is what Bulgakov discerned with his keen eye, reading Lermontov’s compositions,
and he decided to make use of this manner of writing to the fullest. In this
segment I am offering several examples of this interesting phenomenon.
Bulgakov
was attracted by the following lines from M. Yu. Lermontov:
“…A
shot was fired, and right then
My prisoner falls down, his
glance
Conveys not suffering, but
death.
He puts his hand upon his
heart…
As though struck along with
him,
Senseless, she falls down
too,
As though the fateful bullet
In one strike and at the same
hour
Suddenly struck down them
both.”
Here
is where Bulgakov takes his idea of master’s and Margarita’s simultaneous death
from, even though in Lermontov there is only an impression of simultaneity,
whereas the heroine merely faints on seeing the man she loves die before her
eyes.
Now,
note these two excerpts from Master and
Margarita:
“…You better tell me,
asked Ivan intimately, what happened
right now in the next room number one hundred and eighteen?..
…Your neighbor has just
passed away, whispered
Praskovia Fedorovna…
…I knew that! Let me assure
you, Praskovia Fedorovna, that right now in the city one more person has passed
away. I even know who, --- here Ivanushka smiled mysteriously. --- It was a woman.”
But
of course, how could Ivanushka not know about Margarita’s death? It was he, in
the form of Azazello, who watched her die:
“Azazello saw how a gloomy woman waiting for her husband came out
of her bedroom, suddenly became pale, clutched at her heart, and helplessly
gasping--- “Natasha! Somebody... to me!”---
fell to the floor of the drawing room before reaching the study.”
(More
about this in my already posted segment XXXI: The Transformation of Master and Margarita.)
In
his play Alexander Pushkin Bulgakov
makes use of a fragment of Pushkin’s poem---
“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
To a faraway retreat of toils
and purest pleasures.”
To
counter Pushkin’s “I’ve
long been dreaming of one enviable lot,” Lermontov writes in his famous
poem I am Coming Alone onto the Road,
written in the year of his death (that
is, from the very first line Lermontov writes that he is not going to run
anywhere) --- “No
longer am I waiting for anything from life…” To Pushkin’s words
“rest” and “freedom,” in pursuit of which he, “a tired slave” yearns to escape,
Lermontov responds with his own “I am seeking freedom and rest.” He does not want to flee or
to die, in order to fulfill his quest. He wants to fall asleep.
“I
would like to fall asleep forever in such a way
That life’s forces would be
[merely] napping in my breast…”
(More
about the untimely deaths of the two great poets A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu.
Lermontov in my chapter The Bard.)
We
already know what Bulgakov took from these poems from the ending of Master and Margarita. Per Yeshua’s
request, Woland takes master and Margarita to “Rest,” the place (Pushkin’s “retreat”)
between heaven and hell.
And
also, the most poetic place in Master and
Margarita is inspired by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Zhukovsky. ---
“Gods, my gods! How sad is
the evening earth! How mysterious are the fogs over the marshes. He who
wandered in these fogs, who suffered much before death, who flew over this
earth carrying upon himself an unbearable burden,--- he knows that. The tired
knows that. And without regret he leaves behind the fogs of the earth, its
little marshes and rivers, with a light heart abandons he himself into the
hands of death, knowing that death alone…”
Bulgakov
is right. “He who wandered in these fogs, who suffered much before death, who flew
over this earth carrying upon himself an unbearable burden…”
And
yet, according to Bulgakov, he who flew toward the stars (per aspera ad astra?) “--- he knows that. The tired knows that. And without regret
he leaves behind the fogs of the earth, its little marshes and rivers…”
Then
why “with a light heart
abandons he himself into the hands of death, knowing that death alone…”?
Bulgakov
does not finish this sentence…
We
shall return to this amazing moment when Woland and Co. are leaving Moscow in
my chapter Woland Identity, when at
last all members of his group will be identified.
(To
be continued…)
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