GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLVIII.

Triangle Continues.

“…And in this stallion what fire!

Where are you galloping, proud steed,

And where will you bring down your hooves?”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Bronze Horseman.

Lermontov ends his poem I am Coming Alone onto the Road with the words: “Over me, green forever, A dark oak would bow and rustle.” This is a conspicuous allusion to Pushkin’s Lukomorye: “There is a green oak by the Lukomorye…” In his 1841 poem A Leaf, Lermontov writes:

“An oak leaf was torn off its native branch,

And rolled into the steppe, chased by a cruel storm;

It withered and dried up from cold, heat, and grief,

And now it has reached the Black Sea.

There by the Black Sea stands a young chinara tree…

And the wanderer pressed himself to the root of the tall chinara,

Asking for a temporary refuge in deep distress,

And thus he speaks: I am a poor little oak leaf,

Before my time have I ripened and grown in my home country.

Alone and purposeless, long have I been wandering in the world,

Dried up without shade, withered without sleep and rest.

So, do accept the newcomer among your emerald leaves,

I know so many stories, wise and wondrous…

---And why would I need you?--- responds the young chinara.

---You are dusty and yellow, and no company for my fresh sons.

You say you saw a lot, but why would I need your fables?

My ears have long tired of the birds of paradise.

So, keep going, wanderer, I do not know you!..”

From this charming and touching poem it is perfectly clear that Lermontov saw A. S. Pushkin as the oak, and himself merely as an oak leaf. The poem was written long after Pushkin’s death, and in it Lermontov pours out his loneliness.

As we know, Bulgakov depicts M. Yu. Lermontov in Master and Margarita as Kot Begemot, the cat, using the image of the green oak by the Lukomorye, as well as the image of the oak leaf of Lermontov himself, who wishes to sleep under this oak without losing his “life forces.”

Bulgakov also inserts the image of an oak tree uprooted by Koroviev’s whistle, thus alluding to the untimely death of A. S. Pushkin.

“Margarita did not hear [the whistle of Regent-Koroviev], but she saw it at the very same time that she and her hot horse were thrown [some seventy feet] sideways. An oak tree was uprooted nearby, and the ground was covered in cracks all the way down to the river.”

Bulgakov introduces both great Russian poets already in 1923 as friends in his Diaboliada, and in the immortal novel Master and Margarita he gives them both, friends once again, a place of great prominence.

Another Pushkin’s poem closely connected to the subsequent works of Lermontov and Bulgakov is Raven to Raven. I have given its analysis already in the chapter Tarakan [Cockroach], after the eponymous short story by Bulgakov. This is a poem about a murdered warrior:

“A raven to a raven flies,

The raven to the raven cries:

Raven, where shall we dine today?

How, say you, are we going to find out?

The other to the first replies:

A dinner awaits us, I know:

In yonder field under the broom

A warrior lies dead…”

This poem is written by Pushkin as a riddle:

“Who killed him and why,

Only his falcon knows that,

And his black mare,

And the young mistress of the house.

The falcon flew away into the grove,

The mare has been saddled by his enemy [his murderer],

And the mistress is waiting for her loved one,

Not the one who is dead, but the one who is alive.”

M. Yu. Lermontov completes Pushkin’s poem in his Prisoner, repeating the opening words of A Wish---

“…Give me the radiance of daylight,

A dark-eyed beauty,

A horse with a black mane.

First, I’ll kiss the young beauty

Ever so sweetly,

Then I’ll jump upon the horse,

And like wind into the steppe…”

In other words, Pushkin’s murderer of the warrior has been apprehended in Lermontov’s poem, and thrown in jail, from which he cannot escape:

“…But high is the window of the prison,

The door is heavy, and there is a lock on it.

The dark-eyed is far away

In her lavish chamber.

The good horse is by himself in the green field,

Without the bridle and free,

Prancing happily and playfully…

…And I can only hear behind the door

The resonant measured steps

In the silence of the night

Of the responseless sentry.”

Bulgakov had a field day with this one, using the ideas derived from it in several of his works, beginning with the image of the sentry in White Guard, [about whom I am writing in the segment Per Aspera ad Astra in my chapter Man and the People] as well as in the play Adam and Eve and in the novel Master and Margarita.---

“But the bars have locks,” [says Ivanushka to master].

“A month ago I stole [from Praskovia Fedorovna] a bunch of keys, and thus I got the opportunity to come out on the common balcony.”

“If you are able to come out onto the balcony, then you can escape. Or is it too high?” Ivan asked interestedly.

“No!” firmly replied master. “I cannot escape from here not because it is too high, but because I have nowhere to escape to.”

So, where does this bunch of keys come from? From M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Neighbor!

“There’s no way to wait till freedom,

These prison days are as long as years.

And the window is too high above the ground,

And the door is guarded by a sentry…

…I would have been doomed to die in this cage,

But for my lovely neighbor…”

This lovely neighbor happens to be the warden’s daughter, whom the prisoner instructs how the two of them can escape together from the prison:

“You will steal the keys from your father;

You will get the prison guards to a feast,

But the one who is guarding my door,

This one I will take care of myself.

Only you pick a darker night,

And a more intoxicating wine for your father…

And like God’s little birds, together,

We shall fly away into the wide field.”

Thus we see that in response to A. S. Pushkin’s poem Raven to Raven, M. Yu. Lermontov wrote two more poems. Not only does the bunch of keys appear from here in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, but all, except Woland and Gella, personages of his retinue turn at ease if not into “God’s little birds” then at least into birds.

The most romantic place in Bulgakov, connected to this cycle, belongs in his play Adam and Eve:

“As I sleep, each night I see the same cherished dream: a black stallion, always with a black mane sweeps me away from these woods!”

Eve’s dream is realized in Master and Margarita:

“Three black horses were snorting by the shed, quivering, exploding the ground in fountains…”

“…The magical black horses,--- even they were tired…”

These horses were waiting for master, Margarita, and Azazello, to take the first two to their last refuge.

In Adam and Eve, Bulgakov also has horses, but he does not specify their color, but only says that there were also “some horses in a strange lighting,” obviously alluding to the horses of the Apocalypse, as he writes that the last thing which this group of people sees is how “Noiselessly, a whole city block goes down in the window, and a second colonnade appears, and some kind of horses, in a strange lighting.”

This is what Bulgakov himself would call non-surdity (in Russian, bezlepitsa, which is his newly coined word combining nonsense and absurdity), unless what is being described here is a vision of sorts, as it is not possible for a whole city block to go down noiselessly. And it is also equally clear that these horses were not taking anybody anywhere.

(To be continued…)