GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLX.

Triangle Continues.

“I loved you, that love perhaps

Is not completely extinguished in my soul.

But let it not trouble you anymore:

I do not wish to cause you sadness.

I loved you silently and hopelessly,

Tormented now by timidity, now by jealousy.

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

As may God grant you to be loved by another.”

 

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

I Loved You.

 

Soul-searching... There is no other way to describe the life of the Russian officer M. Yu. Lermontov in the Caucasus, and it is precisely this effort of soul-searching that Lermontov reveals in his poem Valerik.---

“…We’re coming closer,

We’ve sent out a few grenades;

Moved up again--- silence.

That was a stormy silence…

And then the salvos of the shots…

We see: they are lying in rows…

‘Charge bayonets! Together!’--- We heard behind us.

And blood caught fire inside our breasts!

All officers in front… ‘Hurrah!’

‘There’re the daggers, Charge rifle butts!’---

And the slaughter started,

And for two hours in the river’s streams

The battle lasted, the butchery was cruel,

Like animals, silently, breast to breast.

The stream was clogged with corpses.

I wanted to scoop some water…

But the muddled wave

Was warm, 'twas red…”

So, what is the conclusion Lermontov the hero comes to, after the battle?---

“…In the distance, in a ridge, uneven

But ever-proud and serene,

There stretched the mountains, and Kazbek,

Was sparkling with its sharp-edged head.

And with a sadness, secret and heartfelt,

I thought: ‘Oh miserable man,

What does he want?.. The sky is clear;

Plenty of room under the sky;

Yet unceasingly and in vain,

He alone is at war--- Why?’”

Ending his gory story, Lermontov switches back to the sarcastic tone:

“But I’m afraid of boring you.

In the amusements of the world you find laughable

The savage quandaries of war.

…And you have hardly witnessed at close range

How people die…

And now, farewell;

If my artless tale amuses you,

Engages you a bit,

I will be happy, and if not?

Forgive me this as waggery,

And softly say: ‘A droll!’”

From Valerik, Bulgakov also takes the theme of fear. There are two scenes in Fateful Eggs, both connected with the scientist zoologist V. I. Persikov. To my astonishment, Bulgakov calls Persikov (who is one of very few personages whom he depicts with great affection) a “droll zoologist” [the key word in Russian is the same as in Lermontov: ‘chudak’], the title which he bestows in Master and Margarita only on Woland, calling him “a foreign droll.” And having a very good reason for it. (Compare this to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: “Is he the same, or settled down? Or is he still playing a droll?”)

The connection between Persikov and Woland is that both are wearing masks, to which Pushkin’s next line is clearly pointing: “Pray, what has he returned as? What is he going to present?.. A cosmopolitan or a patriot, Harold, a Quaker, a Tartuffe, or will he sport a different mask…?”

Using the character of the drollish Professor Persikov, Bulgakov first of all shows what real love is. According to Bulgakov, it is always one-sided. Hence, the epigraph to this posting.

Professor Persikov keeps loving his wife who abandoned him a long time ago, fleeing to the West from Russia. Fifteen years later, having received news of her death, he weeps. He spends his life unattached not for any lack of interest in the weaker sex. Propositions shower upon him from all sides, especially after he achieves the celebrity status in the press, and to make it clear that Professor Persikov does not have some secret kinky vice, Bulgakov introduces the following words:

“Not looking at anyone, noticing no one, not responding to pushes and soft and gentle calls of prostitutes, inspired and lonely, crowned by an unexpected fame, Persikov was struggling through [the crowd] toward the fiery clock near the Manezh. Here… absorbed in his thoughts, he stumbled upon a strange old-fashioned man, painfully sticking his fingers into the wooden case of a revolver, hanging from the man’s belt… and somehow they [Persikov and Rokk] disentangled themselves from each other in the human mêlée.”

This encounter, immediately forgotten by Persikov, leads him to really fateful consequences,-- his death, an indication of which is given by the “fiery clock” near the Manezh…

“Almost every night Persikov spent at the Institute. Once he left his zoological abode to make a report about his beam in the huge hall of the Tse-Ku-Bu on Prechistenka Street… In front of him in [the clouds of human] breath and fog were hundreds of yellow faces, and all of a sudden the yellow holster of a pistol flashed and disappeared… Persikov noticed it vaguely and immediately forgot about it.”

So, this was the same yellow holster, into which he had painfully stuck his fingers in the crowd near the Manezh. I was always struck by those “hundreds of yellow faces” in that audience hall in Moscow. In Lermontov’s poem Valerik we find that some Tatars and Chechens were fighting on the Russian side:

“A peaceful Tatar performs his namaz [Moslem prayer]

Without raising his eyes;

And here some others are sitting in a circle.

I love the color of their yellow faces,

Which matches the color of their nogovitsas [legwear, covering the shin and the knee].”

And so, if the word droll were not enough to find a common thread between Bulgakov and Lermontov, the presence of “yellow faces” in Fateful Eggs cannot be explained other than by Bulgakov’s borrowing from Valerik.

I would like to remind the reader that the “meeting” of Professor Persikov and A. S. Rokk in the crowd is the only place which at least remotely resembles the meeting of master and Margarita, thus making the character of Professor Persikov even more interesting, linking him not only to Woland, but to Margarita as well. Giving the other character the name Rokk/Fate, Bulgakov indicates that nothing good could come out of it. Moreover, he inserts into this scene with Rokk the symbolism of the “fiery clock,” plus the “wooden holster of a pistol,” which, as we know, transforms in Bulgakov into a “Finnish knife” of Master and Margarita.---

“…Love sprung on us like out of nowhere a killer appears in the back alley, and struck us both. So strikes a lightning; so strikes a Finnish knife.”

(The “fiery clock” always shows in Bulgakov that the time is up for the hero, which also means the hero’s immortality.)

And finally, the very idea of the letter which Professor Persikov receives shortly before his own death, informing him about the death of his wife, whom he could never chase away from his mind despite her betrayal and the elapsing stretch of fifteen years since, also links Fateful Eggs with Valerik to some extent. Neither character can forget “the woman.” (As Lermontov writes in Letter, “…But forgetting you is impossible for me.”)

It is not so much Bulgakov’s words: “That was a giant triumph of the zoologist-droll,” as the scene that follows, which ties Fateful Eggs to Valerik:

“And suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed and disappeared somewhere behind a white column… Persikov noticed it vaguely and immediately forgot about it. But on leaving, he suddenly felt unwell. For a moment, the bright chandelier in the vestibule was screened off to him by blackness, and Persikov felt blurry, nauseous… He imagined as though something was burning, as though blood was flowing, sticky and hot, down his neck… With a trembling hand professor grasped the railing… asked for a glass of water…”

And here is Lermontov:

“The stream was clogged with corpses.

I wanted to scoop some water…

But the muddled wave

Was warm, 'twas red…”

And especially moments before his death, Professor Persikov “cried out in irritation: ‘This is regular lunacy. You are completely wild beasts!’” Mind you, he yells all that to a really wild mob, which is there to kill him. So, here again is Lermontov’s description of the battle in Valerik:

‘There’re the daggers, Charge rifle butts!’---

And the slaughter started,

And for two hours in the river’s streams

The battle lasted, the butchery was cruel,

Like wild animals, silently, breast to breast.

Like Lermontov at Valerik, Professor Persikov is an utterly fearless man, fearless to the point of recklessness. Perhaps, for this reason Bulgakov loves them both: as I already said, the two characters painted by him with the greatest affection are Kot Begemot (Lermontov) and Professor Persikov. An incredible working of thought in Bulgakov never ceases to amaze me no matter how many times I would read him. As I said before, the only thing I can say is that Bulgakov’s flight of thought is unthinkable.

(To be continued…)