Triangle Concludes.
“…And the kind genie
of death
Will whisper, having knocked
at the door:
‘It’s time to depart for the
dwelling place of shadows!..”
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Dreamer.
In
the twenty-ninth chapter (of thirty-two) of Master
and Margarita, one of the last chapters of the novel, we can finally
understand the reason why Woland came to Moscow in the first place. It was on
Yeshua’s request, the only one in the “Light” whom Woland was interested in,
because of at least one Manifestation of God expressing the desire to spend
some time on the Earth, assuming a human form, being actually born of an
earthly woman, and taking upon himself all the torments of human life. The
devil [Lucifer] himself was never capable of that. Woland’s words “uninvited but expected guest” clearly
indicate that Matthew Levi served as an intermediary between Christ and Woland.
The words of Woland: “Tell him that it shall
be done” show that Woland was fulfilling Christ’s requests without any
argument about them. This certainly shows that Bulgakov portrays the devil to
be a willing subordinate of Christ.
(The
reader may remember that the idea of Woland’s special interest in Yeshua and of
their interaction is taken by Bulgakov from M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem The Plague, which is the subject of my
segment LIX, Yeshua and Woland.)
It
is also interesting to note in this segment that Matthew Levi’s open hostility
to Woland changes on account of Margarita:
“He asks that she who loved
and suffered because of him [master] be taken too, for the first time pleadingly
Matthew Levi addressed Woland.”
This
is a second time already that Margarita is being compared to Matthew Levi:
“Why did I leave him then, at
night? Why? But that was sheer insanity! And I returned the following day,
honestly, just as I had promised, but it was already too late. Yes, I returned
like the poor Matthew Levi, too late…”
It
is also interesting to note here that Bulgakov writes “he” not only with regard to Yeshua, but also with regard to master,
as if deliberately confusing the reader: “He asks that she who loved and suffered
because of him [master] be taken too.” Most likely, Bulgakov draws
the reader’s attention to the fact that in a certain sense master [“To tell the truth is easy and pleasant!”]
was Yeshua-like, which, after all, is precisely what each person ought to
strive at, as God created man in His own image.
The
words “she who
loved and suffered” also echo the words of the holy angel in Lermontov’s Demon:
“She suffered and she loved,
And Paradise opened to love.”
***
If
Tamara’s soul was taken into Paradise, and master’s and Margarita’s souls went
to Rest, where did Judas’s soul end up then, and why did Bulgakov comment about
the slain Judas’s face being “spiritedly beautiful”? (“[When
Aphranius] looked into the face of the murdered Judas… it appeared to him white
as chalk and somehow spiritedly beautiful.”)
Judas
betrayed Christ for money, why does Bulgakov give him that “spiritedly
beautiful” face? Considering that in Bulgakov the idea of Judas’s murder is
implanted in Pontius Pilate by Woland then everything which is connected to
Judas, as well as Judas himself, is Woland’s domain. The soul of Judas
immediately departs to Hell, to the devil.
Bulgakov
takes the word “spirited” from M. Yu. Lermontov. In his poem Demon Lermontov frequently calls Demon
(that is, the devil) a “spirit”:
You restless spirit, wicked
spirit, Who called upon you in the darkness of midnight?
The evil spirit smirked
insidiously…
[Tamara tells Demon:] Leave
me, you wicked spirit!
And when Tamara’s sinful soul
was carried by a holy angel in his embrace, From the chasm whirled up Hell’s
Spirit…
So,
here is where Bulgakov takes Judas’s spirited face from, from Lermontov’s word Spirit, for Demon’s Spirit.
Bulgakov’s
Woland is the ultimate psychop. His skill at planting ideas in people’s heads
is also taken by Bulgakov from Lermontov. In his poem Demon M. Yu. Lermontov writes:
“And
then as if [Tamara] hears
A magic voice sounding over
her...
…And this voice, wondrous and
new,
She imagined still sounding…
But he disturbed her thought
By a fantasy prophetic and
strange.
The visitor, foggy and mute
[sic!]…”
1. In the first place, we learn that Demon was not
talking to Tamara, but that he “sounded” in her head.
2. Secondly, the “magic voice” planted in Tamara’s head
certain thoughts-fantasies.
3. Thirdly, Tamara saw the visitor dimly, as if in a fog,
as if in a dream. This is why Bulgakov has so many visions and dreams in Master and Margarita and in his other
works.
4. Fourthly, we find out that the visitor is “mute,”
which means that he doesn’t need to talk: his voice can be heard in a person’s
head of itself. [About this see Birds:
Swallow, Posted segment LII, etc.]
5. Fifthly, we find out that Demon is invisible. (“The words died down
in the distance… Jumping up, she looks around…”) Only near dawn, in
a dream, Tamara sees Demon. The fact of Woland’s invisibility
comes to light already in the third chapter of Master and Margarita. (See Beardo
with a Rolly, posted segment LVIII.)
So,
hence we find out that Bulgakov’s Woland is invisible. He does not need to
transform himself into people like Caiaphas, or Aphranius, or Pontius Pilate,
or Pilate’s secretary, etc. The reason is that Woland is not a human being, but
a demon, a fallen angel, to whom are opened non-human means of communication.
“Visitor
dim and mute,
Glistening with an unearthly
beauty…
That wasn’t a terrible spirit
from Hell…
He was akin to a clear
evening:
Neither day nor night,
Neither darkness nor light.”
In
other words, the “spiritedly beautiful” face of Judas has nothing in common
with divinity. Bulgakov’s Judas belongs to the devil. That’s why beauty in
Bulgakov’s works is connected to vice.
Compare
this, from his White Guard:
“Like stacks of firewood, one upon another, laid there were naked
human corpses, emitting an unbearable, stifling to any human being… stench… He
grabbed a woman’s corpse by the foot, and she, slippery, slid down like over
oil with a thud to the floor. To Nikolka she appeared terrifyingly beautiful,
like a witch, and sticky. Nikolka could not take his eyes away from
the scar, winding around her like a red ribbon…”
It
goes without saying that Margarita’s beauty in Master and Margarita is also the beauty of a witch!
***
Again,
like in his poem Combat (see posted
segments LIX and LXI), there can be no question as to on whose side M. Yu.
Lermontov himself is. The devil is his enemy, but even in an enemy a noble soul
can single out certain qualities which can be seen as admirable. With his soul
of a revolutionary, M. Yu. Lermontov admired only two qualities in Lucifer the
revolutionary: his daring bravery and pride.
Especially
considering his young age, it would be wrong and unfair to believe that
Lermontov wanted to go beyond rebelliousness and pride, the two qualities for
which Lucifer was thrown down to earth. Lermontov calls upon humanity to mold
itself. Rebelliousness and pride are not necessarily bad qualities in a person,
and contemplating the questions of good and evil does not mean wavering between
these two. It would be highly hypocritical even to suggest that the world consists
of good people. For good to conquer, the good people must fight for it.
There
was no split personality in M. Yu. Lermontov. He was not a dreamer with his
head in the clouds. As a man and as a poet, he saw life as it is. Lermontov was
Russian. As a Russian officer, he respected the enemy for his bravery, staunch spirit,
and love of freedom. Respecting your enemy is a distinctive Russian feature.
Lermontov
was the ultimate free thinker, not a wavering doubter. The closing words of my
favorite poem 1831, June the 11th
Day explain what Dmitry Merezhkovsky fallaciously attributed to such a personality
split in Lermontov the man:
“The
thought is strong
When it is not restrained by
words,
When it is free like
childplay…”
As for the beginning of this
poem, here it is:
“My
soul, as I remember, since my childhood years
Was seeking after the
miraculous…
How often by the power of
thought in one short hour
I lived for ages, and a
different life…”
It
goes without saying that for any human soul “seeking after the miraculous”
means seeking after God, and not after the devil.
Astonishingly,
M. Yu. Lermontov wrote this five-pages-long poem at the age of sixteen. (And of
course the reader ought to remember that he was killed at the incredibly early
age of twenty-six!) He is indeed a poet who, like no other, puts human thought
on fire. A poet-philosopher, whose works are still current in the twenty-first
century. A truly free soul who, before Nietzsche, was fascinated by the question
of good and evil, always choosing good.
“There
is an end to everything;
Man’s life is only slightly
longer
Than that of a flower,
And if compared to eternity,
Their lifespans are equally
negligible.
It’s only the soul that must
survive its cradle.”
***
This
is the end of my chapter The Triangle.
When we return, the reader will learn the identity of the poet Ivan Bezdomny in
my chapter Two Adversaries.
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