Two Adversaries Continues.
“To be a
poet means the same,
If the truth
of life be not violated,
As scarring
yourself on the tender skin,
Caressing
strangers’ souls with the blood of your feelings.”
S. A. Yesenin. To
Be a Poet.
Both S. A. Yesenin and V. V. Mayakovsky wrote several poems about poets
and poetry. In his 1922 poem Bureaucratiada
Mayakovsky famously says about himself:
“As all
know, I am not a clerk.
A poet.
I have no
talent for office work.”
Curiously, in 1923 Bulgakov creates his out of this world Diaboliada about an alleged clerk V. P.
Korotkov, who on closer scrutiny is not a clerk at all, but a former officer of
the Russian army.
Sergei Yesenin in his 1925 poem To
be a Poet writes:
“To be a
poet means the same,
If the truth
of life be not violated,
As scarring
yourself on the tender skin,
Caressing
strangers’ souls with the blood of your feelings.”
Yesenin was brutally honest in his poetry both to himself and to others.
Hence Bulgakov in Master and Margarita has
Yeshua saying: “To tell the truth is easy
and pleasant.”
By the same token, as Yesenin’s poem above demonstrates, the theme of blood is coming from Yesenin’s poetry
into Master and Margarita: “Blood is a great thing,” says Woland.
In his article Sergei Yesenin, Maxim
Gorky writes how suddenly and hurriedly Yesenin asked him: “Do you think that
my poems are needed? And generally, is art, that is, poetry, needed?”
In the 13th chapter of Master
and Margarita, Appearance of the Hero, Bulgakov addresses precisely that
question. If the splitting of the Yesenin prototype into Ivan and Azazello is
taken by Bulgakov from Yesenin’s poem The
Black Man [see the separate segment The
Black Man in this chapter], then Yesenin’s prototype splitting into Ivan
and master takes place right in front of our eyes, in that already mentioned 13th
chapter, Appearance of the Hero. In
this Bulgakov follows Nietzsche:
“Around the hero everything becomes
a tragedy.”
Master and Margarita’s 11th chapter, The Splitting of Ivan, is merely a
Bulgakov clue for a real splitting. As I already wrote before, there is no real
splitting between the old Ivan and the new Ivan. All people change their views
and even convictions from time to time, but this does not make them split
personalities. Having said that, the imaginary conversation between master and
Ivan is just what it is, an imaginary conversation of a lonely man committed to
a psychiatric clinic where the “new” Ivan is transformed into master.
I must note here that Bulgakov shows no contradiction in this case, as
the idea of picking N. V. Gogol as the prototype of the non-existent master is
taken by him from a poem of none other than S. A. Yesenin, To Valery Bryusov, commemorating Bryusov’s death, where Yesenin
writes:
“We know
how to blow Gogol and smoke.”
(This is precisely what Bulgakov does, introducing the non-existent
master into Master and Margarita. I
need to remind the reader, though, that master’s “non-existence” is just one of
Bulgakov’s literary ploys [the whole idea of Ivanushka and master talking to
each other in a psychiatric clinic is both implausible and preposterous: it has
to be Ivanushka imagining and talking to himself], one of Bulgakov’s novel’s
“dimensions.” As we discussed in previous chapters, master surely exists in the
“spy novel” [where he unluckily gets involved with a woman planning to poison
her VIP husband], and he definitely exists in the “psychological thriller”
[where “Margarita” is one part of his split personality]. The difficulty of
discerning these different dimensions can be explained by the intricacies of
Bulgakov weaving them all together. I will introduce more clarity into this
fascinating subject in my future chapters.)
Here again the strange scenes are explained through V. V. Mayakovsky’s
poem God’s Bird, where exactly the
same questions are being raised about poetry and its importance. Bulgakov liked
God’s Bird so much that he uses it
twice in Master and Margarita. The
first time it is in the conversation between master and Ivan Bezdomny in the
psychiatric clinic. The second time it is in chapter 28 The Final Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot, where Bulgakov
insists that “it is by no means the [writer’s] ID which determines a writer,
but what he writes!”
In the Appearance of the Hero,
we have two “dialogues” on this subject, and we shall discuss them presently.
A rather strange scene in the Appearance
of the Hero can be explained through the poetry of V. V. Mayakovsky.
“Are you a writer? – the
poet [Ivanushka] asked interestedly.
The guest’s face darkened, and he shook his fist at Ivan, saying
after that:I am master.
He became stern and produced out of the pocket of his hospital robe a totally soiled little black cap with the letter “M” embroidered on it in yellow silk. He put the cap on and showed himself to Ivan in profile and en face, in order to prove that he was master. (Much more clarity on this subject will be found in my chapter Woland Identity.)
This scene needs to be discussed together with the one which precedes it
in Master and Margarita. First, it is
master who asks questions:
---Profession?
---A poet, for some reason
reluctantly confessed Ivan.The visitor was saddened.
---Oh, how unlucky am I!..
---So, what about my poems, you don’t like them?
---I dislike them terribly.
---And which ones have you read?
---None…
---And how’s that you say?
---As if I haven’t read other such stuff…
Still, in the course of the subsequent conversation master calls Ivan a “hapless poet,” putting his hand on the
shoulder of the “poor poet.”
Mayakovsky’s God’s Bird was
written in 1924. It must be noted that this poem was in turn inspired by a
Lermontov poem:
“I am a madman! You are right, you’re
right!
Ridiculous is immortality on earth.
How could I wish for loud glory,
When you are happy in the dust…
No, I don’t look like a poet…”
[italicized by Lermontov…]
In his poem, V. V. Mayakovsky reacts to a visit from a comrade in quill,
who introduces himself as:
“---I am a
writer.
---You? A
writer? Pardon me…
So, recite!
Ring it!
And he says,
---I am a writer, not a prosaic.
No, I am in
communion with the muses…”
And here V. V. Mayakovsky presents us with a portrait of a poet, the way
he ought to look (following A. S. Pushkin who gives his own portrait of a poet,
Lensky, in Eugene Onegin).---
“He pushed
the silk of his curls
To the back
of his head in a gentle gesture,
Became a
golden-fleeced lamb,
And started
bleating all the way,
About the
moon allegedly over the valley…
Tin-din-lin
sang his mandolin,
Dzun-doon
sang his cello.
A nimbus
weaved around the haystack of his hair,
The brow was
burning with nobility,
I suffered
and suffered and then burst…
Hey you,
stop impersonating a poet!
I am looking
at you up front and from the back,
(On a funny note, Mayakovsky’s “up
front and from the back” changes in Bulgakov into “in profile and en face”…)
You are a
tulip, not a writer,
You,
Monsieur, are from the canary breed…”
The first thing that catches the eye here is the similarity to Yesenin’s
---
“…I am not
your canary --- I am a poet,
And not some
kind of Demyan…”
It must be noted that Yesenin’s poem predates Mayakovsky’s.
But our main point of interest is how M. A. Bulgakov used this. Knowing
already that the poet Ivan Bezdomny’s prototype is Sergei Yesenin, we must
note, yet again, that master never read his poetry, in order to be a judge of
it, but despite this fact, it is Ivan Bezdomny, who in a fit of anguish
“daringly and candidly” pronounces that his poems are “monstrous.”
As for Bulgakov, he keeps calling him a “poet” in the text: “poor poet,”
“hapless poet,” showing his good attitude toward the poetry of Sergei Yesenin
who called himself, on the record, “the very
best Russian poet” of his time.
To be continued…
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