Two Adversaries.
The Black Man Concludes.
“…The moon’s
crescent has died…”
S. A. Yesenin. The
Black Man.
Of great interest are master’s words to Ivanushka: “I will be doing other things,” in his new state of rest, yet they
remain unclarified. What comes through here, though, is that master will no longer
be writing Pontius Pilate, which is
why the last two chapters of master’s novel, which Margarita has been reading
in the basement, were written by Ivanushka, especially considering the fact
that master offers to him: “You should
write what follows yourself.” And this is the only continuation there is.
Even the scene of Pontius Pilate walking side by side with Yeshua, in
Ivanushka’s last dream, is taken from chapter 26, The Burial.
In other words, both chapter 25, How
the Procurator Tried to Save Judas, and chapter 26, The Burial, have been written by Ivanushka. And this is not too hard
to figure out, considering that both these chapters are about Pontius Pilate’s
revenge against Caiaphas and Judas for the death of Yeshua.
The fact that Bulgakov uses knives in both these chapters --- one is a
bread knife, which Matthew Levi wants to use to kill Yeshua (thus saving him
from an agonizing death on the cross), and himself as well, and the other is
used by hired professional killers to slaughter Judas, --- clearly shows
Yesenin’s influence on Bulgakov. And of course the very idea of revenge is
taken by Bulgakov from Yesenin’s poetry, where he writes in many of his poems,
including Confession of a Hooligan, about
vengeance. Thus, Yesenin’s peasant parents would readily use pitchforks to stab
their son’s offenders to death:
“Somewhere
out there live my father and my mother,
Who do not
give a damn about my verses…
But they
would come armed with pitchforks to stab you
For each
shriek of yours hurled at me…”
***
We never get an answer as to what exactly master is going to get busy
with in his state of eternal Rest. But clearly we get it from Yesenin’s poem
which we are presently discussing as to what is the business of Azazello,
leaving with Woland’s retinue, whose prototype S. Yesenin is. As Yesenin writes
in his poem,---
“But for
your peace [Russian Land] from the starry heights…”
[this is where Yesenin will be after
serving time in darkness…]
“Into that
rest where the storm is sleeping…”
[the rest lasts only for as long as
the storm is sleeping…]
In chapter 29, The Fate of Master
and Margarita is Determined, Bulgakov offers a brilliant explanation of
both Yesenin’s storm and Yesenin’s darkness.
“A storm will now come, the last storm, it will complete all that
needs to be completed, and we shall be on our way... A thunderstorm was already
amassing on the horizon. A black cloud rose up in the west and cut off
half of the sun. Then it covered all of it, and it became dark.
This darkness, coming from the west, covered the enormous city.
Bridges, palaces disappeared...” (This is
what Bulgakov writes about Moscow.) “Everything
disappeared, as though it was never there… The storm started. Woland could no
longer be seen in its dark mist.”
If “the dawn starts immediately, right after the midnight moon” for
master and Margarita in their “rest,” then Woland himself and his cavalcade
disappear in the chasm at full moon.
In Yesenin’s “rest” there is no
“serenity” which Woland promises to
master.
“…Into that
rest where the storm is sleeping…”
The rest lasts only for as long as the storm is sleeping. In other words,
Yesenin is ready at any moment to explode like enraged thunder, coming to the
defense of his country. Yesenin is ready to become a sentry, but not like the
one falling asleep on his post by the armored train in Bulgakov’s White Guard, but the “unknown, incomprehensible horseman in iron
mail,” who saves that other one from death by freezing.
Bulgakov writes:
“The man and the shadow were walking… up to that place where the
black inscription read: Armored Train
Proletarian. Two light-bluish moons did not provide any warmth, but were
teasingly burning on the platform. 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...
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 mysterious and unfathomable horseman clad in iron mail came out and in a
brotherly way flowed at the man...”
“Zhilin?” asked silently,
without lips, the man’s brain
[recognizing ‘a neighbor’ and ‘a countryman’], and immediately the fearsome
sentinel voice in his chest pounded three words: “Post… sentry… will freeze…”
By a completely superhuman effort, the man would pull up the rifle,
place it on his arm; reeling, he would tear his feet off the ground, and keep
on walking…”
See more about this in my chapter The
Triangle, segment CLVII. But in this chapter we are primarily interested in
Bulgakov’s strange words:
“…Two light-bluish moons
did not provide any warmth, but were teasingly burning on the platform.”
Likewise, Bulgakov teases his reader, as Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin
closes his poem by a solemn promise to watch over Russia from above
incessantly, turning his eyes into two moons:
“And over
the chasm shall I light up, like two moons,
My
never-setting eyes.”
END OF CHAPTER.
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