EGOISM OF THE NOBLE SOUL

(This is my comment on Nietzsche’s Jenseits 265.)

I must be a terrible judge of character, and especially of my own. Even now, I am convinced that there is no more accomplished altruist than I am, or, at least, if altruism is going a bit too far, that there is not a single selfish bone in my body. And yet, I have been called an egoist by a caring and loving person, and no matter how loudly I have always protested this characterization, she has not changed her opinion.

It is easy to be stubborn and keep denying the charges, but what does a philosopher do when he thinks that he is right, but the whole world tells him otherwise? Mind you, we are not discussing the shape of the earth, or any other fact of science, where history tells us that one man can be right against the whole world, until the whole world accepts his revolutionary theory, at which time another man stands up, saying that, in fact, everything believed to have be right before him is wrong, and so on, and so forth. But in our case there are no stubborn facts, nor revolutionary theories. We are in the realm of personal opinions, and disagreements about opinions are mostly caused not by different tastes, but by varying and imprecise definitions of words, and especially those words which we have chosen to argue about.

Back to the word “egoism” now, and to its definition, or, rather, its interpretation by the genius of Nietzsche in his Jenseits 265---

At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I propose that egoism belongs to the nature of a noble soul, I mean that unshakable faith that to a being such as “we are” other beings must be subordinate by nature and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question mark, without a feeling that it might contain hardness, constraint, or caprice, but rather as something that may be founded in the primordial law of things: if it sought a name for this fact it would say ‘it is justice itself.’ Perhaps it admits under certain circumstances, which, at first, make it hesitate, that there are some who have rights equal to its own; as soon as this matter of rank is settled, it moves among these equals, with their equal privileges, showing the same sureness of modesty and delicate reverence that characterize its relations with itself--- in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism, understood by all stars. It is merely another aspect of its egoism, this refinement and self-limitation in its relations with its equals--- every star is such an egoist--- it honors itself in them, and in the rights it cedes to them; it does not doubt that the exchange of honors and rights is of the nature of all social relations, and thus also belongs to the natural condition of things.

The noble soul gives as it takes from that passionate and irritable instinct of repayment that lies in its depth. The concept of grace has no meaning or good odor inter pares; there may be a sublime way to let presents from above happen to one, as it were, and to drink them up thirstily, like drops, but for this art and gesture the noble soul has no aptitude. Its egoism hinders it: quite generally it does not like to look “up,” but either ahead , horizontally and slowly, or down: it knows itself to be at a height.

Rereading this passage, in one of my introspective moods, I was greatly surprised and privately shocked, to find so much of my inner hidden self in Nietzsche’s description. If this is egoism, I say to myself, then I am an egoist… but then, once if we have pushed our refined psychology this far, if we push it farther still, then every single person, both noble and a slave, can be interpreted as a consummate egoist, as long as we bend our definitions to fit each particular case. But if everyone just turns out to be an “egoist” by definition, then the term itself loses its meaning, for the reason of its triviality, and must be redefined…

So, here is the key to the problem of defining egoism. Perhaps we ought to dismiss as inadequate the usage of this term in application to the slave, the oaf, the brute, the animal? Perhaps, the word egoism must itself become refined, selective, delicate, subtle, esoteric? Let us, then, abolish all its coarse uses, and keep it as a delicacy of sorts, both linguistically and philosophically speaking. In that case, there is only one definition of the word egoism, egoist, worth adopting, and it is indisputably Nietzsche’s definition in Jenseits 265.

And in that case, and in that case only, I confess to being one, and accept the title of egoist, and from now on, I’ll refuse to have any qualms about being called such an unpleasant name… Unpleasant?.. That is, until Nietzsche comes forth, and resolutely makes it pleasant.

UNPHILOSOPHICALITY OF THE SHOPKEEPER

After another two weeks of posting my wife’s work on Bulgakov, I am returning to my own offerings, currently from my Nietzsche section.

(The “Shopkeeper” is an interesting name for the British, coined by the Scottish economist Adam Smith in his already quoted phrase “a nation of shopkeepers,” which was thereafter repeated by Napoleon, who is therefore not its original author, as many people seem to believe. This entry, although not comprehensive, addresses the curious question raised in Nietzsche’s Jenseits 252, concerning the “unphilosophicality” of the English. What I want to explore here is whether this opinion is in any way justified, that is, whether it has more to it than Nietzsche’s, and the German philosophers’ as a whole, collective personal bias toward the English.)

Considering that it is from English philosophy of John Locke, and later of John Stuart Mill, and not from the great German philosophers, like Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to name only the greatest, that the American cultural tradition proudly traces its origins, and with which it seeks a spiritual identification, so that today American intellectuals of all political persuasions take this English philosophical superiority over the rest of the world, unquestionably and unquestioningly, for granted; but also considering my respect for both the brilliance of Nietzsche’s intuitive genius and the validity of his opinions and characterizations of other philosophers and persons of note,--- Nietzsche’s opinion of English philosophy is of great interest to me, and it must be examined in a much more elaborate way, perhaps, than some other general ideas which do not have such an immediate connection to my primary subjects of interests.

There is another independent and important angle, which arouses my curiosity. During the Soviet period of the Russian history, there existed a politically motivated pseudo-scientific brand of philosophy known to all as Marxism-Leninism. Today it appears to have been so vigorously discredited that it has landed, regrettably, straight on top of the garbage pile of things that used to be very important in their time, but now have become objects causing a guilty feeling and shame among the new Russians. Pity! The Soviet period had its triumphs and its downsides, but so does any other distinctive historical period, and thus discarding its own history should make no nation proud. (Look what has happened to the Germans, who have become wretchedly antihistorical as a result of their outright rejection of the predominant part of their history in the twentieth century, from Kaiser Wilhelm to GDR!)

I cannot disagree with those who hold the opinion that Marxism-Leninism had been a sham: even the name was grotesquely artificial, particularly after the transitional Leninism of Lenin had outlived itself completely, and had given way to the institutional Stalinism of Stalin. But, nevertheless, there were some interesting and useful elements in it, and disparaging it, and getting rid of it wholesale, has been a mistake and a shame in its own right.

Marxism-Leninism by its own admission rested on three whales (or elephants, if you like). They were listed as German philosophy, English political economy, and French utopian socialism. The most curious part of this threesome (as far as I am concerned), is the contraposition of the first two. The explicit recognition of the power of German philosophy (well deserved, I might add) puts the English philosophicality on a lower level at best. What say you, Bacon, Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Mill, Spenser, Bentham, etc. (I shall not dig up any more British names, springing after Nietzsche’s time, though.) By the same token, English propensity for political economy, as recognized by Marxism-Leninism, seems to deny the claim of Max Weber that it is the German Protestant enterprising spirit, which has made capitalism possible in the first place…

Before we say anything more, however, the time is long overdue to present the reader with the Nietzschean centerpiece of this entry, his Jenseits 252, and here it is, given in excerpts:

---They are no philosophical race, these Englishmen: Bacon signifies an attack on the philosophical spirit; Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, a debasement and lowering of the value of the concept of ‘philosophy’ for more than a century. It was against Hume that Kant arose, and rose; and it was Locke, of whom Schelling said, understandably, “je méprise Locke!” In their fight against English-mechanistic doltification of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer were of one mind with Goethe: these two hostile brother geniuses in philosophy, who strove apart toward the opposite poles of the German spirit, and in the process, wronged each other¾ as only brothers wrong each other.

What was lacking in England and always has been lacking there, was known well enough to the semi-actor and rhetorician, the insipid muddlehead Carlyle, who tried to conceal behind passionate grimaces what he knew of himself, namely, what was lacking in Carlyle: real power of spirituality, real profundity of spiritual perception; in brief, philosophy.

It is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race that it clings firmly to Christianity: the English need its discipline to become “moralized,” and somewhat humanized. The English, being gloomier, more sensual, stronger in will, and more brutal than the Germans, are, precisely for that reason, more vulgar, more pious than the Germans: they stand more in need of Christianity…

The first thought which comes to my mind here is the dichotomy of instinct and reason, which we have had a chance to discuss in several places already, including in this section. Is it correct to say that instinct, that is the irrational element, distinguishes the best of philosophy whereas rationality is at its best in the capitalistic surroundings, and therefore in political economy? Without committing ourselves to an extreme opinion, it is possible to say that-- on the balance-- philosophy benefits more from instinct than from rationality, while in political economy, behind the cashier’s register in the shopkeeper’s general store, the situation is reversed. I shall not venture to suggest that on these grounds the English are bad philosophers and the Germans are bad shopkeepers, which would probably be sheer nonsense, defying common sense, especially in the latter case. But without any rush to quick judgment what Nietzsche says in the passage above and what we have said on our part, gives us plenty of food for thought, and, time permitting, we shall be delving into it far deeper, in a still distant, but hopefully foreseeable future.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXCVI.

Woland Identity Concludes.

 

“Hey, you! Heaven! Hat off! That’s me going!”

V. V. Mayakovsky.

Without Mayakovsky’s poetry, there would not have been such an interesting and controversial sub-novel in Master and Margarita. There was a good reason why Bulgakov refused to have his novel Master and Margarita published without Pontius Pilate in it. In chapter 26, The Burial, Bulgakov introduces an interesting scene into the dream of the worn-out procurator, which cannot be understood without a reference to Mayakovsky. Bulgakov writes:

“We shall now be always together, the vagabond philosopher was telling him in his dream. Once there is one, there is the other right there. They will remember me and immediately they will remember you! Me, a foundling, son of unknown parents, and you, son of an astrologer king and of the daughter of a miller, the beautiful Pila…”

Considering that the ancestry of the historical personality Pilate, famous on account of Christ, is unknown, Bulgakov invents it. In this he follows V. V. Mayakovsky’s poem A Letter to Comrade Kostrov on the Essence of Love. This happens to be the poem played up on by Bulgakov in Pontius Pilate.

“Had I not been a poet, I would have become a stargazer,” Mayakovsky writes in it.

As a tribute to Mayakovsky’s gigantism, Bulgakov makes Pilate’s father not just a stargazer, but a stargazer king, having a fling with the miller’s daughter Pila and thus bringing Pontius Pilate into the world. How can we fail to admire Bulgakov’s ingenuity, who makes use here of A. S. Pushkin’s Water Maiden.

As for Mayakovsky himself, as early as in his 1918 poem The Worker Poet, where he defends his poetry as necessary to the working class, he again compares himself to Christ.---

“But the labor of poets is most respectable,

Catching live people, and not fish!”

For those who do not know how to do it, Mayakovsky has a suggestion:

“And as for the vainglorious orators, send them to the mills,

To the millers! To turn the millstones with the water of their speeches.”

Marriage was never an option for Mayakovsky. As he writes in the same poem:

“I am not to measure love by weddings:

She falls out of love --- she wades away.”

***

In his poem A Conversation with a Fininspector [Internal Revenue Officer] About Poetry, V. V. Mayakovsky continues his defense of poetry as indispensable for the welfare of society. This poem is of utmost importance to us, considering that it is this poem which has given M. A. Bulgakov the idea of splitting Mayakovsky in Master and Margarita into Woland and the poet Ryukhin (“And what if I am at the same time the leader of the people and the people’s servant?”).

From the same poem, Bulgakov takes the idea of the card trick at the séance of black magic between Koroviev (A. S. Pushkin) and Begemot (M. Yu. Lermontov), using the image of Mayakovsky, who accuses poets of stealing other poets’ lines and ideas:

“How many poets have the sleight of hand!

Like a magician, he pulls a line

Out of his own mouth, and out of those of others…

He inserts another’s line among his, and he is happy…”

Curiously there is a direct connection here to Bulgakov. In depicting the gruesome death of Berlioz on the rails under a tram, M. Bulgakov is showing us real magic, as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of the séance of black magic, using a remarkable 1913 poem by Mayakovsky, which is somehow building a bridge between his two magicians:

“A magician draws rails

Out of the jaws of a tram,

Himself hidden behind the clock faces of a tower.”

The idea of the tram, or more specifically the use of a tram in cutting off the head of Berlioz, thus proceeds from V. Mayakovsky. In his early 1913 poem The Hell of the City, Mayakovsky clearly describes a tragic accident:

“And there under the shop sign where they sell herrings from Kerch,

The downed old man was fumbling for his glasses,

And he cried when in the whirlwind of the falling dusk

A speeding tram raised up its eye pupils…”

And also in the 1916 poem Sick and Tired, Mayakovsky complains:

“Human beings --- none. Do you understand

The scream of a thousand-day torment?

The soul does not want to go mute,

But who is there to tell it to?

I will throw myself down to the ground,

And I will scrape my face on the bark of a stone,

Washing the asphalt with my tears,

And with a thousand kisses of my tenderness-hungry lips

I will cover

The intelligent muzzle of the tram.”

 

Hence, Bulgakov paints his picture of the cutting off of the head of Berlioz. “The intelligent muzzle of the tram” becomes the tram that beheads Berlioz in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Likewise, from Mayakovsky’s The Hell of the City, Bulgakov draws out the appearance of Koroviev. ---

“Berlioz clearly made out that... his little eyes were small, ironic and semi-drunk.”

Mayakovsky’s “downed old man” was also most probably semi-drunk, which he suggests by the shop sign “Herrings from Kerch,” considering that herring is the proverbial Russian snack to go with vodka.

Koroviev in this scene does not wear glasses yet, but they do appear in the opening pages of the next chapter. ---

“Now the regent [Koroviev] fixed upon his nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, which had one glass missing entirely and the other one was cracked…”

Not only does Bulgakov show Koroviev as “semi-drunk,” but also as a beggar asking Berlioz in a “cracked tenor voice and making faces” ---

“If I may ask you, for the provided instruction, for [the money to buy] a quarter-liter [of vodka]… to allow a former regent to come into better health…”

In the second part of Master and Margarita, Koroviev’s pince-nez is now replaced by Bulgakov with a monocle:

“The flickering light was reflected not in that cracked pince-nez which had long deserved to be thrown out as trash, but in a monocle, also cracked, to tell the truth.”

The idea of the monocle is very interesting, as it comes out of two sources: from Mayakovsky’s famous poem A Cloud in Pants and also from D. S. Merezhkovsky’s Night Luminary, where Merezhkovsky calls A. S. Pushkin the Daytime Luminary, in other words the Sun of Russian Poetry.

Mayakovsky writes:            

“I will leave you…

Putting the monocle of the sun

In my wide-open eye.”

***

A fairly small poem with an unusual title, Mayakovsky’s Conversation clarifies to us yet another unusual scene in Master and Margarita. During his meeting with Margarita, Woland jokingly complains about pain in his knee “left as a souvenir [to him] by one charming witch.” As Margarita sympathetically replies “Oh, how can that be?” Woland dismisses his own complaint: “Nonsense! It will pass in about three hundred years.”

Bulgakov takes the number three hundred from the same Mayakovsky poem, as it suits him perfectly fine for several reasons. (I have written about the significance of the year 1571 before, in my chapter The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita, segment XXIV.)

Mayakovsky complains to the Fininspector about his high taxes and asks him “Having considered the lasting effect of my poems, please recalculate my income, spreading it over 3oo years!”

Both V. V. Mayakovsky and M. A. Bulgakov understand the number 300 unequivocally. It represents the three centuries of the Romanov Dynasty’s rule over Russia. To give him full credit for it, Mayakovsky was the first one to offer this association for the number 300.

***

In his poem on the death of S. A. Yesenin, V. V. Mayakovsky asks the question: “Is that the way to honor a poet?” This is how he describes Yesenin’s funeral:

“…Your monument has not even been cast,

Where is it, the ringing of the bronze or the edge of the granite?

And they have already brought to the grids of memory

The trash of dedications and reminiscences.”

After Horace and Pushkin, Bulgakov created a “monument aere perennius” to the four greatest Russian poets --- A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, V. V. Mayakovsky, and S. A. Yesenin --- in his novel Master and Margarita. And, like Mayakovsky, he could well say about himself:

“Hey, you! Heaven! Hat off! That’s me going!”

End of Chapter.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXCV.

Woland Identity Continued.

 

“And God will weep over my book!

Not words, but spasms stuck together in a lump,

And He will run across the Heaven with my poems under His arm,

And will, spasmodically breathing, read them to His acquaintances.”

V. V. Mayakovsky. But Still.

 

Bulgakov was obviously impressed by V. V. Mayakovsky in his treatment of Goethe’s Faust. If A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov in their poetry treated this work with considerable sarcasm, Mayakovsky is, as usual, sharper and more assertive. Being Russian, Bulgakov gives the following words to prove this point:

“And there is no devil either?

None, there is no devil whatsoever, cried out Ivan Nikolayevich.

Now, this is positively interesting, --- uttered the professor, shaking with laughter, --- so what is it with you, whatever I am asking about, nothing exists?!”

In this, Bulgakov clearly takes the side of the two Russian greats: Pushkin and Lermontov, but V. V. Mayakovsky is quite impressive, as he nails it where it hurts.

Two times, once in the Flute-Spine and the second time in the Cloud in Pants, Mayakovsky compares himself with Goethe, allotting himself the primacy and mocking the sentimental Germans:

“Even if, swinging from blood like Bacchus,

A drunken brawl is on, even then words of love are not decrepit, ---

Dear Germans! I know that on your lips

Is Goethe’s Gretchen.”

And before that:

“I don’t care about Faust, in a firework of rockets

Gliding with Mephistopheles upon the celestial parquet!

 I know that the nail in my boot

Is more nightmarish than Goethe’s fantasy.”

As I already wrote before, the story of Gretchen is not only sugary, but also unfair, to the Russian taste. With regard to the theme of the “nail,” but already not in the boot but in the ear, it returns, in Mayakovsky, in his most interesting 1921 play in verse Mysteria-Buff. Describing the colonial times in Africa, Mayakovsky writes:

“And if you look at a slave in an English colony,

All these demons would have scattered, squealing.

Negroes are skinned and their skins are tanned,

So that they would be good for book bindings.

A nail in the ear? Sure, why not!

Pig bristles are driven under the fingernails…”

 

Realizing that Mayakovsky’s “nail” exposes Bulgakov’s design altogether, Bulgakov gives up on this idea and substitutes a “needle” instead of a “nail”:

“Then instantly, as though a needle had been pulled out of the brain, the pain in the temple subsided, which had been bothering [Margarita] for the whole evening after the meeting in Alexander’s Garden…”

Mark also how Mayakovsky compares himself with Lucifer, as he addresses God:

“You think that this one behind you, with wings, knows what love is?”

Mayakovsky insists:

“An angel too, I was one, peering into the eyes of sugary lambs.”

And then:

“Hey, you! Heaven! Hat off! That’s me going!”

Mayakovsky is not apologetic, like Yesenin. Compare Yesenin’s:

“I am ashamed that I used to believe in God,

I bitterly regret that now I do not believe.”

We cannot say that Mayakovsky does not believe in God, as, in countless poems, again and again, he identifies himself with Jesus Christ:

“I am where pain is, everywhere;

On each drop of the tearful flow

I have crucified myself on a cross.

There is nothing more to forgive.

I’ve burned out souls where tenderness was cultivated.

This is more difficult than to take

A thousand of thousands Bastilles.

And when announcing His coming by a rebellion

You come out to the Savior---

Then I will pull out my soul and flatten it under my feet,”

To make it big!---

And, bloodied, will hand it over as a banner.

 

“His Coming…” Mayakovsky writes about the year 1916: “In the Revolutions’ crown of thorns arrives the sixteenth year.”

And in this we find an amazing follow up to M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Prediction:

“And on that day a mighty man will come,

Him you will recognize, and understand

Why he is holding in his hand a knife:

And woe is you! Your tears, your groan,

Will be appearing laughable to him…”

But, unlike in M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem: “And everything in him will be as terrible and dark as his dark cloak with elevated brow,” V. Mayakovsky identifies himself with Jesus Christ. Whereas in Lermontov’s poem there is a frightful forewarning about Revolution, in Mayakovsky’s poem there is a blessing.

It is M. A. Bulgakov who chooses Mayakovsky as Woland’s prototype, because of his mindboggling, outlandish poetic associations painted by the broad brush of a genius artist.

Mayakovsky and Jesus Christ? Hence Bulgakov’s strong connection between Woland and Yeshua.

Hence, the idea of Yeshua ordering a book about his sufferings also comes from Mayakovsky. Bulgakov must have been stunned by Mayakovsky’s split, that is, on the one hand, his attitude toward “Mister God,” as he calls God in his famous 1915-1916 poem A Cloud in Pants, while, on the other hand, his explicit identification of himself with Jesus Christ in many of his poems. But the idea proper of master’s book being ordered by Christ comes to Bulgakov from an earlier 1913 poem But Still:

“And God will weep over my book!

Not words, but spasms stuck together in a lump,

And He will run across the Heaven with my poems under His arm,

And will, spasmodically breathing, read them to His acquaintances.”

It is from here that the idea of ordering master to write a book about Christ’s last day on earth comes into Bulgakov’s head.

“I’ll climb out, dirty [from sleeping in ditches],

I’ll stand side by side with Him, bend, and say into His ear:

Mister God, how come you are not bored

Of everyday dipping your good pudgy eyes

Into the cloud’s kissel?..”

So, here is what Mayakovsky is offering to God:

“So, let us, you know, arrange a merry-go-round

On the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

Mayakovsky strikes an optimistic tone in this poem, as he writes that “babies will be christened with the names of my poems.”

In his poem I, part 4, A Few Words About Me Myself, Mayakovsky writes”

“I see Christ flee from his icon…

My soul (in the tatters of the torn cloud)

In the burnt-out sky on the rusted cross of the belfry…”

In the following lines of his Cloud in Pants, Mayakovsky’s identification with Christ is direct:

“…And there was not a single one there

Who was not shouting: Crucify, crucify him!”

“Remember: under the weight of the cross,

Christ, tired, stopped for a second.

The crowd was shouting:

Marala! Maaarrraaala!”

And Mayakovsky makes the following conclusion here:

“Right! On each one who pleads for a rest,

You spit in his day of spring!..

No mercy from man!”

And in his famous poem A Cloud in Pants, Mayakovsky is even more transparent in his accusation:

“You see? Once again they prefer Barabbas

To a spat-at Golgofnik!”

Here Mayakovsky “once again” compares himself to Christ, as he insists:

“Why should a tavern crowd be gifted

With a halo hack-painted with a template?!”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXCIV.

Woland Identity Continued.

“You will kill me and bury me, --- I will dig myself out!

The knives of my teeth will yet sharpen over stone!”

V. V. Mayakovsky.

…The assassinated political figure, alluded to in the Tale of the Little Red Cap, has to be a major one.

The poem was written in the revolutionary year 1917. However, this means little, considering that the Russian Revolution had started already in the year 1905. And also the fact that Baron Wrangel, who was called the “Black Baron” in his time, was “dumped into the sea” in the Russian city of Sebastopol in the Crimea in the year 1920, and not in 1927, when V. V. Mayakovsky writes about this in his poem It is Good!

Generally speaking, we must look at the period of time from 1905 through 1917. This period immediately brings to mind the horrendous crime committed in 1911 in Kiev where M. A. Bulgakov was living at the time. During a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s charming opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, after A. S. Pushkin, the Russian Prime Minister Petr Arkadievich Stolypin, who was in attendance, was assassinated by an anarchist working as a snitch for the Tsarist secret police.

Stolypin was such an important and promising political figure, a man of such political skill and wisdom, that in a fairly recent Russian national poll Imya Rossiya, he was voted the second greatest Russian in history, after Prince Alexander Nevsky (1221-1263), a revered saint of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Mayakovsky alludes to Stolypin’s assassination with the words:

“…And it tore the Cadet’s little [red] cap to shreds.

And he remained all black…

In the 11^th Song of the Western Slavs, George becomes “black” having killed his father who had opposed his struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, fearing that it would come at too high a cost for the Serbs, and eventually winning the fight against the Sultan at the price of his own life, posthumously becoming the founder of the Serbian royal dynasty of Karageorgievich, that is, the heirs of Black George.

…I may be contradicted by those saying that Mayakovsky, a revolutionary poet, allegedly joining the Bolshevik Party in 1908 at the age of 14, could not possibly be sympathetic to such a bulwark of the Tsarist regime as P. A. Stolypin. I disagree. Mayakovsky must be judged by his works, and these are heavily influenced by the “greats,” of which Stolypin was one.

Curiously, the great Russian poet M. Yu. Lermontov was a descendant on his mother’s side of the celebrated Stolypin family, whose scion P. A. Stolypin was.

Many ideas of Mayakovsky, albeit developed in his own individual way, came to him from the ‘greats.’ The idea comes first. One must not forget it. I will be writing much more about such influences on Mayakovsky and Yesenin in my chapter The Bard.

***

Because of his political “unreliability,” Mayakovsky could apply to just one school, which in fact accepted him. It was the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. The founder of this school happened to be that selfsame Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov, whom I was writing about in my chapter master… [A wonderful story about brotherly love and courage, focusing on the remarkable man, a maverick during a maverick-unfriendly time, who had been distinguished earlier by the honor of drawing, on behalf of the Russian Government, the papers for the Capitulation of Paris in 1814, which distinction speaks for itself. The same man was the organizer of the highly controversial Order of the Russian Knights, which subject, again, is discussed in my chapter master…]

It is none other than A. S. Pushkin who draws our attention to this man and this subject in his Articles and Sketches.

As for us, what is of utmost importance is the continuity of the revolutionary spirit in Russia from the Decembrist Movement to Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.

***

The idea of bringing together four great Russian poets also came to Bulgakov from V. Mayakovsky’s poetry. In his 1917 poem Our March, Mayakovsky writes:

“Rainbow, give arches of years

To the fast-flying stallions.

Can’t you see that the sky of stars is bored!..

Hey, Big Bear!

Demand that they take us up to heaven alive…”

Prior to the year 1917, Mayakovsky had not been so optimistic, when, for instance, he had written in 1915 about the universally hated First World War that it wasn’t a war at all ----

“But merely the birthday boy organized a carnival,

Devising shooting and target practice to make noise…

And the mask is not for gas,

But for the sake of a toyish prank…

No one has been killed!

Just did not stand fast,

Lay down from the Seine to the Rheine…

It’s just that the birthday boy had thought up a bunch

Of some kind of splendid nonsenses!”

Bulgakov uses this 1915 poem Splendid Nonsenses by Mayakovsky in Master and Margarita, in Pontius Pilate’s dream in chapter 26 The Burial:

“…He [the procurator] even laughed in his sleep happily… He was walking accompanied by [the dog] Banga, and side by side with him walked the wandering philosopher. They argued about something terribly complicated… The argument was especially interesting and incessant…”

And here enters the idea from Mayakovsky’s Splendid Nonsenses. Bulgakov writes:

“It goes without saying that today’s execution turned out to be a pure misunderstanding: Look, here was the philosopher at [Pilate’s] side, therefore he must be alive. And of course it would be a terrible thing to even suggest that a man like this could ever be executed. There had been no execution! None!”

And here is what V. Mayakovsky writes in his Splendid Nonsenses:

“No, they haven’t been killed, no, no!

They will all rise just like that, and go back home,

…And they will say there were no cannonballs, and no fougasses,

And surely there was no fortress!

It’s just that the birthday boy had thought up a bunch

Of some kind of splendid nonsenses!”

No matter how laughable this may seem to some, the joke is on the reader. Because Bulgakov behind the scenes does exactly what Mayakovsky writes in sarcastic jest. Bulgakov introduces into his novel Master and Margarita four dead Russian poets, whose identities are revealed only at the end in chapter 32, Forgiveness and Last Refuge. Only after reading the description of the dark-violet knight and of the youth-demon, the reader understands that he has been had. Meanwhile, the identities of Azazello and Woland himself remain total mysteries to the end.

Still, Bulgakov could well exclaim together with Mayakovsky:

“No, they haven’t been killed, no, no!

They will all rise just like that, and go back home,

And smiling, they will tell their wife…”

Only Bulgakov told nothing to his wife, nor to anyone else, for that matter.

***

Even more clearly and directly, V. V. Mayakovsky writes in his 1916 poem Hey! ---

“Hey, man, invite the earth herself to a waltz!

Take the sky and embroider it anew,

Invent new stars and bring them out,

So that fervidly scratching the roofs [with their nails]

Souls of artists could be climbing up into heaven.”

Bulgakov equips the souls of A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, V. V. Mayakovsky, and S. A. Yesenin with magic flying black horses, using likewise a 1913 Mayakovsky poem Being Tired. It is precisely that poem which inspired Bulgakov to write such a poetic opening of the last 32^nd chapter of Master and Margarita, Forgiveness and the Last Refuge. First, here is Mayakovsky. ---

“Earth! Let me kiss your balding head,

Let me enfold the sunken chests of the marshes.

You! There are two of us, wounded, hunted down like does.

The neighing has reared up

Of the stallions saddled by death.”

Compare this to Bulgakov’s ----

“…How sad is the evening earth! How mysterious are the fogs over the marshes. He who wandered in these fogs, who suffered much before death, who flew over this earth carrying upon himself an unbearable burden,--- he knows that. The tired knows that. And without regret he leaves behind the fogs of the earth, its little marshes and rivers, with a light heart abandons he himself into the hands of death, knowing that death alone… The magic black horses --- even they were tired and carried their horsemen slowly…”

Bulgakov must have been particularly struck by Mayakovsky’s resilience. If A. S. Pushkin writes “I will not die completely,” this is not enough for Mayakovsky. He is quite adamant about it:

“You will kill me and bury me, --- I will dig myself out!

The knives of my teeth will yet sharpen over stone!”

***

The time has come to show why we can by using works of the great poets find out who is who in Master and Margarita. Bulgakov adopted the idea of using poems from A. S. Pushkin.---

“What are you, prosaic, fussing about?

Give me a thought whatever you like:

I’ll sharpen it at the end,

I’ll feather it with a flying rhyme,

I’ll put it on a tight bowstring,

I’ll make an arc of my supple bow,

And then I’ll send it wherever it flies,

To the detriment of our foe!”

Having turned this Pushkin idea inside out, being a prosaic and possessing a unique sense of humor, Bulgakov makes use of both poetry and prose of the great Russian writers, inserting not just their ideas and thoughts, but their own persons as well into his magical novel  Master and Margarita. He also does it in his other works.

In his poem God’s Bird, V. V. Mayakovsky does essentially the same in his deliberations about the place of the poet and the writer in his contemporary society. Mayakovsky does this independently from Bulgakov. And this is the most striking thing, which proves that the great Russian writers always look up to Pushkin and Lermontov. (About which in my chapter The Bard.)

To be continued…