Woland Identity.
Introduction.
“There
is a legend about Faust conjuring
Over
a jar filled with magic wondrous powers ---
And
out of that jar crawled the devil…”
A. S. Griboyedov.
Musing about who it may be whom M. A. Bulgakov has
made the prototype of his Woland, I always realized that this person’s name
must be somehow present on the pages of Master
and Margarita.
And indeed, Bulgakov offers us several names, directly
and indirectly, especially, in chapter 28, The
Last Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot. Approaching the “cream-colored
building with columns,” which Koroviev calls the “writers’ house,” Begemot and Koroviev are discussing “the future
authors of Don Quixote, or Faust, or, may the devil take me, Dead Souls.”
Characteristically, Bulgakov here drops a false clue
for the reader, concerning Gogol, who cannot ever be contemplated for the role
of Woland, as he ends his life completely dispirited.
Goethe does not fit the bill on the grounds of the
Russian attitude to Faust as a sugary
melodrama with an utterly unfair ending. While Gretchen dies by hanging for her
sin of infanticide, Faust receives forgiveness on account of his good deeds,
following the trail of unforgivable crimes of lust and murder, not to mention
his consorting with the devil on a grand scale. No Goethe, thank you!
Cervantes is a very interesting candidate, and he
plays a certain role in how Bulgakov depicts his characters, but this is where
it ends. I am not completely parting with Cervantes, however, as he will be
returning in my future chapter Bifurcations.
After these three names, Koroviev calls upon Gogol yet
again, through the medium of Gogol’s celebrated satirical play The Inspector, the idea of which comes
from Pushkin, for Gogol to develop.
And next, Koroviev proposes himself, that is, he
proposes A. S. Pushkin, by virtue of mentioning Eugene Onegin. Considering that it is precisely Pushkin in
Bulgakov’s novel, who becomes the dark-violet knight in Woland’s cavalcade, he
does not fit the bill either, despite the fact that Margarita does not give us
a description of how Woland looks as his true self. There is another explanation
for that, and also do not forget that Margarita does not describe herself
either.
In Koroviev’s conversation with the woman who is
checking the writers’ ID’s before they can enter the building, another huge
name happens to pop up, the name, mind you, and not a title of a work of his.
He is F. M. Dostoyevsky, who was of course particularly interested in the
questions of good and evil. To him belongs the novel The Demons. It was Dostoyevsky who was pondering on “the extreme
ingenuity of the demons,” while he “could not imagine Satan” to himself.
So, why would not Bulgakov take Dostoyevsky as
Woland’s prototype? All the more reason for him since he uses Dostoyevsky
already in Pontius Pilate! If in White Guard he takes a sentence from The Demons, in Pontius Pilate it is a single word from The Brothers Karamazov. I confess that although I have read
Dostoyevsky’s complete works, this particular word, like the whole situation
around it, come to me indirectly, through the article by D. S. Merezhkovsky
about M. Yu. Lermontov, titled The
Nighttime Luminary. ---
“…But I suffer from the fantastic, which is why I love your earthly
realism. Here you have it all figured out: here’s a formula, here’s geometry;
and with us, all we have are some indefinite equations…”
Now, here is the proper passage in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita:
“A swallow swiftly flew into the colonnade, made a circle under the
gilded ceiling, then descended, almost touching the face of the bronze statue
in the niche with its sharp wing, and disappeared behind the capitel of the
colonnade… During her whole flight a certain formula developed in the by now light and clear head of the
procurator. It went like this: The igemon
has deliberated on the case of the wandering philosopher Yeshua, nicknamed
Ha-Nozri, and has not found anything criminal in it… Due to this fact, the
death sentence to Ha-Nozri, pronounced by the lesser Synhedrion, [that
is, by Caiaphas] is not approved by the procurator.”
There is also an honorable mention of L. N. Tolstoy.
In the 18th chapter of Master
and Margarita, The Hapless Visitors, Bulgakov delivers some direct fun at
Tolstoy by quoting from his book Anna
Karenina:
“Everything
was in confusion in the Oblonsky home, as was justly expressed by the
celebrated writer Leo Tolstoy.”
(This is not an adieu to L. N. Tolstoy, though. We’ll
meet with him again in my chapter The Luminaries.)
I still insist that considering that in both cases,
with regard to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Bulgakov is clearly and distinctly
employing the word “writer,” his intention must be to convey something to the
reader by that. I understand this new clue unequivocally.
There has to be a difference between a writer and a
poet. We know already that three members of Woland’s cavalcade have poets as
their prototypes.
1.
The dark-violet
knight is A. S. Pushkin. (See my chapter Dark-Violet
Knight.)
2.
The youth-demon
is M. Yu. Lermontov. (See my chapter Kot
Begemot.)
3.
Azazello is S. A.
Yesenin. (See my chapter Two Adversaries.)
That accounts for three.
(Mind you, master-Gogol is left out here. N. V. Gogol
was a writer, rather than a poet, despite his early poetic venture Hans Kuchelgarten. As for master, he was not exactly a full member
of Woland’s cavalcade, separating from the group and being sent to Rest.)
Thus we have three great Russian poets in Woland’s
group, and we can safely assume that Bulgakov, just like A. S. Pushkin, who
wrote in both genres, esteemed poetry higher than prose. As a result, it
follows that Woland’s prototype, too, had to be most likely a poet.
And what a fascinating subject Bulgakov himself
introduces us to. Already in the 5th chapter Bulgakov indirectly
involves one more remarkable Russian poet A. S. Griboyedov, contemporary of A.
S. Pushkin, who died a most gruesome death. N. V. Gogol put Griboyedov on the
same level as Pushkin and Lermontov, as a first-rate poet.
Bulgakov introduces Griboyedov rather artificially,
presumably through his aunt, who had been an erstwhile owner of the “Griboyedov
house.” In this house (which does not exist in reality), which Bulgakov often calls
in a short manner as “Griboyedov,” there was a writers’ restaurant, as well as
various literary institutions.
The life of this man, Griboyedov, is a legend. The
main character of his masterpiece Woe
from Wit, Chatsky, is mentioned by name in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
Griboyedov’s famous ancestor Jan Grzybowski came to
Russia from Poland in early 17th century, and, having converted to
Russian Orthodox Christianity, he thus became a lawful Russian in the eyes of
the Church and the State. Being a senior deacon, he was one of the five
compilers of the 1648 Legal Code under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, that same one
whom Bulgakov mentions in his incomparable Diaboliada.
[See my posted segment LXXXIX.]
As for A. S. Griboyedov himself, he spoke nine
languages, three of which at the age of six. He was a grandnephew of the famous
writer and freethinker A. Radishchev. He also graduated from three faculties of
Moscow University: of Letters, Moral-Political. and that of Physics and Mathematics.
In 1821 he exploded a sensational bomb with his play in verse Woe from Wit, which excited all Russia
to such an extent that numerous quotes from it would forever become household
adages and popular sayings.
In 1826 Griboyedov was arrested and imprisoned in the
fortress of Grozny on suspicion of being involved in the recently crushed
Decembrist Movement. He was investigated by a special commission in St.
Petersburg and was cleared of all charges and released.
On August 22, 1828, Griboyedov married the Georgian
Princess Nina Chavchavadze, known in Russian history as the “Black Rose of
Tiflis,” because of her lifelong fidelity to her slain husband. Just 16 years
old at the time of her marriage, she lost her husband a few months later, but
never remarried, although she was much sought by high-ranking suitors because
of her exceptional beauty. She thus became a legend in her lifetime and
thereafter. As for Griboyedov himself, sent as Ambassador to Persia, he died
the heroic death of a martyr soon upon his arrival, during a violent attack on
the Russian Embassy in Tehran.
It is highly probable that M. Yu. Lermontov was so
much taken by the incredible story of the 16-year-old princess-widow who never
remarries, that he portrayed her as the beautiful Georgian girl Tamara in his
poetic masterpiece Demon.
In 1825, in the Crimea, A. S. Griboyedov made a free
translation from the Prologue to Goethe’s tragedy Faust. But no matter how tempting it may be to deduce from such
bits and pieces that Griboyedov may have been considered by Bulgakov as
Woland’s prototype, it is highly unlikely that a man of high morals, the crème
de la crème of Russian society, a distinguished member of the Russian
diplomatic service, can fit the bill as Woland. In M. Yu. Lermontov’s Demon, A. S. Griboyedov is more likely
to be associated with Tamara’s slain bridegroom than with Demon, who seduces
her.
So, here Bulgakov leaves us with yet another false
clue…
To be continued…
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