Woland Identity Continued.
“What
kind of man is this? ---
Ah,
he is a great talent. He makes out of his voice anything he likes. ---
He
would be well advised to make himself pants out of it.”
A. S. Pushkin. Egyptian
Nights.
…And here is Mayakovsky:
“I
shall sew myself black pants
Out
of the velvet of my voice…”
Uncanny similarity here, between the line from
Mayakovsky and the epigraph taken from Pushkin, isn’t it true?..
We
all remember Woland’s mockingly playful mood on Patriarch Ponds. “He made frightened eyes,” suspecting that
Berlioz and Ivanushka do not believe in God. “Even
making a squealing sound from curiosity,” he asked whether they were
atheists. “He glanced around the surrounding houses
with a frightened look, as if fearful to find an atheist in every
window.” The same mockery continues when Woland tries to convince both
Berlioz and Ivanushka that he is some lunatic. “Professor
fearfully glanced back behind him and started talking in whisper:
‘I was personally present through all of
this: on the balcony of Pontius Pilate; in the garden when he talked to Caiaphas;
and on the platform, but only secretly, incognito, so to speak.’”
Berlioz
and Ivanushka looked into his eyes and “convinced
themselves that his left green eye was totally insane, while the right eye was
empty, black, and dead.”
It
all became clear to Berlioz: “A crazy German has come, or perhaps he has just lost his mind on
Patriarch Ponds.” Being asked by Berlioz where Woland intended to
stay in Moscow, the latter “replied saucily, and
winked: ‘In your apartment!’”
And
in his turn, he asked “merrily: ‘And there is no devil either?’”
Commenting
on this and “shaking with laughter,” Woland
enquires: “How
come, whatever I am asking about, nothing exists?!”
Here
Bulgakov subtly mocks Goethe, who called Mephistopheles “the spirit who forever
denies.”
We
know how Woland punished Berlioz, but he did not do anything bad to Ivanushka,
and had the rebel Ivanushka desisted from pursuing Woland, no Master and Margarita would have been
written, but he did, and Woland had no choice but to engage in a game with him.
Noblesse oblige! As for Ivanushka’s punishment, it was all his doing it to
himself, when he decided to declare a war on the unsolicited interlocutor: “Have you ever
happened to be in a clinic for the mentally sick, Citizen?”
And
so, Woland successfully dispatches the “swaddled like a doll” Ivanushka to a
psychiatric clinic, but our story does not end here. The scenes of Woland’s
conversations with Berlioz and Ivanushka on Patriarch Ponds have a lot in
common with the scenes of Ivanushka, the poet Ryukhin and the doctor at the
psychiatric clinic. And this commonness appears to prove that V. V. Mayakovsky
is indeed Woland’s prototype, in spite of, or rather because of, the successful
mystification of the reader through the character of the poet Ryukhin, as to
why Bulgakov would portray the great Russian poet V. V. Mayakovsky in such an
unsavory manner.
In
the first place, already on Patriarch Ponds, Ivanushka “became
convinced that there were no signs of insanity in that face whatsoever,
either now or before, [as soon as], with his face getting cold, Ivan
drew closer to the professor, and peered into his face.”
Repeating
the word “face” several times in a row, Bulgakov wants to attract our attention
to the fact that “someone’s gentle fleshy face,
clean-shaven and well-fed, in horn glasses, appearing before Ivan” is
not the face of some total stranger, but that of Ryukhin/Mayakovsky.
The
same thing awaits us at the psychiatric clinic:
“Here Ryukhin looked at Ivan more closely and became cold: there
was no sign of insanity whatsoever in [Ivan’s] eyes…”
Secondly,
yet again on the same Patriarch Ponds, Woland “suddenly
mysteriously beckoned both friends… Here the professor glanced behind
him fearfully and spoke in a whisper…” And this happens in
the third chapter The Seventh Proof.
Whereas
in the sixth chapter Schizophrenia, As Was
Said, Bulgakov uses basically the same words for Ryukhin: “…For some reason, Ryukhin spoke in a mysterious whisper,
fearfully glancing back at Ivan Nikolayevich.”
Having
been cutting his gem Master and Margarita
like a turner (the highest level of metalwork artistry), Bulgakov could not
be making such literary mistakes. What remains to be argued, but with
confidence, is that he does this deliberately, for a good reason. And how are
we to understand that in response to the doctor asking who that was, “Sashka the Dullard,”
“Ivan pointed his dirty finger in the direction of Ryukhin: ‘There he is, Ryukhin!’ The other
squealed with indignation: ‘That’s what
he says instead of thank you!’ he [Ryukhin] thought with bitterness.”
As
we understand, this happens already after Ivan hit Ryukhin on the ear and
knocked off his glasses. So how could the poet Ryukhin expect any gratitude for
bringing a “normal” man into a psychiatric clinic?
The
answer to all this absurdity is that it had not been the poet Ryukhin with whom
Ivan had previously picked a fight, but it must have been Woland, basking in
the glory of his victory: it was because of the fight that Ivan was dispatched
to the psychiatric clinic.
Well,
the word “bitterness” is also distinctive. Aside from Ryukhin, Bulgakov gives
it to Woland as well:
“Alone, alone, I am always
alone, professor replied with bitterness.”
V.
V. Mayakovsky is also always alone. He is a megalomaniac and egocentric around
whom the world rotates. In the poem I, Mayakovsky
writes:
“A few words about my wife...
There goes my wife the moon.”
“A few words about me myself…
I am alone like the last eye in a man going to the blind.”
No,
V. V. Mayakovsky does not look at all like the “bitter” Ryukhin. He has too
large an ego to be “bitter”!
Even
though he does show us the hounding of Mayakovsky, Bulgakov goes out of his way
to irk, insult the reader, to make him think.
So,
is that really Mayakovsky we the Russians all know so well? Unequivocally no!
So
where does Bulgakov take this “Mayakovsky” from? Easy! From Mayakovsky himself,
specifically from Mayakovsky’s play in verse Mysteria Buff.
In
it, the devil Beelzebub, talking to the workers arriving in hell and treating
the devil with disdain, behaves just like Bulgakov describes Sashka Ryukhin,
and accordingly, Woland. ---
“Beelzebub, self-consciously…”
“Beelzebub, sadly…”
As
we can see, Mayakovsky’s devil is intimidated by the workers arriving in Hell.
Ivan’s
hated “stranger” is for some reason well familiar to him. The reason has to be
his Jubilee voice, the voice of Mayakovsky.
Indeed,
Bulgakov molded him from V. V. Mayakovsky.
So,
who was the person whom Ivan Bezdomny hit, saying with a quiet hatred:
“No! Mercy? Anybody but you!”
It
had to be Woland himself, for the second time after the beardo with a rolly assuming human form, reminding Ivan that of
the poet Ryukhin. And had it not been for the glasses, which mean deception in
Bulgakov [“rubbing-in the glasses” is the Russian equivalent of “eyewash”], it
would have been difficult to prove it. (“Horn-rimmed” glasses also point in
that direction, as popular belief paints the devil with horns.)
It now becomes clear who said it in a basso voice
about Ivan: “Done
deal: Delirium Tremens!” I say it is clear because this is the man
who suddenly appears to the calls for a doctor.
Which Bulgakov changes to: “compassionate face,” as we find in the rest of the excerpt:
“You,”
interrupted him Ivan, baring his teeth, “Can’t
you understand that this Professor must be caught? And you are bothering me
with your stupidities! Cretin!”
“Comrade
Bezdomny, have mercy!” replied the face, blushing, backing off, and already
regretting having got involved in this business.
(Don’t you admire how Woland here grows into his role?
Don’t you admire how once again Bulgakov is masterfully leading the reader
along a false trail?)
“No!
Mercy? Anybody but you!” said Ivan Nikolayevich with quiet hatred, and a
twitch disfigured his face. He quickly put the candle from his right hand to
the left and with a broad swing hit the compassionate face on the ear… The
glasses, falling off the face were immediately stepped on and crushed…”
In the already mentioned poem I am Happy, Mayakovsky compares himself with L. N. Tolstoy:
“My
head is always clean on the outside,
And
today it is clear on the inside.
It
comes up with no less than a page a day,
Which
should wipe off Tolstoy’s nostril.”
Which naturally explains the bizarre scene on the
Moskva River, where Woland, disguised as a beardo with a rolly, takes away
Ivan’s clothes, leaving him only with a tolstovka shirt and underpants.
And finally, the “horn
glasses” on the “fleshy” in
Bulgakov, and “fuller in the face” in
Mayakovsky, face. Where do these glasses come from? Here is a 1929 poem, Americans are Surprised, by Mayakovsky:
“Stunned,
from the faraway shore,
Fixing
her hungry gaze on the USSR,
Standing
on tiptoe, America is peering,
Unblinkingly,
through her horn glasses…”
To be continued…
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