Woland Identity Continued.
“Silent,
for you, are the Kremlin and Prague…
And
you hate us…”
A. S. Pushkin. To
the Slanderers of Russia.
It
is also very interesting to note that Margarita’s blood shower in the pool at
the start of the chapter Great Ball at
Satan’s has a follow-up in her drinking the blood of Meigel, which blood
has by then turned into wine, in the closing pages of the same chapter.
This
is a very powerful scene. Margarita’s blood-bathing in the gemstone pool may
symbolize Russia herself, flowing in blood in front of Bulgakov’s eyes and
never drying up throughout the First World War, the Great October Revolution,
the Civil War, and the foreign intervention of the Entente on Russia’s soil.
And in this case it does not matter whether Margarita Nikolayevna had any
relation to the Romanov Dynasty. Margarita is a Russian woman personifying
Russia.
Sometimes
I wonder why the Europeans, waging wars themselves, and not just limited to the
European Continent, look at Russia as an aggressor?
Having
repeatedly experienced foreign aggression on her territory, it is no wonder
that Russia is standing strong against other nations’ interference in civil
wars in other countries.
Having
used the word “gemstone,” Bulgakov points to the Urals, Russia’s formidable
backbone, where, already in Bulgakov’s time (he died in 1940), a preparation
for the inevitable German aggression against Russia had been in full swing.
Regardless of all concluded and ratified treaties between the two countries,
Germany, as expected, did attack Russia in the summer of 1941.
So,
what moral authority does Germany have today to preach to other countries, when
once again she has swept most of Europe under her control and has now stretched
her ambitions to the East: to Azerbaijan, to Georgia with its slave labor, to
Moldova, etc. Everything that is going on today is the fault of the so-called
European Union, the same Drang nach Osten which had already brought Germany to
dismemberment, but has not taught her anything.
Russia
has always been and remains a multi-national country, where all constituent
nations flourish.
The
largest Koran in the world, adorned with gemstones from the Urals, belongs to
the autonomous republic of Tatarstan in the Urals, where I spent a large part
of my youth in the city of Ufa in the neighboring republic of Bashkiria, having
lived before then in Grozny, and next, in the famous Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan.
I have always enjoyed living among people of many nationalities, and I have
many friends, to whom, and to the Muscovites likewise, I am today sending my
warmest greetings from sunny California.
Aside
from the “gemstone pool,” in which Margarita took her blood bath before the
ball of the spring full moon, Bulgakov introduces three more pools in his novel,
separated from each other “by walls of red, pink and
milky-white roses from one side, and from the other side by a wall of Japanese terry
camellias. Between these walls hissing fountains were already playing, and Champagne
was boiling in bubbles in the three pools, of which one was transparent-violet,
another one was the color of ruby, and the third one was of crystal.”
All
three pools were filled with champagne, which was scooped out of them by
servants using “silver ladles” and poured into flat cups.
With
his bathing pools, Bulgakov creates utterly unsurpassed pictures, exhibiting
his out of this world imagination. Never had any king in history thrown a ball
like this! (And all this splendor comes from Mayakovsky’s ball of the Czechs!)
The
description of the pools not only engages the senses of the reader. The
familiar figurative expression “champagne flowed like a river” assumes a
special literal meaning in Bulgakov.
It
was inside the wall of roses that a stage was set, on which Woland,
unrecognized by anyone, “in a red swallowtail tuxedo” was conducting an
“unbearably loud jazz.” An allusion to Mayakovsky, who visited America, is
given here.
On
her way to the last, “monstrous in its size pool,” Margarita notices “on the stage behind the tulips, where the king of waltzes’
orchestra had been playing, a raving-mad monkey jazz. A huge gorilla wearing
shaggy side whiskers with a trumpet in hand, heavily stomping by way of a
dance, was the conductor.”
As
I already wrote about this (see my chapter Woland
in Disguise, segment LV), this was Woland too.
But
still, this whole idea in Bulgakov comes from the poetry of V. V. Mayakovsky.
Starting with his 1913 poem:
“…And could you play a nocturne
On the flute of waterspouts?”
And
how do you like the following imagery from Mayakovsky’s 1914 poem:
“The violin got all frayed, pleading,
And then suddenly burst into crying
So childishly that the drum could not take
it:
It’s all right, it’s all
right, it’s all right!..
And the orchestra like a stranger watched
How the violin was crying its heart out,
Without words, without measure…
And when the copper-faced, sweaty helicon
yelled:
You, stupid, crybaby, wipe
them off!..”
All
of this becomes a single sentence in Bulgakov:
“In a second, without understanding how it happened, Margarita
found herself in the same room with a bathing pool, and there she cried because
of the pain in her arm and in her foot, she fell down on the floor…”
As
in Bulgakov the scene of Margarita crying is directly linked to the monkey jazz, with Woland in disguise as
the conductor, hence I believe that it will be right to combine these two
images together.
V.
V. Mayakovsky has a poem A Hymn to the
Scientist, where he writes in particular:
“The
spine is curved like it was hit by a shaft,
But would a scientist think
about such a trifle flaw?
He very well knows what
Darwin has written
About us being descendants
of apes.”
Only
Bulgakov with his inimitable sense of humor could portray Mayakovsky like he
did, who, had he been choosing what monkey or ape he would like to be, would
definitely have chosen the gorilla, being so much larger than life.
In
his poem Something About the Conductor,
Mayakovsky portrays the musicians as hooligans, beating up the listening
audience when the offended conductor orders the musicians to squeak.
In
Bulgakov, both his conductors have been offended. Namely, Johann Strauss, King
of Waltzes, opening the great Ball at Satan’s with the polonaise from Eugene Onegin, and also Woland himself, offended
by Bulgakov by having to “struggle against the polonaise.” Mayakovsky against
Pushkin… How delicious…
And
here is Mayakovsky’s wildly outlandish symphony concert:
“When
the last [customer] did not make it to the door,
Dying with his cheek dipped
in sauce,
The conductor, having ordered
his musicians
To howl like beasts, went mad
altogether.”
Mayakovsky’s
gory scene in Something About the
Conductor (the conductor eventually hangs himself on the chandelier), turns
into a comic scene in Bulgakov:
“The virtuoso jazz bandleader [Woland] is banging the band members
on their heads with a cymbal, and they are squatting down in comic horror.”
To
be continued…
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