GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CXCII.

Woland Identity Continued.

 

“And freedom weaved me a nest,

Limitless, like the world!”

M. Yu. Lermontov.

…A different portrait of Woland emerges through the eyes of Margarita in the second part of the book. ---

“Woland spread himself all over the bed; he was dressed only in a long night shirt that was dirty and patched up on the left shoulder.”

This astonishing attire can also be explained through A. S. Pushkin’s poetry, who writes:

“What’s glory? Just a fancy patch

On the decrepit rags of the bard!”

At the end of the chapter The Great Ball at Satan’s, Margarita is much surprised “that Woland came out in this, his last grand entrance at the ball, in exactly the same attire which he had had on in his bedroom. That same patched up night shirt was hanging on his shoulders, on his feet he had worn-out nighttime slippers. Woland had his bare sword with him, which he used as a walking stick, leaning on it.”

The attentive reader must be wondering about the words: “his last grand entrance at the ball.” In fact, this seems to be the only entrance of Woland at the ball, where he is explicitly identified as Woland. Thus, if this one was his last, what about the other entrances, prior to this one?

For the accidental reader who has not read my previous segments, my answer to this intriguing question is contained in my chapter Woland in Disguise, posted segment LV.

Two important events take place during this “last grand entrance” of Woland at the ball.

1.      Touching the skull of Berlioz with his sword, Woland turns it into a chalice. (Regarding the significance of this event, see my sub-chapter Woland’s Justice, posted segment LXIII, where Bulgakov shows that there are things worse than Hell.)

2.      This one focuses on the assassination of Meigel (see ibid.). As soon as Woland “touched [the chalice with Meigel’s blood] with his lips, a metamorphosis occurred. The patched-up shirt and the worn-out slippers disappeared. Woland was now wearing some kind of loose robe, with the steel sword on his hip.”

No longer surprisingly, Bulgakov takes the drinking of the blood also from the poetry of V. V. Mayakovsky.

1.      Firstly, from the comic play in verse Mysteria Buff, where Mayakovsky shows industrial workers in particular, harassing the demons and the devil himself in Hell. (Here Mayakovsky clearly exhibits his knowledge of such Gogol works as One-Eyed Devil and The Eve of St. John’s.) The Laborer tells the demons: “You drink blood? Untasty raw material! I would’ve taken you to the factory, had it not been too late. It is being processed into chocolate for the bourgeois…”

2.      And secondly, from the real life of Mayakovsky himself. “Here [to Red Square], to the mourning and flapping of black flags, while the blood of the slain is still hot, I would run from anxiety toward the enemy shots, to be silent and to fret, to yell and to growl… in the deathly chill of tears and ice floes…”

Bulgakov in Master and Margarita shows Woland’s justice, blood for blood, so that the enemy would know that the slain would be avenged. Woland drinks the blood of “the snitch and the spy Meigel,” “while the blood of the slain is still hot.” And anon, Woland becomes “black,” closing with his grand entrance the Great Ball at Satan’s.

…So, how come that at the end of the ball, “everything turned out the same way as it had been before the ball, in Woland’s bedroom. Woland was sitting on his bed in his night shirt…” Thus opens chapter 24 The Extraction of master. Woland’s night shirt must have been the same, with a patch on it.

There is also a simple explanation to the next change of clothes, which we find in Bulgakov himself. By these dress changes Bulgakov calls for the reader’s attention in asking that same question why this wardrobe see-saw keeps going on in the first place.

The next time we meet Woland, he stands on the roof of the Russian State Library, together with Azazello. The library alludes to the fact that these two are poets, the black color of their dress tells us that they are both dead.

When the next time comes that we see Woland, his attire receives an addition, which goes for his company as well, in the form of Pushkin’s cloak (and sword) from his poem Field Marshal, which I wrote about earlier in this chapter.

What changes is Woland himself, or, more precisely, his size.

“Woland’s cloak was fluttering over the heads of the whole cavalcade, and this cloak started covering the evening sky. When the black cover was blown aside for a moment, Margarita, while galloping, glanced back and saw… that the city itself was long gone, sinking into the ground and leaving behind only fog.”

This description of Woland by Bulgakov as someone exceptionally large, as well as further on, in the last 32^nd chapter Forgiveness and Eternal Rest, conveys a sense of gigantism pertaining to V. V. Mayakovsky, which overwhelms us from the pages of Mayakovsky’s poetry.

Bulgakov writes:

“And finally, Woland was also flying in his true form. Margarita would not have been able to tell what the rein of his stallion was made of, and she thought that it could possibly be made of lunar chains, and that the stallion himself was only a block of darkness, and the stallion’s mane was a storm cloud, and the spurs of the horseman where the white spots of stars…”

Already in his early 1913 poem I, V. V. Mayakovsky writes:

“Like a faraway beach of some unfathomed seas,

Goes the moon --- my wife,

My redhead lover…”

And further on:

“Sun! My father!

You at least have mercy, and stop tormenting me!

It is my blood, spilled by you, pouring out on the long road…”

[Here V. V. Mayakovsky once again clearly identifies himself with Jesus Christ.]

And again:

“Time! At least you, the limping God-painter,

Paint my face for the infirmary of the age’s cripple!”

And in another early 1913 poem From Tiredness ---

“Earth! --- You!

There are two of us… My sister!”

As 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 display them,

So that fervidly scratching the roofs [with their nails]

Souls of artists could be climbing up into heaven.”

Margarita could not describe Woland because Mayakovsky in his poems presents himself as the Universe. Mayakovsky takes this idea from M. Yu. Lermontov, and expands it, as is his habit. Lermontov writes:

“And my mother is the wide steppe,

And my father is the faraway sky…

My brothers in the woods are the birch and the pine…”

And this is how Lermontov ends it:

“And freedom weaved me a nest,

Limitless, like the world!”

In his 1915 poem I and Napoleon, Mayakovsky writes:

“In a second, I will be meeting the autocrat of the heavens,

Then I will try and kill the sun!”

Has Mayakovsky forgotten that the sun is his father? Or is it his reaction to the 11^th Song about Black George in the Songs of Western Slavs? (I will be writing more about Black George later in this chapter.)

Talking about the black color of Woland’s clothes, we must not forget another poem by V. Mayakovsky, written in 1915 and titled Monstrous Funeral, which opens with the following words:

“Grim to blackness, people came out,

Heavily and orderly falling in a formation in the city,

As though at this time there was about to be formed

A black order of grim monks.”

These lines explain, under yet another angle, the strange words said by Azazello to Margarita on Red Square. Responding to Margarita’s remark: “Yes, I understand… I must give myself to him,” Azazello “chuckled somewhat haughtily: Let me assure you that any woman in the world would be dreaming about it, -- Azazello’s face was twisted by a smirk, -- but I’ll have to disappoint you, this is not going to happen.”

Now everything becomes clear. Bulgakov has formed his own “black order of monks,” even if they are not exactly grim. Incidentally, both Mayakovsky and Bulgakov take their references to monkhood from Pushkin’s already quoted Scenes from the Times of the Knights, where the poor knight writes AMD with his blood on his shield thus consecrating himself to the Virgin Mary, and thereafter becomes totally celibate:

Since that time, his soul burnt out,

He wouldn’t give women a single look;

To his death, to none among them

Would he utter a single word.

(See my chapter The Dark-Violet Knight, posted segment XII.)

Bulgakov, however, has the last word, where he takes revenge on V. V. Mayakovsky, making Woland black. (This will be explained later in this chapter.) ---

“Farewell! My time has come!” – Woland tells master and Margarita. “Farewell! – replied Margarita and master to Woland in one cry. Then black Woland, following no road, threw himself into a chasm, and after him all his cavalcade did the same.”

To be continued…