Woland Identity Continued.
“Having
scared off the prayers in the highest by the hoof,
They
caught God in the sky with a noose,
And,
having plucked Him, with a smirk of a rat,
They
dragged Him mockingly through the slit under the door.”
V. V. Mayakovsky.
Master’s cap
also becomes more comprehensible through the reading of Mayakovsky’s poem The Tale of the Little Red Cap. Written
in 1917, this is a poem about the Revolution, showing a family of Cadets (short
for Constitutional Democrats, a
pro-reform liberal party in Russia at the time), “wearing a little red cap.”---
“The
Cadet hears that a revolution starts somewhere,
The
little [red] cap goes up on the head of the Cadet…”
And so the Cadets lived happily after, until---
“Once
there happened to be a huge wind,
And
it tore the Cadet’s little [red] cap to shreds.
And
he remained all black…
So
the wolves of the revolution devoured the Cadet.
We
all know the kind of diet wolves are on:
They
devoured the Cadet together with his cuffs.”
This Mayakovsky poem was too delicious for Bulgakov to
pass on, who never makes a secret of the fact that during the Civil War in
Russia he had taken the side of the White Movement, which was the same side
that the Cadets were on.
Now, why is this poem so delicious? The answer is
simple. The “little red cap” in
Mayakovsky does not come from Charles Perrault, but from A. S. Pushkin’s Songs of Western Slavs, namely, from the
9th Song Bonaparte and the
Montenegrins and the 11th Song
about Black George. [Curiously, the compiler of these Songs of Western Slavs was none other than the Frenchman Prosper
Merimee. They were published in Paris in 1827, and Pushkin translated them into
Russian.]
***
And so, in his Little
Red Cap, Mayakovsky follows not only and not so much Perrault’s fairytale,
or the tale of Three Little Pigs, for
that matter. (There is no wind in Perrault, but there is plenty of wind in the
English fairytale.) The most interesting part in Mayakovsky’s unusual version
is that not only does the Cadet lose his little red cap, but for some reason he
turns black as well.
In his autobiography, Mayakovsky writes that in those
times, in 1905, the red was the color of the SR (Russian Socialist
Revolutionaries), while the anarchists wore black. The answer is obviously to
be looked for elsewhere.
This question is very interesting to us, as Bulgakov
gives master “a greasy little black cap with the letter M embroidered on it in
yellow silk.” Curiously, Bulgakov always writes “master” with a small m. However,
the letter on the cap is a capital M, which points us in the direction of Mayakovsky’s
last name.
Here is yet another evidence that Woland is Mayakovsky.
Bulgakov knew the German language, as well as English and French, thus in
choosing a German name for his devil from Goethe’s Faust he had to know its German spelling Voland in Goethe. Interestingly, in Master and Margarita, a woman from the box office at the séance of
black magic at the Variety Theater, recalls the magus’s name as “perhaps Woland.” To which Bulgakov makes
his own stunningly unexpected, yet terribly suggestive comment: “Or maybe not Woland… Maybe Faland.” Here
Bulgakov obviously lets it be known that the spelling Woland, rather than the
correct German spelling Voland is deliberate, and presents another puzzle of
his, boiling down to the fact that Woland is Mayakovsky.
Indeed, Bulgakov insists that his devil’s name starts
with a “double-v,” that is, with a W, which, when turned upside down, gives us
the Russian M, while Mayakovsky’s first and second initials are V. V., that is,
“double-v.”
Ten years later, Mayakovsky does not end, but
continues the theme of “black” in his long poem It is Good!, where he writes about Baron Wrangel, at the time
heading the White Movement in the South of Russia:
“Banging
the door, dry as a report,
From
empty headquarters he emerged.
Looking
at his feet, with an exacting step,
Wrangel
was walking in his black Circassian cloak.
The
city [Sevastopol] has been abandoned.”
In his 1914 poem Kofta
Fata Mayakovsky writes about himself:
“I
shall sew myself black pants
Out
of the velvet of my voice,
And
a yellow kofta out of three yards of sunset…”
Let us remember that Bulgakov creates a little black
cap for master, with the letter M embroidered on it in yellow silk…
But the story of the little red cap does not end there, as there is yet another angle
which we have not examined yet.
Both Mayakovsky and Bulgakov, like all Russian writers
and poets before them, did not just read the works of A. S. Pushkin, but
studied them intensely as well, in accordance with Pushkin’s advice to the
Russian writers not only to read fairytales, but also to “work in a scientific
study.”
In his autobiography, Mayakovsky writes: “I am an ignoramus. I must go through some
serious schooling…”
Both of them being Russian, Mayakovsky and Bulgakov
had to be familiar with A. S. Pushkin’s Songs
of the Western Slavs. And the answers to both the cap of red color and the
“black” Cadet, ought to be looked for in these Songs. It is amazing that a French writer originally collected them
already after the defeat of Napoleon and that these Songs of the Western Slavs were actually published in Paris in the
year 1827. Which proves that France in those times had a certain amount of
political freedom, considering the controversial nature of the Songs, a freedom that seems to be
lacking in today’s France, substituted by freedom of pornography. A good
example of such absence of freedom is the official treatment of the immensely
talented French comic Dieudonné Mbala-Mbala, who dares to be controversial,
just as the rules of his profession demand.
A. S. Pushkin writes about the Slavs in his poem To the Slanderers of Russia. ---
“What
are you clattering about?
Why
are you threatening anathema on Russia?
Leave
us alone, this is a Slavic argument among ourselves.
An
old domestic argument already measured by Fate,
A
question which is not up to you to decide!”
Pushkin reminds Europe that it was the Russians [Slavs]
who liberated Europe from Napoleon.---
“This
family feud
Is
incomprehensible and alien to you;
Silent,
for you, are the Kremlin and Prague…”
And Pushkin explains why:
“…And
you hate us…
We
did not accept the arrogant will
Of
him [Napoleon] before whom you used to tremble;
And
with our blood we paid the ransom
For
Europe’s freedom, honor, and peace…”
By the same token, today’s Europeans are forgetting
that there had been Napoleon before Hitler. And for both of them, like today,
Ukraine appeared as a choice morsel, promising an abundance of slave labor.
And it doesn’t really matter whether the word “Slav” comes from the word “slovo, word” or from the word “slava, glory.” The Slavs are no slaves.
Two poems from the Songs
of the Western Slavs give us ample proof of that, namely, of the Black
Mountain [Montenegro] and Serbia. ---
“Montenegrins?
What is that? ---
Bonaparte
asked. ---
Is
it true that this evil tribe
Is
not afraid of our power?.."
"…They
are marching close together
Under
the cliffs, then suddenly
A
commotion, as they see
A
row of red caps over their heads…
Their
guns made a salvo,
And
our red caps fell off the poles,
As
we were lying low underneath them,
Hiding
in the bushes.
Then
we responded in a joint salvo of our own
To
the French… And they fled…
And
since then the French
Hate
our free land,
And
they blush as soon as they chance to see
Our
[red] cap.”
If from this song the meaning of the “red cap” comes
out clear, as the revolutionary struggle for independence, the 11th Song About Black George clarifies for us
the meaning of the word “black” in V. V. Mayakovsky. His Tale of the Little Red Cap is a riddle, as at the very end of it
Mayakovsky offers some revealing advice to his readers:
“When
you are going to make politics, children,
Keep
in mind my little tale of this Cadet.”
If Mayakovsky has in mind a political figure, rather
than a military cadet, which comes out as obvious, we are definitely dealing
with an assassination here…
To be continued…
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