Woland Identity Continued.
“And God will weep
over my book!
Not words, but spasms stuck
together in a lump,
And He will run across the Heaven
with my poems under His arm,
And will,
spasmodically breathing, read them to His acquaintances.”
V. V. Mayakovsky. But
Still.
Bulgakov was obviously impressed by V. V. Mayakovsky in his treatment of
Goethe’s Faust. If A. S. Pushkin and
M. Yu. Lermontov in their poetry treated this work with considerable sarcasm,
Mayakovsky is, as usual, sharper and more assertive. Being Russian, Bulgakov
gives the following words to prove this point:
“And there is no devil
either?
None, there is no devil
whatsoever, cried out Ivan
Nikolayevich.
Now, this is positively
interesting, --- uttered
the professor, shaking with laughter, --- so
what is it with you, whatever I am asking about, nothing exists?!”
In this, Bulgakov clearly takes the side of the two Russian greats:
Pushkin and Lermontov, but V. V. Mayakovsky is quite impressive, as he nails it
where it hurts.
Two times, once in the Flute-Spine and
the second time in the Cloud in Pants,
Mayakovsky compares himself with Goethe, allotting himself the primacy and
mocking the sentimental Germans:
“Even if,
swinging from blood like Bacchus,
A drunken
brawl is on, even then words of love are not decrepit, ---
Dear
Germans! I know that on your lips
Is Goethe’s
Gretchen.”
And before that:
“I don’t
care about Faust, in a firework of rockets
Gliding with
Mephistopheles upon the celestial parquet!
I know that the nail in my boot
Is more
nightmarish than Goethe’s fantasy.”
As I already wrote before, the story of Gretchen is not only sugary, but
also unfair, to the Russian taste. With regard to the theme of the “nail,” but
already not in the boot but in the ear, it returns, in Mayakovsky, in his most
interesting 1921 play in verse Mysteria-Buff.
Describing the colonial times in Africa, Mayakovsky writes:
“And if you
look at a slave in an English colony,
All these
demons would have scattered, squealing.
Negroes are
skinned and their skins are tanned,
So that they
would be good for book bindings.
A nail in
the ear? Sure, why not!
Pig bristles
are driven under the fingernails…”
Realizing that Mayakovsky’s “nail” exposes Bulgakov’s design altogether,
Bulgakov gives up on this idea and substitutes a “needle” instead of a “nail”:
“Then instantly, as though a needle had been pulled out of the
brain, the pain in the temple subsided, which had been bothering [Margarita]
for the whole evening after the meeting in Alexander’s Garden…”
Mark also how Mayakovsky compares himself with Lucifer, as he addresses
God:
“You think
that this one behind you, with wings, knows what love is?”
Mayakovsky insists:
“An angel
too, I was one, peering into the eyes of sugary lambs.”
And then:
“Hey, you!
Heaven! Hat off! That’s me going!”
Mayakovsky is not apologetic, like Yesenin. Compare Yesenin’s:
“I am ashamed
that I used to believe in God,
I bitterly
regret that now I do not believe.”
We cannot say that Mayakovsky does not believe in God, as, in countless
poems, again and again, he identifies himself with Jesus Christ:
“I am where
pain is, everywhere;
On each drop
of the tearful flow
I have
crucified myself on a cross.
There is
nothing more to forgive.
I’ve burned
out souls where tenderness was cultivated.
This is more
difficult than to take
A thousand
of thousands Bastilles.
And when
announcing His coming by a rebellion
You come out
to the Savior---
Then I will
pull out my soul and flatten it under my feet,”
To make it
big!---
And, bloodied,
will hand it over as a banner.
“His Coming…” Mayakovsky writes about the year
1916: “In the Revolutions’ crown of thorns arrives the
sixteenth year.”
And in this we find an amazing follow up to M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Prediction:
“And on that day a mighty man will come,
Him you will recognize, and understand
Why he is holding in his hand a knife:
And woe is you! Your tears, your groan,
Will be appearing laughable to him…”
But,
unlike in M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem: “And everything in
him will be as terrible and dark as his dark cloak with elevated brow,” V.
Mayakovsky identifies himself with Jesus Christ. Whereas in Lermontov’s poem
there is a frightful forewarning about Revolution, in Mayakovsky’s poem there
is a blessing.
It
is M. A. Bulgakov who chooses Mayakovsky as Woland’s prototype, because of his
mindboggling, outlandish poetic associations painted by the broad brush of a
genius artist.
Mayakovsky
and Jesus Christ? Hence Bulgakov’s strong connection between Woland and Yeshua.
Hence,
the idea of Yeshua ordering a book about his sufferings also comes from
Mayakovsky. Bulgakov must have been stunned by Mayakovsky’s split, that is, on
the one hand, his attitude toward “Mister God,” as he calls God in his famous
1915-1916 poem A Cloud in Pants,
while, on the other hand, his explicit identification of himself with Jesus
Christ in many of his poems. But the idea proper of master’s book being ordered
by Christ comes to Bulgakov from an earlier 1913 poem But Still:
“And
God will weep over my book!
Not words, but spasms stuck
together in a lump,
And He will run across the
Heaven with my poems under His arm,
And will,
spasmodically breathing, read them to His acquaintances.”
It
is from here that the idea of ordering master to write a book about Christ’s
last day on earth comes into Bulgakov’s head.
“I’ll
climb out, dirty [from sleeping in ditches],
I’ll stand side by side with
Him, bend, and say into His ear:
Mister God, how come you are
not bored
Of everyday dipping your good
pudgy eyes
Into the cloud’s kissel?..”
So,
here is what Mayakovsky is offering to God:
“So,
let us, you know, arrange a merry-go-round
On the tree of knowledge of
good and evil.”
Mayakovsky
strikes an optimistic tone in this poem, as he writes that “babies will be christened with the names of
my poems.”
In
his poem I, part 4, A Few Words About Me Myself, Mayakovsky
writes”
“I
see Christ flee from his icon…
My soul (in the tatters of
the torn cloud)
In the burnt-out sky on the
rusted cross of the belfry…”
In
the following lines of his Cloud in Pants,
Mayakovsky’s identification with Christ is direct:
“…And there
was not a single one there
Who was not
shouting: Crucify, crucify him!”
“Remember: under the weight of the cross,
Christ, tired, stopped for a second.
The crowd was shouting:
Marala! Maaarrraaala!”
And
Mayakovsky makes the following conclusion here:
“Right!
On each one who pleads for a rest,
You spit in his day of
spring!..
No mercy from man!”
And
in his famous poem A Cloud in Pants,
Mayakovsky is even more transparent in his accusation:
“You
see? Once again they prefer Barabbas
To a spat-at Golgofnik!”
Here
Mayakovsky “once again” compares himself to Christ, as he insists:
“Why
should a tavern crowd be gifted
With a halo hack-painted with
a template?!”
To be continued…
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