Two Bears Continues.
Revenge.
“But if you start
laughing over my disgrace,
And disturb the insulted
shadow
By an unjust reproach or words
of slander,
Do not expect reprieve…”
M. Yu. Lermontov.
“…I
shall attach myself to your soul like a worm,
And each moment of relaxation
Will be unbearable to it,
And you will remember the
former carefree time,
Not knowing how to bring it
back to life,
And life to you will be as
long as eternity,
And still you won’t be alive.”
Bulgakov’s
Kot Begemot, that is, M. Yu. Lermontov, can serve as an example of what Lermontov
is writing about, as he tells Azazello:
“It’s perfectly clear, acknowledged
the cat, forgetting about his promise to be a silent hallucination. What are you saying, Azazello? --- he
approached a silent Azazello. --- What I
am saying, nasalized the other, is
that it would be nice to have you drowned. ---- Be merciful, Azazello, replied
the cat, and do not lead my master into
such a thought. Believe me, that each night I would be appearing to you in the
same moonlight glow as the poor master, and I would nod at you, and I would
beckon you to follow me. How would you feel then, Azazello?”
The
most interesting part in these words of Begemot is that he would eventually
succeed in luring Azazello to follow him, as at the end of the novel they are
both leaving together: the youth demon and Azazello, who represents the
knightly side of Ivanushka. The explanation of this puzzle of mine awaits the
reader in the chapter The Bard.
These
words of Begemot also clarify the strange words of Margarita, when she explains
to Woland her decision to pardon the infanticide Frieda:
“No, replied Margarita
forcefully, I know that one can only talk
frankly with you, and I am telling you frankly: I am a careless person. I only
asked you for Frieda because I had the imprudence to give her a firm hope. She
is waiting, Messire, she believes in my power. And if she finds herself
deceived, I will get myself into an awful situation. I shan’t have peace for
the rest of my life…”
If
we read Bulgakov attentively, we may find the answers right there in the text,
like in this case, as Margarita’s reasoning slightly precedes in the same
chapter The Extraction of Master, the
conversation of Begemot with Azazello.
Margarita
was afraid that Frieda would be appearing to her, like she just did:
“[Margarita] wanted to utter the treasured words, when suddenly she
grew pale, opened her mouth, and stared with bulging eyes: Frieda! Frieda! Frieda!”
The
only way we can understand this is that Frieda had practically inhabited
Margarita, reminding her of herself. What a horrifying experience that must
have been!
Using
Margarita as an example, Bulgakov introduces to the reader the words of M. Yu.
Lermontov, which are well worth repeating:
"I shall attach myself to your soul like a
worm,
And each moment of relaxation
Will be unbearable to it,
And you will remember the former carefree
time
Not knowing how to bring it back to life,
And life to you will be as long as
eternity,
And still you won’t be alive.”
The
concepts of infinity of time and space in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita are also
derived from the poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov, who was urging:
“Bravely trust in what is eternal,
Without a beginning and without an end,
What has passed and what’s to come,
What has deceived or will deceive.”
And
also lamenting:
“Years will pass and ages will pass
To the rumble of magic dreams.”
As
we already know, in Master and Margarita Bulgakov
uses Ivanushka’s dreams to relate some very interesting scenes of the novel,
frequently perplexing the reader. Take the “farewell” of the nonexistent master
and Margarita for one!
In
what concerns space, Margarita was stunned by the spaciousness of Apartment #
50. “I could
expect anything but this. Was something wrong with their electricity? But the
most amazing thing was the dimensions of this place. How can all of this be
squeezed inside a Moscow apartment?.. Here they started ascending some kind of
wide steps, and it seemed to Margarita that there would be no end to them. She
was amazed how inside the anteroom of a normal Moscow apartment one could fit
this extraordinary, invisible, but well-felt, infinite staircase… Margarita
realized that she was in a most unusual hall, plus a colonnade, which was dark
and according to the first impression endless.” It was for a good
reason that Koroviev explained that “those who are familiar with the fifth
dimension can easily expand any given space to the required limits. I can say
even more, dear lady, to devil knows what limits!”
How
can we fail to remember M. Yu. Lermontov here:
“I did not like the sky, but I admired
The space with no beginning and no end.”
The
devil himself has no beginning and no end, which is why everything around him
and related to him has no beginning and no end. (Indeed, God created the angels
before the creation of the world, and time and space had their beginning in the
creation of the world.)
I
already wrote (in Beardo with a Rolly, posted
segment LVI) that Ivanushka, who was chasing Woland at the top of his speed,
could not reduce the distance between them even by one iota. So, how can we be
surprised that an ordinary flat, where the devil stayed during his visit to
Moscow, could turn into a “space with no beginning and no end”?
Bulgakov
makes this more comprehensible by introducing the “Fifth Dimension.” In doing
so, he first of all makes fun of the very fashionable trend of
multi-dimensionalism in philosophy, whose proponents led by the Russian
mathematician and metaphysician P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) sought to create
new models of a multi-dimensional universe.
Secondly,
Bulgakov makes use of D. Merezhkovsky’s article Nightly Luminary, where he writes about M. Yu. Lermontov:
“…in human form, not quite
a man, a being of a different order, of a different dimension...”
And
why would Merezhkovsky write that Lermontov most probably had “a desire to be
like everybody else”? And he exclaims: “He has succeeded, after all, in squeezing
the fourth dimension into the third!”
Bulgakov
picks this up and kicks it up a notch, et
voilà! He comes up with the “fifth dimension.”
…At
this point, I would like to remind the reader of master’s peculiar observation
about Kot Begemot:
“For some reason, it seems to me that you are not quite a Cat.”
It is of course uncannily reminiscent of
Merezhkovsky’s “in
human form, not quite a man.” Bulgakov clearly draws the
reader’s attention to the fact that under the guise of a cat a significant
personality is being concealed. Bulgakov could surely hope that someone
familiar with Merezhkovsky’s essay The
Nightly Luminary about M. Yu. Lermontov, would make precisely such an
identification.
To
be continued…
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