Two Bears Continues.
Revenge.
“…Shamefully
indifferent toward good and evil,
We wilt without a struggle at
the beginning of our journey,
Dishonorably pussilanimous
before danger,
And contemptible slaves
before power.”
M. Yu. Lermontov.
The
mocking, sarcastic tone of M. Yu. Lermontov, his propensity for understatement,
must have particularly drawn Bulgakov to Lermontov’s poetry, which truly
radiates from Bulgakov’s works. As Lermontov himself writes:
“I
will put up the satyrs to it,
Whom I have called for help,
And then all will be well.
Scold people, only do it
sharply,
Or otherwise, to all the
devils with your quill!”
Bulgakov
draws two scenes in Master and Margarita from
this poem Boulevard, using the following
words of Lermontov:
“So,
come to me from subterranean fire,
My little devil, my
disheveled wit,
And sit near me, and be a parrot:
I’ll say, ‘You fool!’ --- you
shout back, ‘You fool!’”
The
first scene begins when Koroviev leads Margarita through the “halls” located in
the space of the Moscow apartment #50 (about which shortly), “where certain rustlings could be heard, and where something
touched Margarita’s head. She started. Be
not afraid, Koroviev sweetly soothed her.--- Ball-time tricks of Begemot!”
What
kind of ball-time tricks those were,
Bulgakov, as often with him, reveals a full three-pages later:
“Ai!, exclaimed Begemot. The parrots scattered around, just as
I predicted! And indeed, somewhere far off the noise of many wings could be
heard.”
The
only military man of all the greats featured in this scene of Master and Margarita, M. Yu. Lermontov
knew a thing or two about diversion. He needed the parrots, or rather M. A.
Bulgakov needed them, who let Begemot play this particular part in order to
make Woland’s chess game with him more interesting. (More about it, which
includes a brilliant recreation of an episode in Russian history, can be found
in my chapter Kot Begemot, posted
segment XVI.)
“‘Lies, as usual,’
grumbled Azazello,” when Koroviev and
Azazello returned after rushing to check the mishap. This is not the only scene
where Bulgakov points to M. Yu. Lermontov. He writes a second scene, namely, in
the chapter The Splitting of Ivan in
the psychiatric clinic, where after a conversation between the two Ivans,---
“Having napped for a while, the new Ivan nastily asked the old
Ivan:
So, who is it that I come out
to be in this case?
A fool!—distinctly said a basso voice somewhere,
which did not belong to either Ivan, and sounded suspiciously like the basso of
the consultant [Woland].
In
both these scenes, Bulgakov twice uses Woland, playing upon the words of M. Yu.
Lermontov. First it is “Devil take you!”
and next the catchy word “You fool!”
There is also a reason for that. Bulgakov clearly shows his desire to be
solved, in so far as Kot Begemot is M. Yu. Lermontov. Even the word “buffoon”
itself, as applied to Kot Begemot, is borrowed by Bulgakov from M. Yu.
Lermontov, from another one of his poems, this time of a more serious nature.
In his first, earlier poem Dedication M.
Yu. Lermontov laments:
“The
haughty stupid world glitters
In its pretty emptiness!
Was I indeed writing for it?
Was I indeed dedicating my
inspiration,
Exposing the fullness of my
heart,
To some self-important
buffoon?”
Ten
years later, being already a military man and shortly before his death in the
Caucasus, M. Yu. Lermontov writes his famous poem:
“It’s
boring and sad, and no one to stretch out my hand to,
In a moment of the soul’s
disarray…
Desires!.. What’s the use of
desiring eternally and in vain?
And years are passing, all
the best years!..
And life, as you look around
with cold attention,
Is such an empty and stupid
joke.”
Bulgakov
does not beat around the bush, saying farewell to Kot Begemot:
“He who had been a cat, entertaining the prince of darkness, now
turned out to be a scrawny youth, a demon-page, the best buffoon who ever lived
in the world. He was quiet too, now, and was silently flying, submitting his
young face to the light flowing from the moon.”
After
these words by Bulgakov, there is no doubt that he had read D. S.
Merezhkovsky’s Nightly Luminary. Bulgakov
obviously had to know M. Yu. Lermontov’s poetry by heart, considering that the
influence of Lermontov’s poems and his ideas on Bulgakov comes through very
clearly. Bulgakov was “in awe” of Lermontov both as a poet and as a man of
absolute fearlessness. Let us not forget that in Bulgakov’s eyes cowardice was
the very worst vice, from which all other vices flowed.
But
in spite of all his admiration for Lermontov, Bulgakov had to lament, and even
feel an indignation about the fact that at the early age of 26, M. Yu.
Lermontov allowed himself to be killed, having made his shot in the air at his
duel. Imagine how many more immortal works would he have been able to create
for us, his grateful heirs!
D.
S. Merezhkovsky closes his article about Lermontov with these words:
No one was ever able to look death in the eyes so directly, because
no one ever felt so clearly that there was no such thing as death. “The one who is close to Heaven cannot be
struck down by earthly things.”
***
In
his poem My Home Lermontov writes:
“My home is everywhere where there is a
celestial dome…
Its roof reaches up to the stars,
And from one wall to the other wall
It’s a long way, which is measured
By the dweller’s soul, not by his sight.”
As
opposed to the apartment #50 which the devil occupies in Moscow, albeit
temporarily, M. Yu. Lermontov writes:
“…My splendid home was built by the
Almighty,
And I am condemned to long suffering in it,
And only in it shall I have my rest…”
Also
in Bulgakov, Woland says:
“It is impossible not to
believe that you [Margarita] were trying to devise the best future for master,
but truly what I am offering you, what Yeshua was asking for you, yes, for you,
is even better.”
In
other words, Bulgakov clearly lets the reader understand that, same as in
Lermontov, master’s home is built by God.
To
be continued…
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