Two Bears Continues.
The Moon.
“Tell me, branch of
Palestine,
Where did you grow, where did
you flourish?..
Was it by the clear waters of
the Jordan?..
[Or was it] in the mountains
of Lebanon?..
You are standing, branch of
Jerusalem,
A faithful guardian of the
sacred!..
The Ark and the Cross, the
holy symbol…”
M. Yu. Lermontov.
In
his dream, the Equestrian Golden Spear (Pontius
Pilate) hears the following words allegedly coming from Yeshua:
“We shall now be always
together… If there is one, there’s the other. They’ll mention me, they’ll
mention you right away!” Yet another
variation on Lermontov’s:
“Along
with mine, your name will be repeated:
Why separate the dead?”
“The cruel procurator of Judea was weeping and laughing in his
sleep out of joy.
I
cannot but remember Petka’s dream here, with which M. A. Bulgakov closes his
immortal novel White Guard:
“Petka was a little boy... and he had a dream, simple and happy,
like the sun ball. It was as though Petka was walking across a large green
dale, and on this dale there lay a sparkling diamond ball larger than Petka
himself. In their dreams adults, whenever they need to run, get stuck to the
ground, they moan and struggle, trying to tear their feet off the quagmire… But
a child’s feet are fast and free. Petka ran up to the diamond ball, and choking
with joyful laughter hugged it with his arms. The ball showered Petka with
sparkling drizzle. That was Petka’s whole dream. From all this pleasure he
burst into loud laughter in the night… Petka started seeing different, light
and happy dreams…”
If
Petka’s dream reflects the boy’s little but happy and sinless life, then
Pontius Pilate’s dream is not merely a cowardly escapism. By the words “Equestrian Golden Spear” Bulgakov
reminds the reader that it was precisely due to Pilate’s cowardice that the
execution took place, and the torture was stopped earlier than expected only
due to the approaching storm, when the executioner killed Yeshua by piercing
his heart with a spear.
As
for the murder of Judas, Bulgakov calls it a “shallow and paltry, but primarily
too-late, action.” Still, Bulgakov describes the “mental sufferings” of Pontius
Pilate. He writes that he “aged as though in front of
our eyes and his back bent... For a second time [the procurator] was attacked
by anguish.”
In
this Bulgakov seems to be following M. Yu. Lermontov:
“And in no way can it be a dream
What has at least a spark of suffering.”
What
is also interesting about Pontius Pilate’s dream is that it is virtually
identical with Ivanushka’s dream that ends the novel Master and Margarita. And the reason for this is perfectly clear.
It is to show that Ivanushka is the author of both Pontius Pilate and Master and
Margarita.
The
murder of Judas is also interesting because of the Greek woman who betrays
Judas by luring him out of the city to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he
hurries for an amorous rendez-vous, from time to time “getting
from the darkness into the patterned lunar carpets reminding him of the
carpets he had seen in the shop of Niza’s jealous husband.”
The
most interesting thing about this whole situation is that even this comes from
a Lermontov poem.---
“…Inadvertently recognizing everywhere
In every man a stupid flatterer,
And in every woman a Judas.”
Linking
a loose woman with the traitor Judas, Bulgakov shows us two Judases at once.
Judas is slaughtered by two knife-wielding subcontractors of Aphranius [see my
chapter Birds: Nightingale, posted
segment XLVIII].
In
Pontius Pilate, the theme of the
knife is played up twice by Bulgakov. Judas is murdered with knives, and also
Matthew Levi steals a bread knife to stab Yeshua with it, thus to save him from
the excruciating death on the cross, truly the devil’s idea!
As
we know, this theme passes on to Master
and Margarita in this famous description of love:
“…Love sprung on us like from under the ground a killer appears in
the side street, and struck us both. So strikes a lightning; so strikes a Finnish knife.”
(For
more on this knife theme see my chapter Cockroach,
posted segments CIV, etc.)
Aside
from Aphranius’ subcontractor assassins, we have Matthew Levi, doggedly devoted
to Yeshua. He is “struck by a simple idea of genius…
to force his way to the [prisoner’s] cart and jump on it. Then Yeshua is freed
from torments. It takes just one moment to strike Yeshua in the back with the
knife, exclaiming: Yeshua! I am saving
you and going with you! I, Matthew, your faithful and only disciple!.. The
plan was very good, but the point was that Matthew did not have a knife on
him.”
And
when Matthew Levi returned to the city and stole a bread knife there, it
was already too late to save Yeshua.
The
theme of the knife appears for the first time in Bulgakov’s gory 1925 short
story Cockroach, and, you have
guessed correctly, the knife is bought by the baker Vasili Rogov, although it
is not a bread knife, but a Finnish knife, which Rogov uses to kill a man,
whose prototype, incidentally, is none other than the dead soul of M. Yu.
Lermontov, which crime sends him to the firing squad.
This
clearly reveals to the reader the unique way of thinking characteristic of
Bulgakov, about whom we can truly say “omnia
mea mecum porto” (Bias of Priene, in Cicero’s translation).
M.
Yu. Lermontov has numerous poems featuring daggers and knives, but one of them
in particular comes to mind: To a Friend,
from which Bulgakov borrows three ideas:
“I am
not captivated by heavenly beauty,
But I am searching for
earthly bliss…”
(Master
is not averse to sharing Margarita with her husband.)
“But
you must not ask me vainly:
You, friend must not find out
who she is.”
(“And who is she? Asked
Ivan, interested to the highest degree in this love story. The guest made a
gesture [as though cutting his throat] meaning that he would never reveal it to anybody.”)
And
this:
“I
did not know how to defeat cruelty,
But I am carrying the rejection
and revenge with me.”
The
third idea coming from this poem by M. Yu. Lermontov concerns Pontius Pilate,
who asked Caiaphas to pardon Yeshua, but did not get the requested pardon from
the High Priest and decided to take his revenge on Caiaphas by assassinating
Judas and returning the money paid by Caiaphas for his betrayal, with the note
attached: “I am
returning the cursed money.”
“So
is a gray-haired thief in the thick wood
Still unrepentant of his
sins;
Still stirring fear in
passersby and neighbors,
And dear to him is his friend
the bloody knife…”
Bulgakov
writes: “Having slaughtered Judas, the two killers
rushed off the road to the side, and the darkness ate them up.” And
here, describing the dead traitor, Bulgakov writes strange things. When
Aphranius “looked into the face of the murdered Judas… it appeared to him white
as chalk and somehow spiritedly beautiful.” (See the segment Oil and Whine of the Bulgakov
chapter.)
For
Bulgakov, the word “beautiful” is not automatically positive. Every prostitute
is “beautiful” to him. Shpolyansky, in White
Guard, a man without any principles or scruples, is as beautiful as Yevgeny
Onegin. As for the word “inspired,” it stresses the sarcasm toward the man
killed for his treachery for money.
Then
there is another strange thing: “The breathless corpse
was lying with spread out arms.” Bulgakov calls this position of the
corpse “a cross,” in Master and Margarita.
And
here is a third strange thing: “The left foot [of the
corpse] found itself in a patch of moonlight, so that each strap of the sandal
could be seen distinctly.” In this case, Bulgakov plays upon destiny:
what has to be, must be, the way how it was with Theseus and Achilles. In other
words, Judas’s betrayal had been predestined. This does not change the
fact that Judas acted according to his character, because he did it for money.
Bulgakov
promotes the same idea in Yeshua’s conversation with Pontius Pilate.---
“You have to agree with me
that to cut the hair [on which, according to Pontius Pilate, hung the life of
Yeshua] can only He who hung it there,” asks
Yeshua, and to Pontius Pilate’s contention: “I can cut this hair!” Yeshua
responds: “You
are mistaken in this too.”
To
be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment