Margarita
and the Wolf.
The Bulgakov
Multiplicities Continues.
“Do
not look for me in God,
Do
not call to love and live…
I
will follow yonder road,
Where
I’ll lose my rowdy head.”
Sergei Yesenin.
We are presently dealing with Bulgakov’s Multiplicities, and, in order to demonstrate the consistencies
of Bulgakov’s quill, we are now turning to Ivan’s evil side, namely to the
demon Azazello, whose prototype we also find in S. A. Yesenin.
Bulgakov writes:
“When the poisoned ones stopped moving, Azazello went into action.
The first thing he did was to dash
through the window…”
In other words, the theme of the window (“Invariably thinks of going to the window…”)
still continues in chapter 30, It’s Time!
It’s Time!
Summarizing what has been said, the theme of the
window in Bulgakov is linked to Ivan: to Margarita and master, invented by him,
and to Azazello, his evil side.
The reader certainly remembers how dramatically the
window appears in Master and Margarita in
the scene of Ivan’s incarceration in the psychiatric clinic. ---
“Let
me pass now, said Ivan to the medics closing their ranks at the door. Are you going to let me through, or not?!, yelled
the poet in a frightening voice… So, this
is your way?!, said Ivan, turning around in a wild, hunted-down manner. So be it, farewell! And, head first, he
dashed into the curtain of the window. The noise was rather loud, but the glass
behind the curtain never suffered a crack, and in an instant, Ivan Nikolayevich
was struggling in the arms of the medics. He wheezed, tried to bite, and
shouted: So these are the kinds of glass
trinkets you got for yourselves here!.. Let me go! Let me go!..
A syringe glistened in the doctor’s hand…
He stuck the needle into Ivan’s arm…”
Thus, already in the 6th chapter, Schizophrenia, as was Told, Bulgakov
introduces the “window” as a way of escape.
All roads here lead to Ivan, once again underscoring
the fact that Bulgakov chose him particularly as the “writer” of his novel Master and Margarita.
Returning to Margarita, with her eyes “greening” from Azazello’s cream,
indicating both her poisoning and her imminent death, we need to point out that
Bulgakov draws the reader’s attention to this color two more times in chapter
23, The Grand Ball at Satan’s, and in
the next 24th chapter The
Extraction of master.
Margarita is not the only lady at the ball. Bulgakov
writes:
“A certain lady was approaching Margarita,
hobbling in a strange wooden boot. Her eyes were cast downwards, monastery-style,
she was thin, modest, and for some reason had a broad green band on her neck.
How
green she is?, asked
Margarita mechanically… Why is this green
stuff on her neck? A feeble neck?”
The story of Mme. Tofana, as the reader knows, points
to the spy novel hidden inside Master and
Margarita.
What is also rather important here is that it is
precisely “Lady” Tofana who
calls Margarita “Dark Queen,” whereas
the Backenbarter in their meeting on the riverbank calls Margarita “Light-Filled Queen.”
In such a manner, Bulgakov points out not only, and
not so much the fact that Margarita has been poisoned and is practically dead
at this time, but that Margarita was one of the conspirators in the plot to
poison her husband; thus Tofana sees in Margarita a kindred spirit, or even
better, a potential client.
For some reason, M. Bulgakov does not call the
“greenery” on Tofana’s neck a “kerchief,” but a “band,” and even a “ribbon.” As
for the “kerchief,” although not a green one, but with a blue border, it finds
its way into the story of Frieda, which Bulgakov borrows for his novel Master and Margarita from the 1905 book The Sexual Question by the Swiss
psychiatrist Auguste Forel.
This proves once again that Goethe has no imprint on
Bulgakov’s novel, as Bulgakov’s Margarita cannot be mistaken for the role of
Gretchen under any stretch of imagination.
The reason why Bulgakov chooses a real, rather than a
fictional person for this role shows first of all, that what has been done to
Gretchen in Faust is a crime, and
secondly, that the prototypes of his characters in Master and Margarita are real people.
Still, a kerchief of green color does appear in
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita in
chapter 24, The Extraction of master, following
Margarita’s words:
“I want right now, this very
second, that my lover master be returned to me!”
“Here a burst of wind entered the room… From the windowsill down
across the floor there spread out a greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in
it appeared Ivanushka’s guest calling himself master…”
In this scene the roles are reversed, and it is now
master, not Margarita, who is in delirium, which once again demonstrates that
these two are one and the same person. [I am writing about this in my already
posted chapter Who R U, Margarita?]
The green color in Bulgakov is the color of death and
decomposition. Gella also has a scar around her neck, and green traces of
decomposition all over her body.
Using the expression “Dark Queen,” and also the appearance of master in a “greenish kerchief” of lunar light,
Bulgakov indicates to the reader that Margarita is by no means an innocent
person. All these words: dark, green, kerchief,
point to a murder committed.
Curiously, Ivan’s green eyes in the novel point to the
fact (revealed only at the end of Bulgakov’s book) that his prototype Sergei Yesenin
had been dead since 1925. The novel was finished by the time of Bulgakov’s own
death in 1940. To summarize this line, all the characters gathered together in
the no-good apartment #50 at the time of master’s appearance in it, have been
dead, in so far as their prototypes are concerned.
***
Using the fact that Sergei Yesenin saw himself as
split, in his poem The Black Man, and
also the telltale symptom: “smell of
burnt feather,” Bulgakov endows several of his personages with characteristics
of a homoeopathic remedy.
Thus, Ivan Bezdomny --- “with anguish and uneasiness when alone or in stormy weather, particularly
in evening with fright. Becomes easily vexed and angry, which makes him
exceedingly vehement, from which he suffers afterwards. Great irascibility,
anger, passion, and violence. Great flow of ill-assorted ideas. Anguish
respecting the future; delirium; weeping… loquacious. Causation: grief, worry.”
Sergei Yesenin certainly had --- “disgust to life, strong emotions, anger, mental exertion, sexual
excesses.” And he also had “sharp and
rather handsome features and delicate refined skin.”
Even the “hoarseness”
of this remedy fits S. A. Yesenin.
Bulgakov gives a different set of characteristics to
master and Margarita. --- “Shamelessness
approaching insanity, ecstasy, levitation, sexual excesses [a married
woman, she walked the streets looking for a lover, and strutted in the nude in
front of Azazello and of the whole male company], state of clairvoyance [predicts Ivan Bezdomny’s future], great irascibility, anger, passion and violence”
--- all of this fits Margarita.
“Fear of
darkness, specters, of things creeping out of corners” --- this is already
master. Also, in his tale to Ivan, master certainly reveals being capable of
--- “strong emotions, anger, disgust to
life, grief and worry.”
And then, naturally, Azazello --- “becomes easily vexed and angry, also
violent.”
To be continued…
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