Margarita
and the Wolf.
“…Life’s
routine burns it all.
I
was lewd and made scandal,
So
that I would burn with a brighter flame…”
“I
lit my fire… My fire burnt out…
And
a tear fell on the ash of the coals…”
Sergei Yesenin.
As
I already wrote before, Yesenin’s Margarita, and master as well, are creations
of the imagination of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, driven crazy by boredom inside a
psychiatric clinic. This is why Margarita exhibits so many features coming out
of Yesenin’s poetry.
Although
the scenes of master’s and Margarita’s return to the basement are purely
fantastic, they do illustrate just as well yet another novel hidden by Bulgakov
in Master and Margarita, namely, the
psychological thriller about a man with split personality.
On
top of all this, it is precisely these scenes of the return to the basement,
which contain a number of puzzles dealing with parallel reality in the novel Master and Margarita and the sub-novel Pontius Pilate. A portion of these
puzzles will be solved, once again, in my chapter Strangers in the Night, such as, for instance, which book is the
one that master burns right before leaving the basement, on his way with
Margarita to their last place of eternal rest:
“Already intoxicated by the forthcoming horseback ride, master
pulled a book from the shelf and threw it on the table, ruffled its pages upon
the burning tablecloth, and the book merrily caught fire. Burn, burn, former life! Burn, suffering! shouted Margarita.”
Although
Sergei Yesenin has many poems about fire, burning fires, and such, they belong
to the love theme, when he writes about his heart catching fire.
S.
Yesenin wrote the most interesting poem on this subject on July 14th,
1925, just a few months before his death.
This
poem does contain a puzzle in itself, explaining his decision to take his own
life at the age of 30, which, in turn, explains his utterly reckless way of
life, that of a man who knows that he is about to commit suicide, anyway.
“So,
it seems, is customary in this world,
Having gotten over our demons
by the age of thirty,
With an ever greater
persistence, we the burnt-through cripples
Are holding our connection to
life.”
In
this poem, Yesenin shows his own inner struggle against also his own decision
to end his life. The poet thus describes his very last attempt to resist the
suicide urge:
“My
beloved, I will soon turn thirty,
And this earth is dearer to
me with every passing day,
This is why my heart is
having dreams
That I am burning with a
pinkish fire…”
In
other words, with his last strength, Yesenin yearns to be in love again, in the
last-ditch effort to forestall his coming death.
“If
we burn, let us burn down burning,
And it was for a good reason
that, when the linden were in bloom,
I removed the ring from the
parrot,
Knowing that we were going to
burn together.”
In
other words, Yesenin wants to live out his life through old age together with
his beloved whom he married shortly before his death. I should remind the
reader that this last wife of his happened to be a granddaughter of L. N.
Tolstoy.
“A
gypsy woman put this ring on my finger,
Taking it off my hand, I have
given it to you…”
Having
been married again, Yesenin falls into a familiar doubt:
“In
my swampy head wanders a quagmire,
Hoarfrost and darkness on my
heart,
Maybe you have given it [the
ring] to somebody else
With laughter?
Maybe, having been kissing
through dawn,
He has been asking you
himself,
How you managed to bring the
ridiculous stupid poet
To write such sensuous
verses…”
So,
here is the mother of all woes: suspicion. The excerpt above is the
quintessence of Yesenin’s Margarita. Bulgakov turns it out in a very
interesting manner. Although in Bulgakov, Margarita is an unfaithful wife, she
falls in love with master, and loves no one else until her death.
This
is why Azazello, whose prototype is S. A. Yesenin, having become convinced of a
true love between master and Margarita, in the fantastical novel, exclaims:
“Then,
fire!” exclaimed Azazello. “Fire,
which started everything, and which we end everything with.”
Apart
from the direct association of fire as a destructive power (“Burn, burn, former
life!!! Burn, suffering!!!”), there is also an indirect association,
namely, the one taken by Bulgakov from that same poem of Sergei Yesenin, to the
effect that the initial infatuation of master and Margarita had grown into deep
love, and it was Margarita’s decision “to perish” with master.
To
master’s words: “I
shall not allow you to do that. It won’t be any good with me, and I do not want
you to perish with me!” Margarita replies: “I am perishing together with you!”
Sergei
Yesenin closes his poem in a mysterious way:
“Then
so what? This wound shall pass too,
I’m just bitter to see the
edge of life…”
Here
Yesenin refers to the approaching end of his life.
And
then, totally suddenly:
“…It’s
the first time that such a hooligan [he means himself]
Has been deceived by the
cursed parrot.”
In
order to figure out the meaning of the last two lines, we need to travel into
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita:
“Ay!, cried Begemot, all the parrots have flown away, as I predicted they would.'”
I
am explaining these lines, taken by Bulgakov from M. Yu. Lermontov’s poetry, in
my chapter Kot Begemot, posted
segment XVI.
What
I wish to emphasize here, though, is that it is precisely the Yesenin poem
quoted above, that Bulgakov uses to build the attitude of Azazello (whose
prototype is S. A. Yesenin) toward Kot Begemot upon.
“‘Lies, as usual,’
grumbled Azazello, darting his eyes at Begemot.”
Not
to mention the fact that to Begemot’s simple question: “What are you saying, Azazello?”
trying to engage him in a conversation, Azazello replies quite rudely: “I am saying,
nasalized the other, that you ought to be
drowned.”
Azazello’s
animosity toward Kot Begemot in this case is totally divergent from the real
attitude of Sergey Yesenin toward the poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov, as Yesenin confesses
in his short autobiography that Lermontov was the very first poet who had
exerted a tremendous influence on him.
In
order to understand Yesenin’s lines about the parrot, we need to remember
Lermontov’s poem Boulevard, where he
writes:
“Scold
people, only do it sharply,
Or otherwise, to all the
devils with your quill!”
And next, Lermontov
continues:
“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!’”
Bulgakov
liked these lines so much that he has used them several times in Master and Margarita.
Yesenin’s
closing lines (“It’s
the first time that such a hooligan has been deceived by the cursed parrot.”)
cannot be explained by Yesenin being deceived in love. We know that Yesenin was
married three times, and he was countless times “in love,” so how could he ever
be deceived? These lines have a direct bearing on his suicide, which subject I
am writing about in my forthcoming chapter Strangers
in the Night.
A
new marriage did not help Yesenin at all.
To
be continued…
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