Margarita
and the Wolf.
“…Only
do not touch the unkissed ones,
Only
do not lure the unburnt…”
Sergei Yesenin.
“Should
we meet each other by accident,
I
will smile, as we quietly keep our separate ways.”
Curiously, having come across a man interested in
picking her up under the Kremlin Wall, Margarita starts reasoning with herself,
not at all happy with her casual dismissal of this prospective affair. ---
“Why
exactly did I send away that man? I am bored, and there was nothing bad about
that Lovelass… Why am I sitting like an owl by myself under the wall? Why am I
shut out of life?”
Indeed, given time, Margarita would surely have found
herself another lover, so that she wouldn’t be “shut out of life.”
Bulgakov has a very clever way of writing his novel.
He covers all the angles. We do not really know what would have happened to
Margarita, had she not turned out dead in her mansion.
As to the cause of her death, she must have been
poisoned, as Bulgakov gives the readers to understand not just in the chapter Azazello’s Cream, but most importantly
in master’s tale in Chapter 13, The
Appearance of the Hero.
Having learned from newspapers about master being
hounded by the critics, Margarita appeared before master ---
“…with
a wet umbrella in her hands, and also with wet newspapers. Her eyes were
radiating fire, her hands were trembling and were cold. First she rushed to
kiss me, then in a hoarse voice and slapping the table with her hand, she said
that she was going to poison the critic Latunsky…”
Before this, here is master’s memory of their first
meeting:
“She was saying that she went out that day with the yellow flowers
in hand in order to be found by me, and if that had not happened she would have
poisoned herself, because her life was empty.”
Switching to the fantastical dimension, Bulgakov
continues with the poisoning theme at the Great Ball of Satan, unequivocally comparing
Margarita to the notorious poisoner Mme. Tofana, the erstwhile procurer of
poison to wives desirous of poisoning their husbands by putting the stuff in
their food. Mme. Tofana is the only one in the novel to call Margarita “Dark
Queen,” intimating that she was also capable of “dark deeds,” the kind that
Mme. Tofana herself had been capable of.
And so, Sergei Yesenin concludes:
“So
will you walk your own way
To
diffuse joyless days.”
Bulgakov himself had been married three times, which
amply proves that he was unfaithful to his wives just as much as they were
unfaithful to him. And here we have the cherry on the top of our cake.
Sergei Yesenin describes how he meets women, which yet
again supports my version about the “authorship” of Master and Margarita, that is, Bulgakov writes his novel from the
person of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, whose prototype Yesenin happens to be.
“…And
when with another man you’ll walk
Down
the side street, chatting about love,
Perhaps
I will be out for a stroll,
And
we shall meet again then…
Bulgakov must have been struck by the bluntness of
this poem by S. Yesenin. This is the reason why he kills off his novel’s
heroine, to prevent her from being unfaithful to master.
And
there will be nothing to disturb the soul,
Nothing
to make it flutter, ---
He
who loved cannot love again,
He
who burned out cannot be set aflame.”
Bulgakov’s depiction of Margarita’s death in the
realistic dimension is grim and succinct.
“Azazello saw how a gloomy woman waiting for her husband came out
of her bedroom, suddenly became pale, clutched at her heart, and helplessly
gasping--- “Natasha! Somebody... to me!”---
fell to the floor of the drawing room before reaching the study.”
Breathtaking!
THE END.
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