Margarita:
Queen and the Revolution Continues.
“Had
you loved like I do,
You
would have killed love…”
V. Mayakovsky. From the Play Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Waking up from her “prophetic” dream, Margarita had “a premonition that something was about to happen today, at
last. Having had this premonition, she started warming it up and nurturing it
in her soul…”
Sitting in solitude on the familiar bench under the
Kremlin Wall, Margarita was again “saddened and
dispirited. But right then, suddenly, that same wave of anticipation and
excitement which she had experienced in the morning, jolted her chest.”
Having remembered her morning “premonition,” Margarita
received reassurance: “Yes, it is going to happen!”
She is only a few moments away from Azazello appearing
on the scene.
Having seated his Margarita under the Kremlin Wall,
Bulgakov definitely likens his heroine to V. V. Mayakovsky’s “woman with a banner, bowing over those who
lay down under the wall.”
And indeed, while sitting on the bench, Margarita
watches the funeral procession for the headless Berlioz. Although Berlioz did
not lose his head on the executioner’s block at the Lobnoye Mesto, on Red Square, the funeral procession goes by the Lobnoye Mesto.
Even in her condition, even having no idea whose
funeral that is, Margarita realizes that it is “a strange funeral.”
The point is that rumors of the stolen head of Berlioz
cut off by a tram were circulating all around Moscow. “Even
from a distance, Margarita was able to see that the faces of the people in the
funeral vehicle… were somewhat strangely at a loss… Equally confused were the
faces of those on foot, who, numbering approximately three hundred (sic!), were following
the catafalque…”
This funeral for the headless Berlioz is a godsend for
the researcher. To begin with, already in the tragedy [play] Vladimir Mayakovsky the poet not only
introduces a “headless man,” but he shows how this idea has come to him already
in the Prologue to the play.
Saying in the opening of the Prologue that he “may just as well be the last poet,”
Mayakovsky, offering his “soul on a
platter,” accuses mankind:
“In
your souls, a slave [sic!] has been kissed up.”
Insisting that “I am fearless,” Mayakovsky makes
an offer to humanity, to the effect that he was going to open, “with words as plain
as mooing,-- our new souls.” And then, having done his good deed, V.
V. Mayakovsky, having given to humanity a “tongue native to all peoples” and
“limping with
his little soul” [most probably because he has crumbled his enormous
soul, so that everybody can have their share], intends to “leave for my railway
platform with holes where the stars used to be, along the worn-out domes.”
So, what is Mayakovsky going to do after performing
his “good deed”?
“I am
flying, all bright, in robes of laziness,
To
the soft bed of genuine manure…”
“…And
with a soft kissing of the [railroad] sleepers’ knees,
The
wheel of the locomotive will embrace my neck.”
Hence, Woland, cutting off Berlioz’s head by means of
a tram, gives us another indication that Woland’s prototype is Vladimir
Mayakovsky…
So, here we have the number 300 again.
[Bulgakov’s “Nonsense!
In another 300 years it will go away!” in Master and Margarita is taken from Mayakovsky’s “…And having considered the lasting effect of my
poems, please recalculate my income, spreading it over 3oo years!”
in A Conversation With a Financial
Inspector About Poetry.]
Here is also the “slave.” [“So, what did He {Yeshua}
ask you to tell me, slave?” The idea is taken from Mayakovsky’s
tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky.]
Here is also the train. [“Somewhere in the distance, for some reason greatly
perturbing her heart, a train was puffing along. Margarita soon saw it. It was
crawling slowly, like a caterpillar, scattering sparks into the air.” The
idea is again taken from Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky. “The wheel of the locomotive will embrace my neck.”]
As we see, all roads lead to V. V. Mayakovsky’s
poetry.
Now, the idea of the “bright queen” in Master and Margarita. [“Oi, do forgive me
magnanimously, Bright Queen…”] This is how Koroviev [alias A. S.
Pushkin] calls Margarita. This idea also proceeds from Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, where Mayakovsky
associates it, in his Prologue to the tragedy, with the word “fearless.” (“I am flying, all bright…”)
Here we also have the theft of Berlioz’s severed head
in Master and Margarita, which once
again leads us to Mayakovsky’s 1913 tragedy Vladimir
Mayakovsky, who introduces alongside “a man without an eye and a leg,” “a
man without an ear,” and also “a man without a head.”
However, I could not find Annushka-the-Plague in
Mayakovsky’s poetry. He liked “silent” women, perhaps because he liked to speak
and explain all by himself. Whatever anybody says, a poet is “a being of a
different dimension.” Thus, in his tragedy Vladimir
Mayakovsky, he makes up his list
of Dramatis Personae putting himself first: “Vladimir Mayakovsky. (Poet of 20-25 years of age.)” Next after him
is named “His [that is Mayakovsky’s]
Female Acquaintance, 2-3 sazhens [4-6 meters in height]. (Does not talk.
[sic!])”
Although Bulgakov does not put Annushka-the-Plague
among the crowd of mourners in Berlioz’s funeral procession, he still shows us
a similar “citizen” “in the left rear corner of the
motorized catafalque. The fat cheeks of this citizen were as though pumped up
from the inside… with some kind of piquant secret, in her puffy eyes
played ambiguous little fires…”
Bulgakov has a field day describing that funeral,
which cannot be explained by his animosity toward Berlioz.
“…It seemed that any time now, the citizen,
no longer able to restrain herself, would wink at the deceased, and say:
Have you ever seen anything like this?
Veritable mystique!”
…The reader has obviously noticed the fact that
Bulgakov’s character in Master and
Margarita does not actually speak, same as V. V. Mayakovsky’s “Female
Acquaintance” in the tragedy Vladimir
Mayakovsky, who does not speak either.
But the funeral itself comes to Bulgakov from another
Mayakovsky poem, namely The Monstrous
Funeral, written in 1915. The reader is already familiar with this poem
because it is precisely the poem which explains to us why Woland is celibate.
(See my chapter Woland Identity, posting
CXCII.)
Out of this poem, Bulgakov takes several ideas for Master and Margarita, including the “secret” of the funeral, which Margarita watches
from a distance, sitting on a bench under the Kremlin Wall.
In Bulgakov, the secret is that the corpse is headless.
He writes:
“Horribly
skillfully stolen it was. Such a huge scandal!”
And he immediately explains that it was stolen because
someone must have needed that head:
“And
the most important thing, it is unclear who needed this head and why.”
The word “horror” is also present in Mayakovsky’s Monstrous Funeral.
It’s just that, like a real gentleman, Horror opens the door and lets everyone
pass before him.
First, the secret of the funeral is revealed:
“Suddenly
from the coffin sprang a grimace,
Thereafter,
a scream ---
They
are burying the deceased laughter!”
In V. V. Mayakovsky’s funeral procession, the
participants are:
1.
“The white-haired
mother of the deceased laughter… weeping, the old woman life.’
2.
Also, “the large,
big-nosed, weeping, Armenian joke.”
3.
“And behind him,
stripped and shorn, squealing, ran the witticism,” not knowing where to find
shelter, once laughter was dead.
4.
Then, “great
hosts of semi-smiles and smiles.”
5.
And only then,
closing the Monstrous Funeral like a real administrator and organizer, was
Horror itself. “And, anon, through their soaking-wet ranks... entered Horror,
all in funeral march.”
To be continued…
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