Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.
“I
love you, my tempered dagger,
My
comrade bright and cold…
I
shall not change, and my soul will be firm,
Like
you, like you, my iron friend.”
M. Yu. Lermontov. The Dagger.
Bulgakov
writes:
“The bell rang again. Bombardov darted into the semidarkness…”
Bulgakov
needs this in order to sustain the illusion in the reader that Bombardov exists
as a real person, about which later.
“…From afar came his soft scream: Don’t read about the shot!”
And
again, Bulgakov draws the reader’s attention to the fact that something is not
right here, as Maksudov is “utterly overwhelmed by Bombardov’s puzzles.”
We
are dealing here, of course, with the puzzles of Bulgakov himself, namely,
about the puzzle of the “shot.”
The
puzzle of the shot is elucidated in the same chapter of Bulgakov’s novel,
during Maksudov’s meeting with Ivan Vasilievich. Maksudov is reading his
script. ---
“Bakhtin (to Petrov). So,
farewell! Very soon you will come after me…
Petrov. What are you doing?!
Bakhtin (shoots himself in the temple, falls down, sounds of
harmonica in the distance…).”
A
very interesting dialogue is taking place between Ivan Vasilievich (protesting
against the use of a gunshot and suggesting that Bakhtin must stab himself with
a dagger) and Maksudov. Bulgakov exhibits his gruesome sense of humor all
through it.
Sergei
Yesenin, whose features can be found in Bulgakov’s hero, committed suicide by slashing
his wrists, not exactly a dagger, but not a bullet either. This is why Maksudov
insists that nobody uses a dagger to commit suicide in the twentieth century.
It
was V. V. Mayakovsky who shot himself, which is why Bombardov, who contains
features of Mayakovsky, gives such an advice to Maksudov.
After
the hero of the play Black Snow Bakhtin
shoots himself from a pistol in the presence of Petrov, a “man with a rifle in
hand” comes onto the bridge.
Bulgakov
is extremely frugal on detail about this play. He needs this play only to focus
our attention on two characters of the Theatrical
Novel: Maksudov and Bombardov.
He
is no less frugal on detail about another non-existent, like Black Snow, play Stenka Razin, obtained from who knows where by another mystical
personage: Misha Panin.
All
of this is to draw the reader’s attention to the words “gunshot” and “dagger,” thus
making Maksudov’s play a cloak-and-dagger thriller. (As I promised, I am going
to reconstruct the plot of the play in my future chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.) Thus the question which Bulgakov
raises here, using these two words is the one raised in M. Yu. Lermontov’s1838
(that is, written after A. S. Pushkin’s death) poem The Poet. The poem starts with the following words:
“My
dagger sparkles with goldsmith’s workmanship.
The
blade is reliable, without a blemish,
Its
steel keeps the mysterious temper ---
A
legacy of the belligerent Orient…”
Lermontov
describes the glorious service rendered by this dagger, passing from hand to
hand, till it falls into the hand of a “brave Cossack,” who, having no use for
it, sells the dagger to an Armenian merchant.
“…Now
the poor companion is deprived of its hero,
Like
a golden toy, it glistens upon a wall,
Alas,
harmless and without glory!..”
And
now we approach the part of this poem which struck Bulgakov so much in his
literary life, considering that Lermontov’s The
Poet is a continuation of the earlier poem Death of the Poet.
“…In
our effeminate age, aren’t you like that, poet?
You
have lost your calling,
Having
exchanged for gold the power which the world
Responded
to, in silent veneration…”
It
is for a reason that Bulgakov even here, in the Theatrical Novel, in a completely obscure, undetailed play, of
which we can make very little sense from random words here and there, suddenly
inserts this word “dagger” among pistols and rifles. He is talking here partly about
the war, partly about the many destroyed lives.
“…There
was a time when the rhythmical sound of your mighty words
Fired
up the warrior to battles…
Your
verse, like the Holy Spirit hovered over the crowd,
And
the echo of noble thoughts
Sounded
like a bell on the summoning tower,
In
the days of popular festivities and woes.”
M.
Yu. Lermontov accuses his contemporary society of being “gratified by glitter
and deception,” of “being accustomed to hiding its wrinkles under rouge.” All
this explains the argument between Maksudov and Ivan Vasilievich, who merely
wishes that Maksudov write an altogether different play to suit his taste.
(Ironically Ivan Vasilievich wants Maksudov as an independent writer to fall on
his sword, so to speak. Ivan Vasilievich expects Maksudov to give up and turn
into a commercial hack, writing whatever the theater director wishes him to
write.) Lermontov’s poem The Poet
explains the suicides of S. A. Yesenin and V. V. Mayakovsky, as it contains a
passionate appeal to the subsequent generations of Russian poets. ---
“…Will
you wake up again, you, Prophet ridiculed!
Or
will you never to the voice of vengeance
Take
out from the gilded sheath
Your
blade, covered with contemptible rust?”
Lermontov
inquires whether the spirit of Pushkin will ever be reborn in the Russian
poets, and whether they will ever avenge Pushkin’s death through their truthful
creations.
That’s
why Bulgakov unites four poets in Master
and Margarita. Of these four, A. S. Pushkin was killed in a duel at the age
of 37, and M. Yu. Lermontov was killed in a duel at the age of 26. The other
two, Yesenin and Mayakovsky, committed suicide greatly influenced by
Lermontov’s last duel in which he was killed.
And
how skillfully does Bulgakov throw in this word “duel” in his Theatrical Novel! ---
“The quarrel between two characters in Scene Four brought about the
phrase:
I will challenge you to a
duel!…And how many times during the night I threatened myself to rip off my own arms, for having written the triply cursed phrase.”
The
word “duel” is of course loaded, but the only work of literature I managed to
find under this title was Chekhov’s novella The
Duel. I confess that my first thought in connection with this word was
about M. Yu. Lermontov with his famous duel in Princess Mary from the novel Hero
of Our Time.
However,
I definitely had to find a work of
fiction with this word in its title. I did and wasn’t disappointed, because
that allowed me to make a big discovery concerning both Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel and Master and Margarita.
This
discovery proved to me yet again that I was on the right track.
To
be continued…
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