Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita Continues.
“Killed!..
why weep now?
Why
the useless chorus of empty praises,
And
the wretched muttering of excuses?
Fate’s
sentence has been carried out!”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Death of the Poet.
The
wily Bulgakov points to the time of the Empress Catherine the Great not only
through his use of the historically famous name Panin, but also by calling the
fictitious play, to which Maksudov gets a free pass, “The Favorite” [masculine!], the action of which takes place [you’ve
guessed it!] in the eighteenth century.
I
cannot stop admiring Bulgakov for his unimposing yet persistent insertion of
Russian history into his works.
What
a gorgeous picture started to form in our mind on the basis of a single
character [a woman at that!] --- Margarita Petrovna Tavricheskaya.
And
how contemporary the Theatrical Novel reads
today, reminding the reader that Tauris, that is, Crimea was recaptured from
the Turks, occupiers of rightful Russian territory, also in the 18th
century.
It
would be so much better if those who judge the Russian people as occupiers of
someone else’s land, get acquainted with world history and figure out whose
land is which.
With
the establishment of Tmutarakan Rus in the tenth century AD, Crimea was ruled
by Russian Princes. Ships were coming from Venice, Florence, and Genoa, for the
purpose of trading with Russia. Since the time of the Tatar-Mongol invasion in
the thirteenth century, Crimea was occupied by Tatars, and used as a transit
route to send some two million people into slavery in Turkey. In that
continuous struggle, the Russian people were spilling their sacred blood for
the Russian soil of Kievan Rus. There was no such thing as “Ukraine,” of
course, the name merely signifies the “edge” of Russia, which is still Russia,
like the edge of a table is still that table.
Returning
to our discussion of Bulgakov’s Theatrical
Novel, the “free pass,” or rather, a special note to obtain a free pass for
S. L. Maksudov, also contains a puzzle. The note is addressed to a certain Petr
Petrovich, who happens to be the “administrator of student stage.”
The
puzzle consists in the fact that in the next 9th chapter: It’s Started, two pages later, the reader meets another Petr Petrovich, whom
Bulgakov introduces as Petr Bombardov, actor of Independent Theater. It
is only later that we find out that his full name is also Petr Petrovich.
Showing
two members of the same theater with the same name Petr Petrovich, and thus
drawing the reader’s attention to this fact, Bulgakov clearly indicates that in
the Theatrical Novel he combines two
prototypes within a single character, which is different from Master and Margarita, where he splits
two different prototypes into two characters each: V. V. Mayakovsky into the
poet Ryukhin and Woland, on the one hand, and S. A. Yesenin into the poet Ivan
Bezdomny and the demon Azazello, on the other.
The
existence of two persons named Petr Petrovich in the Theatrical Novel proves yet again that in the single character of
Petr Petrovich Bombardov, Bulgakov combines A. S. Pushkin and V. V. Mayakovsky,
or it will be better to say that he combines in a single character the features
of these two great Russian poets.
Does
it mean that by the same token two Russian poets are combined by Bulgakov in
the character of S. L. Maksudov? Not necessarily, but so it does turn out.
In
the Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov gets a
perfect opportunity for a new experiment. He makes a very interesting move on
his chessboard. In the character of Bombardov, he combines V. V. Mayakovsky
with his idol A. S. Pushkin, for, as we know, Mayakovsky was obsessed with
Pushkin, and two younger dead souls, S. A. Yesenin and M. Yu. Lermontov, in the
character of Maksudov.
Interestingly
these four great Russian poets constitute the “Magnificent Four” of Russian literature.
Although
S.A. Yesenin is a very original poet (his themes may not be quite original, but
what he does with them, is!), the main ideas which are of interest to us both
in the Theatrical Novel and in Master and Margarita, such as the idea
of revenge, as if in a dream, the idea of a dream, the
idea of a knife, the idea of loneliness, the theme of crying,
the theme of a ship, the theme of unrequited love, and even the
name Maksudov itself, --- all point to M. Yu. Lermontov.
Two
separate component words can be identified within the name Maksudov: Mak
(as in Scottish last names starting with Mc-), and Sud (Judgment). We
shall return to the significance of these later on, but first let us trace the
above-mentioned themes in Lermontov.
In
the 1837 poem Death of the Poet, in
which Lermontov passionately responds to the tragic death of A. S. Pushkin, he
writes:
“Dead
is the poet, a prisoner of honor,
He fell, foul-mouthed by
gossip,
With lead in his chest and
thirst for revenge,
His proud head dropping down…
And so he died, with a futile
thirst for vengeance,
With a secret frustration of
deceived hopes…”
Twice
we find a call for vengeance here, hence the gruesome murder of Judas in
Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius Pilate of
Master and Margarita.
In
the same Lermontov poem we find the theme of loneliness, the problem of genius:
“He
rose against the opinions of society,
Alone,
as always… and now killed!”
M.
Yu. Lermontov blames high society for Pushkin’s death. ---
“Weren’t
you the ones who maliciously hounded
His
free and courageous gift,
And
bellowed, just for fun,
A
barely nascent fire?..”
It
was because of the killing of A. S. Pushkin in this manner and as a challenge
to society, that M. Yu. Lermontov allowed himself to be killed in a duel by
making his shot into the air. It was about himself and about his own
forthcoming death that Lermontov writes the following lines:
“In
cold blood, his killer
Aimed
his hit, there is no escape.
The
empty heart is beating evenly,
The
hand holding the pistol does not waver.”
Lermontov
is chillingly pessimistic in describing the bard’s last refuge, which, according
to him is the coffin, shrouded in eternal silence.
“The
sounds of wondrous songs are silenced,
They
shall be sounding nevermore,
The
bard’s refuge is grim and taut,
And
there is a seal upon his lips.”
It
is because of this Lermontov poem that Bulgakov offers in Master and Margarita a far more different picture of master’s last
retreat:
“Listen to the soundlessness,
Margarita was saying to master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet.
--- Listen and enjoy what you were
deprived of in life – quietude. Look, there, ahead, is your eternal home, which
you have been given as your reward. I can already see the Venetian window and
the clinging grapevine. It creeps up to the very roof. So, this is your home,
your eternal home. I know that in the evening you will be visited by those you
love, those who interest you and those who do not upset you. They will play for
you, they will sing for you, you will see the color of the room when candles
are burning. You will be going to bed having put on your soiled and eternal
night cap; you will be falling asleep with a smile on your lips. The sleep will
strengthen you, you will be reasoning wisely. And you will never be able to
chase me away: I will be the one guarding your sleep.”
M.
Yu. Lermontov closes his poem Death of
the Poet with a direct invective against the members of the Russian high
society who had never stopped the hounding of the great poet A. S. Pushkin:
“You
hide under the cover of the Law,
You
make silent -- Judgment and Truth!..”
And
here we have Lermontov repeating the word “Judgment” several times, to make his
point:
“…But
there’s God’s Judgment, you partakers of depravity,
There
is a fearsome Judgment, it is waiting;
It’s
incorruptible by the clinking of gold,
It
knows all thoughts and deeds in advance…”
Lermontov
repeats the word “Judgment” thrice, in accordance with the Christian tradition.
Yesenin does the same repetition on numerous occasions in his Pugachev. For instance:
“A
thousand demons! A thousand witches! A thousand devils!
What
a rain! What a foul rain! Foul, foul!..”
Or
take this one:
“What
happened? What happened? What happened? ---
Nothing
terrible. Nothing terrible. Nothing terrible.”
Bulgakov
does the same thing, but in his own way. For instance, in the chapter Margarita:
“What did she want, this woman?” And then:
“What was she after, this woman, in whose eyes a certain
incomprehensible little fire was always burning?”
And
a third time:
“What did she need, this slightly squinting in one eye witch,
who had adorned herself that spring with acacia?”
To
be continued…
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