GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXV

Who is Who in Master?

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev.

Posting #1.

“…Death came, and the warrior offered

That they play a game of twisted dice.”

N. S. Gumilev.

Let us now briefly focus on Gumilev’s two poems from the 1907-1910 poetry collection Pearls:

The Old Conquistador.

Bulgakov uses this poem by Gumilev for the character of Matthew Levi in chapter 16: The Execution.

“Condors glided in the smoky sky…

 For eight days he wandered without food,

The stallion died, but under a large cliff

He found a cozy dwelling place,

So that he wouldn’t part with the dear remains.

There he lived in the shade of dried up fig trees,

Singing songs of the sunny Castile…

As always was he bold and calm,

And he knew not either fear or malice…”

The last two lines pertain to Gumilev himself, who by all known accounts had no fear of death when it came to take him, just like he ends this poem:

“…Death came, and the warrior offered

That they play a game of twisted dice.”

That’s why Bulgakov is so difficult to figure out, to solve. He uses Gumilev’s game of dice with Death in the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors. However, we know that Andrei Fokich is getting an invitation to play a game of dice from Woland, that is, Satan, whose prototype happens to be the Russian Revolutionary poet V. V. Mayakovsky. But there are also some features of N. S. Gumilev in Woland. I have already written about Woland’s old-fashioned tuxedo at the séance of black magic at the Variety Theater. There are other similarities too, which I already mentioned before.

A Prayer.

“Fierce sun, threatening sun,

The insane face of God

Walking in space,

Sun, burn away the present

In the name of the future,

But spare the past!”

The two poems above are instrumental for our understanding of Bulgakov, especially of the lines about the sun in Master and Margarita and about the sun and Matthew Levi in Pontius Pilate.

It is here that we finally begin to understand whom Bulgakov calls the “fierce monster.”

“The sun burned the crowd and drove it back to Yershalaim.”

***

A Ballad in Gumilev’s poetry collection Romantic Flowers. [Oh, “triply romantic master!”]

“My friend Lucifer gave me five stallions,

And one golden ring with a ruby in it…”

Bulgakov has six stallions in Woland’s company. But, as the reader will find out at the end of the Ballad, a sixth stallion is added to the group. Four of Bulgakov’s stallions belong to the Magnificent Four: A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, V. V. Mayakovsky, and S. A. Yesenin. Master and Margarita (in the mystical novel) get two more stallions. Also, Woland gives Margarita… not a golden ring with a ruby in it, but a golden horseshoe with diamonds, for good luck.

Like N. S. Gumilev, master believed that the sun had risen for him, when he won good money in a lottery, and sat down to write his Pontius Pilate. Likewise, like the hero of Gumilev’s Ballad, who fell in love with the Maiden of the Moon, master fatefully fell in love with Margarita.

But Bulgakov’s ending is different from Gumilev’s. The Ballad’s hero ends up in darkness and despair, whereas in Master and Margarita, Christ becomes involved in master’s fate, and together with his beloved Margarita, sends them both to Eternal Rest.

What is of utmost interest here, is that the Rest depends on master’s strength of faith. That’s why the ending is so unexpected. On the last page of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov shows how in the lunar stream “a woman of immeasurable beauty was leading toward Ivan a man overgrown with beard, who was nervously glancing around him.”

As I already wrote in the Strangers in the Night, the “woman of immeasurable beauty” points to A. A. Blok and his Muse the Beautiful Lady. The nervously glancing around man overgrown with beard also points in the same direction, as Blok has a delightful take on Pushkin’s God Do Not Let Me Lose My Mind. Here is Blok:

“I’ll lose my mind, my mind I’ll lose,

I love in madness.”

All poets, not only Blok, loved beautiful women. That’s why Bulgakov with his exceptional sense of humor introduces his own “woman of immeasurable beauty.”

All the more so since Gumilev had a Muse of his own, calling her The Muse of Faraway Travels. I bet she was as beautiful as Blok’s Beautiful Lady. No wonder, considering that both these Muses originate with the same woman. I suggest that the reader may try guessing who the woman is.

The arrival of N. S. Gumilev in Master and Margarita changes little, as it is impossible to imagine the poet in the role of a nervously glancing around man overgrown with beard, unless Bulgakov decided on the last page of his novel to play a game of “types” with Gumilev, which would force upon the poet to play a role totally contrary to his character. (Mind you, this game of “types” was invented by Gumilev himself, according to the memoirs of Mme. Nevedomskaya.)

The “woman of immeasurable beauty” very much suits Gumilev, who, like A. Blok, valued beauty in women. She is also quite consistent with the person of the Maiden of the Moon, whom Gumilev claimed to have met on the “heights of consciousness.”

“There on the heights of consciousness are madness and snow,

But I struck my stallions with my whistling whip,

I directed their gallop toward the heights of consciousness,

And there I saw a maiden with a sad face…”

These four lines contain lots of information.

1.      Firstly, Gumilev uses the loaded word “madness”;

2.      Secondly, whistling on the Vorobievy Hills (in Master and Margarita) are Pushkin and Lermontov, alias Koroviev and Kot Begemot, while here Gumilev uses a whistling whip to send his horses up to the heights of consciousness.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXIV

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #20.

What can be done! We are clearing the way

For our distant sons!..””

Alexander Blok. To Poets.

The second line at the end of Blok’s poem Poets, about a “small pearly cloud” is taken from Lermontov’s 1841 poem The Cliff:

“A small golden cloud passed a night

On the breast of a giant cliff;

In early morning she sped away,

Merrily playing on the azure.

But there remained a wet trace

In the wrinkle of the old cliff.

Alone he stands immersed in deep thought,

And he is softly weeping in the desert.”

All subsequent poets of the Silver Age have been weeping over these poems. Blok deliberately avoids identifying the flower, while calling the small cloud “pearly.” The latter comes out of Lermontov’s 1840 little play in verse The Journalist, The Writer, And The Reader, where Lermontov describes his moments of inspiration:

“Writing about what? There comes a time

When both the mind and heart are filled,

And rhymes, comradely like waves,

Stream chirping, one after another,

Rushing forth in a free sequence.

The wondrous luminary rises

In half-awakened soul;

And words are stringing along like pearls

Onto thoughts breathing with strength...”

[More in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.]

And so, if in Night Violet Blok shows Pushkin with his troop, in the poem Poets he turns to his other idol Lermontov, killed in 1841 in a duel at the age of 26.

Turning to the philistine reader, Blok writes that the life of a poet is superior to philistine life. It is filled with inspiration and lofty dreams:

“…At least the poet has

[Maiden’s] braids, and little clouds, and a golden age,

None of these are accessible to you!..”

And again at the end he compares himself to a dog:

“Let me die under a fence, like a dog,

So what if life has trampled me into the ground? –

I believe it was God who has covered me with snow,

It was the blizzard kissing me…”

Also Bulgakov through his word “wonder” points to the great Russian poets Pushkin and Lermontov. The first one wrote the truly wondrous poem:

“I remember the wondrous moment:

You appeared before me…”

That’s why the guest [master] is expecting “wonder” from Ivan Bezdomny, but it never comes.

And in Lermontov’s play in verse The Journalist, The Writer, And The Reader I read:

“…The wondrous luminary rises

In half-awakened soul…”

Here we also have a “wonder” happening.

The idea of turning the poet Ivan Bezdomny into a historian also comes to Bulgakov from Blok’s 1908 poem To Friends:

“…Secretly hostile to one another,

Envious, deaf, alienated,

What can be done! Each of us has tried

To poison his own house.

All the walls are soaked in poison,

And there is no place to put down one’s head…”

Blok continues the theme of “poets-enemies”:

“…Traitors in life and friendship,

Wasters of empty words.

What can be done! We are clearing the way

For our distant sons!”

Turning to the event of his death, Blok is concerned about what the critics are going to write about him.

“…When under a fence in nettles

The wretched bones will rot,

Some later historian

Will write an impressive work…”

And in Bulgakov’s 13^th chapter of Master and Margarita:

“Historian by education, just two years before, he [master] had been working at one of Moscow’s museums…”

This is how Bulgakov reintroduces Blok into master’s character. Bulgakov himself needed to read many books about the Crucifixion of Christ in order to become historically competent and he had done his work splendidly. For instance, he substituted nails with ropes, as the Romans tied the condemned to wooden cross-planks with ropes, instead of driving nails into their hands and feet.

Bulgakov also wrote an engaging work that can be called “impressive” in terms of the scope of the material included in the novel Master and Margarita.

Blok is worried that—

“…The cursed [historian] will only torture

The totally blameless lads [poets]

With dates of birth and death

And a heap of lousy quotations…”

M. Bulgakov obviously does nothing of the kind. He introduces Russian poets into the novel Master and Margarita incognito, leaving the difficult but joyful, rather than sad, task of recognizing the prototypes of his characters to such lucky researchers as myself.

O Lucky… Woman!             

Now this is how Blok closes his poem:

“…I wish I could bury myself in wild grass,

Lose myself in sleep forever!

Be silent, cursed books!

I never wrote you!”

These words of Blok finally explain why Bulgakov wrote this:

“After a silence, Woland spoke to master:

So it’s back to the Arbat basement? And who is going to write? What about the  dreams, the inspiration?

I have no dreams and I have no inspiration either, replied master. – I’m not interested in anything around me except her. – He put his hand on Margarita’s head again. – I’ve been broken, I am bored, and I want to be back to the basement.

And what about your novel? Pilate?

It’s hateful to me, that novel, replied master. – I have suffered too much because of it.

And to you I say, replied [Woland] with a smile, addressing master, – that your novel will still bring you more surprises.

This is very sad, said master...”

Here we already have M. Yu. Lermontov, whom Blok loved so much. And Blok in this scene is master’s prototype. Remember that to Lermontov belongs the famous expression: “It would have been funny had it not been so sad.”

“…No, no, this is not sad, said Woland.”

I do not know what exactly Woland/ Bulgakov meant by “surprises.” The subject of the conversation here is master’s novel Pontius Pilate. I think that “surprises” are the solutions to the puzzles posed both in the novel Master and Margarita and in the subnovel Pontius Pilate. For me personally the big first surprise was solving the mystery of the Dark-Violet Knight. But my whole work on Bulgakov’s works has been a sheer delight, I would call it a joy for me.

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXIII

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #19.

“–So, what about my poems?..

–I dislike them terribly.

–And which of them have you read?

– I’ve read none of them…”

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

Considering that the novel Master and Margarita starts with the poet Ivan Bezdomny already on the first page of the first chapter, and ends with him in the Epilogue, I have decided to end my chapter Who’s Who in Master with him as well. However in the Epilogue, on the last pages of the novel, the reader is no longer dealing with the poet Ivan Bezdomny, but with a bona fide historian. He is a Fellow at the Institute of History and Philosophy Professor Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev. How he managed to become a historian will become clear to the researcher from this posting.

Connected with Ivan Bezdomny is yet another conversation of master. Bulgakov writes:

“The guest enquired: Occupation?

–Poet, – for some reason reluctantly confessed Ivan.

The visitor was saddened. – Oh, how unlucky am I! – he exclaimed. Having learned that Ivan’s last name was Bezdomny, the guest said, frowning: Eh ,eh…”

It is becoming quite clear to the researcher here that in master we are dealing with A. A. Blok. As for Ivan Bezdomny, the sly Bulgakov is trying to pass him off as Andrei Bely, aka Boris Bugaev. Ivan asks:

“–So, what about my poems? You don’t like them?

–I dislike them terribly.

–And which of them have you read?

– I’ve read none of them! – nervously exclaimed the visitor…

–And how come you say what you say?..

–As if I haven’t read other such stuff?.. However, if by a miracle? [The Russian word is ‘chudo’. This will be crucial in connection with Ivan’s reply below.] All right, I am willing to trust you. You tell me yourself: are they any good?”

Ivan Bezdomny’s [Bulgakov’s] answer is stunning:

“Monstrous! – suddenly bravely and frankly said Ivan. [The Russian word in this case is ‘chudovischno’. See the connection above.]”

Considering that I have already stated that Ivan’s guest in this excerpt is the Russian poet Alexander Blok, I am going to produce evidence of that. As always, I am addressing myself to the poet’s poetry.

In the 6^th and last cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok writes:

“He was greeted everywhere

In the streets on sleepy days.

He was walking and carrying his miracle,

Stumbling in the frosty shade.”

As for discourses on poems and poets, Blok has a very interesting poem in that respect. In order to appreciate it in full measure, the researcher needs to reread Blok’s poem The Night Violet.

The title of this poem is Poets. It belongs to the period between 1908 and 1916. –

“Outside the city, there rose a deserted quarter

On a soil marshy and unsteady…”

The “night violet” grows outside the city on a marsh.

“…Poets lived there, and each greeted another

With a conceited smile…”

In his long poem The Night Violet, Blok shows A. S. Pushkin with a “troop” of Russian poets sitting on benches inside a hut. When Blok enters this Russian hut, he recognizes many of those seated there. They are all dead and he knows them from their legacy: verses and prose.

In the poem Poets, Blok shows his contemporary time:

“…To no purpose was the radiant day rising

Over this sorrowful marsh [sic!]:

Its dweller was devoting his day

To wine and diligent work.

When drunk, they were swearing to friendship,

Their chatter was cynical and spicy’

As the morning came they were vomiting,

Then behind closed doors

They were working stupidly and zealously.

Then they crawled out of their kennels like dogs…”

If Marina Tsvetaeva compares poets to cats, ostensibly following Kipling with his tale about the cat who walked by himself, in reality she also takes this idea from Pushkin from his Dedication to the charming fairytale in verse Ruslan and Lyudmila:

“There’s a green oak by the Lukomorye,

A golden chain is on that oak.

Both day and night, a learned cat

Walks all around along that chain.

When right he walks, a song he’s singing;

When left, a fairytale he tells…”

Marina Tsvetaeva has indeed walked her “own way” in poetry.

“[Their] Own Ways… What enthralls me in this title are both words equally, and the formula arising from them. What can a poet call his own, except his own way? What can he and would he want to call his own, except his way? Everything else is alien: yours, theirs, but my way is mine. The way is the only property of the wayless…”

According to Blok, poets in his time:

“…They were crawling out of their kennels like dogs,

Looking on, as the sea was burning…

Relaxed, they were dreaming of the Golden Age

[That is, of A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov],

Scolding the publishers in unison,

And wept over a small flower,

Over a small pearly cloud…”

In the last two lines of Blok’s poem Poets, the poet managed to use three poems of the poet of the Golden Age M. Yu. Lermontov. Blok’s “small flower” comes from Lermontov’s fairytale poem Forget-Me-Not. In it, the poet writes about a heartless beauty who asks a “noble knight” in love with her to pluck for her a “blue flower growing on a marsh.” Lermontov writes:

“…My knight jumped up, in admiration

Of the beauty of her soul;

Leaping over the rivulet, he flies

Like an arrow to pluck the precious flower

With a hurried hand…”

Bogged down in the marsh, the knight manages not only to pluck the lethal flower, but also to throw it to the “gentle maiden” just before he drowns.

“...Ever since then, it’s dear to love,

It’s called ‘forget-me-not’…”

Poets had much to cry about!

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXII

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #18.

“What’s in my name for you?

It will die like the sad noise

Of a wave splashing on a faraway shore,

Like a sound of night in a deep forest…”

A. S. Pushkin. What’s in My Name for You?

Two more chapters are connected with the theme of the knife in the novel Master and Margarita.

Firstly, it is chapter 13 The Appearance of the Hero. We meet Margarita here, but she is not called by her name. Bulgakov writes: “…And soon, soon this woman became my secret wife.”

The word “secret” points to the Russian poet Alexander Blok, who, following A.S. Pushkin, extolled “secret freedom.”

Another sentence: “The sun of May was shining on us” indicates that both master and his “secret wife” are Russian poets, remembering that another Russian poet, K. D. Balmont, had written a book of poetry titled Let Us Be Like The Sun. And everything started from this. There are numerous examples in the poetry of the Silver Age. Bulgakov has a good reason to make such an emphasis on the “sun” in both the sub-novel Pontius Pilate and the novel Master and Margarita. And as for master’s beloved and master himself having no name, Bulgakov takes this from A. S. Pushkin. Incidentally, so does Blok with his “unknown lady-strangers,” and so do numerous other poets.”

Pushkin begins his titleless 1830 poem with the words:

“What’s in my name for you?

It will die like the sad noise

Of a wave splashing on a faraway shore,

Like a sound of night in a deep forest…”

This is why master does not give either his own name or that of his beloved. The name “Margarita” first pops up in the second part of the novel. The same Pushkin poem’s last four lines point to the same thing:

“…But on a day of sadness in the silence,

Say it, languishing:

There is a memory of me,

There is a heart in the world, where I keep living.”

And in the 19^th chapter Margarita the Unknown (master’s secret wife), having returned to her mansion, as master is no longer in the basement apartment, contemplates her life without him:

“She needed to forget him or die herself... Is it possible to endure such a life? No! Forget him, whatever it costs. – Forget him! But he could not be forgotten, that’s what the trouble was.”

As the reader understands, Bulgakov writes up this chapter following Pushkin’s poem above. Bulgakov writes:

“Having had tea, she went into the dark windowless room where she kept her suitcases and all sorts of old stuff. In Margarita’s hands was an old album in brown leather, which had master’s photograph in it, his savings bank book with the deposit balance of 10,000 rubles in his name [sic!], pressed between sheets of tissue paper, petals of a dried rose, and part of a notebook with typewritten text and a burned-off bottom edge. Having returned to her bedroom with this treasure, Margarita fixed master’s photograph into the three-part mirror and sat there for close to an hour holding the fire-damaged notebook in her lap, leafing through the pages and rereading what now had neither a beginning nor an end. Wiping off her tears, Margarita Nikolayevna put the notebook aside, put her elbows on the little table under the mirror, and having her reflection in the mirror, sat there for a long time never taking her eyes off the photograph. Then the tears dried up. Margarita carefully packed her belongings and in a few minutes they were buried again under a pile of silken clobber, and the lock to the dark room closed with a ring.”

Without revealing master’s name, Bulgakov still depicts a loving woman who “has memory” of her lover, “there is a heart in the world where [master] lives.” Incredible! Once again accepting Pushkin’s challenge, M. Bulgakov takes Pushkin’s poem and turns it into unforgettable pages of his novel. What man and what woman wouldn’t wish to be loved like that? Terrific!

This excerpt from the 19^th chapter of Master and Margarita also offers the researcher the same word first uttered by Yeshua, and much later by Pontius Pilate in his conversation with Aphranius. Bulgakov writes:

“No! Master was mistaken when he bitterly told Ivanushka at the clinic at the hour when the night pulled past midnight, that she must have forgotten him. That could never be. She certainly hadn’t forgotten him. Waking up, Margarita did not burst into tears, as it had used to be often the case, because she woke up with a premonition [so, this is the word!] that today at last something was going to happen. Having sensed that premonition, she stared heating it up and cultivating it in her soul, apprehensive that it might leave her.”

Becoming clear in this excerpt is what M. Bulgakov has in mind. A “premonition” means “that something must necessarily happen, because it cannot be that something would last forever.”

This is what Pontius Pilate understands from his conversation with Yeshua, when Yeshua says: “I have a premonition that a misfortune has befallen him [Judas]…”

Pontius Pilate is taking advantage of the word “premonition,” and this word alone convinces the chief of secret service Aphranius that he must indeed have Judas slaughtered.

If we now summarize the premonitions of Yeshua, Pontius Pilate and Margarita, such a premonition in all three cases leads to death. Yeshua dies on the pole, pierced by a lance; Judas is slaughtered by two knife-wielding assassins; and Margarita dies because master lives in her heart, there is a memory of master, and nothing else.

As for the knives, Bulgakov writes already in chapter 13 The Appearance of the Hero:

“…and, how curious, before my meeting with her, our little yard had seldom been visited, simply said, no one ever had, but now it seemed to me that the whole town made it its destination. The yard gate makes a sound, the heart makes a sound, and just imagine: at the level of my face, outside my little window, someone’s dirty boots, unfailingly… Knife sharpener? Come on! Who needs a knife sharpener in our building? Sharpening what? What kind of knives?..”

Considering that the theme of the knives is connected to Andrei Bely, and master is baffled why anybody should offer him in his basement to “sharpen knives,” it means that in master’s character, in this case, the researcher is dealing with Alexander Blok (“And this hand shall not raise a knife!”).

Making use of the theme of the knife, Bulgakov is also calling upon the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin, in the character of Azazello. Hence a confusion results. Yesenin’s poetry frequently focuses on knives. Let me remind the reader that in in Chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time! when a kitchen maid moans on seeing the demonic creatures pass by her, and she wants to raise her hand for the sign of the cross, Azazello terribly yells to her from his saddle: “I’ll cut off your arm!”

In Sergey Yesenin we have:

“So what if we were growing up with knives,

And our sisters were growing up like the month of May…”

Bulgakov may have done it in order to confuse the reader in the characters of Matthew Levi and Azazello.

Which is why I, as always, emphasize the importance of the knowledge of Russian poetry, in order to unravel this puzzle properly.

I’d like to close this with A. S. Pushkin’s titleless 1934 poem:

“It’s time, my friend, it’s time! The heart is asking for rest –

Days fly after days and each hour takes away

A particle of being, yet the two of us together

Propose to live… and – may just die...”

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXI

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #17.

“I love you, my Guardian Angel in darkness,

In darkness that is with me all the time on earth…

For having been my radiant bride,..”

Alexander Blok. Guardian Angel.

The next situation in which Alexander Blok also takes center stage consists of several components.

“The arrestee was the first to speak: I see that some kind of trouble has occurred because of my talk with that youth from Kyriath. I am having a premonition that a misfortune has befallen him, and I am very sorry for him...”

The Procurator is struck by the fact that Yeshua still does not realize the danger of his situation, and starts asking him whether Yeshua believes “in any gods.”

“God is One, and in Him I believe.

Then pray to him! Pray hard. Although this won’t help. You have a wife?.. Abhorrent city!.. Had you been slaughtered before your meeting with Judas from Kyriath, you would surely have fared better...”

A lot of interesting material pertaining to Blok is contained here. As always I resort to poetry. In 1906, he wrote the poem Guardian Angel about his love for his wife, who later abandoned him. This is how we can explain Yeshua’s answer to Pilate’s question: “You have a wife?” –

“No, I am by myself.”

Then Blok moves on to himself:

Because I want to but dare not to kill –

Take revenge on the faint-hearted who lived without fire,

Those who have humiliated my people and me!

Who locked up the free and the strong in prison,

Who long disbelieved my fire,

Who wishes for money to deprive me of the light of day,

Who wants to buy a dog’s obedience from me,

Because I am weak and ready to succumb,

Because my ancestors are generations of slaves…

And the soul has been killed by the poison of tenderness,

And this hand shall not raise a knife…”

This Blokian poem does not contain the word “slaughter,” which is used not by Yeshua but by Pontius Pilate. Which is the reason why I am putting together the following two lines from Blok’s Guardian Angel:

“...Because I want to, but dare not to kill –

And this hand shall not raise a knife…”

“To kill” using “a knife” means to “slaughter.” Yeshua does not intend to take revenge on Judas. Revenge never enters his head. He feels sorry for Judas because as a result of his visit Judas may get in trouble.

The word “slaughter” in Bulgakov is connected with Pontius Pilate, who uses this word in conjunction with the word “premonition” in the 25^th chapter in order to impress on Aphranius that Judas is going to be slaughtered. In a very interesting fashion, Bulgakov conveys this dialogue between the procurator and the chief of secret police. On the one hand, it is not in Pilate’s interest to openly admit to Aphranius that it is he who wishes Judas to be slaughtered. Which is why Pilate orders the assassination in a convoluted way. He has no proof that someone else wants to murder Judas, but insists that such information exists.

“Such information exists. Let me not talk about it. Moreover, it is accidental, dark, and unreliable. But I am obligated to foresee everything. Such is the burden of my office…”

[And here it comes!]

“And more than anything else I must trust my premonition, for it has never failed me yet…”

And then again Pilate tries to convince Aphranius:

“And still, they will slaughter him tonight – stubbornly repeated Pilate. – I have this premonition, I’m telling you! Never once has it failed me.”

Why does Bulgakov borrow this word from Yeshua and passes it on from the 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita to the 25^th?

Apparently, this journey of “premonition” from Yeshua to Pontius Pilate can be explained by the following words of Bulgakov in chapter 2:

“It seemed to the procurator that he had left something unsaid with the condemned man, and perhaps even something unlistened to.”

So what could it be? It is quite possible that Pilate understood Yeshua’s words backwards, because it is precisely Pilate who was trying to convince Aphranius that Judas was to be slaughtered on Paschal Night. But it is most likely that Pilate was influenced by other words of Yeshua after he had finally understood with Pilate’s help that some people wanted to kill him and asked the procurator to let him go.

The subsequent feeling of guilt affected Pontius Pilate. He was also overcome by sheer humiliation, having directly asked Caiaphas three times to have Yeshua released, and having been denied his request.

Using the word premonition, not only was he able to convince Aphranius to have Judas slaughtered without giving him an express order to do so, and thus maintaining his deniability. In such a manner he avenged both the death of Yeshua and his own failure in the face of Caiaphas’s stubborn resistance by having the blood money returned to the High Priest on the same Paschal Night.

This is when Aphranius fully understood what was expected of him. Bulgakov writes:

“Imagine how pleasant it will be for the High Priest to receive such a gift on holiday night!

Not only pleasant! – replied the guest [Aphranius], smiling. – I suppose that there will be a very big scandal there.”

As my chapter The Garden with Caiaphas in it has already come out, we can note here, without a spoiler in the making, that apparently V. Ya. Bryusov appealed to K. D. Balmont, but lost. Bulgakov describes this scene somewhat prematurely. The procurator’s “premonition” was a premonition of Bryusov himself, as he must have been struck by the virtually simultaneous deaths of his two best students, the two greats: Blok and Gumilev.

Bryusov’s “premonition” proved itself right. Three years later, in 1924, the same “poetic vermin” (Marina Tsvetaeva’s term to designate the worst of the worst in the literary circles of Russia) would destroy him too.

To be continued…

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GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DX

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #16.

“...And if the face of freedom is revealed,

Revealed first is the face of the snake,..”

Alexander Blok. The City.

In the 2^nd chapter of Master and Margarita, titled Pontius Pilate, Alexander Blok appears for a brief moment, but in a very important conversation between Yeshua and Pontius Pilate about power. Yeshua tells Pilate about a warm welcome he had received from Judas, who urged Yeshua to share with him his views on state power. And this is what Bulgakov writes:

“All power is violence against the people. A time will come when there will be no more power of the Caesars or any other power.”

Like many other Russian intellectuals, Blok very painfully responded to the Russian revolution of 1905. Yeshua’s words are not Gumilev’s, who was a devout monarchist. They are Blok’s words, and in such a fashion Blok emerges as another prototype for the character of Yeshua.

In the poetry collection The City (1904-1908) Blok writes (in a 1905 poem):

“...And if the face of freedom is revealed,

Revealed first is the face of the snake,

And not a single joint is compressed

Of the flashing rings of the scales…”

Also in the next poem in the same cycle, dated 1905, Blok writes:

“…And over the bays the voice of the rabble

Was lost, dispelled in the Neva’s sleep,

And the wild screams: Dethrone! Dethrone!

Do not awaken pity in the sleepy wave.”

In short, these Blokian lines clearly demonstrate that he was not a monarchist like Gumilev was. And finally, Blok’s terrific 1905 poem The Rally:

“He was speaking wisely and sharply,

And the dim eye-pupils were darting,

Straight and glitterless,

Blind little lights.

And streaming from below were glances

Of many thousands of eyes,

And he had no premonition that soon

His last hour would strike.

His movements were sure,

And his voice was stern…

A noise erupted like the sound

Of a dropped smoldering firebrand…

And in the ringing of broken glass

A hollow moan burst in,

And the man fell down on the slabs

With a broken head…

I don’t know who in the crowd

Killed him with the thrown stone,

And I clearly remember how a rivulet of blood

Remained on the pole…”

It becomes quite clear here that it is from this Blokian poem that Bulgakov takes the idea of the pole, also like Blok himself is following after Christ. The Romans did not use nails in crucifixion, but tied the condemned with ropes to a pole with two crossbeams for arms and legs.

“…And resonantly clicked near the vault

The set triggers.

And flashing in the fleeting light

Was how the man was lying

And how a soldier

Was holding his rifle at the ready

Over the dead man.

And stern and quiet

Were the open eye pupils,

Stretching gracefully before him

Were glinting bayonets…”

And here comes the wonderful ending:

“...As though one hidden at the entrance

Behind the black muzzle of the barrels

Had confidently breathed in the night

The breath of freedom.”

This 1905 poem already contains a precursor of the famous Blokian 1918 long poem The Twelve.:

“...And in the sudden quietude

The circle of the face was radiant,

Quiet was the Angel flying over,

And boundless joy…”

Remember the words closing Blok’s The Twelve? –

“...Crowned with a white wreath of roses –

Jesus Christ is leading the way.”

This is totally unsurprising, as already in 1905 Blok writes:

“Here He is, Christ – in chains and roses –

Behind the bars of my prison.”

This is why M. A. Bulgakov in the 25^th chapter of Master and Margarita: How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from Kyriath puts two white roses in a red puddle, as though of blood.

To be continued…

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