GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLVII

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“In vain, hiding in secret branches,

Your gentle flock is ringing loudly.

I am dropping my voluptuous sash,

I am dropping my multi-loving myrtle…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. Praise to Aphrodite. 1921.

Why is Margarita ascending an endless staircase? In Marina Tsvetaeva’s words:

“Storeys? Epochs. The swiftest feet would take a hundred years to ascend such a staircase.”

“I would have given much to be now walking in the footsteps of those two…”

Tsvetaeva means herself “in the prep class” of the gymnasium and the painter Natalia Goncharova, graduating from the gymnasium. Hence, Bulgakov’s scene at the Ball, where Koroviev looks at his much younger self.

“Begemot’s example was followed only by the ingenious dressmaker and her escort, unidentified young mulatto. Both of them plunged into the cognac, but here Koroviev caught Margarita’s arm, and they left the bathers to their own devices…”

For some reason, Koroviev was not too eager to watch, or to let Margarita watch, what the young mulatto was engaging in with the ingenious dressmaker inside the pool.

“Patriarch Ponds, red flannel pants, eight years old. Walking hand-in-hand with Natalia Goncharova… (I remember, and she remembers me. She knows – I. It means – mine.”

Marina Tsvetaeva names famous “couples” –

1.      “through the deadly bed” (Romeo and Juliet);

2.      “through the monastery gate” (Heloise and Abelard);

3.      “through all seas” (Tristan and Isolde).

There are also broken pairs, such as –

1.      Siegfried failing to recognize Brunhilde;

2.      Penthesilea failing to recognize Achilles, where fate hides in a misunderstanding, albeit a fateful one.

And there are also truly fateful couples, condemned inherently, without any hope either in this world or in the next one.

Again, I do not know whether Bulgakov read this or not, most likely not, as the lines above were written when Tsvetaeva was living abroad. But Bulgakov is an honest writer. He has shown us a “broken couple,” in the characters of master and Margarita, having chosen two mismatched Russian poets who had never been lovers, solely on the strength of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems dedicated to Alexander Blok.

Very interestingly, Tsvetaeva summarizes the life of Blok. Previously, she wrote about the living poet as though he were dead. After his death, she is now writing about the dead poet as though he were alive. She calls him “a leader without his troop,” “a prince without a country,” “a friend without friends.” After the death of Blok, Marina Tsvetaeva’s words about him become clearer. –

“The death of Blok. What is surprising is not that he died, but that he lived. There are few earthly markers… All of a sudden somehow he has become an icon, postmortem while alive (in our love)… He as a whole is such an explicit triumph of the spirit, such a palpable spirit, that it is astounding how his life was allowed? (To be so broken in him!)

I perceive Blok’s death as an Ascension.”

That’s why a year before his death Tsvetaeva writes:

“And to us all appeared – to all wide square! –

The sacred heart of Alexander Blok.”

On the day of Blok’s death, Tsvetaeva writes:

“Do not bother him!

His countenance was so clear:

My Kingdom is not of this world…”

She insists, however, that –

“There was only one thing still alive in him:

His broken wing.”

Considering that Marina Tsvetaeva insists in her poems that A. Blok was “not of this world,” Bulgakov could not send both of them off with Woland’s cavalcade, and, in accordance with Yeshua’s wish, he sent them to Rest, under the images of the two main characters of Master and Margarita: master and Margarita.

As a matter of fact, Blok was an introvert who found his poetry and inspiration from within himself. He had a very rich life, few people have had it richer, but all of it was his inner life. It seems that he needed no other person from outside of himself to penetrate inside that introverted shell of indifference to where his heart was beating so passionately and so generously for his reader.

Sadly, Alexander Blok, who exerted such a profound influence on the subsequent great Russian poets, such as V. V. Mayakovsky and S. A. Yesenin, did not get enough credit from them for this influence. It is primarily thanks to Marina Tsvetaeva, who had virtually sanctified him in both her poetry and prose, that some justice has been done to his memory.

Already after Blok’s death, Tsvetaeva continues to search for him in her poems:

“Grab him! Tighter!

Love, and love him only!”

With such a résumé , Marina Tsvetaeva had to knock out all other contestants for the character of master’s beloved in Master and Margarita, and she did!

In a November 1921 poem, written already after A. Blok’s death, Marina Tsvetaeva, for some reason, is looking for Blok in all baby cribs across Russia, perhaps thus reacting to his broadly devised long poem Retribution, which remained unfinished by Blok, but given in outline, about a father, a son, and a grandson. Most probably, Tsvetaeva thought that in this poem, Blok was portraying one and the same person: himself.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLVI

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“I sing my lying blood in treacherous veins.

I drink to all the treacherous lovers of mine:

The ones to come…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. 1919

A. A. Block studied A. S. Pushkin, like M. Yu. Lermontov before him, and V. V. Mayakovsky and S. A. Yesenin after him.

Pushkin’s fairytales were of great interest to Blok, and they inspired him to write poetry on their subjects. Blok’s poem In the Attic can serve as an example.

The very strange inner conversation of Margarita, sitting by herself under the Kremlin Wall, can also be explained by the fact that Marina Tsvetaeva and Blok were never lovers. It follows an unsuccessful attempt of a man passing by to strike a conversation with Margarita, which she discourages. –

“Here is a good example, -- Margarita was mentally addressing him who possessed her. – Why did I send this man away? I am bored, and there was nothing wrong with that Lovelace…”

“He who possessed her…” This is how Bulgakov saw the bizarre relationship of Tsvetaeva and Blok, and this is how he portrayed it, considering that Blok had his own “Margarita, the” “woman-stranger” living inside him.

Such strange places in Master and Margarita ought to draw an even greater attention to this unique work of genius. These strange places challenge the reader to conquer yet another peak in the mountain range of Bulgakov’s masterpiece.

The poetry of A. A. Blok “possessed” Marina Tsvetaeva to such an extent that she started writing poems to Blok, beginning in 1916.

Bulgakov, naturally, read the works of all his major contemporaries, as he shows through the character of Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel.

Bulgakov became interested in Tsvetaeva because of her poems To A. S. Pushkin (1913) and also To A. A. Blok (1916, 1920, 1921). Having already devised the creation of “Woland and Cie,” which would include great Russian poets, Bulgakov understood that to ensure a complete success of his undertaking, he needed a love story. Thus, such a love story emerged from his take on M. Tsvetaeva’s poems to Blok.

It is such a great pity that Marina Tsvetaeva wrote her My Pushkin so late in life (1937), and while living abroad. In this work, her childhood reminiscences are intertwined with her acquaintance in Paris with the Russian painter Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova, grandniece of A. S. Pushkin’s wife Natalia Nikolayevna Goncharova.

In Moscow, Marina Tsvetaeva lived with her parents, brothers, and sisters near Nikitskiye Gates, and they were neighbors there of the Goncharov family, but, as it often happens, they did not know each other.

Tsvetaeva’s father was a widower with two children when he married the young girl who was to become the mother of Marina Tsvetaeva. This young girl, Marina’s future mother, had submitted to her father’s request, giving up on the man she loved, to marry a widower with two children from a previous marriage, still deeply in love with his dead wife.

Here already, Bulgakov borrows the place of work for his master, namely, the museum, regarding which M. Tsvetaeva writes in her 1933 reminiscences The Laurel Wreath, dedicated to her father.

I am naturally unaware whether Bulgakov read these reminiscences or not. But what a coincidence! Most likely, Tsvetaeva’s father, like master, knew that many languages. From Nikitskiye Gates, nannies were taking the children for walks on Patriarch Ponds or to the Pushkin Monument on Tverskoy Boulevard.

Yet another coincidence.

Master and Margarita begins on Patriarch Ponds, but Marina Tsvetaeva says that she always preferred walking toward the Pushkin Monument. –

“…Because I liked to walk from it down the sandy or snowy alley, and to return up the sandy or snowy alley toward it, toward his back with the hand, toward his hand behind his back…”

“…The Pushkin Monument was black as a grand piano. Because of the Pushkin Monument I have my insane love for the blacks, which I have carried through all my life…”

“…I liked it that whether we were coming or leaving, he is always standing there. Under the snow, under the fallen leaves, at dawn, in the blueness, in the hazy milk of winter, – always standing there…”

I was right when, even not realizing yet that Marina Tsvetaeva was Margarita’s prototype, I wrote that the meeting on Tverskaya means for every Russian that Pushkin Monument, cast in black iron, showing the African heritage of the great Russian poet.

The Pushkin Monument is “a monument to freedom – the elements – fate.”

Hence, in Master and Margarita, Bulgakov writes:

“Ivan found out that the guest and his secret wife had come to the conclusion already in the first days of their affair that it was fate herself that had brought them together on the corner of Tverskaya and a side street, and that they had been created for each other for all time.”

We can now say: for the ages, because Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita is immortal, and together with the novel, all its characters, their prototypes being well-known real personalities.

The love story of master and Margarita will continue to dominate, but how important it is to learn that behind Bulgakov’s characters stand these two Russian poets of the early 20^th century: Alexander Blok and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Thanks to Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems to Blok, and Blok’s attraction to the “stranger-woman,” Bulgakov is not only joining them in a love story anybody can envy, but is also showing us the historical background of his time...

…In order to say, after his hero Pushkin:

“…That in my cruel age I glorified freedom…”

Marina Tsvetaeva was four years old when their home was visited by –

“…The honorary guardian of the museum,

Pushkin’s own son, already in advanced years,

The beard all white, and with a star upon his chest…”

What is also striking is that Bulgakov introduces a certain “Backenbarter” on the river, in his chapter The Flight. Marina Tsvetaeva writes: “Pushkin had side whiskers,” in her childhood memoirs My Pushkin.

Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry provides another interpretation to the significance of blood in the novel Master and Margarita. There is a reason why the question of blood is raised by Woland on several occasions:

“Yes, Koroviev is right… Blood!”

And again: “Blood is a great thing!, said Woland cheerfully…”

So, here is why Woland so much likes to quote Koroviev about blood, who, like Marina Tsvetaeva, recognizes the meaning of it.

In her poem In Memoriam H. Heine, Marina Tsvetaeva exhibits her strong willfulness, writing:

“Our dispute is not finished, but only beginning!

In the next life – it’s a pleasure to behold! –

You will be crying, and I will be singing!

A tambourine in hand, the devil in blood!

A red skirt covered by black hearts!”

Why did Woland quote Koroviev, then?

It was also because of the “red skirt.” A. S. Pushkin has a poem The Monk, where the devil tempts an old monk with a “white skirt.”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLV

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“Shall I say what I was thinking about?

In the rain – under one cloak,

In the night – under one cloak, then

To the coffin – under one cloak.”

Marina Tsvetaeva. Disciple. 1921.

Alexander Blok, like M. Bulgakov after him, understood Pushkin’s Tale of a Dead Princess and the Seven Warriors correctly, namely, that the Princess had died of poison, and that she remained dead, and that her grieving fiancé died too, desperately throwing himself with all his might against her crystal coffin.

The sad truth of Pushkin’s fairytale is not hard to figure out. With that violent strike the Prince breaks the coffin. And although the next line is that the Maiden all of a sudden comes back to life, and the Maiden even says: “Oh how long have I been sleeping!” – yet the sad reality of the situation is underscored by the following words:

“…And she rises from the coffin…”

How’s that? Hasn’t Pushkin just told us that the Prince threw himself against the coffin with all his might, so that the crystal coffin was shattered? What also gives away Pushkin’s ruse, is the dot-dot-dot at the end of the line:

“And she rises from the coffin…”

Blok’s variation noir on Pushkin’s Dead Princess is the most interesting. In his poem The Tale, he gives a totally horrific and unique take on this fairytale. Curiously, we find another “Tale” in Lermontov. –

“I do not want the world to learn

My tale of mystery;

Of how I loved and how I suffered,

The judge of these is only God and my conscience.”

Now here is Blok’s macabre “Tale”:

“In the windows, curtained

By a net of wet dust,

A dark profile of a woman

Leaned downwards…”

Blok intensifies the situation by the image of another woman, apparently playing the leading role in his “Tale” –

“…And unexpectedly sharply

Curses started sounding…

As if cutting through

The line of rain:

With an uncovered head,

Someone in a red dress

Was raising a tiny child

High into the air…”

It may look here as if Blok has reached his apogee, having introduced a child into his “Tale…” But it isn’t so.

“Bright and persistent,

An inveterate ray of light fell,

And immediately, the woman,

Daughter of nightly amusements,

Madly hit her head on the wall,

With a scream of abandon

Dropping the child into the night…”

Here it is, what Blok takes from Pushkin’s Tale of a Dead Princess and the Seven Warriors. It is exactly how Prince Yelisey broke his own head.

“And against the coffin of his beloved bride

He hit [his head] with all his might.”

And so, forget the delirious happy ending which the dying prince dreams up at the last moment of his life. Prince Yelisey in utter despair bangs his head on the crystal coffin with such force that the coffin breaks. So does Prince Yelisey’s head…

In fact, A. S. Pushkin offers us two endings, whichever we are more comfortable with. In the real one, the Princess remains dead. In the happy one, she comes back to life, and the two of them set upon the journey back, and get married, to live happily ever after.

In Blok’s warped world, sure thing, there can be no happy ending. –

“And gray visions crowded…

As she was lying there on her back…

In her dirty-red dress,

On a bloody pavement…”

No Prince Yelisey here! This is actually a duel between two women. The “Prince” has been left out of the frame. –

“…But out of those open eyes

A glance, persistent and daring,

Was still looking for someone

In the upper floors…

And it found and met,

In the window, by the curtain,

The glance of a dark woman

Clad in artful lace…”

The curtain now falls. –

“…The two glances met and froze

In a soundless scream,

And the moment lingered on…

The street was waiting…

But in another moment

The curtain fell down,

And down there, in the open eyes,

The strength died…”

Like Pushkin, Blok offers the reader an improbable happy (sort of!) ending:

“…Someone raised the screaming child

In [His] arms,

And, crossing [Himself],

Furtively wiped [His] eyes…”

This ending is indeed improbable, as Blok has written that the woman had raised the child into the air, and having fatally broken her head against the wall, she “dropped the child into the night.”

In other words, the child must have been killed by that fall, like Pushkin’s Prince Yelisey must have been killed after striking his head against the crystal coffin in despair.

A. A. Blok portrays Christ in that “Someone.”

“…Someone gently stroked

The child’s wet curl.

Leaving quietly,

And crying while leaving.”

So does Margarita, having rubbed herself with the poisoned cream and dying, remembers herself young and happy. Hadn’t she loved her fiancé, marrying him? But bearing no children, she turned into an evil stepmother and stopped loving herself.

And here is a portrait of the evil stepmother for you, who is also the unloved stepdaughter of hers in the same body.

To be continued…                                                 

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLIV

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“And when one day you are drawn

Into an eternal journey, like into water,

Justify your snake nature:

Forget home – me – my verses.

Remember one thing, tomorrow you’ll be old,

Drink wine, drive a troika, sing on the edge,

Become a blue-eyed Gypsy.

Know one thing: nobody is your equal,

And throw yourself on everybody’s chest…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. To Alya.

[Alya=Tsvetaeva’s little daughter.]

Why is the heroine of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita naked?

Marina Tsvetaeva is reasoning thus:

“Is my body me? Can it listen to music, write poetry, etc.? The body can only squeal and blush. The body is a dress. What is my concern if it gets stolen, in which hole, under which stone it has been buried by the thief? To the devil with them (both the thief and the dress).”

Hence Bulgakov takes the idea of leaving Margarita without the dress which she had originally wanted to wear to the foreigner’s party. In other words, following Marina Tsvetaeva, Bulgakov says: “To the devil with it,” the dress, and he leaves his heroine naked, to listen to music [a waltz].

And in yet another scene, he allows the devil to play the thief, by stealing the clothes of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, replacing them with a peacenik’s tolstovka and underpants.

So that the reader would take it seriously, Bulgakov follows the advice of Marina Tsvetaeva: “That’s why one must burn!” Bulgakov’s body was burned. (To the devil with the body, only the soul is immortal!)

Because of Marina Tsvetaeva’s adulation of A. S. Pushkin, Bulgakov decided to introduce into his novel the woman Margarita, namely Marina Tsvetaeva, and also on account of her exorbitant veneration of A. A. Block. Thus Bulgakov united in his novel Master and Margarita M. Tsvetaeva during her lifetime and the enigmatic Russian poet who died in 1921, about whom Tsvetaeva said: “It is surprising not that he has died, but that he lived.”

Having created this pair by, paraphrasing Marina Tsvetaeva, “a triumph of human spirit,” Bulgakov’s genius has given the woman in Marina Tsvetaeva in his novel Master and Margarita what she had always wanted in life and never got: “The will of another to a better me.”

“I always wanted to serve, always fanatically dreamed of being obedient, to put my trust in someone, to be outside my own will…”

So, what was stopping her from achieving her desire? Her own “willfulness”! It was precisely because of her strong will that Tsvetaeva could only dream of “being outside her will,” knowing that this had to be impossible, due to her strict constitution.

In Master and Margarita, Bulgakov answered M. Tsvetaeva’s question: “What if I indeed overcome it all and give away it all?” by turning her into the immortal Margarita.

“My eternal heart and service

Only to him. The King!”

In other words, to A. S. Pushkin. Having written these lines, Tsvetaeva contradicts herself. Even if she, indeed, wanted to submit her will to someone, she had not met that someone. The following lines in her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin –

“My eternal heart and my reflection in the mirror –

Oh, how I love!”

– show that Marina Tsvetaeva was an egocentric, and in that quality she would not give an inch to any man.

Marina Ivanovna loved others only in her poetry. In real life she loved only herself. Otherwise, she would not have asked the question: “What if I indeed overcome it all and give away it all?” Nor would she write in the same place, in opposition to love, about her “higher life with friends in the vastness of my soul.”

This shows me that Bulgakov was perfectly right endowing Margarita with “singular, unseen by anyone, loneliness in her eyes” which Bulgakov discerned in Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry.

“My eternal heart and my reflection in the mirror –

Oh, how I love!”

This is why in Master and Margarita, Margarita so often puts her hand to her heart or grasps her chest.

“Margarita’s heart gave a horrible jolt, so that she could not even pick up the little box at once.”

“Underneath Margarita… for some reason much troubling her heart, a train was making noise.”

“Margarita’s heart jolted, and she nodded” [in response to Koroviev’s question that she must by then have figured out who the host was].

“[Aiming at the heart! –exclaimed Margarita, for some reason clutching her heart. – At the heart! – she repeated in a muted voice.”

And then Koroviev says:

“Ah, yes, the heart. He hits the heart on demand, any which atrium or any which ventricle.”

“Margarita’s heart started beating faster,” when she succeeded in getting Woland offer her to choose any reward for serving as the hostess of his Ball.

All these examples, however, including the direct evidence that Margarita died of a heart attack. —

“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.”

– show that Margarita as such does not exist, as it is hard to imagine that two different persons would die at exactly the same time. We know that master suffered from a heart ailment, and that his prototype A. A. Blok died of a heart disease. It proves that I am right. Only in the fantastic novel we can imagine that two persons die of a heart disease at exactly the same time, merely because they love each other.

In the spy novel there are several possibilities, including the one in which both master and Margarita have been poisoned, and another one, where master has been knifed to death. An indication of this is not only the scene in the basement, but also the story that master tells Ivan, where it appears that no one had ever been coming into the little yard in front of his apartment’s windows, before Margarita had entered his life, after which as master complained, “at the level of my face outside the little window, someone’s dirty boots would necessarily appear. A knife sharpener. But who would need a knife sharpener in our building? To sharpen what? What knives?”

The theme of the mirror is very interesting because of the fact which Marina Tsvetaeva about the mirror in her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin.

A. S. Pushkin has a very interesting fairytale about a Dead Princes and the Seven Warriors, paralleling the Snow White story, but not quite, because in Pushkin the Dead Princess remains dead, after her suitor the Prince breaks his head on her glass coffin and dies. [See my chapter Strangers in the Night: Posting CCLXXIII.]

In Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, a peculiar picture emerges, as his Margarita combines two persons: that of the Evil Stepmother and the Unloved Stepdaughter. As we know, Margarita looks at herself in the mirror and sees herself ten years younger. –

“Looking from the mirror at the thirty-year-old Margarita was a naturally curly black-haired woman of about twenty, laughing uncontrollably and baring her teeth.”

Why Bulgakov is interested in giving his characters features contrary to their nature, and where and who from he takes this idea, will become clear to the reader from my upcoming chapter The Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries…

“My eternal heart and my reflection in the mirror –

Oh, how I love!”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLIII

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“Valor and virginity! – This union

Is ancient and marvelous, like Death and Glory.

I swear to that by my red blood

And by my curly head…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. 1918.

Marina Tsvetaeva also writes in her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin about “Groves in the glowing jaws of a fireplace.”

Bulgakov uses that twice.

The first fireplace appears in chapter 18, Unlucky Visitors:

“By the fireplace, a short, red-haired man with a knife tucked behind his belt was roasting pieces of meat on the point of a long steel sword, and the juice was dripping into the fire, and the smoke exited through the chimney.”

Knowing the poetry of this “young king,” namely, S. A. Yesenin, who happens to be the prototype of the “short red-haired one, with a knife behind his belt,” how can we fail to realize that Bulgakov is, using the expression of Yesenin himself, “blowing Gogol and smoke”?

The second time Bulgakov is using the fireplace of Marina Ivanovna on a grand scale. Here it’s Margarita “at a height,” as Marina Tsvetaeva writes in her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin:

“We would both keep silence, wouldn’t we?

Watching as somewhere at our feet,

Inside some dear little clay hut,

There glimmered a first light…

We would both laugh and run

Hand in hand, down the hill…”

In Bulgakov, Margarita does not run, together with Koroviev “down the up staircase.” –

“Down there, so far away, as though Margarita was looking at it through the other side of the binoculars, she saw a colossal anteroom with a perfectly huge fireplace, into whose cold and dark jaws a five-ton truck could easily enter… All of a sudden, something thundered down there in the enormous fireplace, and out of it, there sprang a gibbet with a half-crumbled dust of a corpse hanging on it. This dusty figure then broke off the rope, hit the floor, and out of it jumped a black-haired handsome in a tuxedo and lacquered dress shoes. Then out of the fireplace came a semi-rotten small coffin, its lid fell off, and out of it another dust tumbled away…”

The “handsome” then did what Marina Tsvetaeva did not want her Pushkin to do:

“…The handsome gallantly approached it [the dust figure falling out of the coffin], and offered it his arm, forming a lock; the second dust then took the shape of a nude fidgety woman in black shoes and with black feathers on her head [here we may notice Blok already], and then both of them, the man and the woman, hurried up the staircase…”

At this point I’d like to offer the reader a puzzle. Who is the first guest at Woland’s Ball?

I am going to solve this puzzle in my chapter The Guests at Satan’s Great Ball.

***

“All of his science is – Might.

It’s light – I look:

Pushkin’s hand, –

I shake it, I don’t lick it.”

In other words, Tsvetaeva sees herself as Pushkin’s equal, not as his dog, like Bulgakov shows Matthew Levi in Master and Margarita. (More about this in my future chapter The Garden.)

“A fellow coworker to great-grandfather:

In the same workshop!

Each correction –

Like with my own hand.”

Thus, Marina Tsvetaeva’s “great-grandfather” is A. S. Pushkin. That’s why Bulgakov gives Koroviev the tirade about Margarita being a great-great-granddaughter of some French queen. Here is an inside joke, however, considering that Tsvetaeva calls Pushkin’s African ancestor Ganibal a son of Peter the Great, which makes A. S. Pushkin Peter’s “great-grandson.”

“A negro was a true son to him…”

[Peter I beat his own son to death…]

“…Thus you will remain his true great-grandson…”

And further on:

“The great-grandson of the giant’s [Peter’s] godson

Inherited Peter’s spirit.”

Thus Bulgakov calling Margarita “Light-filled Queen” also proceeds from Marina Tsvetaeva.

“…And the step, and the lightest of the light

Glance, with which I am still light-filled,

Is the last, postmortem, immortal,

Peter’s gift to Russia.”

In other words, Tsvetaeva is light-filled through A. S. Pushkin, who happens to be Peter’s immortal gift to Russia.

Returning to the previously quoted lines from the same poem by Tsvetaeva, “A fellow coworker to great-grandfather: In the same workshop!” – she asserts that Pushkin is her great-grandfather, like he is one to all master poets. And thus all Russian poets, according to her, have inherited Peter’s spirit.

***

Marina Tsvetaeva writes:

“Oh how I love names and banners,

Hair and voices…”

And Bulgakov, describing Margarita in the chapter Appearance of the Hero, of Master and Margarita, writes only about her voice (“I distinctly remember how her voice sounded: somewhat low but faltering”).

And in Chapter 20, Azazello’s Cream, we learn something about her hair: “Looking at the thirty-year-old Margarita from the mirror was a naturally curly-haired, dark-haired woman of about 20…”

Remarkably, in Chapter 22 Margarita’s eyes become green. Here is a Bulgakov give-away: Marina Tsvetaeva had green eyes.

Curiously, Bulgakov does not describe the features of Margarita’s face, or her body, except for the words of master:

“…I was struck not so much by her [Margarita’s] beauty as by the singular, unseen by anyone, loneliness in her eyes.”

...We have talked, under Marina Tsvetaeva’s angle, about Margarita’s hair and her voice. (“Oh how I love names and banners, Hair and voices…”) In describing his Margarita, Bulgakov obviously has no use for “banners.” So, what remains is her name.

Tsvetaeva admires her own name (“the incomparable name: Marina”). And, likewise, Bulgakov gives the heroine of his novel the equally incomparable name Margarita, which is a fairly rare name in Russia.

In her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin Tsvetaeva not just loves her incomparable name which signifies the sea to her, but, as she puts it, –

“My eternal heart and my reflection in the mirror –

Oh, how I love!”

This is why Bulgakov introduces the scene with the mirror in the 20^th chapter of Master and Margarita: Azazello’s Cream.

In what concerns the name “Marina,” M. Tsvetaeva has a poem where she compares herself with Marina Mnishek, whom she calls:

“Self-seeking blood! Cursed, cursed you be,

You who could become False-Marina to False Dmitry…”

From this we can figure out what Tsvetaeva has in mind, calling Marina “an incomparable name.”

She loves herself, and hates Marina Mnishek for having the same name as she does, as we have just been able to demonstrate.

“My eternal heart and my reflection in the mirror –

Oh, how I love!..”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLII

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued.

“...These words never and forever,

A track – behind a wheel...

Dark-skinned arms and blue rivers

– Ach – **** your Mariula!”

Marina Tsvetaeva. A Rendez-Vous With Pushkin. 1913.

M. A. Bulgakov was also impressed by the early poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, dedicated by her to A. S, Pushkin. The point is that Bulgakov composed Woland’s cavalcade exclusively of Russian poets to whom Pushkin was an idol.

By providing the main storyline of the triangle, as well as a very important storyline connected to Pushkin – Marina Tsvetaeva becomes a very attractive candidate for the role of the principal female character of Master and Margarita.

As her poem A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin will show (as well as her several other poems about Pushkin), M. A. Bulgakov took many ideas from Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry for his novel Master and Margarita, and for his other works, – ideas that cannot be attributed to any other poets.

A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin opens with these lines:

“I am ascending a steep white road.

My lightweight feet do not get tired

To get higher than the height…”

Here is where Bulgakov takes his idea of the endless staircase from. This is why it is Koroviev, whose prototype is A. S. Pushkin, who meets Margarita on that staircase.

“I remember the curly-haired magus

Of these lyrical places [the Crimea]…”

This is why a slight confusion arises in Master and Margarita, in view of the fact that Bulgakov bestows the title of magus on Woland, calling him thus 3 times [see my posted chapter Woland Identity]. Then where does the title magus come from in application to Koroviev, in his meeting with Margarita, if not from the same poem by Marina Tsvetaeva? –

“A magus, regent, wizard, translator, or the devil knows who in reality, – in a word, Koroviev, –took a bow … and invited Margarita to follow him…”

And here is Marina Tsvetaeva:

“Pushkin! –

You would have known by the very first glance

Who has met you on your way.

And you would have beamed,

And would never have offered me

To walk up the hill arm-in-arm.”

In Bulgakov, Margarita follows Koroviev, who lights up their way with his oil lamp.

Running somewhat ahead, –

“…Watching as somewhere at our feet,

Inside some dear little clay hut,

There glimmered a first light…”

Compare this to Bulgakov’s:

“…But then far and above a little light started flickering and getting closer…”

Back to Tsvetaeva’s A Rendez-Vous with Pushkin,

“…Without leaning on the dark-skinned arm,

I would be talking while walking…

Old wines and old thrones…”

[See The Ball of a Hundred Kings.]

And also : “the unique name Marina.” [Bulgakov gives her an even more unique name: “Margarita.”]

“…Amulets, cards, vials and candles,

Gold and silver,

False, reaching into the soul speeches

From charming lips…

Half-smiles, in response to questions,

And young kings…”

Here we already have more than enough to realize that it is after this poem that M. A. Bulgakov, with his imagination, paints the drawing room of the jeweler’s widow’s apartment, now occupied by Woland and his retinue, for the reader.

“Ladanki, amulets” turn into the smell of “ladan, incense,” and also into “church brocade” on the table, where we see “old wines” in old bottles. Marina Tsvetaeva’s “gold and silver” turns into “a platter of pure gold,” as well as into gold plates and gold two-prong forks. From one of such gold plates, Andrei Fokich tastes “meat of the first freshness,” which belongs to a man just slaughtered for this purpose. [Namely, Pyatnazhko, see my chapter Cannibalism, posted segment CII about this.]

And of course M. Tsvetaeva’s “vials” explain the “scent of strongest perfume” in Bulgakov.

Offering Andrei Fokich “a game of dice... dominoes... cards?” Bulgakov places M. Tsvetaeva’s “cards” in last place not to reveal the secret of Woland, whose prototype V. V. Mayakovsky loved to play cards.

Even Mayakovsky’s adversary S. A. Yesenin writes about Mayakovsky’s passion for playing cards, in his sketch about his trip to America, titled The Iron Mirgorod. Describing the steamboat Paris, S. A. Yesenin writes:

“I walked through enormous halls of specialized libraries, walked through recreation rooms, where card games were played (and where I somewhat regretted that Mayakovsky wasn’t there), walked through the dance hall…”

Although Bulgakov does not call poets “kings,” like M. Tsvetaeva apparently does, still he assigns “royal blood” to Margarita, which supports the claim that he takes the idea of calling poets “kings” from Marina Tsvetaeva, who not only calls her contemporary poets “young kings,” but explicitly calls A. S. Pushkin the “king.”

“My eternal heart and service

Only to him. The King!”

This is why Backenbarter, alias Koroviev [see my posted segment XLV], calls Margarita “Bright Queen,” when she passes her “lust” test. Margarita is “bright” (or “light-colored”), because this is how Tsvetaeva calls A. S. Pushkin. (Paradoxically, she stresses his “light-colored eyes” and “light-colored hair.”) This is precisely how she calls herself, emphasizing the Russian blood.

So this is why Woland says about Margarita:

“Yes, Koroviev is right. How whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!”

And again:

“Blood is a great thing!” said Woland cheerfully for some unknown reason…

(More clarity on the subject of blood, later in this chapter.)

But now everything is clear, and we know “for what reason.” –

Woland’s cavalcade, including him and Margarita, are Russian poets.

Both these words carry equal weight. All of them are Russian poets.

To be continued…