GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXXXIX

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil Continued.

“…Through my closed eyelids

I am reading strange tidings:

Rainbow: double glory;

Fiery glow: double death…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. Brothers. 1918.

That same poetic description of the evening sky, closing the 32^nd chapter of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, which I partially quoted in the previous posting, is also taken from Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry:

“The horses rushed forward and the horsemen rose upwards and started their gallop. Woland’s cloak was fluttering over the heads of the whole cavalcade, and this cloak started covering the evening sky. When for a moment the black cover was blown aside, Margarita at full gallop glanced back and saw that behind her there were no more not only those multi-colored turrets with an airplane making a turn over them, but that the city itself was long gone, sinking into the ground and leaving behind only fog.”

Bulgakov took this from Tsvetaeva’s 1922 poem God, consisting of three parts and closing with the following two stanzas:

“…Under a vaulted roof

All were waiting for the call and the architect.

Both the poets and the fliers were despairing.

For He is God and he moves.

For the whole book of the stars

From Az through Yzhitsa

[First and last letters of the old Russian alphabet]

Is merely a trace of His cloak.”

Thus, “God’s cloak” in Marina Tsvetaeva turns into “Woland’s cloak” in Bulgakov, as his whole cavalcade, including Woland himself, are all Russian poets. And although they are not fliers-pilots, they all fly. As Bulgakov writes in the previous 30^th chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! –

“The stallions were rushing over the roofs of Moscow. A thundercloud was dashing toward the fliers, but it wasn’t yet spurting rain. They were flying over the boulevards and saw how little human figures were scattering to hide from the rain… They flew over the city already drowning in darkness… They flew over the smoke – all that was left of the Griboyedov House. Lightnings were flashing over them. Next, roofs gave way to greenery. It was only then that the rain started pouring, turning the fliers into three gigantic bubbles in the water.”

Bulgakov’s emphasis on the word “fly” is remarkable, and it can only be explained by the already quoted lines from Marina Tsvetaeva:

“…Under a vaulted roof

All were waiting for the call and the architect.

Both the poets and the fliers were despairing…”

Apparently, no attention has been drawn to the sentence:

“It was only then that the rain started pouring, turning the fliers into three gigantic bubbles in the water.”

The “Second Book” of Blok’s poetry (1904-1908) starts with the cycle Bubbles in the Earth (1904-1905).

As the epigraph to this cycle, Blok uses Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them.”

Macbeth.

Has the reader noticed that Bulgakov’s Blok (master) becomes one of the Shakespearean-Blokian “bubbles” in the earlier quoted passage?

Blok also inserts a very touching line in one of his unrhymed poems:

“She asked me to read her Macbeth outloud.

Having reached the bubbles in the earth,

About which I cannot speak without trepidation,

I noticed that she was also agitated…”

Can it be that this 1908 poem from the cycle Faina touched the heart of Bulgakov as well? The reader is going to learn that not just in one but in two of my future chapters.

***

I can by no means ignore the poetic opening of the 31^st chapter of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita: On Vorobievy Hills:

“The thunderstorm had been carried away without a trace, and, arching over the Moskva River, a multi-colored rainbow was standing in the sky, drinking water from the Moskva River. There was rustling in the air, and Azazello, who had master and Margarita flying in the black tail of his cloak, landed together with them near the group [Woland, Koroviev, and Begemot] that was waiting for them.”

It is impossible here not to recall this 1906 poem by Blok:

“Your storm has carried me away

And overturned me.

And quietly rising over me

Was the blueness of the dying day.

I am lying on the ground,

Smashed and overturned by the storm.

I hear the distant peals of thunder,

And I see the boundary of the rainbow.

I will ascend it, the seven-colored

And unblemished path –

So that I can with a soft welcoming smile

Look into the eyes of your storm.”

In the spirit of this poem, Bulgakov depicts master’s parting with Moscow from the height of Vorobievy Hills:

“A poignant sorrow crept to master’s heart, supplanted by sweetish anxiety, a wandering Gypsy stirring.”

Master’s behavior can also be explained through still another Blokian poem, the 1906 Windows into the Yard from the 1904-1908 cycle The City, where Blok closes this enchanting poem with this:

“I am altogether like the winter sun,

The silly sun.”

And Bulgakov, opening the 31^st chapter writes about windows and suns:

“…Woland, Koroviev, and Begemot were sitting in the saddles on black stallions, looking down on the city sprawling beyond the river below, with a broken sun sparkling in thousands of windows facing west…”

And again later on:

“I had to inconvenience you, Margarita Nikolayevna and master – Woland spoke. – I don’t think, though, that you will ever regret it. Well, what? – he was now addressing master alone. – Say farewell to the city, It’s time for us to go. – Woland pointed his hand, clad in a black, gauntlet-style glove, toward where the countless suns were melting glass behind the river, and where above those suns was fog, smoke, and steam of the sizzling hot, at the end of the day, city.”

To be continued…