GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCLIV

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil Continued.

Master’s Prototype: Andrei Bely.

“What do I care about my mortal body?

It’s not mine if it is not yours.”

Marina Tsvetaeva. 1925.

Thanks to Bulgakov, Marina Tsvetaeva got herself into the exclusive male club of the great Russian poets (pity though, as she deserves that membership in her own right). However, not as a poet, but as someone that she wants to see herself as.

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

Here is Tsvetaeva’s wish, once again in her words, but at a slightly different angle:

“…In the city of friends:

In this empty, in this steep

Male heaven…

In the heaven of male deities…

In the heaven of male triumphs!

Long live the passionlessness of souls!..

In the heaven of Spartan friendships!”

In 1941, five months before her death, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the poem You’ve Laid the Table for Six. M. A. Bulgakov had already been dead by that time, and he could not have possibly read it, but we need this poem to understand the scene of Andrei Fokich Sokov visiting Woland in the no-good apartment #50. Sokov’s prototype is surely not as famous as Bulgakov’s other illustrious prototypes, but still, he is quite necessary for understanding the general picture.

There are six as well in the apartment of the jeweler’s widow, although they’ve already had their supper. “The black magus spread himself on some kind of enormous sofa, low, and with pillows scattered on it.” Kot Begemot sat “in front of the fireplace on top of a tiger skin.” And Azazello was roasting juicy pieces of meat, what was left of Pyatnazhko. Gella, who opened the door to Andrei Fokich, had obviously eaten too, together with the company. Indeed, in the second part of Master and Margarita, in the chapter The Extraction of master, Gella was sitting at the table with the others. According to Woland, “It’s the night of the full moon… and I am eating supper in the close company of associates and servants.”

Woland, Kot Begemot, Azazello, and Gella make four, so far.

As we know, Koroviev is sitting in Berlioz’s study, whence he supplies to Woland all the necessary information about Andrei Fokich. By placing Koroviev in that study, Bulgakov accomplishes two objectives. The first one follows Pushkin’s assertion that a writer must be working in a “scientific study.” And the other objective is to hide in this study, together with Koroviev, a woman whose presence is betrayed by the smell of “the strongest perfume,” the smell that overwhelms that of roasted meat.

And so, Andrei Fokich included, we have six persons, which is the number quoted by Tsvetaeva, with the unknown woman making seven.

There are two kinds of mysticism the reader is dealing with here. One is purely Bulgakovian mysticism. A woman marks her arrival on the scene by a smell of “the strongest perfume” before actually making her physical appearance in the form of Lilith-the-owl.

The second kind of mysticism is palpably real. Mikhail Bulgakov died on March 10, 1940. Marina Tsvetaeva wrote her “table for six” on March 6, 1941. Bulgakov could not possibly have envisaged Tsvetaeva’s poem before his death, yet the eeriness of the coincidence casts a truly mystical spell over the whole situation.

Now back to Tsvetaeva’s “table.” –

“It is no fun for you six at such a table.

How could you forget the seventh one –

The seventh her…”

And it is quite possible that Bulgakov places “the seventh her,” that is, Marina Tsvetaeva in the image not of Medea (as I formerly suggested in my chapter The Fantastic Novel of Master and Margarita, posted segment XXXV), but as Lilith, who also engaged in cannibalism: she used to eat children, but never her own, as she had none. Here Bulgakov is using Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1924 poem An Attempt at Jealousy:

“How is your life with that other one…

How is your life with a plain woman?

Without divinity?

How is your life with anyone else –

My chosen one!!!

How is your life with a stranger,

A local one?

How is your life with number 100,000 –

You, who have known Lilith!

How is your life with an earthly woman,

Without any sixth senses?”

Marina Tsvetaeva had a rather bizarre relationship, to say the least, with her husband Sergei Efron. It is quite possible that she is writing this poem to her husband, as she insists that the two of them addressed each other as “you” (in Russian as opposed to “thou,” normal between husband and wife), despite the fact that she of all people was well familiar with A. S. Pushkin’s distinction between the passionately loving thou and the cold you.

Bulgakov makes a very interesting job of Tsvetaeva’s poem:

“…But chewing on the flavorful, juicy meat [of the slaughtered Pyatnazhko] the buffet vendor nearly choked and almost fell down a second time. From the next room…”

[“From the next room” means the study in which Koroviev is sitting, as on the next page Koroviev “responded from the next room,” and to corroborate that the next room is also the study, Bulgakov goes on: “The same crappy voice could be heard from the study.”]

“…there flew a large dark bird and lightly touched the buffet vendor’s bald head. Having settled down on the mantelpiece of the fireplace, next to the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl.”

A very dramatic entrance! The very first appearance of an owl in Master and Margarita. The second time even though the owl itself is absent, yet Margarita, sitting on a bench under the Kremlin Wall, laments:

“Why am I sitting under the Wall all alone, like an owl?”

A third time, although Bulgakov does not identify the bird as an owl, he does imply it quite strongly, so it surely looks to be the case. In chapter 22, With Candles, Bulgakov writes:

“They walked among columns where certain rustlings could be heard and where something brushed Margarita’s head. She was startled.”

And the fourth time, the most remarkable of all, occurs in chapter 24, The Extraction of Master:

“Margarita was sitting with her fingers stopping her ears, looking at the owl napping upon the mantel piece. The cat fired, immediately after which Gella shrieked, the killed owl fell off the mantelpiece, and the shattered clock stopped.” [ There is a mystical foreboding here of Margarita’s own death. See also my earlier chapter Kot Begemot, posted segment XIX.]

Here Bulgakov offers the reader a very complicated puzzle. In the first place, it is impossible to introduce Lilith without Marina Tsvetaeva. Secondly, we must remember that for some reason, Margarita compares herself to an owl, of all creatures. And thirdly, we need to draw the connection where Margarita, being chaperoned by Koroviev at the Ball, sees a young A. S. Pushkin plunging into a cognac-filled swimming pool together with a certain “ingenious dressmaker.” [See my chapter Two Adversaries, posted segment CLXXVII.]

In other words, in this scene at the ball, Bulgakov already gives us an example of a man finding himself in another century (20^th, to be precise), is looking at himself as a young man in early 19^th century.

Whence it is easy now to draw a bridge from Margarita, whose prototype happens to be the Russian poetess of the 20^th century Marina Tsvetaeva, to Adam’s first wife Lilith, which is the name that Tsvetaeva chooses to call herself in her poem, thus identifying herself with this purely fictitious character.

Hence the scene in Master and Margarita, centering on the “young mulatto,” who is being looked at by Koroviev and Margarita, is identical to the scene of the owl (that is, Lilith) who is being looked at by Margarita Nikolayevna in the 20^th century. This scene also explains why in chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time! –

“…The face of the poisoned woman was changing… Her temporary witch’s squint was disappearing in the eyes, as well as the former cruelty and wildness of her features was leaving them. The face of the deceased lightened up and at last softened, while her scowl stopped being a predatory scowl, but merely a suffering woman’s grimace.”

And only after this transformation –

“…Azazello unclenched her white teeth and poured into her mouth several drops of that same wine which he used to poison her. Margarita sighed and started sitting up…”

In other words, because Marina Tsvetaeva herself, in her poem, calls herself Lilith (that is, she traces her heritage from the first wife of Adam), the dying Margarita is liberated from this demonic heritage, and turns, to use Tsvetaeva’s own words, into an “earthly woman.”

To be continued…