Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.
From Blok to
Bely.
“…There
came a sigh of the winds among the graves –
Aren’t
you a murderer?
You’ve
killed yourself –
You,
murderer, –
You’ve
killed yourself!”
Andrei Bely. 1903.
With
the first appearance of A. Blok as master’s prototype on the stage of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s
mysticism is coming out with even greater force, and the reader can fully
appreciate the mystical side of the novel itself.
The
first meeting of master and Margarita according to the story master tells
Ivanushka in chapter 13, The Appearance
of the Hero, is becoming increasingly comprehensible. Also comprehensible
now becomes the reason why Bulgakov has two pairs of lovers. My original
thought that Bulgakov takes his mystique from N. V. Gogol has been proven
correct.
It
is Gogol’s eerie novella Horrific
Vengeance where Gogol for the first time in world literature depicts the
communication of a detached soul of the sorcerer’s daughter with the sorcerer
himself just as the heroine of the story Katherine is sleeping peacefully,
unaware of where her soul is and what it is up to. [See my chapter master… – posting CXLIII.]
It
is mostly A. A. Blok, to a greater extent than M. Yu. Lermontov, who introduces
Gogol’s mysticism into his poetry. Most distinctly, this mysticism comes out in
the scene of master’s appearance in a greenish kerchief of light in the chapter
The Extraction of master of
Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita.
By that time it is already known that all the participants of master’s hallucinations
in the no-good apartment #50 are dead. Therefore master’s soul must also have
left his body inside the psychiatric clinic and flown through the open window
of the apartment, heeding Margarita’s call, who exists within the mystical
novel, as I have already mentioned before.
It
follows that Margarita’s soul had by then left Margarita’s body inside her
mansion and it was that soul that was performing all those incredible feats in
the mystical novel. We know, of course, that Margarita the person had died
inside her mansion, from a heart attack, induced by the poison in Azazello’s
cream.
All
this brings us back immediately to the psychological thriller and the
fantastical novel, because Bulgakov ascribes to Margarita the same kind of
death that Blok had died from (he died of a heart ailment). It is hard not to
marvel at Bulgakov’s skill and artistry as a writer able to interweave so many
threads inside his relatively small-sized masterpiece.
***
The
scene of master’s appearance in the no-good apartment #50 is extremely
interesting in itself, as Bulgakov follows Blok’s poetry in his narrative. And
this alone ought to provide great pleasure to those who know the poetry of this
amazing mystical poet, who, in his own inimitable way, like M. Yu. Lermontov,
is so close to N. V. Gogol. Blok’s poetry comes out in practically every word,
picked by M. A. Bulgakov with such superb precision.
Such
commonplace words as “ the wind” and “kerchief,” or expressions like “a heavy
curtain on the window,” “the window pushed wide open” – are certain to tell a
great deal to the connoisseurs of Blokian poetry.
And
of course the “greenish [sic!”] kerchief of nightly light in the same paragraph
exposes Blok in it lock, stock, and barrel.
This
is what had caught my great interest all along, even before I realized the
powerful presence of Blok in Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita. Why “greenish”? Everybody seems to describe the light of the
moon as blue or bluish!
By
the same token, I was struck by the following Bulgakovian phrase:
“...In her state of agitation, she [Margarita] failed to notice
that her nakedness had somehow come to an end. She now had on a silken black
cloak…”
***
Mysticism
is close to the Russian heart, as it is closely connected to Russian Orthodox
Christian religion. Mysticism also reveals itself in Russian literature. M. A.
Bulgakov proudly calls himself a “mystical writer.”
Moving
now to the Russian mystical poet and writer Andrei Bely, I cannot resist the
urge to show the mysticism of both these friends, Blok and Bely, through their
poetry. The two of them kept an extensive correspondence with each other, as
Blok was living in St. Petersburg, and Andrei Bely was living in Moscow. I’d
like to show their friendship in their verses.
The
first to write such a poem was Bely. It was titled To Blok. The first two parts were written in 1901, and the third
one, to which Blok responded, in 1903. –
“All
in fire and love,
My dying wandering gaze…
Oh, approach me – prostrated
in blood,
I am lying at the foot of the
mountains…”
Isn’t
this a captivating opening?!
“...Flouncing
about over the abyss,
I fell into the valley where
a brook is singing,
A heavy stone, whistling,
Suddenly knocked me off my
feet –
A heavy stone, whistling,
Smashed my temple…”
Apparently,
some kind of calamity had visited the poet, and he appeals to his friend to get
some relief. This is obviously a mystical poem, as it reflects only the poet’s
mental state, and not really his physical condition.
The
following lines came unexpected for me:
“…Among
the lilies of the valley,
I am a gaping bloody flower.
The suddenly stiffened by
torment,
My chest no longer sways…”
The
point is that the lily-of-the-valley
is my favorite flower, alongside the violet. The first spring flowers after
snowdrops, they were my mother’s favorites. And this love of them passed on to
me her daughter. Also remarkable is the fact that they were the favorite
flowers of A. S. Pushkin, but about this later, in another chapter.
Andrei
Bely closes his poem with a scream of the soul:
“…Do
not leave me, friend,
Do not forget!”
In response to this poem by Bely,
his friend Blok creates an even more passionate outburst in his October 1903
poem To Andrei Bely…
To
be continued…
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