Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.
Andrei Bely.
“A madman lives here.
Among the white lilacs...
From the clinic an orderly
runs
Screaming hurriedly,
belatedly.”
Andrei Bely. Madman. 1904.
Continuing
with Andrei Bely’s poem Escape, I
have saved the most interesting part for the last. In this poem, Andrei Bely
has the following lines:
“…But,
sister, they say I am mad;
They say you are also mad!..”
Bulgakov
turns these lines of Andrei Bely into a very long dialog between master and
Margarita, having been returned to master’s basement apartment by Woland, upon
their mutual wish. It happens in Chapter 30 of Master and Margarita: It’s Time! It’s Time! –
“Having slept until the Saturday sunset, both master and his
lady-friend felt completely restored to their normal strength. In terms of
their psyche, however, the changes were quite significant… Devil can have it! – master suddenly exclaimed. – No, listen, you are an intelligent person,
aren’t you? And you’ve never been insane… Are you seriously convinced that last
night we were indeed at Satan’s?”
How
uncannily reminiscent this is of Bely’s above-quoted lines:
“…But,
sister, they say I am mad;
They say you are also mad!..”
The
reader surely remembers how A. S. Pushkin joked that if a writer should give
him a line, the poet would write a whole poem out of it? Bulgakov follows suit
and out of A. Bely’s two-liner he comes up with a whole dialog.
“…Perfectly seriously, replied
Margarita. Of course, of course, responded
master with irony. So now it has become
evident that instead of one madman we have two! Both husband and wife! – He
raised his arms to the heavens and yelled: No,
this is devil knows what, devil, devil, devil!
Just now you have unwittingly
told the truth, she said.
Devil knows what… And believe
me, the devil will arrange everything!
Her eyes suddenly lit up, she jumped up, started dancing on the
spot and crying out:
How happy I am, how happy I
am that I’ve made a deal with him! Oh, devil, devil! You’ll have to, my love,
live with a witch! – After
that she rushed toward master, grabbed him around his neck, and started kissing
him on the lips, on the nose, on the cheeks. Clumps of master’s unkempt black
hair were jumping on his head, while his cheeks and forehead reddened under her
kisses. – And indeed, you now do look
like a witch…”
“And I don’t deny it, replied
Margarita. – I am indeed a witch, and I
am very happy about it.”
This passage, obviously, has
elements pertaining to Blok, such as the repetitions. But a dialog like this,
if only it can be imagined, takes place between Marina Tsvetaeva and Andrei
Bely.
“…I am indeed a witch, – [replied Margarita] – and I am very happy about it.
All right, all right, responded master. A witch, so be it… Abducted me from the clinic… Returned us here…
Provided they don’t declare us missing…”
This
turns out to be a Bulgakov take on Andrei Bely’s Escape. But as for Marina Tsvetaeva being a witch – where does that
come from? As Bulgakov poses the question in the Theatrical Novel:
“…And where is everything
coming from?!”
There
can be only one answer: From Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry, of course!
Here’s
her eminently telling line: “Red Skirt,
Devil in Blood.”
That’s
where Bulgakov’s “witch” is coming from. If a woman has the devil in her blood,
she has the full right to consider herself a witch.
***
In
the next poem of this cycle The
Miserables, titled Time, Andrei
Bely creates a very interesting image of death as an old grandfather-type man:
“Do
scythe, do scythe, do scythe, you,
Dear old man!
I shall fall down with a sigh
Under a broom bush…”
The
next poem, Pacification, says this:
“It’s
Time,
The white horses are carrying
on…”
In
Bulgakov, though, Time, that is, Death, is being carried on by magical black
horses.
As
for master’s plait of hair, –
“Margarita could not see herself, but she could well see how master
had changed. His hair was shining white now in the moonlight, and at the back
of his head it formed itself into a plait which was flying in the wind…”
These
lines can be best interpreted through the words of Andrei Bely from the poem Time. Before we get to them, however, it
is necessary to clarify that in the Russian language the word “kosa” is loaded with multiple meanings. They
are: a braided plait of hair, a scythe, and also: foreland (or promontory).
Several poets and writers have played on this ambiguity, Yesenin, Bely and Bulgakov
among others.
“Hair
in the blueness –
Like the clouds’ gray hair.
Not a two-horned crescent –
A scythe [kosa] flew up,
And reaps…”
In
other words, master’s hair had turned white and braided itself into a plait, as
it was time for him to die. Everybody knows the Great Reaper and His Scythe, so
here is a play on two particular meanings of the word “kosa.”
The
reader has a big surprise in store though, in my upcoming chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries, where,
at last, this question will be put to rest for good.
To
be continued…
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