Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.
Andrei Bely.
“My soul, resign! Amidst
a golden feast
The day has passed away.
Upon the fields of foggy past
A shadow’s cast.
The tired world goes
peacefully to sleep,
And there, ahead,
There’s no one waiting for
the spring,
And you shouldn’t wait.
Nothing is there, and nothing
will be.
And you will die…
The world will disappear, by
God forgotten.
And so, what are you waiting
for?”
Andrei Bely. Sunsets. (Gold in Azure). 1902.
Having
reread Andrei Bely’s poetry cycle Insanity,
dating about the same time as The
Miserables, I understood a number of things:
1. Firstly, there is a good reason why Bulgakov uses the
title of this cycle: Insanity, in master’s
story, thus implicitly pointing to Andrei Bely.
2. Secondly, it would be misleading to analyze this cycle
without the other, that is, Insanity
without The Miserables.
3. And thirdly, the poems by both Alexander Blok and
Andrei Bely can be analyzed backwards, considering that later poems often tend
to clarify the earlier ones.
And
this is exactly what I did, picking out two poems from this cycle, namely: In Prison and The Morning. In this poetry cycle it becomes perfectly clear that
the first person here (“I”) is ill. He is likely to have been arrested and
fallen ill in jail. This theme echoes between the two cycles: The Miserables and Insanity. In the course of the narrative we find out that this man does
not actually escape anywhere. It is just that his terminal illness changes its
course. It becomes equally clear at the end of the poem In Prison that the patient, aka the prisoner, aka Andrei Bely, is
seriously ill, and he dies.
“They
tell me I am going to die,
That I am thin and mortally
ill…”
But
then, morning comes in the next poem The
Morning, and everything seems to have changed:
“I am
once again at liberty and free…”
And
right away we find out why:
“Open
the curtains: in diamonds, in fire, in amber
Are the crosses on the
belfries. I am sick? Oh no, I’m not sick.
The hands raised to the
mountain on the deathbed – in silver…”
It
becomes clear that instead of an excruciating headache, the sick man is running
a high temperature, in other words, as is often the case, one symptom replaces
another. As we surely remember, the previous poem In Prison opens with:
“They
came and see me wandering
Among the needling thistles…”
In
other words, the prisoner-patient is having a terrible fit of headache. (In
Bulgakov, both master and Margarita experience headache in the form of a needle
in the temple.) Let us go back to the earlier poem Pacification, where Andrei Bely says:
“There:
I’ve attached to my brow
A bunch of prickly thistle…
And now again I’m sitting
within the walls,
No tears in my eyes, no sighs
in my breast.
I am destined to live in a
torture chamber.
Oh yes, my torture chamber is
beautiful.
It’s all the same to me. I’m
not afraid.
My mind is clear…”
It
looks like the medicine has helped. But next morning a crisis comes with high
temperature.
“The
dawns are purple there, and the storms are in purple.
Heed, catch, I am resurrected
– see: resurrected!
My coffin sails away: golden
into golden azures…”
The
patient probably becomes violent (“exhibits wild behavior”):
“…They
caught me, they brought me down;
They put a compress on my
forehead.”
***
Before
we get to the subsequent poems of this cycle, we need to establish a connection
with Bulgakov, specifically with his novel Master
and Margarita.
For
this purpose, we must go back to master’s appearance “in a greenish kerchief of nightly light” in the no-good apartment
#50.
“He [master] was wearing his hospital clothes, a gown, slippers,
and a black cap…”
This
is how Andrei Bely depicts himself in the poem Pacification of the same poetry cycle Insanity:
“The
time was slowly flowing there
Among the solitary violent
cells.
Putting my hands down without
a fight,
I was waiting for the outcome
of my fate…
There the dead were
performing dances
In their fool’s caps, in
their worn-out robes…”
And
also in the poem Escape of the cycle The Miserables:
“The
tired legs grew weak,
Entangled in the gray robe…”
Which
means that in that passage about master appearing “in a greenish kerchief of
nightly light,” alongside words picked out of Blok, Bulgakov uses colorful
images out of Bely’s cycles Insanity and
The Miserables. And also, taking the
two of them together, Blok and Bely, it is Bely who fits the bill as a madman.
Hence, master’s black cap replaces the fool’s cap, as the black cap belongs to
Blok, while the fool’s cap belongs to Bely.
Also,
Andrei Bely is worried that –
“…she
who perhaps loved me
Will no longer recognize me
now…”
This
is how Bulgakov delivers it:
“[Master’s] unshaven face was twitching in a grimace. He was
throwing insanely scared sideways glances at the flame of the candles…
Margarita instantly recognized him [sic!], she moaned, and ran toward him. She
was kissing his forehead, his lips, pressed herself to his prickly cheek, long-suppressed
tears were now running down her face. She was uttering only one word, senselessly
repeating it again and again— YOU… YOU…
YOU…”
The
possibility of this scene comes from A. Bely’s poem To Mother, from the poetry cycle Insanity.
“I
came out of the poor grave,
No one was meeting me…
I sat on the gravestone,
Where am I to go now?
Where am I to carry my
extinguished flame?..
I shall knock, and they’ll
lock the door…”
These
lines by A. Bely were Bulgakov’s inspiration in the 24th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Extraction of
Master.
To
begin with, in order to appear in the no-good apartment #50, where he had been
expected by the dead poets, master had to be dead himself. And indeed, Blok had
died in 1921, and Bely – in 1934. I do not know the precise year when Bulgakov
wrote this scene, but it was definitely after 1921. Considering that the two
poets had been friends, Bulgakov must have thought that he could bring these
two characters as one into Master and
Margarita.
In
the mystical novel, where we happen to find ourselves now, anything is
possible, just as in the fantastical novel, but in a more complicated way. This
is why we absolutely must know who is who. In the fantastical novel, as it had
always been perceived until this time, it’s hardly necessary. But how far more
exciting it is to know which prototypes have been picked by the author for his
characters, how he intermixes them, how he splits them, and more!
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment