A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
God-Fearing
Lecher.
Posting #3.
“You are
the tsar: so live alone!”
A. S. Pushkin. To The Poet. 1830.
Moving now to A. F. Sokov, it may be noteworthy to
remember that he wanted to see Woland in particular, and nobody else. As the
reader may also remember, Bulgakov portrays him as a religious, God-fearing
man.
Because I already know who the prototype of Andrei
Fokich Sokov is, I suggest this time a different angle, under which we will be
looking at this personage.
Having learned who has come to visit him this time,
Woland starts pressing the buffet vendor on account of his rotten food, which
he offers to his clients, and of the tea diluted by faucet water.
As for the buffet vendor, he has come to complain
about the money he had received during the séance of black magic, which had
turned itself into shredded paper.
Opening his package, which is supposed to show the
shredded paper to Woland, Sokov is flabbergasted, seeing that the bad paper had
turned back into money inside the no-good apartment #50.
Bulgakov uses this trick in Master and Margarita, describing the restaurant at the Griboyedov
House of Writers. In my chapter A Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita, I suggested already that Bulgakov uses
the allegory of food to talk about the creative work of his contemporary
writers. This is what we are dealing with in the 18th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Hapless Visitors.
Referring to “green feta cheese,” Bulgakov shows that the poet in question was
not a fountain of originality, but that he heavily borrowed from both his
predecessors and his contemporaries not only their ideas, but also quite likely
their whole sentences and phrases.
The tea diluted by water in the samovar also points to
Bulgakov’s low opinion of this particular poet, in the sense that his poetry
was shallow. Bulgakov clearly shows that A. S. Pushkin, V. V. Mayakovsky, and
S. A. Yesenin are also of a low opinion of this man, both as a poet and as a person.
Considering that Begemot is not present during the conversation with Andrei
Fokich, it is most likely that Lermontov is the poet from whom this one has
borrowed the most.
As I already wrote on several occasions before, M. Yu.
Lermontov had a tremendous influence on the subsequent generations of Russian
poets, including those of the 20th century.
Thus the transformation of the real money into
shredded paper in Master and Margarita
can be explained just as easily as the transformation of the shredded paper
back into genuine money, that is the authentic banknotes, in the presence of
those same poets whom A. F. Sokov had robbed, as he was composing his own
verses.
The same explanation goes for the suggestion made to
Sokov to sit down on a low taburet stool, from which the buffet vendor falls
down, due to the broken fourth leg, which signifies his faulty poetry. It also
explains the explicit mockery of his literary comrades, when Andrei Fokich
Sokov, in the process of falling down upsets the nearby taburet and spills its
wine all over himself.
It is perfectly clear that in the character of A. F.
Sokov, Bulgakov exposes a dissimulator, passing himself not for what he is, but
for someone else.
Here again, Bulgakov receives help in the person of a
Russian poetess who used to know the poet in question very well, in fact, so
well that she had written a whole article about him. This was the article which
Bulgakov used extensively in Master and
Margarita. It was this article that helped me solve several puzzles in
Bulgakov’s novel.
For instance, the hilarious scene with the
Backenbarter in the 21st chapter of Master and Margarita, The Flight, in which both Margarita and the
Backenbarter are for some reason naked.
And also, why is Bulgakov so persistent in calling the
buffet vendor A. F. Sokov a “tiny little man”?
As in the case of V. V. Mayakovsky and S. A. Yesenin,
Bulgakov breaks down the person of this poet into two characters in Master and Margarita. Apart from the
buffet vendor in the first part of the novel, in its last 18th
chapter The Hapless Visitors,
Bulgakov also puts this poet in the second part of Master and Margarita.
But who is this poet? – as the reader can ask,
paraphrasing a line from M. Yu. Lermontov. And who is that Russian poetess who
wrote the stern article about her fellow poet, titled My Reply to Osip Mandelstam.
My reader has already met this poetess in my chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil. She is
the one who serves as the enigmatic Margarita’s prototype, the famous Russian
poetess of the 20th century Marina Tsvetaeva. She continues to
answer the unanswered questions in the novel Master and Margarita in her prosaic works and articles.
The very first page of Marina Tsvetaeva’s article My Reply to Osip Mandelstam contains an
answer to a question. Why is Margarita naked?
And why does Bulgakov occasionally clothe his heroine
now in a robe, now in a cloak?
“The poet’s prose. At last the poet has
started speaking in our language… in which we all speak.”
And here it comes:
“Here now you are naked [sic!] before me.
Outside the enchantments, Orpheus without his lyre… The poet in prose is a
sovereign stripped of the purple, deigning (or forced to) appear among us as a
man.”
A naked Margarita is sitting on a windowsill and
looking at the moon, in the 20th chapter of Master and Margarita, Azazello’s Cream, because Bulgakov introduces
her in his novel not as a poetess, but as master’s “secret wife.” Bulgakov’s
Marina Tsvetaeva is “outside the enchantments,” as he depicts her not the way
she was, that is, not as a poetess, but the way she wanted to be, and as she
wrote about it in her prose.
To be specific, she was writing about her desire to
“serve” in love. Margarita “serves” master. His book becomes her “life.” When
in chapter 24, The Extraction of Master, the
naked Margarita felt herself deceived and decided to take her leave, Bulgakov
writes that at that moment “Woland, without saying a word, took off his worn-out and soiled robe,
while Koroviev threw it over Margarita’s shoulders.”
As Bulgakov explains to the reader, Margarita “wrapped herself [in
the robe] as though searching for a wrapper or a cloak. Her nakedness suddenly
started to embarrass her.”
Here Bulgakov confuses the reader, as he cannot really
explain what is going on without giving away “where all of this is coming from.”
Also, do pay attention to the fact that it is A. S.
Pushkin (Koroviev) who covers Margarita’s nakedness with the robe.
Which brings us back to the chapter The Flight, that is, to the scene
between Margarita and the Backenbarter, both of them naked, however, the
Backenbarter has a top hat on his head. In that river scene they are both out
of character, “outside the enchantments,” so to speak, for the reason that they
are naked. As for the top hat, according to Bulgakov, it shows A. S. Pushkin’s
integrity not only as a poet and a writer, but also as a man. I am drawing the
reader’s attention to it, because, having met Margarita’s resistance,
Backenbarter immediately stops his advances, which is of considerable
significance later in this chapter.
Here Bulgakov follows Marina Tsvetaeva herself, who in
her article asks Osip Mandelstam the following question:
“Will you be able to be a tsar even without
the purple [and a poet even without the verses]?”
Marina Tsvetaeva takes this from Pushkin’s 1830 poem To The Poet, this line in particular:
“You are
the tsar: so live alone!”
Margarita proved to all that she could remain a
poetess, as she carried herself with dignity, which earned her respect from her
comrades in the quill.
And now Marina Tsvetaeva’s second question to Osip
Mandelstam:
“Is poet (royalty) – an inalienability, is
poet in you –essence?”
Marina Tsvetaeva proved that she contains that poet
essence in her. She also contains royalty, as Bulgakov makes her a “queen.”
“Shall I bow to you, naked?” –Tsvetaeva continues her interrogation of Osip
Mandelstam.
All guests at Satan’s Great Ball bow to Queen
Margarita…
To be continued…
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