A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
God-Fearing
Lecher.
Posting #4.
“I
see Rus having exorcised the demons,
Crowned
with the tablets of the law,
It’s
all the same to me whether with a Tsar or without a throne,
But
without a sword over the cups of the scales.”
Colonel Tsygalsky. The Ark.
Paraphrasing the saying: Poetry is the language of gods, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote in her
article: “From Derzhavin to Mayakovsky (not a bad
neighborhood!) – poetry is the language of gods.” And she adds: “Gods are not speaking, poets speak for them.”
Why does she think that Osip Mandelstam has “cast off
the purple”?
We know that he published his prose, that is, his
reminiscences of the Civil War. He called his book The Noise of Time. A good title.
But then, rejecting the divine language of poetry and
adopting the pedestrian language of prose, O. Mandelstam showed himself as an
ignoramus who does not even know the language he is using. As for his subject,
it couldn’t be worse. Having come to Crimea during the Civil War, he was a
guest at the home of a certain Colonel Tsygalsky of the Volunteer (White) Army,
and he repaid for the host’s benevolent hospitality with black ingratitude.
The time was hard on people, but the Colonel shared
everything he had with his guest. As for the guest, he spared no mockery and
sheer malice for his host in his book.
Mandelstam did not even try to soften his contempt for
the poverty of the Colonel. He mocked the poor quality of the tobacco that the
Colonel smoked himself and shared with his guest, and he mocked the meager food
rations which the colonel was receiving in “small packages” for himself and his
ailing wife, whom Mandelstam deliberately and persistently mislabels as
Colonel’s sister, and for his two sons.
Marina Tsvetaeva is genuinely stunned how the
impoverished and needy Colonel Tsygalsky was sharing his last meager resources
with the guest Osip Mandelstam. But let us see how this episode is reflected in
Mandelstam’s book. –
“Colonel Tsygalsky was coddling his halfwit
weeping sister…”
And striving to show off his sick sense of humor,
Mandelstam goes out of his way to mock the whole Volunteer Army, using a
totally monstrous allegory. –
“[The Colonel also] coddled the ailing
eagle of the Volunteer Army. In one corner of his abode, as though unseen,
stirred to the hissing of the primus an emblematic eagle. Into another
[corner], wrapping herself in a military coat or in a scarf, the sister
squeezed herself, looking like a crazy fortuneteller.”
Marina Tsvetaeva writes that as she was reading this
malicious mockery, she could not believe her eyes that it was coming from her
fellow writer Osip Mandelstam.
And then she moves on to her reminiscence of how
somebody in 1921 brought her a book of poems under the title The Ark. Most of all there she liked and
memorized one particular verse:
“I
see Rus having exorcised the demons,
Crowned
with the tablets of the law,
It’s
all the same to me whether with a tsar or without a throne,
But
without a sword over the cups of the scales.”
Tsvetaeva writes that “the last two lines [she] has always seen as
the formula of Volunteerism, [and also] as a poetic formula.”
We need to note here that Marina Tsvetaeva’s husband
Sergei Efron, a military officer of the old establishment, joined the side of
the Revolution and was sent to Europe to do intelligence work for the new power.
Being Russian first and foremost, Marina Tsvetaeva was
sympathetic to both sides in the Russian Civil War. This is the reason why she
was particularly indignant about Osip Mandelstam’s book, which ends with the
following malicious foul-mouthing of Colonel Tsygalsky of the Volunteer Army:
“It’s hard to imagine why such people would
be needed in any kind of army.”
I think that Marina Tsvetaeva understood the
motivation behind Osip Mandelstam’s writing of such incredible ungrateful filth
about his generous host Colonel Tsygalsky. It was envy toward a sincere patriot
of his country, a poet at heart, for otherwise Tsygalsky would not have been
able to write such touching lines which had penetrated Marina Tsvetaeva to the
bottom of her soul.
One cannot explain other than by darkest envy the
following lines from Mandelstam’s book:
“One day, embarrassed by his voice [sic!],
his primus, his sister, unsold lacquered boots and bad tobacco, he recited his
poems. [sic!]”
And so, here is the crux of the matter. Colonel
Tsygalsky had the audacity to recite his poetry and to ask advice from a man
about whom Marina Tsvetaeva, who knew Osip Mandelstam very well, wrote:
“You, Osip Mandelstam, have nothing ahead
of you except for another 8-line poem which you’ll be writing for three months.”
Tsvetaeva reminds Mandelstam:
“Remember how you, an already famous then
poet, wept in 1916, after an unflattering review by Bryusov.”
(Bryusov was a very well-known poet and literary
critic in Russia at that time.
What shocked Marina Tsvetaeva perhaps even more, if
such a thing was possible, was that, in his despicable book, Osip Mandelstam
used the real name of Colonel Tsygalsky. –
“What if he is alive and you may meet him
someday? How will you be able to look him in the eye? Or will it be like that
day in 1918, in a corridor, when I declined to shake your hand? You will
hustle, babble something, raising back your head, but burning down to your ears…”
Here is a good place for us to turn to another
personage of Master and Margarita,
whose prototype, according to Bulgakov, is Osip Mandelstam.
In order to do it, the reader needs to be reminded how
Bulgakov depicts Andrei Fokich Sokov, as he enters the no-good apartment #50. –
“And so, having left the economist behind
on the stairs landing, the buffet vendor climbed up to the fifth floor and rang
the doorbell of apartment 50.
The door was opened immediately, but the
buffet vendor shuddered [sic!], made a few steps back [sic!], and did not enter
right away. That was understandable. The door was opened by a young woman who
had nothing on, except for a coquettish lacy apron and a white pin in her hair.
She had golden slippers on her feet too, though. She was built flawlessly, and
the only defect which could be counted in her appearance was a crimson scar on
her neck. So do come in then, once you
rang! – she said, staring at the buffet vendor with her green wanton [sic!]
eyes.
Andrei Fokich made an awkward sound, blinked
his eyes, and stepped into the anteroom... The shameless housemaid, putting one
foot on a stool, picked up the phone. The buffet vendor did not know where to
hide his eyes, stepping from one foot to the other, as he thought: What a housemaid this foreigner has! What
filth!”
Bulgakov clearly portrays a pious man here. The theme
of piousness continues into the next room where Andrei Fokich finds himself:
“There was a table there, making the
God-fearing buffet vendor shudder: The table was covered with church brocade.”
From the buffet vendor’s conversation with Woland, it
becomes clear that the man does not drink, does not gamble, whether it’s a game
of cards, of dice, or even dominoes.
When Woland learns from Koroviev that Andrei Fokich
has only nine months to live, he makes a very tempting suggestion to him, which
will be opening my next posting…
To be continued…
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