Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.
Andrei Bely.
“They are singing,
singing;
They are carrying me to the
last refuge,
After the service.
They are carrying me to the
Last Judgment…”
Andrei Bely. Carrying
Out the Corpse. Insanity. 1906.
In
Master and Margarita, Bulgakov makes
use of Andrei Bely’s “bowler hat” in the scene of Margarita meeting a stranger (Azazello)
in Alexandrovsky Garden across from the Manezh.
Sitting
on a bench under the Kremlin Wall, Margarita is quite surprised at the sudden
appearance out of nowhere of a stranger who joins her on the same bench knowing
her name and patronymic:
“Margarita was surprised. You
know me? Instead of an answer, the red-haired man took off his bowler hat
[sic!] and put it away. A perfectly
ruffian face! – Margarita thought, peering into her street acquaintance…”
Here
we find Bulgakov’s unequivocal allusion to Sergei Yesenin’s out-of-this-world
play in verse Land of Scoundrels, and
also to the poet’s arrest and short-term exile. This scene is one of those
places in Master and Margarita where
several novels intersect: the fantastical, mystical and spy novels plus the
political thriller.
“…But I do not know you, –
dryly
said Margarita. – But where would you
know me from?..”
And
here it comes:
“…Yet, incidentally, I have
been sent to you on certain little business…”
Margarita’s
first reaction points to the presence of the political thriller…
“…That’s what you should have
started with in the first place… instead of mumbling something about some
cut-off head! You are going to arrest me?”
[In his 1895 History of England, the historian Charles Oman notes that
plainclothes policemen and special agents in the second half of the nineteenth
century were distinguished by wearing bowler hats.
The history of this hat, as well as the
hat itself, is linked to Bulgakov. In his novella Fateful Eggs bowler hats are worn by special agents guarding
Professor Persikov. Then, among the guests at the Great Ball of Satan Margarita
meets the very first Earl of Leicester Robert Dudley, the dearest favorite of
Queen Elizabeth I. The Earldom of Leicester was created in 1564 specifically
for him. He is officially known as the First Earl of Leicester of the First
Creation.
The bowler hat was created by the Bowler
Brothers hatters (hence the name) in 1849 on a special order of Edward Coke,
younger brother of the Second Earl of Leicester of the Seventh Creation. The
client wanted this hardened-felt hat for himself and his friends to wear during
hunting parties. The durability of the hat and its unusual look became an
overnight success among several groups of customers, plainclothes policemen
prominently included. John Steed of the Avengers
fame was one the best known wearers of the bowler hat.]
Having
talked about the bowler hat, we must not neglect the other attributes of a
perfect Englishman, such as the walking stick, or at least the umbrella. John Steed
never parted with his bowler hat or his umbrella!
It’s
time now to jump from Andrei Bely’s poetry cycle The Miserables to the cycle Insanity,
written about the same time. As the reader remembers, I am treating them
simultaneously. The cycle Insanity has
a poem titled The Funeral Service,
where we read:
“Come
guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Whisper: Oh God,
Leave your umbrellas and
walking sticks
In the anteroom:
Here are my bones…”
And
in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
in the last chapter of the first part of the novel, titled The Hapless Visitors, we read:
“The whole large and semi-dark anteroom was jam-packed with unusual
objects and garments. Thus a mourning-black cloak, lined with some flaming
cloth was thrown on the back of a chair. A long sword with a glittering golden
hilt was lying on the console table under the mirror. Three swords with silver
hilts were standing upright in the corner, as plainly as some umbrellas or walking
sticks [sic!]. And on the stag antlers on the wall hung berets adorned with
eagle feathers.”
This
excerpt shows me that Bulgakov knew Andrei Bely’s poetry very well, and also
that Bulgakov was tremendously interested in Andrei Bely as a person. Bulgakov
literally distributes Bely’s features among his characters, and does the same
with the personages of Bely’s poetry.
For
instance, when Andrei Fokich Sokov is invited by Gella into the anteroom of the
apartment, Bulgakov writes:
“Andrei Fokich made an awkward sound,
blinked his eyes, and stepped into the anteroom... The shameless [naked]
housemaid placing one foot on a stool, picked up the phone. The buffet vendor
just didn’t know where to hide his eyes, stepping from one foot to the other,
as he was thinking: What a housemaid this
foreigner has!! What filth! And, in order to deliver himself from this
filth, he started looking askance [sic!], that is, examining the anteroom…”
Thus,
Bulgakov confuses the reader, deliberately giving Andrei Bely’s features to the
buffet vendor, whose real identity will be revealed, as I said before, in my
chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries:
The God-Fearing Lecher.
Naturally,
the words “looking askance” come from
Marina Tsvetaeva’s reminiscences of Andrei Bely. We must also note that aside
from the umbrellas and the walking sticks, conspicuously present in both Bely
and Bulgakov (see above), we have the Bely line: “…Here are my bones…” that
corresponds to Woland’s suggestion to Sokov “to play a
game of dice.” [This play on words may be completely lost on a
non-Russian reader, for which reason a little clarification is in order. In the
Russian language the word “kosti”
means both “bones” and “dice.” Sic!]
In
the next poem At the Coffin from the
poetry cycle Insanity Andrei Bely
explains that what he means by “bones” is his own corpse.
“I am
lying in a black suit,
With a yellow-yellow face.
An icon in my bone-hard hand.
Dilin-bim-bom!”
In
the last, untitled, poem of the cycle Insanity
Andrei Bely makes a promise:
“Soon,
soon, as a drafty spirit,
I will inescapably come for
her,
Enveloped by the pale air
Like by a veil of those same
days…”
And
Bulgakov in the terrific chapter 24 The
Extraction of Master produces master with a gust of wind through the window
into the drawing room of the “no-good” apartment #50. Indeed, master can well
be called here “a drafty spirit.” Only
he does not come for Margarita. According to Bulgakov, it is Margarita who
summons master from wherever he is.
“...And
to her, the air wanderer,
I’ll press my snow-cold face.
[that is, his dead face]…”
“...Margarita fell on her knees, pressed herself to the side of the
sick man, and quieted down…”
To
be continued…
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