A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Lion and
the Servant Maiden.
Posting #1.
“The
battle with the vampire dwarf seemed hard…
It
was the fourth hour, the sky lightened up,
And
the horizon became pale-emerald…”
Andrei Bely. Nailed Horror.
“What
kind of Bely [white] is that?
An
angel or a madman in underwear escaping into the street?”
Marina Tsvetaeva. Captive Spirit.
In her reminiscences of Andrei Bely, Marina Tsvetaeva
describes their trip to the zoo in Berlin. In order for the reader to
understand what I am talking about, I would like to remind you that Tsvetaeva
is using a literary device here, which she also uses in the story about Sergei
Yesenin’s return from exile.
Whenever she feels the awkwardness of telling a story
from her own person, she substitutes herself by her little daughter Alya Efron,
who thus becomes the person allegedly telling the story. –
“At the zoo, in front of a cage with a huge
lion, the lions’ lion, Alya:
Mama,
look! A veritable Lev Tolstoy! Same eyebrows, same broad nose, and same gray
little mean eyes, really lying about everything.
You
don’t say! The
forty-year-old [Andrei Bely] to the eight-year-old [Alya]. Lev Tolstoy is the
only man ever to put himself under a glass dome and perform a vivisection on
himself.”
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a notorious sex offender.
The reader of these lines must be perplexed why I am writing about this at all,
but it was Bulgakov who introduced into his novel Master and Margarita the world-renowned author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and
of other monumentals, whose collected works, including drafts, count ninety
volumes in all. Which is the reason why I’d find it impossible to imagine
Bulgakov being unfamiliar with Marina Tsvetaeva’s reminiscences.
Hence the title of the present chapter: A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries,
subtitled The Lion and the Servant Maiden,
the Lion being L. N. Tolstoy and the Servant Maiden being Gella in Master and Margarita. How could Bulgakov
better punish Tolstoy in his novel than by unleashing a woman-vampire on him?
I was always surprised that in the horror scene with
Rimsky, after Gella’s unsuccessful attempt to turn Rimsky into a vampire with
the help of Varenukha (yes, the reader guessed it correctly that Varenukha’s
prototype is indeed the world-famous Lev Tolstoy!), Bulgakov proceeds to write:
“And after her [Gella], jumping up, and
stretching out his body horizontally in the air, reminding of a flying Cupid
[sic!], Varenukha flowed slowly over the writing desk into the window.”
It now becomes clear why Bulgakov so mercilessly
punishes the harmless at first sight Varenukha, who is incidentally the only
one among the characters of Master and
Margarita who always wears a tolstovka. (Ivan’s tolstovka is a false clue.
He wears it out of necessity only after his own clothes have been stolen,
courtesy of Woland.)
With his exceptional sense of humor, Bulgakov picks a
woman-vampire to show L. N. Tolstoy, who is of course Varenukha’s prototype,
what “non-resistance to evil” really means.
In Tolstoy’s transformation into a vampire, we see
Bulgakov’s outrage as a Russian Christian Orthodox not only over Tolstoy’s
obscene behavior toward women, but also over his unsavory experimentation in
the last years of his life, which, according to Tolstoy himself, was supposed
to redeem his earlier transgressions. Bulgakov shows it even before Gella’s
“kiss” turns Varenukha into a vampire.
When
Varenukha’s assailants start beating him up, something incredible happens.—
“After the fat man’s blow, the whole outhouse as though lit up for
a moment with a quivering light and from the sky a clap of thunder responded.
Next came another burst of light and in front of the administrator the second
assailant appeared; he was short, but with athletic shoulders, red-haired like
fire, wall-eyed on one eye and a fang in the mouth. This other one, obviously a
left-hander, punched the administrator in his other ear. In response to that,
once again there was a boom in the sky, and a downpour of heavy rain crashed on
the wooden roof…
They both picked up the administrator under the arms, hauled him
outside the garden and rushed with him down the Sadovaya Street, the water
crashing and howling was pouring down, bubbling, in swelling waves, torrents
came down from the roofs missing the eaves, foamy streams came out from under
the gateways. Jumping through the turbid rivers and lit up by lightnings, it
took the bandits a second to carry the half-dead administrator [to their
destination]… and Varenukha, being close to insanity, was thrown on the floor.
…Here the two ruffians disappeared and a completely nude girl appeared,
red-haired with burning phosphorous eyes. Varenukha realized that this was the
greatest horror now, and groaning backed to the wall… Varenukha’s hair stood
up… “Now let me give you a kiss…”
Next, Varenukha fainted and did not feel the kiss…”
Varenukha’s brutal beating in a public outhouse by
Azazello and Begemot is degrading, but so was Lev Tolstoy’s conduct with women
and toward the Christian religion – degrading! Bulgakov shows that Tolstoy’s
life as a person was so disgusting that the best comparison of his life would
be to outhouse sewage.
The name itself which Bulgakov gives to this character
is already degrading. Varenukha means “an intoxicating beverage produced by
boiling vodka together with honey with added berries and spices.”
“Varenets” and “dusheparka” are two other words
signifying this inebriating beverage. This is probably how Bulgakov felt about
L. N. Tolstoy’s creative work. There is a reason why Maksudov, in response to
Rudolfi’s (see about him later in this chapter) comment: “Imitating Tolstoy!” – enumerates a number of writers with the name
Tolstoy, leaving Lev Nikolayevich for the last spot.
“Imitating
Tolstoy, said Rudolfi.
I became angry.
Which
one of the Tolstoys? – I
asked. – There were many of them... Is it
Alexei Konstantinovich, the famous writer, or maybe Petr Andreevich, who
captured Tsarevich Alexei abroad, or is it Ivan Ivanovich, the numismatist, or
Lev Nikolayevich?”
Bulgakov put his novel White Guard above War and
Peace, and, I think, deservedly so.
Giving Lev Tolstoy such a peculiar name, “Varenukha,”
Bulgakov also alludes to the name of the inebriating beverage given by the
Romans to those condemned to crucifixion, the beverage that Yeshua, in Pontius Pilate, turns down.
The question comes up why Woland, treating Varenukha
with aversion, allows Azazello to release him from the vampire curse. The
answer is unambiguous. Woland did not want to have him in Hell, because his
prototype V. V. Mayakovsky, in his play Mysteria
Buff, is sending the unscrupulous lecher L. Tolstoy with another
unscrupulous lecher Rousseau to Paradise.
This also explains why it is none other than Kot
Begemot and Azazello, whose prototypes are Lermontov and Yesenin, who are
beating up Varenukha in a public outhouse. Their own “free way of life” notwithstanding,
they never stooped to the level of raping women.
Azazello’s words: “You
shouldn’t be lying!” are taken directly from Marina Tsvetaeva, showing that
L. N. Tolstoy’s manner of life was in sharp contrast to his morality preaching
in his creative work.
To be continued…
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