A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Duets.
Posting #3.
“Life
is calling to enjoyment,
Meanwhile,
under the window, in the silence of midnight,
Death
is singing his serenade:
In
the darkness of captivity, stern and constricted,
Your
youth is wilting away.
The
unfathomable knight, by my wondrous power
Shall
I liberate you…”
Mussorgsky/Golenischev-Kutuzov.
Songs
and Dances of Death.
“White as snow, without a single black
hair, the old man who only recently used to be Rimsky ran toward the door, “unbuttoned”
the door lock, opened the door, and rushed down the dark corridor. At the turn
to the stairway, he, moaning from fear, felt for the light switch, and the
stairway became lit. On the stairs, the trembling, quivering old man fell down,
for it seemed to him as though Varenukha softly crushed down on him from
above.”
There is no way that Varenukha could “crush down” on
Rimsky, because he had already flown away after Gella, and could not disobey
her command. And, most importantly, the power of the cockerel’s crow covered
him too, because he had become part of the demonic force himself, in punishment
for his dissipated, immoral life.
The only one who could “softly crush down” on Rimsky
was M. P. Mussorgsky in the form of a cockerel. Pay attention to the word
“softly.” A crash with a cockerel can be described as “soft.”
By the same token, Bulgakov wants to show by this
means that Mussorgsky as a composer tops Rimsky-Korsakov, and the latter should
not have been “correcting” the orchestration of the genius.
There is no doubt that Rimsky-Korsakov is a
first-class composer, having written a considerable number of enchanting operas
staged and heard all around the world. The first and foremost among them is, in
my opinion, The Tale of the City of
Kitezh. Rimsky-Korsakov was of course a deeply religious man, a mystic in
the operatic world. He was interested in the supernatural element. As for
Mussorgsky, he was down to earth, but in the musical sense he was bigger than
the universe itself.
Interestingly, when Bulgakov in the 32nd
chapter of Master and Margarita,
Forgiveness and the Last Refuge, describes the metamorphoses of the members
of Woland’s cavalcade, he resorts to M. Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death.
Mussorgsky wrote this 4-song cycle in collaboration
with the talented amateur poet Arseny Arkadievich Golenischev-Kutuzov, a
descendant of the legendary Field Marshal Kutuzov, the conqueror of Napoleon.
The key song of this cycle, which Bulgakov used in his
novel Master and Margarita is called Serenade.
In the “quivering twilight of spring” [sic!], a sick and dying
maiden gets a visit from Death…
“Life
is calling to enjoyment,
Meanwhile,
under the window, in the silence of midnight,
Death
is singing his serenade:
In
the darkness of captivity, stern and constricted,
Your
youth is wilting away.
The
unfathomable knight, by my wondrous power
Shall
I liberate you…”
Et voilà, Bulgakov’s Koroviev is transformed by a
wondrous power into a dark-violet knight… And don’t we know why?! He, Pushkin,
was the first Russian poet suffering a violent death on Russian soil in 1837,
as a result of an international conspiracy.
And after that already it was Lermontov in 1841, who
allowed himself to be killed on a duel, shooting his pistol up into the air,
whereas his opponent had no such intention. Moving into the 20th
century, it was S. Yesenin in1925, slitting his wrists, a peasant poet choosing
the manner of suicide of a Roman nobleman at the age of 30. Five years later,
in 1930, it was Mayakovsky who shot himself at Pushkins age of 37. That same
Mayakovsky who wrote I Myself.
So these are the “Magnificent Four” of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.
The only woman-poetess featured in Master and Margarita – Marina Tsvetaeva
– was still alive in Bulgakov’s lifetime and became the sole prototype of Margarita
on account of her poems featuring Pushkin and Blok, and also of her reminiscences
which had given Bulgakov many ideas for his work. Not the least among the links
between Bulgakov and Tsvetaeva was the fact that they had so many views in
common, both being Russian to the core and emerging from the same milieu. They
were both professors’ children, Orthodox in their religion, and, most
importantly, they were Russian patriots. They were no fans of the Commissars
and of their role in the Russian Revolution.
It may seem at first sight that Bulgakov’s Margarita
has nothing in common with the sick maiden of Mussorgsky’s Serenade. However at Woland’s Ball, Koroviev was endlessly testing
Margarita with his stories of poisonings, knowing full well that Margarita had
been suicidal at several points of her life, and wanted to poison herself.
And, of course, after the Ball, Margarita was tested
with such cold indifference that she decided, then and there, to go and drown
herself, rather than to beg for anything.
The following lines of the Serenade struck me tremendously, as I could not figure out why
Margarita was so reluctant to describe herself when she was describing the
others in Woland’s cavalcade.
Here are those lines, all of them sung by the Knight
(Death) to the Maiden:
“Get
up and look at yourself –
Your
face shines with transparent beauty,
Your
cheeks are red…”
The following lines confirm the truth of my point
that, depending on the angle of vision, the novel Master and Margarita presents the reader with different pictures
made out of the same pieces of the mosaic. –
“…Your
wavy plait of hair
Weaves
around your body like a storm cloud…”
We will return to the storm cloud later on, but first,
regarding the plait, here is where Bulgakov takes the idea of master’s plait
from, in the psychological thriller. Thus Bulgakov shows us that Alexander Blok
had a split personality in his poetry…
“…The
blue glow of the intense eyes
Is
brighter than heaven and fire.
Your
breath radiates midday heat.
You
have enticed me…”
So, this is why Margarita does not describe herself on
the way to the “last refuge.” Bulgakov gives us an obvious clue: “Margarita could
not see herself.” And the answer comes through with the help of
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky and his Serenade
from the song cycle Songs and Dances
of Death... I am so happy to have cracked this one!
From the same Mussorgsky Serenade, we are getting
a clue regarding Woland’s description by Margarita (in fact, there is no
description as such!) after the cavalcade’s transformation into their “real
selves.” –
“And finally Woland was also flying in his true form. Margarita
would not have been able to tell what the rein of his stallion was made of, and
she thought that it could possibly be made of lunar chains, and that the
stallion himself was only a block of darkness, and the stallion’s mane was a
storm cloud, and the spurs of the horseman where the white spots of the stars…”
And so, we can conclude that any description of
Woland’s real appearance is absent due to the fact that V. V. Mayakovsky,
Woland’s prototype, being larger than life, is represented as the whole
universe. For, it is Mayakovsky who suggests that Man invite the Earth to a
waltz, seeing the space under the heavens as the parquet under the dancers’
feet.
“Earth!
Let me kiss your balding head…
Earth! -- You! There are two
of us… My sister!”
***
It is perfectly clear that the word “plait” is not the
only metaphor that Bulgakov borrows from Mussorgsky. Another metaphor is the
“storm cloud,” and so is the word “darkness.” Both these words are present in a
single sentence describing Woland’s stallion. –
“…And the stallion himself was only a block of darkness, and
the stallion’s mane was a storm cloud…
Compare this to Mussorgsky’s Serenade:
“…In the darkness of
captivity, stern and constricted…
Your
wavy plait of hair weaves around your body like a storm cloud…”
Just like Mussorgsky’s Serenade gives no description of Death, except that he comes to the
sick maiden in the form of a knight, Bulgakov gives no description of Woland except
that Margarita sees his stallion as a “block of darkness,” and the stallion’s
mane as a “storm cloud.”
Such sketchiness of description is frequent throughout
Bulgakov’s literary works, but here it is especially fitted to parallel
Mussorgsky’s Serenade.
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment