A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Lion and
the Servant Maiden.
Posting #2.
“I
conjured, and I believed the conjuring,
I
pleaded with the Creator for a stormless bliss,
When
suddenly I saw a tall crucifix,
Nailed
to which was a white-haired vampire in purple.”
Andrei Bely. Nailed Horror.
“Gella” appears in Bulgakov already in White Guard. –
“Like stacks of firewood, one upon another, laid there were naked
human corpses, emitting an unbearable, stifling to any human being… stench… He
grabbed a woman’s corpse by the foot, and she, slippery, slid down like over
oil with a thud to the floor. To Nikolka she appeared terrifyingly beautiful,
like a witch, and sticky. Nikolka could not take his eyes away from the scar,
winding around her like a red ribbon…”
The reader has surely recognized this “beautiful like a witch” woman traveling
from a makeshift morgue of Bulgakov’s first novel White Guard, where she has no name, into his last novel Master and Margarita, where she already
has a name, Gella, her occupation being the devil’s maidservant.
In Woland’s words, this maidservant is “agile, quick-thinking, and there is no such
service that she would not be able to render.”
Gella appears in Master
and Margarita throughout the book and disappears only when Woland’s company
prepares to leave the no-good apartment of the jeweler’s widow. And it is clear
why she disappears. Gella is not a poet, but only poets are allowed to travel
in Woland’s cavalcade.
The name Gella comes from the word agellos, meaning an “angel of the
abyss,” in Christian demonology. But there is a simpler explanation of this
name. Bulgakov knew the English language and to him Gella, or Hella, could mean
a she-demon from Hell. And considering that V. Mayakovsky in his long poem Flute-Spine complains that God, as a
punishment for his godlessness, got him an “accursed one from Hell” to stalk
him endlessly to the end of his life, Bulgakov, in turn, made this “accursed
one” Woland’s maidservant. (We remember that Woland’s prototype is Mayakovsky
and we can easily surmise Gella’s prototype from this.)
To begin with, Gella first appears in the 10th
chapter of Master and Margarita,
titled News from Yalta. In the
aftermath of Varenukha’s beating in a public outhouse, Azazello and Kot Begemot
drag him into the no-good apartment #50, aka the jeweler’s widow’s apartment.
Bulgakov writes:
“Then the two ruffians vanished, and in
their stead there appeared in the anteroom a completely naked young woman –
red-haired [sic!] with burning phosphorescent 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…”
The second appearance of Gella was already discussed
in the previous sub-chapter Duets of
the general chapter A Swallow’s Nest of
Luminaries. And now we are moving on to the 12th chapter of Master and Margarita, titled Black Magic And Its Unmasking, where
Gella appears in a “women’s store”
opened on the stage of the Variety Theater by Fagot (aka Koroviev, aka Pushkin)
himself. Bulgakov writes:
“A red-haired vixen, appearing devil knows from where, dressed in
black evening attire, splendid in every way, except being spoiled by a peculiar
scar around her neck, was beaming near the shop windows with a proprietary
grin. Albeit with some hoarseness in her voice, the gal started singing sweetly
and with a burr something little comprehensible, but judging by the faces of
the women in the audience, very tempting:
Guerlain, Chanel Number Five,
Mitsuko, Narcisse Noir, evening dresses, cocktail dresses…
Fagot was wiggling, the cat was bowing, the vixen was opening the
glass shop windows…”
I already wrote about the so-called “women’s store” in
my Spy Novel of Master and Margarita. Here
I am only dealing with the character of Gella. Bulgakov writes:
“…The gal with the disfigured neck now
appeared now vanished and went so far as to babble completely in French, and
surprisingly, she was perfectly understood by all women, even those of them who
did not know a word in French.”
Indeed, these lines convincingly indicate that
Bulgakov took as Gella’s prototype none other than Lilya Brik, who was
constantly traveling abroad, especially to France, where her sister married Louis Aragon. (Those who do not know who
he is, look him up!) From these trips she Lilya Brik was always bringing to
Moscow fancy clothes and perfume, among other things.
Next time Gella appears in the 14th chapter
Glory to the Rooster, which is also
covered in my sub-chapter Duets of A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries. She also
appears in the 18th chapter of Master
and Margarita, The Hapless Visitors, where Lilya Brik meets Osip
Mandelstam. (See my sub-chapter The
God-Fearing Lecher.)
***
I was always wondering why Bulgakov chose a woman for
the role of the vampire in Master and
Margarita. And I was also wondering about the prototype of this personage.
Reading Marina Tsvetaeva, I learned that Asya
Turgeneva, whom she admired so much, once asked her:
“Why
do the Tsvetaev sisters have such red lips? Both Marina and Asya [Tsvetaeva,
the same first name]. Are they vampires by any chance? Perhaps, one ought to be
afraid of you, Marina? Will you be coming to me at night? Will you be drinking
my blood?”
Despite this, and the fact that Tsvetaeva writes a lot
about blood in both her prose and her poetry, I could never see her in the role
of Gella, the vampire. And then it struck me that Gella is Woland’s servant,
that is, the devil’s maid, which is the reason why the connection ought to be
sought with V. V. Mayakovsky.
I have always been interested in Mayakovsky’s poetry.
Me and Alexander have always loved it. And so I reread his long poem A Cloud in Pants, written in 1915, and
next his Flute-Spine, in which he
complains that God, in punishment for his blasphemies (which did not prevent
Mayakovsky from following the Russian tradition of comparing himself to Jesus
Christ), procured a “cursed one” from hell and commanded Mayakovsky to love
her.
***
If Sergei Yesenin is “executed” by a woman unknown, to whom he writes a
letter many years later, then V. Mayakovsky writes a whole long poem on this
subject, “playing the flute” of his
own spine. Already in the Prologue of
this poem, written in 1915, that is fifteen years before his suicide,
Mayakovsky thinks “more
and more often whether to put a bullet period at the end [and] just in case
[gives] a farewell performance.”
Meanwhile, in the opening of the poem proper, Mayakovsky asks:
“Pressing
the miles of streets under the sway of my steps,
Where shall
I go, hiding this hell?
What kind of
celestial Hoffmann
Has thought
you up, you, the accursed one?!”
Thus Yesenin’s “beloved” is transformed in Mayakovsky into the “accursed
one.” Mayakovsky explains that this “accursed one” has been given to him in
punishment:
“There I
blasphemed,
Yelled that
there is no God,
And God
brought up such one from the depths of hell
That before
her a mountain will get excited and tremble,
And He
brought her up and commanded:
Love!”
In punishment, God produces a she-devil from hell.
To be continued…
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