A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
The Lion and
the Servant Maiden.
Posting #3.
“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.
In a very interesting fashion Bulgakov combines the ideas of Mayakovsky
and Yesenin, and creates his own. Master, who is writing a novel about the
Crucifixion of Christ, titled Pontius
Pilate, is connected by the demonic force with the witch Margarita. Bulgakov
does not explain how she had become a witch, which can only be understood
having read Mayakovsky’s Flute-Spine.—
“God is
content. Under the heavens, in a wringer,
The
exhausted man has become wild and extinct.
God is
rubbing the palms of his hands.
Thinks God:
‘Just you wait, Vladimir!’”
A very important moment comes here, which is directly related to Master and Margarita.
“It’s to
his, his [that is, God’s] mind came the idea,
So that
[Vladimir Mayakovsky] would not figure it out,
To give you [witch]
a real husband,
And put
human sheet music on the grand piano.”
This is why Bulgakov doesn’t need to explain how Margarita had become a
witch: she was one all along! She managed to deceive master and us readers just
because she had a real husband, that is, her, witch’s, husband is a real man
who does not know, like we do not know it, that she is a witch…
“If we were
to sneak to the door of the bedroom
And make a
sign of the cross over your quilt,
I know,
there will be a smell of burnt wool,
And sulphurous
smoke will come from the flesh of the devil.”
Such is Mayakovsky’s actual attitude toward the Brik couple. He exclaims:
“No need for
you! I don’t want you!”
He does not want to have a witch as his lover; he understands that he is
in trouble, and suggests that God should inflict on him a different
punishment:
“Tie me to
comets, like to horses’ tails,
And drag me,
tearing me over the teeth of the stars…”
Or perhaps this:
“When my
soul gets evicted from the body,
And comes to
Your Judgment,
You make a
rope out of the Milky Way,
And take me, and hang me as a criminal.”
And then, completely out of despair:
“Do what you
want, quarter me, if you like,
I will be
the one to wash your hands, Righteous,
Only listen!
Take away from me that accursed one
Whom you
have made my lover!”
And again, he ends with a repetition:
“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?!”
Mayakovsky clearly understands that the two Briks are playing a dirty
game with him. His poem is beautiful not because of his love for “Lilechka,”
but because of his love for himself. Mayakovsky is an egocentric. The whole
world is rotating around him. He is a poet with amazing associations. All his
poetry is about himself. As he himself writes in his grandiose poem To Myself, beloved, the author dedicates
these lines –
“Were she to
torture the poet so,
He would
exchange his beloved for money and glory.”
Mayakovsky is a poet, and he exchanged these verses for money and glory.
Bulgakov could naturally turn Lilya Brik (who was
stalking and dogging Mayakovsky all his life) into Woland’s servant and in such
a manner to finally submit the demanding lover, that is, Lilya Brik, to the
service of the poet, that is, Mayakovsky. This relationship was tiring to
Mayakovsky from the very beginning. Already on May 26th, 1916, in
his poem Lilichka!, Mayakovsky
practically begs his relentless stalker to let him go, to release him, to stop
pursuing him. –
“Tobacco
smoke has eaten up the air,
The
room is a chapter in Kruchenykh’s Hell…
It’s
day still – you will throw me out,
Perhaps,
first giving me a scolding…
I’ll
run out, throw my body into the street,
Wild,
I will lose my mind…”
The poem practically portrays “Lilichka” as a sadist
in a sick sadomasochistic relationship with the young homeless poet who desires
only one thing: to end this morbid liaison:
“My
dear, my good one, don’t keep this going,
Let
us say farewell right away!..”
It is perfectly clear here that Mayakovsky wants to
end the relationship, but he is afraid of retribution. It is Lila Brik’s
husband (the three of them live together, as Mayakovsky has no place of his
own, and his affair with the wife is no secret to the husband, who exploits it
for what it is worth) who publishes Mayakovsky’s poetry and pays him money per
line, not much, but enough for the poet’s sustenance.
Even in the 1922 long poem I Love, in which Mayakovsky talks about his life, Lila Brik occupies
not too much space near the end, and the truth about their relationship isn’t
too hard to figure out. The first line in the seventh chapter You is outright stunning. –
“You.
She
came businesslike, for the roar, for the height,
One
look, and she discerned a mere boy.
She
took away his heart and simply
Went
to play with it, like a girl with a ball…”
Is that love?
To be continued…
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