GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CCCCXX

A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.

Mr. Lastochkin:

The Magnificent Third.

Posting #16.

“Only snakes are shedding their skin

So that their soul would mature and grow;

Alas, we are not like snakes:

We are changing souls, not bodies.”

N. S. Gumilev. Memory.

This last stanza of Gumilev’s poem From the Serpent’s Lair –

“...She keeps silent, only shivering,

And she feels unwell,

I pity her, the guilty one,

Like a wounded bird,

Like an uprooted birch tree,

Over a swamp cursed by God.”

– is used by Bulgakov also in another passage in Master and Margarita, that is, in the 24^th chapter The Extraction of Master, reversing the places of the two hapless lovers. It is master who “feels unwell” when Margarita demands that he be returned to her “this very second.” Master is gravely ill. He is “frightened,” his “hallucinations have started again.” Margarita rushes to master not out of pity, but because of her great love for him. Bulgakov writes:

“Margarita fell on her knees, pressed herself to the side of the sick man, and quieted down. The sick man put down his head and went on peering into the ground with his sulky sick eyes.”

It is perfectly clear here already that Margarita summons master by the power of her love only in her imagination. It is precisely in this place that master also in his imagination sees his death. Bulgakov writes that master was peering “into the ground” and not into the floor of the room where he was, whether it was the floor of the apartment #50 or the floor of his room in the psychiatric clinic.

“Ground” in this case means the grave.

Only Bulgakov can write like that. Two hallucinations, two desires are crossing at this point. And for a while it remains unclear where Margarita ends and master begins.

But Margarita wins, and master starts pitying her because it won’t be good for her with master, that she will perish with him. Which is indeed the case when Woland returns them both to master’s basement.

Also in Bulgakov’s Chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time! – when Azazello poisons both master and Margarita in the basement apartment so that the souls of the dying lovers would come together from their different locations: Margarita’s from the mansion and master’s from the psychiatric clinic into the soulless bodies created by Woland.

Bulgakov writes:

“When the poisoned ones stopped moving, Azazello went into action. The first thing he did was to dash through the window, and in a few moments he was inside the mansion. Always precise and meticulous, Azazello wanted to ascertain that everything was done as necessary. And everything turned out to be in order. Azazello saw how a gloomy woman waiting for her husband came out of her bedroom, suddenly became pale, clutched at her heart, and helplessly gasping: Natasha! Somebody... to me! – fell to the floor of the drawing room before reaching the study.

Everything is in order, said Azazello.”

Such is the end. But Bulgakov is a mystical writer, and transferring the souls into soulless bodies, he dispatches the two lovers to their Last Refuge. Bulgakov uses a very interesting device in order to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that only Margarita’s body is in the basement, and for some reason it is functioning on its own. –

“Margarita rose from the armchair. It is interesting to note that her soul was in complete order. In other words, her acquaintance with Woland had brought her no psychological harm. Everything was as though like it was supposed to be.”

This proves that Margarita was soulless. Bulgakov takes this idea from Marina Tsvetaeva’s book Earthly Signs, where she writes this in particular:

“Death is frightening only to the body. The soul does not conceive of it.”

This is why Margarita inside her mansion...

“...came out of her bedroom, suddenly became pale, clutched at her heart, and helplessly gasping: Natasha! Somebody... to me! – fell to the floor of the drawing room before reaching the study.”

In other words, Margarita had no conception that she was dying.

Bulgakov takes the idea of poisoning from Gumilev’s play which he created impromptu for his friends who had gathered in his house during a rain. According to Mme Nevedomskaya, the title of the play was Love-Poisoner.

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