The Garden.
Posting #14.
“…Jesus Christ…
Standing alone in his garment
of linen,
Wrapped in golden brocade…”
Andrei Bely. Gold in
the Azure.
…Secondly, from these poems it becomes clear that the “swallow”
belongs to Andrei Bely. As the reader knows, Bulgakov uses only one swallow.
The swallow appears as a messenger, as with its arrival in the colonnade, a
“formula” comes into Pontius Pilate’s head.
“A swallow swiftly flew into the colonnade, made a circle under the
gilded ceiling, then descended, almost touching the face of the copper statue
in the niche with its sharp wing, and disappeared behind the capitel of the
colonnade…
Throughout its whole flight, a certain formula developed in the by now light and clear head of the
procurator. It went like this: The Igemon
has deliberated on the case of the wandering philosopher Yeshua, nicknamed
Ha-Nozri, and has not found anything criminal in it… Due to this fact, the
death sentence against Ha-Nozri, pronounced by the lesser Synhedrion [that is,
by Caiaphas], is not approved by the procurator.
The only remaining thing was to dictate this to the secretary.
The wings of the swallow snorted right over the head of the Igemon;
the bird rushed toward the cup of the fountain and flew out, to freedom…”
Using
Andrei Bely’s poetry, these lines can be treated as good news about Yeshua’s
freedom.
***
Bulgakov
takes the “formula” also from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, as this particular
word is quite frequent in her writings, including in relation to V. Ya.
Bryusov.
Already
in the first part of Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, titled The Poet, she takes a line from Bryusov:
“Plod
onward, thought, my faithful ox!”
After
which she asks:
“Is Bryusov a poet after all said? Yes, but not by the Grace of God…
Inspiration plus ox labor – that’s a poet. Ox labor plus ox labor – that’s
Bryusov: An ox pulling a cart. This ox is not utterly devoid of grandeur,
though.”
Despite
such praise, Marina Tsvetaeva comes to the following conclusion:
“If instead of thought – will, the verse would have become a
formula.”
And
how is Marina Tsvetaeva’s exposition turning out in Bulgakov’s novel? Read the
passage above about a swallow inside the colonnade once more.
Marina
Tsvetaeva raises the question of formula in the 4th part of her
memoirs: Bryusov and Balmont,
comparing the two Russian poet to each other:
“If Bryusov is an example of insurmounted talentlessness, then
Balmont is an example of insurmounted giftedness. Bryusov never summoned the
demon, Balmont could never overcome him.”
Tsvetaeva
takes this turn of the phrase from Pushkin’s observation about Sir Walter
Scott’s contemporaries:
“Like Agrippa’s disciples,
having conjured up the ancient demon, they couldn’t control him, and became
victims of their audacity.”
And
before that in Marina Tsvetaeva:
“...With the current of his own gift – Balmont. Against the current
of his giftlessness – Bryusov. And putting it in a formula [sic!]:
Balmont, like a child, plays
as he works. Bryusov, like a child’s tutor, works as he plays…”
Marina
Tsvetaeva has also contributed to solving yet another puzzle in the 3rd part of her
memoir of Bryusov: An Evening With the
Poetesses. As I already wrote on several occasions before, the sun occurs 26 times throughout the Pontius Pilate sub-novel, according to
my BVL edition. I have explained it
accordingly in the proper chapters. Yet I had no explanation for two
occurrences: one in Master and Margarita and
the other in Pontius Pilate.
The
first occurrence in Master and Margarita proper:
“No, wait! I know what I am
getting myself into. But I am doing it because of him, because I have no more
hope for anything in the world. But let me tell you: If you ruin me, you will
be ashamed of yourself. Yes, ashamed! I am perishing because of love! And
thumping her chest, Margarita cast a glance at the sun.”
And in Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs she writes:
“And addressing myself to the polarest
of all suns, the sun most opposite to me – Bryusov, I see that I could have
loved Bryusov if not as a poet, then as another
kind – Bryusov not in poetry but in the will to it has been revealed – then
as a different force [underlined by Tsvetaeva].”
And
also in the 2nd chapter Pontius
Pilate:
“Pilate raised his head and stuck it right into the sun.”
Both
these cases are easy to explain. Marina Tsvetaeva saw poets as “suns.” She takes it from the poetry of
Blok, who wrote this:
“Trust
me, there is no sun in this world anymore.
Trust only me, night heart. I
am a poet!”
The
first example is somewhat more complex than the second: both Margarita and
master are poets. To be exact, all three prototypes of master – Blok, Bely, and
Gumilev – are poets. That’s why when Margarita looks at the sun, she sees in it
both herself and master.
***
What
I would also like to note here is that Margarita undertakes a very dangerous
step because of love. This is what Marina Tsvetaeva writes about Bryusov:
“Bryusov had it all: charms, a will, passionate speech. The one
thing he did not have was love. And Psychê – I am not talking about living
women – had passed him by.”
***
Thirdly, it becomes clear what Andrei Bely had in mind
calling his poetry collection Gold in the
Azure. It is precisely on account of the following lines:
“…Jesus
Christ…
Standing alone in his garment
of linen,
Wrapped in golden brocade…”
Bely
closes the poem with slightly changed lines, appropriate for the celebration of
the resurrection of the dead:
“…The
sky was gleaming with golden brocade…
Jesus Christ… was standing in
the distance
In his snowy-linen garment.”
In
other words, Andrei Bely in this manner depicts The Glory of God. First Christ stands wrapped in this Glory, then
the Glory spreads all over the sky, which is apparently the destination of the
resurrected souls of the dead believers.
And
all this is leading the reader, unarguably, to the unforgettable icon of Andrei
Rublev, under whose influence lives every Russian Orthodox believer.
It
is from this icon by Andrei Rublev, known as The Holy Trinity, and familiar to many foreigners from its reproductions
in arts albums, that Bulgakov takes the blue color of Yeshua’s chiton.
“The Procurator, his cheek twitching, said softly: Bring in the accused. And immediately
from the garden area to under the balcony’s columns two legionnaires brought in
and placed in front of the procurator’s armchair a man of some twenty-seven
years of age. The man was dressed in an old and torn blue [sic!] chiton...”
No
glamor here!
***
It
is probably from Andrei Rublev that Andrei Bely takes if not his pen-name
Andrei (born Boris Bugaev) then at least the title of his favorite poetry
collection Gold in the Azure,
dedicated to his mother. It was the manuscript of this particular collection of
poems, revised by Bely in Germany, that he lost in one of Berlin’s cafés. The
idea of Bely’s failed revision had been to show changes over the period of 20
years. Something like: Gold in the Azure “then”
(in 1903) and “now” (twenty years later).
Incidentally,
this poetry collection contains numerous poems about the sun, which is so prominently
featured in Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate.
To
be continued…
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