A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
Mr. Lastochkin:
The
Magnificent Third.
Posting #9.
“...My
heart will be burned by a flame
Until
the day when there will rise
The
walls of a New Jerusalem
On
the fields of my native land.”
N. S. Gumilev. Memory.
M. A. Bulgakov makes plentiful use of N. S. Gumilev’s
poem The Tram That Lost Its Way in
his works. Not only does he take the
tram and the cut-off head of Berlioz for his Master and Margarita, but, like Gumilev, he attaches himself to
Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter imagery.
Thus he picks his epigraph to the novel White Guard about the Russian Civil War
from Pushkin’s historical novella.
And also he makes a rather unexpected mention ++of
master’s braided plait, which master never had until his final journey to the
last place of eternal rest. Here Bulgakov alludes to the hero of Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter Grinev, who wears
such a plait, customary for noblemen not only in Russia during the reign of
Catherine the Great, but all over the 18th century Europe.
N. S. Gumilev intends to have a prayer service for
Mashenka’s health and long life at St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Petrograd, while
for himself he is going to order a funeral mass. The poem The Tram That Lost Its Way ends with words about Mashenka:
“But
still forever is the heart somber,
It’s
hard to breathe and painful to live…
Mashenka,
I never thought
That
one could love and grieve so much.”
In Pushkin’s Captain’s
Daughter, Mashenka is the heroine who comes to St. Petersburg to plead for
a pardon for her hapless fiancé Grinev who got into trouble because of his
unintentional involvement with Emelyan Pugachev during the time of the Pugachev
Rebellion.
Walking in a St. Petersburg garden, she accidentally
comes across the Empress Catherine II, and without knowing who she is tells her
the story of her fiancé’s plight. Touched by Mashenka’s love, loyalty, and
bravery, Catherine the Great pardons her fiancé.
Gumilev’s poem The
Tram That Lost Its Way shows us that its author considered himself totally
innocent, but having no “Mashenka” who would fearlessly plead for his release,
he was executed, as he himself sees as guilt by association.
***
Already in his novella Diaboliada (1923), Bulgakov introduces N. S. Gumilev in the
character of V. P. Korotkov, with whom, granted, Gumilev as such has nothing in
common. The personage of Korotkov gives us still another proof that Bulgakov
may have known about Gumilev’s game of “types,” which he invented.
And also the theme of revenge suddenly comes out on
the very last page of Bulgakov’s novella, showing us how acutely just two years
after Gumilev’s death, Bulgakov completed and published his cryptic response to
that tragic event, that had thoroughly fooled the censors.
Gumilev was an extremely empathetic figure for
Bulgakov, who allows the martyred poet to avenge his death, first by emptying a
full clip of bullets into his nemesis Kalsoner, in Diaboliada, and then as Abadonna in Master and Margarita, taking off his glasses to look into the eyes
of the despicable snitch Meigel before his avenger Azazello, the
demon-assassin, makes short shrift of the scoundrel.
By calling Margarita (whose prototype is the Russian
poetess Marina Tsvetaeva) “donna,” while introducing another character under
the name of Abadonna, Bulgakov hints that Abadonna’s prototype is also a
Russian poet.
It is also interesting that Abadonna in Bulgakov comes
“out of the wall,” same as Levi Matthew. What does Bulgakov wish to say by
this?
“Abadonna,
called Woland in a low voice, and here out of the wall there
appeared a figure of a thin man in dark eyeglasses.”
Seven chapters later, in chapter 29 of Master and Margarita, The Fate of Master and Margarita is
Determined, we read:
“But at that moment something made Woland turn away from the city… Out
of the wall came a ragged, soiled in clay, somber man in a chiton, wearing
home-made sandals, with a black beard.”
Having these two descriptions, it wouldn’t be hard to
guess that Bulgakov here wants to show us the fate of Levi Matthew. Refusing to
accept help from Pontius Pilate, he was killed thereafter as a follower of
Christ, and all covered in blood thrown into a pit.
Choosing such an appearance for Levi Matthew, Bulgakov
points to the death of N. S. Gumilev, whose grave, or even the approximate
location of the grave has never been found or established. Most likely, he was
interred together with those people whom he may never have known but with whom
he was shot nevertheless, and hastily interred.
There is another link in Bulgakov between Margarita
herself and Levi Matthew, which I couldn’t find without some help from Gumilev’s
poetry, namely, from his stunning poem about The Tram that Lost Its Way.
In it, Gumilev also writes about a “wall.”
“…Stop
it, operator,
Stop
the tram right now!..
Too
late, we have already turned around the wall…”
There is an expression “to stand at the wall,” and also “to be put to the wall.” It means to be shot by a firing squad. Also
“to be crowded at the wall” refers to
a mass execution.
Isn’t it what Gumilev wants to say:
“…Too
late, we have already turned around the wall…”
It is quite possible that Gumilev at that time already
heard about a wave of arrests and believed that he was going to be arrested
too, considering that he was a returnee from the hostile nation of England.
The wall means death!
When in the 30th chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! master and
Margarita fly into the psychiatric clinic to say goodbye to Ivan, they are both
dead. Bulgakov writes:
“From the white wall, there separated a dark
Margarita, and approached [Ivan’s] bed…”
There was a compelling reason why during her first
meeting with Abadonna, Margarita was so scared of his “dark glasses.” She
understood that she was meeting death and that she was now “dark,” that is, she
was dead by then.
To be continued…
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