A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries.
Mr. Lastochkin:
The
Magnificent Third.
Posting #12.
“From
the leprosarium of falsehood and evil
I called
on you and took you to the dawns!
From
the dead sleep of tombstones
Into
the hands, these palms, both of them,
Like
a seashell – grow and be quiet.
You
will become a pearl in my palms…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. A Seashell. 1923.
In so far as master’s character goes, this is by far
the most interesting story. Mind you, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was the
founder in 1911 and master of the St. Petersburg Poets’ Workshop. Indeed, his view of poetry was as a craft, rather
than an art.
As always, Bulgakov lays out his evidence in plain
view, and no one takes notice of it.
Aside from the above-mentioned Poets’ Workshop, there were other clubs and studios active at that
time, where poets would gather, read their poetry, teach, and learn from
others.
One of such studios was directly organized by N. S.
Gumilev. He gave it the name The Sounding
Seashell.
The key word here is the Russian “Rakovina” (translated above as “Seashell,”
but the same word homonymously refers to the kitchen sink). We find this word
twice in Master and Margarita,
drawing the reader’s attention to it.
Describing his small apartment in the basement in one
of Arbat’s side streets to Ivanushka, master makes a particular mention of the
fact that it had a “sink” in it. –
“A
perfectly separate apartment with an anteroom, with a sink with water in it…”
And a little further, when Ivan learns how the lovers
used to pass their time –
“She [Margarita] would come, and before
anything else she saw her duty to put on an apron, and in the narrow anteroom,
where that selfsame sink was, which for some reason was such a source of pride
for the sick man…”
Having written: “which for
some reason was such a source of pride [for master],” Bulgakov clearly
shows us that the sink and the water in it were by no means the issue here.
***
Had I not become interested in the person of V. S.
Lastochkin, I would not have progressed from him to Gumilev, and would not have
started looking at Gumilev’s literary work under the angle of M. A. Bulgakov,
and then I would not have written this chapter which had become so interesting
to me.
Now the reader understands how everything is
interconnected in Bulgakov. Indeed, who might have suspected something unusual
in a writer describing a sink with water in it, in a small basement apartment?
Who might have gotten the idea in their head that something is not quite proper
here?
But when you realize what a gigantic work has been
accomplished in Bulgakov’s works, introducing Russian poets of the Golden and
Silver Ages as his characters’ prototypes, through these poets’ works,
frequently using allegory and out-of-this-world associations, you can only
marvel at the originality of his mind.
It is not as important how much material Gumilev
provided for Bulgakov’s own work, as the fact that Gumilev was an intellectual,
that is, he came from the same social milieu as Bulgakov himself. They were
both dreamers. They also had a common interest in traveling. Bulgakov must have
been attracted to Gumilev’s poetry because of his descriptions of his travels,
something that Bulgakov himself never had a chance to indulge in, in his life.
Because of his own deficiency in that respect, Bulgakov had to be especially
interested in Gumilev who had crossed all Europe and Africa in particular,
where Gumilev’s greatest interest lay. Gumilev considered himself an expert on
Abyssinia. And to honor Gumilev’s African adventure, Bulgakov introduces the
names of two African lakes in his works, namely, Margarita in Master and
Margarita may well have a connection to the Ethiopian lake of that name (so
named after the Italian King’s wife), and the other one Rudolfi in the Theatrical
Novel, refashioned in the Italian manner from the Ethiopian lake named
after the Emperor of Austria Rudolf.
In February1921 Gumilev was elected in Blok’s place as
Chairman of the Petrograd section of the All-Russian Union of poets.
Considering that N. S. Gumilev not only was a member
of Masters’ Workshop in St. Petersburg, together with A. A. Blok, but at some
point organized his own Masters’ Workshop, and he also wrote a poem in his poetry
cycle A Pillar of Fire, titled Masters’ Prayer, it is quite possible to
imagine that Bulgakov, with his extraordinary sense of humor, came up with his
novel’s title Master and Margarita all
because of Gumilev, whose traits are featured in both master and Margarita.
Despite his two marriages and countless love affairs,
Gumilev was a lonely man, perhaps the loneliest among all poets. Consider the
following dialogue in the 13th chapter The Appearance of the Hero in Master
and Margarita:
“…She
was living with another man… and I was there, then, with that one, what’s her
name…
With
whom? – asked Bezdomny.
With
that one… well… with that… well… -- responded the guest and started clicking his fingers.
You
were married?
Well,
yes, that’s why I am clicking… To that one… Varenka… Manechka… no. Varenka… she
had that striped dress, museum… That’s it, I don’t remember.”
But about this in my future chapter Who is Who in Master.
It looks to me like Gumilev’s only friends in life
were books. In the 1907-1910 collection of poems Pearls, there is a poem under #99, Reader of Books, and the next one under #100, Flowers Don’t Live at my Place, which both show especially acutely
that Gumilev was living in a world of his own by himself.
“Reader
of books, I also wished to find
My
quiet paradise in consciousness’ submission,
I
loved them, those strange paths
Where
there aren’t any hopes or memories…”
Isn’t that the reason why Bulgakov, having found no
great love around himself, joined people who had never seen each other in an
artificial love story called Master and
Margarita. Where in the character of master he combined features of three
poets, his contemporaries, two of them from St. Petersburg, and Andrei Bely from
Moscow, all three of them suffering an even more miserable fate than Bulgakov
himself.
Equally artificially, Bulgakov added to them another
lonely poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, who saw Blok twice at poetry recitals in Moscow,
and Gumilev – “never”, and who wanted to “serve” not as a poet, but as a woman,
in love.
None of Bulgakov’s personages are called “poets,”
except for Ivan Bezdomny, who, as we know, renounces poetry and becomes a
historian, which in itself ought to draw attention, as poets are a very special
breed who cannot really renounce poetry, cannot really stop writing poems.
About the poet-historian the reader will find out in
my future chapter The Garden.
Bulgakov shows his characters through their poetry.
How does it go in the Theatrical Novel?
–
“One must love
(his?) heroes.”
And so does Bulgakov. He loves his heroes, loves their
poetry, and if you know these verses, it is very easy to identify this or that
poet in Bulgakov’s works, especially in Master
and Margarita, where seven of them are brought together. I have already
demonstrated this throughout my work, but I must show it here again with one
example from the 30th chapter of Master
and Margarita: It’s Time! It’s Time!
In this excerpt, readers familiar with the poetry of
Blok will instantly recognize it:
“Margarita fell on the sofa and burst into
such violent laughter that tears started rolling out of her eyes. But as soon
as she quieted down, her face changed in a dramatic fashion, she started
talking seriously, and as she was talking, she slipped off the sofa, crawled
to master’s knees, and looking into his eyes, started patting his head.”
Observe Bulgakov’s mastery here, comparing this
passage to Blok’s:
“…Crawl
up to me, and I’ll hit you,
And
like a cat you’ll scowl at me…”
This comes from Blok’s famous poem Black Blood, written by him in response
to Pushkin’s Black Shawl.
Even Blok’s cat is rendered by Bulgakov with a certain
gesture:
“Margarita was patting master’s head…”
And before that, in chapter 24 –
“She was patting master’s manuscript like
one pats a favorite cat.”
To be continued…
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