GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CCCCXVIII

A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.

Mr. Lastochkin:

The Magnificent Third.

Posting #14.

“...Or maybe Beatrice has become a whore,

The great Wolfgang Goethe – a deaf-mute,

And Byron – a circus buffoon… o horror!”

N. S. Gumilev. A Fragment. 1912.

But it is time for me to produce the proof that the idea of showing his characters whom he loved so much, but presented so contrary to their nature, had come to Bulgakov from the poetry of N. S. Gumilev.

In the collection of poems under the general title Alien Sky, published in 1912, Gumilev has a poem titled A Fragment, which once again shows that Gumilev, like all major Russian poets could not escape the influence of M. Yu. Lermontov, who, having destroyed 78 stanzas of his poem Plague, left us with just A Fragment, counting stanzas 79 through 84. Which only proves that in this Fragment, the plague that Lermontov is writing about is not merely a deadly disease, but an allegory of human life.

Here is Gumilev’s Fragment:

“Christ said: blessed are the miserable,

Enviable is the fate of the blind, the cripples, the paupers,

I shall take them to the high abodes,

I shall make them knights of heaven

And call them the best of the glorious…

So be it! I accept! But what about those others,

By whose thought we now live and breathe,

Whose names sound to us as summons?

How will they redeem their greatness,

How will they be paid by the will of the balance?

Or maybe Beatrice has become a whore,

The great Wolfgang Goethe – a deaf-mute,

And Byron – a circus buffoon… o horror!”

Gumilev naturally knew Lermontov’s poetry very well, as he even modeled his life in a way, after Lermontov: absolute fearlessness, volunteering for wartime military service, love for books, loneliness, wish of an honorable death, contempt for people, which explains the loneliness.

And even Gumilev’s death itself was as though fashioned after Lermontov’s.

“A Fragment…” I do not know whether Gumilev wrote any other poetry around this “fragment,” and simply destroyed it, like Lermontov did. He could just put down the titled “Fragment,” because, being a religious man, he properly understood the remaining fragment from Lermontov’s Plague.

Here is your answer to the question on which pile of manuscripts Kot Begemot was sitting, and from which he pulled the top manuscript and handed it to master in Master and Margarita. (See my chapters Cats and master…, where I am writing about this.)

Kot Begemot was sitting on a pile of Lermontov’s manuscripts, which the poet had burned in his fireplace, by his own admission in the short play The Journalist, The Reader, And The Writer. –

“Writing about what? There comes a time

When both the mind and heart are filled,

And rhymes, comradely like waves,

Stream chirping, one after another,

Rushing forth in a free sequence.

The wondrous luminary rises

In half-awakened soul;

And words are stringing along like pearls

Onto thoughts breathing with strength...”

In this little play, M. Yu. Lermontov reveals his poet’s kitchen, showing how he was writing his works and how demanding he was toward his output.

It is from here that Gumilev picks his poetic cycle titled Pearls.

He also calls himself a “seashell without a pearl.”

Meantime, Lermontov continues:

“…Then with a freedom’s daring

The poet looks into the future,

And with a noble dream, the world

Is cleaned and washed before him…”

And here comes Lermontov’s admission that he has no one to share his bliss with, and that there is no reason to, after all:

“…But all these bizarre creations,

He is reading by himself, alone at home,

And afterwards, without any scruples about it,

He lights his fireplace with them…”

Considering that Gumilev’s Fragment begins with the word “Christ,” I believe that my idea about Lermontov’s Fragment: Plague is right. Burning all other material, preceding the Fragment, M. Yu. Lermontov keeping the two friends, the elder and the younger, alludes to the relationship between Satan and Christ. According to the Bible, Satan was always watching Jesus from the beginning of his ministry to the Crucifixion.

This thought is also confirmed by N. S. Gumilev, a deeply religious man, in his poetry, starting with his early collection of poems, the 1903-1907 Romantic Flowers, where he has the following poem, titled The Clever Devil:

“My old friend, my clever Devil,

Once sang to me a certain song:

All night a seaman struggled with the sea,

And then at dawn he floundered…

He heard the call as he was struggling:

Believe me, I won’t let you down!..

But keep in mind, said the clever Devil,

He ended up floundering at dawn.”

Compare this to the later poem A Ballad, where Gumilev also calls the Devil his “friend.” –

“My friend Lucifer gave me five stallions…”

And this is just to name a few.

It is probably because of such a “relationship” between Gumilev and the Devil, that Bulgakov is giving certain features of Gumilev to Woland and his squint to the witch Margarita.

The opening lines of Gumilev’s Fragment ought to be understood by all. Who will ever intercede in behalf of the defenseless crippled people except Christ, who had suffered a terrible torment on earth?

The second portion of this Fragment is also open to understanding. What will happen to the great people of the world? – asks Gumilev. “How will they redeem their greatness?” Such is the main idea of this poem.

Gumilev’s answer sounds like mockery. But isn’t this precisely how his game of types is played, the game which is described with such relish and delight by Mme. Nevedomskaya? (See her reminiscences of Gumilev earlier in this chapter.)

Thus it does not really seem all that important whether Bulgakov read her reminiscences or heard about these psychological exercises from others. I have quoted Nevedomskaya for easier elucidation of this point, and not as the critical argument.

Bulgakov could well take this idea from Gumilev’s Fragment. But he only took Russian poets for the leading parts. Goethe remains a “deaf mute” in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. He is nowhere to be seen or heard. What is left of Goethe, aside from the epigraph to the novel, is the poodle on the knob of Woland’s walking stick.

Gumilev’s “Beatrice” (not to be confused with Dante’s Beatrice!) represents a double twist. The name of Bulgakov’s heroine is Margarita, perhaps after Gumilev’s eponymous poem in the poetic cycle Alien Sky. [Margarita.]

This poem only proves the mocking attitude of the Russ toward Goethe’s Faust, beginning with A. S. Pushkin’s Faust satire and M. Yu. Lermontov’s Asmodeus’ Feast. The Goethe tearjerker about Margarita doesn’t touch the Russian heart.

Too much sugar and injustice going unpunished…

Margarita in Gumilev’s poem is a prostitute. Her hapless brother does not know that, although –

“…Sonorously students are singing in the streets,

Glorifying Margarita’s honor…”

Gumilev consoles Margarita’s brother, reminding him of Rigoletto:

“Valentin, Valentin! Forget your shame…”

In his remarkable take on Goethe’s Faust, Gumilev insists that Faust as such does not exist. “He was invented by maiden’s disgrace.”

The only part from this poem which fits Bulgakov’s Margarita is the beginning, where Valentin talks about his sister in a pub, praising her intelligence and her face.

To be continued…