Gumilev.
Shadows and Money.
Posting #7.
“There
where the old magus is buried…
You
and I will see Lucifer.
Wait,
the boring day will die down…
Lucifer
will crouch like a shadow…”
N. S. Gumilev. The Cave of Sleep.
“I
come to you, Spirit of Evil and Ruler of Shadows…” –
Instead of a greeting, Matthew Levi throws these words
at Woland.
Woland shoots back:
“What
would goodness be doing if evil had not existed?”
Then Woland enters a lengthy discourse about shadows:
“How
would the earth have looked had shadows vanished from it? ”
In Chapter 26 The
Burial, using the words: “The evening
shadows were playing their game” Bulgakov is pointing to the presence of
Woland. As a shadow “from objects and
trees” and also from “trees and
living creatures,” Woland could be present whenever he wished to be
present. So, why wouldn’t he be sitting invisibly in Pontius Pilate’s empty
chair or as some kind of shadow?
As we learn at the end of Chapter 25, a bag of money
for Afranius was lying on that chair under the procurator’s cloak.
“Ah, yes! – exclaimed
Pilate in a low voice. – I’ve completely
forgotten. There is this matter of my debt to you!
The guest was astounded:
Really, Procurator, you do
not owe me anything!
But that isn’t so, remember?
When I was entering Yershalaim, there was this crowd of beggars… I wanted to
throw them some money, but I had none on me, and I borrowed from you.
Oh, Procurator, that must
have been some trifle small change!
Even a trifle debt ought to
be honored!
Here Pilate turned back, picked up the cloak lying on the chair
behind him, pulled a leather bag from under it and offered it to his guest, who
bowed, receiving it, and hid it under his cloak.”
Thus closing his 25th chapter, Bulgakov
kind of continues the theme of money at the opening of the next 26th
chapter.
This theme is of utmost importance, as Pontius Pilate
was by no means obligated to pay his chief of the secret guard Afranius for his
service, because the latter was completely subordinated to the procurator and
entirely at his service. On top of that, Bulgakov uses the same word: “astounded” with regard to Afranius as he
does with regard to the accountant Lastochkin in the 17th chapter A Troublesome Day. –
“Vasili Stepanovich Lastochkin stuck his
head into a window with the inscription: Sums
Received and politely asked for the proper order form. What for? – asked him the clerk in the window. The accountant was astounded...
Strange! – thought the accountant. His
astoundment was perfectly natural... Everybody knows how difficult it is to get
money. Obstacles to that can always arise. But in his 30-year experience as an
accountant there had never been a case when either a juridical or private
person would have a problem with money to be delivered.”
Very strange words indeed! Bulgakov uses them to
picture the extremely difficult position which V. S. Lastochkin finds himself
in. And, as we know, N. S. Gumilev is hidden by Bulgakov behind the Lastochkin
character.
As I already said before, judging by the manner in
which Bulgakov presents the Lastochkin character, not only is the man innocent,
but no matter how strange the situation is, he never suspects even the
possibility of being arrested.
The money scene in the 25th chapter How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from
Kyriath shows us yet again that
in Bulgakov’s eyes N. S. Gumilev was completely innocent of the charges made
against him. Bulgakov makes it clear not just through Mr. Lastochkin, but
through the chief of the secret police himself. Remember how astounded was
Afranius when Pilate reminded him of the money owed to him?
In this way, Bulgakov shows the attentive reader that
Gumilev is Lastochkin, since among
all the characters of Master and
Margarita his is the only fate that receives no mention in the Epilogue or elsewhere.
It was Bulgakov’s opinion that Gumilev had been set
up. It was possible that an unsuspecting N. S. Gumilev may indeed have carried
a sum of money from Europe to someone in Petrograd, and when that man was
arrested, he may have pointed out the poet as the carrier of that money, leading
to Gumilev’s arrest.
After all, Bulgakov had a wide circle of important
acquaintances, and he may have known things which very few other people knew. Thus,
for instance, when the second husband of the poetess Anna Akhmatova was
arrested together with her son from N. S. Gumilev, Lev Nikolayevich, she,
according to Professor G. P. Struve, went to Moscow in 1936 to the Bulgakov
family, and apparently on their advice, wrote a letter to Stalin, saying that
she could not live without her husband and her son. A direct appeal to Stalin
often worked wonders whereas complaints on lower levels were by no means as
effective. Anyway, the two men Akhmatova was pleading for, were immediately
released on Stalin’s order, and soon thereafter the chief of Soviet secret
police Yagoda was arrested and executed. Bulgakov is writing about Yagoda and
his assistant in Master and Margarita,
as the last two “guests,” crafty murderers, arriving for Satan’s Ball.
A scene with money is also featured in the next
chapter after the 17th, that is, in the last 18th chapter
of Part I of Master and Margarita,
titled The Hapless Visitors.
In this chapter, the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov
brings “shredded paper” to “Mr. Artist,” that is to Woland, complaining that
this was what happened to the money paid to his buffet during the Séance of
Black Magic. A most interesting conversation takes place between the vendor and
Woland regarding wine and the game of dice. [In Russian, “kosti” means both “dice”
and “bones” – hence the frequent pun
in classic Russian literature. I have already written about it elsewhere.
Andrei Fokich finds the person he needs – Woland – in
the shadows! This is the first correspondence between this situation and the
one in Pontius Pilate.
Next, the buffet vendor states his business to Woland,
raising a contradiction right away:
“Yesterday
you were kindly showing some magic tricks…
Me?!
– exclaimed the magus in astoundment.
– Have mercy, will you? This would’ve
been rather unbecoming for me!..”
And indeed, when Andrei Fokich, “agitated, produced a package out of his pocket and
unwrapped it, he was astounded. Inside a torn piece of a newspaper were
ten-ruble banknotes.”
Just like in the case of the accountant Lastochkin, we
are dealing with money, but in this case it is first Woland (facetiously) and
then Sokov (in all seriousness) who is astounded.
This chapter gives us an explanation of Woland’s magic
tricks, or rather of his mind games with Pontius Pilate, which I have already
discussed before, in my chapter The
Woland Identity.
(See the opening to my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: The God-Fearing Lecher, where the
prototype of Andrei Fokich is revealed and the oddities of Chapter 18 of Master and Margarita will no longer
appear odd.)
The theme of money, astoundment and amazement is
rather difficult, as it shows a conglutination of several novels in one. That’s
why we will be touching just one line, namely, the innocence of N. S. Gumilev.
V. S. Lastochkin’s astoundment coincides with the
astoundment of the chief of the secret guard Afranius. This astoundment is
genuine. Also genuine is Woland’s amazement, but for a different reason.
It becomes clear that Gumilev, in the opinion of
Bulgakov, his younger contemporary and also an immensely astute man deeply
interested in the events taking place in Russia, the country he loved with all
his heart, could never be involved in any anti-government conspiracies, that he
was slandered and drawn into a web of gossip and innuendo, all happening behind
his back.
Considering himself a free man and never concealing
his openly monarchist political views, N. S. Gumilev was by no means helped by
his openness and sincerity. Unlike Bulgakov, Gumilev badly underestimated his
adversaries and paid the ultimate price – with his life.
Just like in the case of Andrei Fokich Sokov, the
money, which V. S. Lastochkin delivers, represents the poetry of N. S. Gumilev.
“…Streaking before his eyes was foreign currency.
Here were packs of Canadian dollars, English pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian
lats, Estonian kroons…”
Bulgakov uses foreign money here to show that N. S.
Gumilev was considered a “foreign poet” in Russia, which is corroborated by the
following words of A. Blok from his article Without
a Deity, Without Inspiration:
“…There was something cold and foreign in
Gumilev’s poems. He and his followers do not have, and do not wish to have,
even a shadow of conception of Russian life. In their poetry they suppress the
most important, the only given – the soul…”
Respecting and loving the poetry of Blok, I cannot
agree with him here. It is clear to me that Blok was not familiar enough with
Gumilev’s poetry. Nor should we forget the fact that Gumilev and Blok were
rivals.
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