The Garden.
Posting #1.
“...Of flowers and
wine, of expensive incense,
I celebrate my day in the
merry capital!
But where are my friends,
Cinna, Petronius?
Ah, here they are, here they
are, salve amice…”
N. S. Gumilev. The
Prodigal Son.
Marina
Tsvetaeva enters my chapter The Garden in
a truly grand way.
Without
Marina Tsvetaeva there would have been no sub-novel Pontius Pilate in Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita. That’s why Bulgakov so adamantly opposed the publication of Master and Margarita without Pontius Pilate in it.
While
working on my chapter Mr. Lastochkin
in the cluster A Swallow’s Nest of
Luminaries I was reading a lot of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev, his poems
and prosaic fiction and also his articles on poetry. Already then my attention
was drawn to the fact that Valeri Bryusov happened to be of a very high opinion
of Gumilev’s potential as a young poet. But imagine my surprise when I read the
following Gumilev lines about Bryusov himself:
“The Russian Symbolists have undertaken a hard but lofty task –
leading native poetry out of is Babylonian Captivity of ideology-driven bias,
which had been oppressing her for the past nearly-half-a-century. Alongside
their creative work, they were supposed to foster a culture, to talk about
elementary truths, to defend, with foam at their mouths, thoughts that had long
become commonplace in the West. In this respect, Bryusov can be compared to
Peter the Great. [!]”
Throughout
his Articles and Notes on poetry and
literature, Gumilev was writing about Bryusov, and gave examples of his poetry.
I understood that V. Bryusov had become the Father of Russian Symbolism. When I
was reading S. A. Yesenin, I was struck by his symbolism, which was by far the
most stunning in his play-in-verse Pugachev.
(See my posted chapter Two Adversaries.)
Also
here, precisely because of V. Bryusov and his influence on young poets of the
20th century, I would like to cite another example from Yesenin’s Pugachev.
“...Near
Samara, there is an alder tree with a broken head.
Dripping yellow brain, it is
limping by the roadside.
Like a blind man separated
from his group,
With an unpleasantly nasal
and hoarse jitter,
It is begging for alms
From the passersby, both
riders and on foot,
Stretching out to them the
torn hat of a crow’s nest.
But no one would throw to it
even a stone,
Frightened and crossing
themselves at the star…”
I
have also cited already a poem by a grateful Sergei Yesenin, written in 1924,
that is, a year before his own death, on the occasion of V. Bryusov’s death.
Having
been reading and rereading Alexander Blok, I also got acquainted with his poems
dedicated to Bryusov.
But
Andrei Bely has an especially large number of poems dedicated to Bryusov. As
far as I could understand, he was even writing them in Bryusov’s style. Very
unusual two-line stanza’s. I have not seen anything like them anywhere else.
Studying
Marina Tsvetaeva, in preparation for writing my chapter Margarita Beyond Good And Evil, I was naturally reading both her
poetry and memoirs in prose. But at first I somehow found no time to get to her
reminiscences of Bryusov. It was only fairly recently, as I was starting work
on my chapter The Garden, that I read
her series of sketches Hero of Labor,
which opens with the sketch Poet.
Its
second page already struck me like her “coup de foudre.” –
“Bryusov was a Roman. Only in such an approach there is a solution
and justice. Behind his back we find not the Olympus but the Capitol. His gods
never got involved in Trojan battles – remember the wounded Aphrodite, the
pleading Thetis, Zeus dimmed by the imminent death of Achilles. Bryusovian gods
were towering, seated, permanently finished with the empyreal, settled down on
earth.”
I
was mostly struck by the first two sentences: “Bryusov
was a Roman. Only in such an approach there is a solution and justice.”
How
well does it coincide with the following line in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita:
“Margarita brought her lips close to master’s ear and whispered: I swear to you by your life [sic!], by the
astrologer’s son [Pontius Pilate], guessed right by you [sic!], that all will
be well.”
I
was always struck by this phrase of Margarita, and also another one, coming
from master, in the 13th chapter: The Appearance of the Hero, that is, seventeen chapters prior to
the 30th chapter: It’s Time!
It’s Time!
In
Chapter 13, Ivan relates to master his own story of Pontius Pilate, which he
for the first time in his life had heard from Woland on Patriarch Ponds.
“Ivan didn’t miss anything, it was easier for him this way to tell
the story, gradually getting to the moment when Pontius Pilate, in a white
mantle with blood-colored lining, came out on the balcony. At this point the
guest prayerfully clasped his hands and whispered: Oh, how I guessed it! Oh, how I guessed it all!”
So,
this is what master had guessed!
I
came to the same conclusion when I realized that if in the image of Yeshua,
Bulgakov was using features of all three Russian poets who had become master’s
prototypes, then all the remaining dramatis personae of the sub-novel Pontius Pilate had to have prototypes of
their own.
Because
in depicting a historical event of 2,000 years ago, Bulgakov was in reality
depicting events of his own time.
In
this sense, Bulgakov was very much helped by Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, having
found in her a kindred spirit. Especially, on the subjects of the monarchy, the
White Movement, the Bolsheviks, the Red Commissars, the Orthodox Christian
Religion, etc., as the reader is going to see throughout my work.
That’s
why my discovery of V. Bryusov from N. S. Gumilev’s Articles and Notes on Russian poetry and literature to Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoirs is so very important.
I’ll
be walking the reader through several points identified by Marina Tsvetaeva,
which will highlight the essentiality of her work Hero of Labor on Valeri Bryusov written in 1925 in Prague, that is,
soon after his death, for Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius Pilate of Master and
Margarita. And also how essential she (Tsvetaeva) is not only to Bulgakov
scholars, but to all Bulgakov readers and admirers.
1. Marina Tsvetaeva determines V. Ya. Bryusov to be a
Roman. In her memoirs she calls him a “poet of volya, [wild] freedom/will”:
“Under Bryusov’s hand they would bend
without loving, and his yoke was heavy. Magus,
sorcerer – only about Bryusov, about
that passionless master of lines [sic!].”
Marina Tsvetaeva asks the reader: “So, what is the power? What are the charms?”
And she answers the question herself: “Non-Russian [power] and non-Russian [charms]: Freedom
unaccustomed to in Rus, supernatural, wondrous, in a magical faraway kingdom
where, like in a dream, anything is possible. Anything except naked freedom,
that is. And Russia was seduced by that naked freedom of the magical faraway
kingdom, she [Russia] bowed to it and bent under it...” Here, Marina
Tsvetaeva means the generation of Russian Symbolists] “...By
the Roman freedom of a merchant’s son from Moscow [V. Bryusov], somewhere from
Trubnaya Square… A fairytale?”
2. “Passion for fame. And this is Rome. A
Russian considers striving for fame in one’s lifetime either deplorable or
ludicrous. Love of fame: love of self. From times immemorial, the Russian poet
affords to the military, and kneels to it…”
I can add that so does the whole Russian people. And
all Russian people join the army or militia when enemies from abroad attack
Russia.
“...One vice that Bryusov did not have was
littleness. All his flaws of character, starting with littleness were on a
grand scale. One hopes they were all virtues in Rome.”
Talking about Bryusov, Tsvetaeva comes to the
conclusion that more than fame he loved power. Which leads the reader to:
3. “...Fame? Love for you – of billions.
Power? Before you – the fear – of billions. Bryusov loved not fame but power.”
What follows is a most interesting train of thought
from Tsvetaeva.
“An artist can be judged – this is
conventional wisdom – by all.”
Which leads us to:
4. Here starts the most important point explaining why
Bulgakov decided to write the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate and insert it into his novel Master
and Margarita. As M. Tsvetaeva goes on, “To judge
an artist, I insist, can only other artists. An artist can be judged only by a
court of friends or by the Supreme Court of his fellow craftsmen, or by God.”
Considering that the most important prototype of
Yeshua is N. S. Gumilev, who was arrested, judged, and executed, Bulgakov decided
to follow Marina Tsvetaeva’s advice and to show the role of Gumilev’s “fellow
craftsmen” in his tragic fate. Tsvetaeva writes:
“...Only they and God know what it means:
to create that world among worlds of
power... A philistine is not to judge a poet, no matter what he was in life.
His vices are not yours. And his vices have already been preferred to your
virtues.”
Tsvetaeva
concludes her four points with the following words:
“The sole purpose of these notes is to make friends
[underlined by Tsvetaeva] think.”
To
be continued…
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