The Garden.
Posting #4.
“I forgot that the
heart in you is just a night light,
And not a star! I forgot
about it!
That your poetry is out of
books
And your criticism is out of
envy. Early aged,
You again seemed to me for a
moment
A great poet…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. To
V. Ya. Bryusov.
To
prove my point about the theatrical quality of Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita, I am returning to
Pontius Pilate addressing the masses in Yershalaim. [The reader is also welcome
to my chapter A Dress Rehearsal For
Master And Margarita, where I am writing about Bulgakov envisaging his
novel as a stage play.]
“There in the presence of all whom he wished to see, the procurator
solemnly and drily confirmed that he had approved the death sentence to Yeshua
HaNozri and officially inquired the members of the Synhedrion as to which
prisoner they wished to spare. Having received the answer that it was Varravan,
the procurator said: “Very well,” and
ordered his secretary to register that immediately in the protocol… Then he
solemnly said: It’s Time!..”
[Let me remind the reader that
twenty-eight chapters later, Bulgakov titles the 30th chapter of his
novel Master and Margarita: It’s Time! It’s Time!]
“...Then all present started their descent lower and lower toward
the palace wall, toward the gates opening on the large, smoothly paved square,
at the end of which were columns and statues of the Yershalaim stadium. As soon
as the group, having left the garden into the square, ascended the vast stone
platform reigning over the square, Pilate... figured out the situation. The
space he had just covered, from the palace wall to the platform, was empty, but
ahead of him Pilate could not see the square itself. It was eaten up by the
crowd. It might just as well have spilled onto the platform, but for the triple
row of Sebaste soldiers on the left hand of Pilate and soldiers of the Igurean
Auxiliary Cohort on the right, who were holding the crowd off.”
This
passage shows Bulgakov’s mastery as a writer. He must have prepared himself,
reading the necessary historical material in order to describe the place he’d
never been to. On the other hand, it was his work in the theater that helped
develop his imagination. For Bulgakov, describing Yershalaim so vividly
amounted merely to a change of theater sets. (See my already posted chapter A Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.)
But
considering that the idea of making the Russian poet-initiator of Symbolism in
Russia V. Ya. Bryusov the prototype of the Roman procurator of Judea Pontius
Pilate, comes to Bulgakov from the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, – much of
what relates to Pontius Pilate is connected to her memoirs. Like, for instance,
in the case of the description of the square and of the platform, I found a
corresponding place in Marina Tsvetaeva:
“Estrada. A certain
place... Estrada: An area raised
above the ground. And the feeling upon it is the feeling upon it is the feeling
upon a foothold, a horseman before a crowd. Estrada’s
passions are bellicose. Enough already that you are in fact, physically, above
all, to make you friends and enemies. Estrada
has a scale of its own: merciless.”
I
may be asked, how come I know that Bulgakov must have read Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs? This is precisely what I am doing in this chapter, and the proof which
I have will overwhelm the reader.
For
instance, I used to think that I would never solve Bulgakov’s riddle from
chapter 21, [Margarita’s] Flight, where the author writes the
following in particular:
“...Turning her head up and left, the
flying [Margarita] was admiring how the moon was rushing over her, like crazy,
back to Moscow, but at the same time, strangely, was locked in one place, so
that upon it she could distinctly see some kind of mysterious dark – was it a
dragon or a humpbacked horse? – pointing its sharp muzzle in the direction of
the city left behind.”
And
it was only thanks to Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs that I realized what it meant,
as Tsvetaeva happens to be the sole prototype of Bulgakov’s Margarita, knowing
that only a Russian poetess is fit for that role. The reader may remember that
Bulgakov now clothes – now unclothes Margarita, until, at last, in chapter 24 The Extraction of Master, he writes:
“...Margarita fell on her knees, pressing herself to the side of
the sick man [master], and thus quieted down. In her anxiety, she did not seem
to notice that her nakedness had somehow come to an end. She now had on a black
silken cloak…”
Thus,
finally, Bulgakov in the 24th chapter gives his reader a clue to the
effect that Margarita does belong in the club. Woland’s cavalcade are all
poets, and she is a poetess in her own right.
And
so, in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, I am reading about her appearance at a
recital of her poetry at the Polytechnic Museum. Altogether, she recited seven
of her poems. Her presentation was met with “a second of silence,” followed by
“applause.”
Tsvetaeva
writes:
“…These bursts of applause each time carried me [sic!] like
Konyok-Gorbunok [the Humpbacked Horse] carried Ivan Tsarevich.”
Here
I’d like to quote Marina Tsvetaeva’s only verses which she herself included in
her memoirs, as their subject is very current, considering what happened
recently in the Russian city of Rostov-upon-Don.
“Those
who survived will die, and those who died will rise,
And in the dictionary,
thoughtful grandchildren
Will write, after the word Dolg
[Duty] the word Don.”
How
could anyone help applauding such lines?!
Marina
Tsvetaeva’s poetry shows us that she was first and foremost Russian, that she
knew Russian history well, and felt each event together with the Russian people.
As
she herself writes: “…The main objective is to perform
here, in the 1921 Moscow, the duty of honor
[underlined by Marina Tsvetaeva].”
And
so, Marina Tsvetaeva’s last seventh poem was “at that
hour, in front of Red Army soldiers – communists – cadets – mine, that of the
wife of a White Army officer, last truth.”
She
opens the poem with an epigraph from A. S. Griboyedov:
“The women were
screaming: Hurrah!
And throwing their bonnets up
in the air.”
[A. S. Griboyedov. Woe
From Wit.]
Marina
Tsvetaeva is writing about herself:
“…I
am a rebel with my forehead and womb…
But I confess that that the
mightiest of all,
The most precious to me are
the ashes of Grishka…
And if I throw my bonnet up in
the air,
Ah, isn’t that like boys are
shouting on all world squares?
Yes, Hurrah! – For the tsar!
– Hurrah!”
Being
an avant-garde poetess of the twentieth century, Marina Tsvetaeva, in the
Russian tradition dating back from Pushkin to Lermontov and then to her fellow
Russian poets of the 20th century – Bely, Blok, Gumilev, Mayakovsky,
Yesenin, possessed a remarkable absolute fearlessness, inherent in the Russian
spirit.
Marina
Tsvetaeva writes this about her above-quoted poem:
“In this poem was my union with the audience hall, with all halls
and squares of the world, my last – covering all feuds – trust, the soaring of
all caps [sic!], whether Frigian or family caps – above all fortresses and
prisons – I myself – myself me…”
It
is from this passage that it becomes clear how especially close M. A. Bulgakov was
to Marina Tsvetaeva. They both shared the same political views.
Having
chosen Marina Tsvetaeva as the prototype of his Margarita, Bulgakov must have
respected her as a woman. It is because of this respect that Bulgakov doesn’t
follow Goethe in his treatment of Gretchen. Instead, Bulgakov portrays two
women. One is Margarita, a loving woman who is ready to undertake dangerous
steps and face the consequences, all for the sake of learning about the fate of
her beloved master.
The
character of Frieda, that is, of a real woman, victim of rape, comes to
Bulgakov from forensic medicine literature. [See my Fantastic Novel of Master and Margarita, Posting #XXIX.] Which
ought to have given a clue to the reader that all Bulgakovian personages
without exception have real people as their prototypes.
To
be continued…
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