The Garden.
Posting #12.
“I am wandering in the
mountains,
A forgotten, fallen silent
prophet…
The sad whisper: So, carry
your cross…
I am screaming: I shall
overcome all circles,
I shan’t give myself as a
sacrifice to evil…”
Andrei Bely. Crimson
Mantle in Thorns.
Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Andrei Bely contains a curious note about Bely’s Galilee,
which we are now getting to.
Soon
after Alexander Blok’s death, Andrei Bely was invited to deliver a lecture on
Blok, with his literary reminiscences and general evaluation of Blok’s creative
work.
Tsvetaeva’s
memoir is based on the words of the man who had invited Bely to the gathering
of poets and all those who wanted to honor the memory of Blok. Here is Kogan
complaining about Bely’s “scandalous” conduct at the gathering. Instead of
talking about Blok, Bely is complaining about his own mistreatment:
“P. S. Kogan understood neither poets nor poetry, but loved and
honored both, and did for them what he could.
And they call him a writer, a
big man, this is a scandal!
Who? What?
[I’m talking about] Bely.
Thought he would be talking about Blok… But suddenly: From hunger! From hunger!
From hunger! Gout from hunger like there’s gout from satiety! Asthma of the
soul! But this is not all. Suddenly – from Blok – to himself. I have no room! I
am a writer of the Russian land (yes, that’s what he said!), and I haven’t got
a stone to repose my head upon, that is, a stone, a stone there is, but we are
not in the stony Galilee, we are in the revolutionary Moscow, where a writer
must be helped. I wrote [the novel] Peterburg! I foresaw the collapse of the
Tsarist Russia, I had a dream in my sleep back in 1905 about the end of the
Tsar!..”
[In
other words, son of a wealthy man, known all over Europe
professor-mathematician, himself a mathematician and a religious man, has like
Blok taken the side of the Revolution after the mass killing of a peaceful
workers’ and their families’ demonstration by tsarist troops on January 9th,
1905, known in Russian history as the Bloody Sunday.]
“…I cannot write! This is
disgraceful! I have earned help! I’ve been working since childhood! In this
hall I see idlers, parasites (yes, that’s what he said!), they write nothing,
they only put their signatures down [sic!]…”
Here’s
Marina Tsvetaeva’s “literary vermin” for you!
This
is what struck P. S. Kogan – Andrei Bely’s fearless bluntness, readiness to
publicly stand up for himself, for his dignity. To throw words of condemnation
right into the audience hall. –
“…Profiteers! Vermin!..”
To
use Kogan’s frequent refrain: “Yes,
that’s what he said!”
And
then Andrei Bely proceeds with his accusations regarding the “murder” of Blok.
Bely won’t be intimidated into silence. –
“And I am proletariat!
Lumpenproletariat! Because I’m dressed in rags. Because they killed Blok and
now they want to kill me. But I’m not giving in! I will be yelling until I’m
heard! A-a-a-a!!!”
And
P. S. Kogan continues”
“Pale, red-faced, sweat
pouring down, frightening eyes, even more frightening than ever, one can see
that they cannot see a thing. And they call him an Intelligent, a man of
culture, a serious writer. That’s how he honored Blok’s memory by standing up!”
In
this excerpt from Marina Tsvetaeva memoirs we can clearly see that Andrei Bely,
an eccentric, is quite capable of standing up for his human rights. Tsvetaeva
depicts this episode rather hysterically, so that people may decide for
themselves whose side they are on in this question, without suspecting
Tsvetaeva herself of trying to influence the decision.
The
conclusion is the same anyway. In times of revolution, numbers of scum are
being brought to the surface. Otherwise it is hard to figure out how a
demonstrably uneducated man could be put in charge of literary matters and then
move on to become head of a university.
How
else can we explain that Andrei Bely, a bona fide revolutionary, ostensibly in
harmony with the new power in Russia, was having such a hard life after [sic!]
that selfsame revolution that he had so passionately invited.
What
struck me the most here is that P. S. Kogan, in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs,
cites as a positive example already after his death the conduct of Bely’s
friend and a great Russian poet Alexander Blok. Here is Kogan in Tsvetaeva’s
account. –
“...And if Blok indeed died
as a result of underfeeding, then who knew him better than I did? Only because
he was truly [underlined by Tsvetaeva] a great man, modest, never
shouting about himself, but when they sent him to unload a barge, he went, and
did not say who he was. That’s real greatness…”
What
a monster!
***
From
the excerpt above, regarding Andrei Bely’s “room,” it becomes clear why master
in his first conversation with Ivanushka relates a somewhat fantastic story. –
“The historian lived alone having no relatives and almost no
acquaintances in Moscow. And then, imagine that! –he won 100,000 rubles [in a
lottery, see The Fantastic Story of
Master and Margarita, Posting XXII].
Having won 100,000 rubles, Ivan’s mysterious guest did the
following: he bought books, abandoned his room on Myasnitskaya Street (Ooh, wretched hole!, he growled), and
rented two rooms in the basement of a small house inside a garden in a side
street off Arbat, from a developer.”
According
to Andrei Bely, his neighbors were using a saw and an axe, creating so much
noise between them that he was unable to work. With his unique sense of humor,
Bulgakov alludes to Bely’s problem, identifying master’s pre-lottery address as
Myasnitskaya Street, Butchers’ Street, where historically butchers were sawing
and chopping meat carcasses.
As
for master’s new address in the close proximity of Arbat Street, Bulgakov
chooses it because of its historical ties to Ivan Grozny’s Oprichnina (see my
posting XXVI for the sense of history). But this area of Moscow is also linked
to Andrei Bely, who lived both in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In
the very interesting 1921 poem The First
Date in which Andrei Bely describes the tempora and mores of his time, a la
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, only without
a love story, despite its suggestive title, Bely writes:
“You
come out into eternity... into Arbat [Street];
You used to be wandering
speechless;
And Arbat’s youthful spring
Is all the more audible and
visible to me…
The first grass of the
boulevards…
And speeding along Arbat into
eternity are
The fast-moving series of
black carriages.
A blue-color worker, a
student, a cadet…
Idiots, scholars, Ignoramuses
Are passing by, the wind
whirling up their clothes
Coming from the green
signboard ‘Hopes’*
The soft light will grow
pinkish,
Over the distance of days and
years…”
[Bely’s own footnote:] “*Stationer’s shop in Arbat.”
Andrei
Bely’s footnote to the poem, explaining that ‘Hopes’ was the name of a stationer’s shop in Arbat Street, makes it
clear that he knew this part of Moscow very well. It is possible that he may
have lived there, but in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir, Andrei Bely’s fiancée, and
later, wife, Asya Turgeneva lived there. [Yes, she belonged to the most famous
Turgenev dynasty!] –
“...Yes, she was, all of her, from some English engraving, Asya
Turgeneva, Turgenev’s Asya –
Andrei Bely’s fiancée and Katya of his Silver Dove… I remember coming to see her first. Into some
side-street snows, I think, off Arbat…”
To
be continued…
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