The Garden.
Posting #13.
“...I was lying in a
coffin, dressed in a white shroud,
The coffin opened up and the
bracket screamed;
Smiling at me was,
sorrowfully numb,
My old friend, leaning over
the coffin.
Andrei Bely. Old
Friend.
...Andrei
Bely wrote about himself as a false prophet, nailed to a cross. In his 1901
poem Retribution from the poetry
collection Crimson Mantle in Thorns,
this is what he writes:
“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…”
These
last words are very important.
“…All
too early did I rise over the lowland,
All too early did I appeal to
the sleeping.
And in response to my mad
screams,
They are running already with
a burning hope…
There in the lowlands
Life is grim and sad like a
coffin…”
Andrei
Bely confesses that he has deceived people with his song, started singing all
too early.
“…Crown
my brow with sharp thorns!
I have deceived you with my
song,
Crucify me, crucify me!
I know that you are yearning
for my blood…”
The
last lines, which Andrei Bely repeats twice, are very touching, and they are
also instrumental for our understanding of Bulgakov’s depiction of Yeshua in
the sub-novel Pontius Pilate.
“...I
am nailed to the cross, I am dying,
A tear freezes on my cheek.
Someone Dear whispers to me:
I know,
And closes my eyes with a
kiss…”
Andrei
Bely is talking here about Christ, offering his mystical version of a kiss. As
Andrei Bely is ready to sacrifice his life for Christ’s sake, it’s Christ
Himself who comes to soothe him in his last minutes.
In
a later 1903 poem Old Friend from the
poetry cycle Images, Andrei Bely as
though in a dream sees his own death and the death of his friend. This is the
Bely poem to which Blok responded in an untitled poem from the poetic cycle Retribution (1908-1913) where Blok
writes, addressing an old and tender friend:
“A
regal shroud I brought to you as a gift…”
Here
I was very much interested in the vision of Christ:
“...The
ethereality was rushing in its ever-drunken fabric,
And Jesus Christ was like a
timeless candle
Standing alone in his garment
of linen,
Wrapped in golden brocade…”
What
follows next is directly pertaining to Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius Pilate:
“...Two
swallows [sic!] with loving trepidation
Flew down upon the shoulders
of the Savior.
He said, fly now with your
chirping
To the land of coffins, you,
precursors of the spring…”
Thus
in Andrei Bely everything is the other way around both with the kiss and with
the swallows:
“...I
was lying in a coffin, dressed in a white shroud,
The coffin opened up and the
bracket screamed;
Smiling at me was,
sorrowfully numb,
My old friend, leaning over
the coffin.
My friend was silent,
illuminated by immortality;
Two swallows screamed into
our ears,
And rushed into the aromatic
ether…”
Instead
of the Terrible Judgment (Last Judgment), Andrei Bely is in for a celebration:
“...Crossing
ourselves, the two of us went out
Across this world to the
Feast of Resurrection,
And the dead were rising from
their coffins,
And joyful singing could be
heard…”
Closing
Old Friend, Bely slightly alters a
previously written stanza:
“...The
sky was gleaming with golden brocade,
The ethereality was rushing
in its ever-drunken fabric,
And Jesus Christ was like a
timeless candle
Standing in the distance in
his snowy-linen garment.”
***
And
so, Andrei Bely has a reason for calling himself a “false prophet.” His vision
of humanity is too much on the optimistic side. But out of this poem Bulgakov
took several things.
To begin with, it becomes clear what Andrei Bely has in mind
talking about “ancient freedom” in the following verse:
“Oh,
where are you, – you, ancient freedom! –
I wept and screamed and
wrenched my hands
With the blunt despair of an
innocent victim…”
...This
“ancient freedom” is linked in Bely to Jesus Christ, for it is his voice that
he hears lying in his coffin:
“...And
then it breezed in an endearingly sad whisper:
Ages will pass, and you will
rise, the dead one…
And through your sleep you
both will hear in your coffins
The signal of the horn
blasting through the azure,
And your old friend will come
to you from his coffin,
Raising his visage, blazing
in the sun.”
Why
is this “endearingly sad whisper”
relating to Jesus Christ, in Andrei Bely’s poem? Because in the 1903 poem Retribution, the nailed to the cross and
dying Bely hears a voice:
“…Someone
Dear whispers to me: I know,
And closes my eyes with a
kiss…”
Who
else can it be other than Jesus Christ? In both poems A. Bely uses the same
word “whisper”: “Someone Dear whispers”
and “endearingly
sad whisper.”
It
is also clear that Bely could not possibly call his “old friend” “someone,”
and it had to be only a mystical creation of his imagination.
That’s
why in Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius
Pilate Yeshua is buried in one grave with two criminals. Coming through the
character of Yeshua is especially the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev who was buried
in a common grave with other condemned and executed by a firing squad.
It
is because of this fact that Bulgakov does not show Yeshua’s Resurrection in
his novel. He uses the image of Yeshua to show what had been happening in his
own time to great Russian poets. Remember that it wasn’t just Gumilev, Blok and
Bely who compared themselves to Christ, but it was also the Revolutionary poet
Mayakovsky, who committed suicide in 1930. Within the short span of 9 years
(1921-1930) four Russian poets perished: Blok, Gumilev, Yesenin, Mayakovsky. In
1924 V. Bryusov died, the poet who had brought the new movement of Symbolism to
Russian literature. Max Voloshin died in 1932, Andrei Bely in 1934, Bulgakov in
1940, and Tsvetaeva in 1941.
Naturally,
Bulgakov could not ignore this phenomenon of epidemic proportions.
Combining
in Yeshua’s image three Russian-Orthodox poets, Bulgakov creates his own
mystical “trinity” of Russian literature.
To
be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment