The Garden.
Posting #8.
“He was speaking wisely
and sharply,
And the dim eye-pupils were
darting,
Straight and glitterless,
Blind little lights…”
Alexander Blok. A
Rally.
Although
we are now moving to the three possible prototypes of Yeshua, we are not
parting with Pontius Pilate and his prototype in the person of V. Ya. Bryusov.
Having
discovered master’s prototype in Alexander Blok, I started paying much greater
attention than before to the creative work of another Russian poet from St.
Petersburg, Nikolai Gumilev. The two of them perished virtually together, in
the span of a few days in August 1921. Blok died first of a heart ailment, and
next Gumilev lost his life to a firing squad.
Around
that time Bulgakov was already writing his novel White Guard. Considering that both of them, Blok and Gumilev, were
members of Russian Intelligentsia, coming out of the best segment of Russian
society, the strange coincidence of the timing of their death could not fail to
attract M. A. Bulgakov’s special attention to this tragic event.
Contemplating
the work of his life, the novel Master
and Margarita, Bulgakov decided to make both these poets jointly prototypes
of his title character master. All the more, knowing that N. S. Gumilev was the
principal organizer of the so-called “Masters’
Workshop” in Peterburg, himself being one of the “masters.” Incidentally,
the exact number of these “masters” was three. No wonder that Bulgakov would
eventually settle on exactly three prototypes of his master: Andrei Bely,
Alexander Blok, and Nikolai Gumilev.
I
was also very much interested why Bulgakov reportedly refused to have Master and Margarita published on the
condition of excluding the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate from it. I was also surprised by the attacks on Bulgakov for
depicting Jesus Christ with certain significant deviations from the Gospels
story.
I
was thinking about all this long and hard, until I finally reached the
conclusion that Bulgakov’s goal was not so much a retelling of the story of
Jesus Christ as portraying in the image of Yeshua certain features of all three
great Russian poets serving as master’s prototypes in Bulgakov’s novel.
Yeshua’s
reasoning about sovereign power comes out of Blok and Bely. It is best
summarized in Blok’s single line:
“The
people do not want [to have] power [over them].”
Blok
loved Russia and the ordinary Russian people with all his soul. He also had
friends among the anarchists. There was such a movement, albeit short-lived,
among the poets in Russia, organized by Georgi Chulkov. Blok’s poetry
collection The City contains such a
poem, with strong anarchic elements in it, titled A Tale.
As
for Andrei Bely, he also had strong revolutionary tendencies. He saw himself as
an authentic Russian revolutionary. Marina Tsvetaeva describes one of his
public appearances in her memoirs. Bely presents himself as a fearless man,
about which later.
Andrei
Bely’s favorite word being “pleasant,”
Bulgakov creates the following phrase for Yeshua:
“It is easy and pleasant to
speak the truth.”
And
finally, the third poet, Gumilev, who was by all accounts a fearless man, which
I am amply discussing in my sub-chapter Mr.
Lastochkin from the chapter A
Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries. And here are Yeshua’s words, daring but
clever words, in response to Pontius Pilate’s question:
“...Then swear that it wasn’t
so!
What do you want me to swear
by?
Well, swear by your life, for
it is high time to do it as it is hanging by a hair! You should know it.
You don’t think – do you? –
that you were the one who hung it[ my life on a hair], Igemon? If you do, you
are gravely mistaken.
Pilate shuddered and answered through his teeth:
I can cut this hair, [you
know!]
And in this you are mistaken
too – radiantly smiling
and shielding himself from the sun retorted the arrestee. – Do admit that surely only the one who hung it can cut the hair!”
Of
the three poets, only Gumilev could have such a conversation. Even more so,
considering that Bulgakov himself gives us a clue in his remark about Yeshua “shielding himself from the sun.” I already wrote in
my sub-chapter Mr. Lastochkin that
Gumilev has a short story in prose titled The
Golden Knight, where a group of Richard the Lionheart’s knights, having
lost their way in the desert, are killed by the sun. That’s why Bulgakov makes
such an emphasis on the sun in Pontius
Pilate.
“Pilate raised his eyes to the arrestee and saw that the sun was
already fairly high over the hippodrome, that one of its rays got inside the
colonnade and was creeping toward Yeshua’s worn-out sandals, who was trying to
stay away from the sun [sic!].”
In
all probability, Yeshua would have died from the sun, had the thunderstorm not
interfered.
Also
from Gumilev’s Golden Knight,
Bulgakov takes if not Yeshua’s clothes, then at least their color: light-blue.
While
the knights were praying, they apparently had a collective vision:
“At the turn of the gorge there appeared an unfamiliar knight, slim
and well-shaped, handsomely-mighty in the shoulders, with his visor down, and
in armor of pure gold, bright like the shining of the star Aldebaran. And his
stallion of golden color was rearing and jumping, barely touching the
resounding cliffs with his hooves.”
That
was Gumilev’s depiction of Jesus Christ as a vision to the dying Crusaders.
“Hurrying behind his master was a light-blue [sic!] herald on a
snow-white stallion, his face meek and wise, secretly resembling the face of
Apostle John…”
And
in Bulgakov:
“...Two legionnaires brought in and placed
in front of the procurator’s armchair a man of some 27 years of age. The man
was wearing an old torn light-blue chiton. He was looking at the procurator with
an alarmed curiosity.”
When
I started my work on this material, I was struck by the similarities between
Margarita’s conversation with master in his basement apartment and the one
between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua. Specifically, this passage:
“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
could not understand these words until now, when I began working on my chapter The Garden. People usually swear by
their own life, or by the lives of dearly beloved third persons, but not by the
life of the person they are swearing to. I used to explain this oddity by the
fact that Margarita didn’t exist. Having eventually found Margarita’s prototype
in the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, primarily on the strength of her
memoirs, which proved extremely helpful to Bulgakov and, as soon as I realized
this connection, to me, I came up with a different explanation, considering
that the place in question is one of many where several underlying novels
intertwine.
One
more interpretation of this place is that Bulgakov is pointing here to Chapter
2 of Master and Margarita, where
Pontius Pilate is urging Yeshua to swear by his own life. Finding ourselves in
the political thriller of Master and
Margarita, the explanation of Margarita’s words is in the 1921 execution of
the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.
That’s
why Margarita does not swear by her own life. Marina Tsvetaeva was still alive
at the time of death of both Gumilev and Bulgakov himself, and master’s death
as well. As I already wrote, Gumilev and Blok died in the span of a few days in
August 1921. Andrei Bely (master’s third prototype) died of a heart illness in
1934. Bulgakov died in 1940 of a kidney disease. And finally, Marina Tsvetaeva
died in 1941.
To
be continued…
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