The Garden.
Posting #7.
“Nothing will be.
The night will come, will
have a bite and eat up.
You see -- the sky is judasing again
With a handful of stars gnawed
by betrayal?”
V. V. Mayakovsky. A
Cloud in Pants.
Although
Marina Tsvetaeva in her reminiscences of Bryusov writes: “I never considered him either a Christian or a Slav,” Bulgakov is
ready to give Pontius Pilate and to his prototype Bryusov together with him, a
redeeming chance.
At
the very beginning of Chapter 26, The
Burial, Bulgakov portrays the mental state of the procurator fairly
sympathetically:
“…He was attacked by anguish. The procurator was painstakingly
trying to understand the cause of his mental torment. He quickly realized what
it was, but made an effort to deceive himself. It was clear to him that today
he had missed something irretrievably, and that now he was trying to correct
something with some little, paltry, and, most importantly, belated actions.”
The
point here is Pontius Pilate’s revenge on Caiaphas for the reason that the
Jewish Synhedrion had refused to release the philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri,
despite the pleas of Pilate.
Once
again, Bulgakov takes this idea from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs. In a
conversation with Tsvetaeva, the poetess Adalys [apparently, Bryusov’s
mistress] told her that Bryusov was vengeful and resentful.
The
idea of using a woman for the purpose of revenge also comes to Bulgakov from
Tsvetaeva, namely, from her diary (About
Love).
“A nighttime conversation.
Pavel Antokolsky (poet, student at the Vakhtangov Studio): The Lord had Judas. And whom does the devil
have – Judas?
I [that is, Tsvetaeva]: That
must surely be a woman. The devil falls in love with her and she wants to
return him to God. And she will! [sic!]
Antokolsky: I insist that it
will be a man.
I: A man? How can a man
betray the devil? He has no access to the devil. The devil does not need him.
What business would the devil have with a man? The devil is a man himself. The
devil is the epitome of masculinity. Only love can tempt the devil, so it must
be a woman…”
And
indeed, Woland is very much interested in Margarita. He is astonished by her
faithfulness to master.
“…Antokolsky: And a man will
turn up who will ascribe the honor of this conquest to himself.
I: And you know how that will
be? The woman will fall in love with the devil. And a man will fall in love
with her. He will come to her and say: But you love him, don’t you have pity
for him? He is so miserable, return him to God! And she will.
Antokolsky: And she will stop
loving him.
I: No, she will not stop
loving him. The devil will stop loving her, because now he has God. He does not
need her anymore…”
Guided
by these lines, Bulgakov writes his own story, inserting Marina Tsvetaeva into
it, who is of course the wife of a Soviet intelligence agent. Thus the Russian
poetess Marina Tsvetaeva gets her own dual role in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Apart from her
role as Margarita, she is suitable in Bulgakov’s eyes for the role of the Greek
woman Niza, a Mata Hari of sorts, working for Roman Intelligence and connected
to a man – the Chief of the secret service in Yershalaim – Aphranius.
To
begin with, Marina Tsvetaeva was a great admirer of Greek (Hellenistic)
culture.
In
order to perplex the reader, not only does Bulgakov provide her with a Greek
husband, a seller of carpets, but he changes the color of her eyes – twice! As
I already wrote before, Marina Tsvetaeva had green eyes, which is why
Margarita’s eyes are “greening.” (The implication is that her eyes have not
always been green.)
On
the other hand, Marina Tsvetaeva is proud of being “of the sea,” playing upon
her first name “marina.” (Incidentally, Marina Tsvetaeva is “of the sea” in
Latin, whereas the Greeks would rather have it as… Galina.)
Niza’s
eyes are blue, changing to black, colors of the sea (“Black Sea”). –
“…[Judas’s] thoughts became confused. He forgot about everything in
the world and was looking with pleading eyes into Niza’s blue, but now seeming
black [sic!] eyes.”
It
is impossible here not to recall Alexander Blok’s poem Black Blood from the poetry collection Frightful World (1909-1916), where Blok writes:
“I
have finally vanquished her!
I have lured her into my
palace!..
A tempest of tangled braids,
a blurry eye,
A lackluster diamond on the
ring.
Dimming are candles, eyes,
and words,
You are dead, at last you are
dead!
I know I have drunk all your
blood,
I am putting you in the coffin
and singing…
There is no more her, I am
standing alone,
Listening to what violins are
singing.
They are singing wild songs
About my newly-gained freedom
at last,
About exchanging my base
passion
For a better lot!..”
Another
masterpiece penned by Alexander Blok. Bulgakov knew this poem very well, as he
used its lines in the basement scene in Chapter 30 of Master and Margarita: It’s Time! It’s Time!
“…She started talking seriously, and as she
was talking, she slipped off the sofa, crawled to master’s knees, and looking
into his eyes started caressing his head. How
you suffered, how you suffered! My poor one. I
alone know about it…”
And
in Blok’s poem Black Blood:
“…Come,
crawl up, and I’ll hit you,
And
you’ll bristle like a cat…”
Naturally,
the great master Bulgakov does it his own way. Which proves that Bulgakov knew
this poem. In Chapter 24 of Master and
Margarita: The Extraction of Master, having returned to the basement with
master, “having wept for some time, Margarita
approached the untouched [by fire] pages of the notebook... Margarita didn’t
want to sleep. She caressed the manuscript tenderly, like one caresses a
favorite cat [sic!]…
Thus,
Bulgakov uses Blok’s poem to show the reader that this amazing poet-mystic is
definitely present in his novel Master
and Margarita. He is also showing beginning writers how to use poetry in
order to write good prose.
As
for the devil, Bulgakov cleverly inserts him “incognito” in the scene with
Pontius Pilate in the 26th chapter The Burial:
“Perhaps this twilight was the cause of a sharp change in the
appearance of the procurator. As though he aged a lot in this short span of
time; his back bent, and besides, he became disquieted. At one point he glanced
back and for some reason shuddered, glancing at the empty armchair, with
its back covered by the cloak. The holiday night was approaching, the evening shadows
were playing their game, and most probably the procurator had a mere
hallucination when he imagined that someone was sitting in that empty
armchair. Having allowed himself a measure of faintheartedness, by touching and
moving the cloak, the procurator let go of it and walked fast back and forth on
the balcony, now rubbing his hands, now running up to the table and grabbing
the chalice, now coming to a stop and beginning to stare mindlessly at the
floor mosaic, as if trying to read in it some hidden letters.”
It
is impossible here not to be reminded of the 29th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Fate of Master and
Margarita is Determined.
Woland
and Azazello were sitting on the stone terrace of one of the best libraries of
the world: the Lenin State Library in Moscow.
“Woland was sitting… cloaked in his black cassock. His long broad
sword was thrust between two plates of the terrace vertically, thus forming a sundial.
The sword’s shadow was slowly but surely elongating, crawling toward Satan’s
black shoes... In the upper stories of the big buildings, a jagged blinding sun
was being lit up. Woland’s eye was likewise burning like one of those windows,
even though Woland’s back was toward the sunset.”
No comments:
Post a Comment