Veiled
Guests at Satan’s Great Ball.
Posting #4.
“...A
heart was beating in her, full of treachery,
Her
curved eyebrows carried death.
She
was just as much a hyena,
Like
myself, she loved the smell of blood…”
N. S. Gumilev.Hyena.
If Steve Oblonsky in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina had a sister Anna
Karenina, then the poetess Natalia Poplavskaya had a younger brother Boris
Poplavsky, who was particularly close to his father Yulian Poplavsky.
Apparently, Bulgakov somehow learned about a
connection between N. S. Gumilev and the Poplavsky family. Perhaps they had
meetings abroad, where the whole Poplavsky family frequently traveled. But
considering that both brother and sister were poets, they may have known each
other in Russia as well.
The information about them is quite sketchy. The whole
story about Berlioz’s apartment is most likely an invention of Bulgakov. I will
be treating the Berlioz – Poplavsky line in my chapter The Bard.
The poet Boris Poplavsky was not married. Which is
why, in case Bulgakov is using the real name, it had to be Poplavsky the
father, and not the son. The story about Poplavsky’s passport indicates that
this man was “vyezdnoi,” which means that he was allowed to travel abroad. This
fact must have evoked such a violent reaction from Kot Begemot, because
Lermontov, like Pushkin, had been denied the permission to travel freely.
Incidentally, Bulgakov found himself in the same boat with these two.
As I said before, the information about the Poplavsky
family on the Internet is very scarce. But seeing that Bulgakov connects
Poplavsky to Gumilev in his novel, and so does Tsvetaeva in her memoirs, I
deduce from it that such a connection in real life is possible.
As Bulgakov inserts a real Poplavsky into his novel Master and Margarita, I am inclined to
believe that it must be the father, Yulian Ignatievich Poplavsky, about whom
nothing relevant to the story is known.
Bulgakov introduces his daughter, the Russian poetess
Natalia Poplavskaya, author of the 1917 poetry collection Verses of a Green Lady, as one of the female guests at Satan’s
Great Ball, pointing to her by his use of the word “green,” which is the same
as what Marina Tsvetaeva does in her memoirs.
When Madame Tofana, the historically famous
professional poisoner, is introduced to Margarita at the ball, Bulgakov writes:
“Margarita was next approached by a lady
[sic!] hobbling in a strange-looking wooden boot on her left leg. Her eyes were
lowered, nun-style; she was thin, modest, and, for some reason, had a wide
green [sic!] band around her neck. How
green! – Margarita asked automatically…”
To begin with, I must make a note to the reader that
the first guests at Satan’s Great Ball are all doubles. Apart from being
explicitly historical personalities, like Madame Tofana, for instance, they
“double” as prototypes of either certain Russian poets, or at the very least,
characters from their poems.
If Marina Tsvetaeva, describing the poetess Natalia
Poplavskaya, writes about her “slipper,” perhaps hinting at her Cinderella
story, having married a baron, then Bulgakov writes about “a strange-looking
wooden boot” on one of her legs. Even though he is ostensibly depicting an
erstwhile convicted mass murderer, he still calls her a “lady,” while the
reader must remember that Natalia Poplavskaya’s poetry collection is titled “Verses of a Green Lady.”
M. Bulgakov draws the reader’s attention to this fact
twice in a row. First, he introduces the “wide green band” with an important
qualifier: “for some reason.” The unusualness of the situation is then
reinforced through Margarita’s surprised reaction: “How green!” –
“How
green! – Margarita asked automatically…”
As for Natalia Poplavskaya’s brother, the Russian poet
Boris Poplavsky, it is from him that M. Bulgakov borrows those “dark glasses”
for the character of Abadonna, whose prototype also happens to be N. S.
Gumilev.
When Margarita says: “I wouldn’t like to be on the side whom this Abadonna is against!”
Woland summons him right away: “Abadonna!”
–
“And here out of the wall appeared the
figure of a thin man in dark glasses.”
According to the information I was able to glean from
the Wikipedia, I learned that Boris
Poplavsky used to wear dark glasses, never taking them off even at night.
The poet Boris Poplavsky died in Paris in 1935
allegedly of a drug overdose. His sister Natalia died in the 1920’s. There are
no details as to where and how. Most importantly, nothing seems to be known
about Natalia’s husband, the baron. However, the letter M. associated with his
name rings an eerie connection to Bulgakov’s Baron Meigel, and what he
represents in the novel Master and
Margarita.
I do not know to what extent these people may have
been instrumental in the death of N. S. Gumilev, if at all. Gumilev never kept
secret his political views, and always expressed them openly, as if daring
death in those hard, unforgiving times.
***
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