GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CDLXXXII

The Garden.

Gumilev.

Posting #4.

“...Your staff I’ll accept, oh Sister Poverty!

I’ll be walking the roads, begging for bread,

Beseeching people by the holiness of the Cross…”

N. S. Gumilev. The Cross.

Their religiosity notwithstanding, Russian poets challenge God, and N. S. Gumilev was particularly keen on doing it. In the poem Cross from the collection Romantic Flowers, Gumilev writes about a man leading a rich life until he gambles away all his possessions.

Several pages later, he explains what it means in his poem The Choice. –

“The builder of the tower [apparently, of Babel] will lose his grip.

His precipitous fall will be terrible,

And at the bottom of the world’s well

He will curse his madness.”

In the poem The Cross (of the same cycle Romantic Flowers), which he writes in response to A. S. Pushkin’s God, Do Not Let Me Lose My Mind, Gumilev prefers madness to poverty.

“Va Banque on this card, I yelled,

And the card was beaten, and I lost…

I myself don’t remember how I fell to my knees…”

Now Gumilev begins his contemplation on what to do next along Pushkin’s lines: “No, – better a beggar’s staff and bag!” This is how Gumilev has it:

“...Your staff I’ll accept, oh Sister Poverty!

I’ll be walking the roads, begging for bread,

Beseeching people by the holiness of the Cross…”

But being a master of contrast, because of his love of contrast, Gumilev comes up with his own exit to this “game of types.” Gumilev wouldn’t have been himself, had the reader been denied an unexpected finale. –

“…One moment and in the hall, joyful and noisy,

Silence fell, all, startled, jumped up from their seats,

When I came in, inflamed and insane,

And without a word put my cross on a card.”

In order to fully understand this poem of Gumilev, we need to go to a much earlier poem from the cycle The Way of the Conquistadors, titled Heights and Abysses.

“…A prophet not recognized among us…

He is saying that he is insane,

But that his soul is holy,

That in his much-thoughtful sadness

He had seen the light-filled face of Christ.”

But in the poem The Cross the hero had not seen “the light-filled face of Christ.” That’s why he staked his golden cross on a card.

This poem has no ending, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. You cannot become a beggar while wearing a golden cross around your neck!

And this is what Gumilev further elucidates in his poem The Choice. Being a free man, Gumilev stands for the freedom of choice. But at the same time he shows the consequences of that freedom.

“The destroyer will be crushed,

Overturned by fragments of plates,

And abandoned by God All-Seeing,

He will cry in anguish about his torment.”

In other words, a man who has lost all his possessions in a house of gambling, an “inflamed, insane” man, will, according to Gumilev, “curse his madness,” and “abandoned by God” for his transgressions, “he will cry in anguish about his torment.”

But Gumilev yet again comes to an unexpected conclusion without any didactics:

“You cannot escape your bloody lot,

Which is destined to earthlings [that is, to people] by the firmament [that is, by fate]…”

[Gumilev here poetically paraphrases the well-known Russian saying “What has been written at one’s birth cannot be escaped.” Nevertheless, he comes to an unshakable conclusion. –]

“…But keep silent, it’s the incomparable right

To be able to choose your own death.”

This is a very powerful statement from a man who has always been risking his life, from his perilous travels in Africa, where an entire French expedition had been eaten by the natives around the same time, to his volunteer service in World War I. That’s why it comes as no surprise that Gumilev chose to return to the Revolutionary Petrograd in 1918. He firmly believed that there is only one place for a Russian poet in times like those, and that was Russia.

How does Bulgakov use those two Gumilev poems from the Romantic Flowers?

To begin with, he picks his deck of cards from the poem The Cross, and marvels how whimsically the deck has been shuffled, as Woland expresses his pleasure with Margarita’s visit.

Margarita is naturally a Russian Orthodox Christian, like her prototype the famous Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva was, and she knows what she is getting herself into.

“I agree to everything, I agree to go through this comedy with rubbing in the ointment, I agree to go to wherever the devil’s bosom is…” – exclaims the fearless Margarita.

Bulgakov passes on this fearlessness to his heroine from Gumilev’s poetry.

And also the multiplicity of deaths befalling Bulgakov’s title characters. Depending on which novel within the novel the readers find themselves in, master and Margarita die different deaths.

In master’s case, within the political thriller, which Bulgakov reveals through Margarita’s dream, master dies in a penal colony.

“Margarita dreamt of a place unfamiliar to her – hopeless and gloomy under the clouded sky of early spring. She dreamt of a patchy running gray sky, and under it a soundless flock of rooks. Some clumsy little bridge, a muddy spring streamlet under it. Joyless, impoverished semi-bare trees. A single ash tree, and further on amidst the trees, behind some kind of vegetable garden a log structure, either a separately built kitchen or a bathhouse, or else, hell knows what Everything around so gloomy that one has an urge to hang themselves on that ash tree by the bridge. Not a stir of the wind, not a moving crowd, not a living soul… Here was a hellish place for a living human being!”

But Margarita is not frightened by this dream.

“And then, imagine this, the door of this log structure swings open and he appears. Rather far-off, but she could see him distinctly. Dressed in rags, you cannot tell what it is he is wearing. Ruffled hair, unshaven. Eyes sick, alarmed. He is waving his hand, calling her. Drowning in the lifeless air, Margarita ran toward him over the bumps, and then she woke up.”

Margarita is not even troubled by the probable death of her beloved master.

“…If he is dead, and has beckoned me, then it means that he has come for me, and that I will die soon.”

Death does not frighten Margarita.

“This is very good, because my torments will then come to an end.”

Margarita does not want to live without master. Back at their first meeting she tells him that had she not been found by master, she would have poisoned herself.

Thus Bulgakov points to Margarita’s poisoning twice. First when she rubs in Azazello’s cream in the spy novel. And the second time when the same personage Azazello poisons her with wine in the fantastical novel.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CDLXXXI

The Garden.

Gumilev.

Posting #3.

“Apostle Peter, get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door.”

N. S. Gumilev. Paradise.

“He faced war with perfect simplicity, with straightforward fervor. He was perhaps one of those few people in Russia whose soul was encountered by war in a state of maximum combat readiness. His patriotism was as unconditional as his religious confession was cloudless. I haven’t seen anybody whose nature was more alien to doubt… His mind, dogmatic and stubborn, was devoid of any duplicity.”

A. Ya. Levinson. Gumilev’s Obituary.

The ending of N. S. Gumilev’s poem Memory may well have been written under the influence of A. S. Pushkin’s Scenes From the Times of the Knights. As for Gumilev’s ultimate wish as such, it clearly comes out of his poem Paradise and from his poetry collection The Quiver (1911-1915).

“Apostle Peter, get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door.”

Gumilev recourses to the help of the Saints, in order to confirm his worthiness:

“Saint Thomas with the Fathers of the Church

Will show that I was straight in the Dogmata,

And let Saint George relate to them the story

How at the time of war I was fighting the enemies,

Saint Anthony can then corroborate

That I could never subdue my flesh,

But then Saint Cecilia’s mouth

Will whisper that my soul is pure…”

And again Gumilev appeals to Apostle Peter:

“…Apostle Peter, if you turn me down

And I will have to leave, what will I do in Hell?

My love will melt the ice of Hell,

And my tear will drown Hell’s fire…”

And should even that be not enough –

“In front of you dark Seraphim

Will appear as my intercessor.”

Having run out of arguments, Gumilev pleads with St. Peter one last time;

“Delay no more, and get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door.”

In Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, master’s prototype Gumilev does not get into Paradise. Eternal Rest awaits him. Master does not even make the least effort to knock on the door of Paradise. Instead, he gets a knock on his door. Bulgakov deliberately draws the reader’s attention to it.

“A quarter of an hour after she [Margarita] left, I received a knock on my window.”

Released three months later, master commits himself into a psychiatric clinic (if anybody can believe that!), where Bulgakov makes him, on top of everything, the “keeper of the keys,” after master steals them from the head nurse.

Master does not even think about Paradise. Having listened to Ivan’s story, he expresses his regret that it had not been he himself to meet Woland.

“Ah, ah! How peeved am I that it was you who met him, and not I. Although all has burned out, and the coals are covered over by ashes, still I swear that for such a meeting I would have given Praskovia Fedorovna’s bundle of keys, as I have nothing else to give: I am a pauper.”

In order to understand where Bulgakov is coming from, we need to look at another Gumilev poem, titled Gates of Paradise from his poetry collection Pearls (1907-1910).

As we see, this poem was written long before Paradise from the collection The Quiver (1911-15). In this poem Gumilev explains why it is so hard to get into Paradise.

“Not under seven diamond seals is locked

The entrance to God’s paradise…

…It is a door in the wall long abandoned,

Rocks and moss, and nothing else,

Nearby a pauper, like an uninvited guest,

And there are keys at his waist.”

Knowing in advance that master is not destined for Paradise, the devil (Woland) offers an alternative, namely, a diamond-studded golden horseshoe, which implies a suggestion to join the magnificent four.

We also find out why Bulgakov gives Praskovia Fedorovna’s bundle of keys to master, and also makes him a pauper. This proves yet again that Gumilev’s features are present in master.

I am very fond of the end of Gumilev’s poem. –

“Knights and men in armor are passing by,

All of them dream: There at God’s Sepulcher,

The Gates of Paradise will open for us…

Thus the slow monstrosity goes by,

Howling, the ringing horn is blaring,

And Apostle Peter in tattered rags

Is pale and wretched, like a beggar.”

Without Gumilev’s poetry, many of Bulgakov’s puzzles could not have been solved. And I cannot help thinking that just like in Gumilev’s poem the crowd passes by without noticing either the door to Paradise or Apostle Peter himself carrying the keys to Paradise, mistaking him for a dirty beggar, readers of Master and Margarita, reading through this unique novel, are missing the most interesting things about it, namely, that the novel contains the crème de la crème of Russian poetry.

And had it not been for the character of V. S. Lastochkin, particularly his last name, which Bulgakov chose to give him, I myself might never have guessed that he had included in the novel yet another unique Russian poet with a unique fate.

Way back, in his Romantic Flowers (1903-1907), Gumilev writes the following lines about war in his poem Death, published in 1906, that is, long before the start of the world war, which he would join as a volunteer.

“You [death] seemed so golden-drunken,

Baring your sparkling breast,

You were, amidst the mist of blood,

Charting the course to the heavens.”

This means that even in the pre-war years Gumilev welcomes death as the road to Paradise.

“…And blood was streaming through the veins faster,

And the muscles of the arm got stronger…

You were luring me with a song of Paradise,

And you and I shall meet in Paradise.”

Hence, Bulgakov gives Woland the words in Chapter 23 of Master and Margarita to the effect that all theories are worth each other. One among them says that each will receive according to his faith.

Although Gumilev was interested in the “secrets of other religions,” he was a Christian at heart. His numerous poems testify to this fact. He really believed that he would be admitted to Paradise. He has a poem to this effect, titled Paradise, in the poetry collection Quiver, which he wrote during the period of 1911-1915. –

“Apostle Peter, get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door...”

Having enumerated his virtues, Gumilev concedes to a single vice:

“…Saint Anthony can then corroborate

That I could never subdue my flesh...”

Once again, Gumilev appeals to Apostle Peter:

“…Apostle Peter, if you turn me down

And I shall have to leave, what shall I do in Hell?

My love will melt the ice of Hell,

And my tear will drown Hell’s fire.

In front of you dark Seraphim

Will appear as my intercessor.

Delay no more, and get your keys:

One worthy of Paradise is knocking on your door!”

And so, of the three poets – Blok, Bely, and Gumilev – Gumilev alone considers himself worthy of Paradise. Whereas Blok writes in his poem opening the cycle Motherland (1907-1916):

“You walked away, and I am in a desert,

Clinging to the hot sand.

But the tongue can no longer

Utter the proud word.

Having no sorrow about what had been,

I understood your [Russia’s] loftiness:

Yes, you are native Galilee

To me – the unrisen [sic!] Christ.”

In the poem The Eternal Call, dedicated to the philosopher D. S. Merezhkovsky, in the cycle Gold in the Azure, Andrei Bely, his usual self, writes:

“Preaching an imminent end,

I appeared as though a new Christ,

Having crowned myself with a wreath of thorns,

Adorned with the flame of roses...

They were laughing at me,

At the mad and preposterous false-Christ...”

Two months later, on August 2, 1903, Andrei Bely writes the poem The Evening Sacrifice -- for a different cycle Crimson Mantle in Thorns:

“I stood there like a fool

In my sparkling crown,

In a golden chiton,

Fastened by an amethyst –

Alone, alone, like a pole,

In faraway deserts,

Waiting for throngs of people

Genuflecting...”

This is how Andrei Bely – as different from Blok – describes himself, as a new Savior.

In other words, despite the fact that certain features of Blok and Bely are present in the image of Yeshua, it is only Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev who is Yeshua’s sole and true prototype.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CDLXXX

The Garden.

Gumilev.

Posting #2.

“Other countries border on mountains,

Seas, and rivers.

Russia borders on God.”

Rainer Maria Rilke. Journey Through Russia.

Within the mainstream of the political thought developing since the end of the 15^th century in Russia, with regard to Moscow becoming the Third Rome of World Christianity, we have an influx of religious mysticism about the central role of Moscow in erecting the Temple of New Jerusalem on sacred Russian soil. It is this thought which is embodied in N. S. Gumilev’s monumental poem Memory.

There was a compelling reason, then, for the “commissars” to blow up the magnificent Temple of Christ the Savior in 1931. After a while, a big swimming pool was erected on its site, called the Moskva Swimming Pool. In the 1990’s, the pool itself was obliterated and a replica of the original Cathedral was erected on the original site, becoming the principal church of Russian Orthodox Christianity, and in a sense, the Temple of New Jerusalem, envisaged by Gumilev.

It is quite possible that Bulgakov in this fashion points to who and why killed N. S. Gumilev…

As I already wrote elsewhere, both poets Gumilev and Blok were connected through their intense religiosity. This is the reason why Bulgakov combines their features, adding to them Andrei Bely, in the character of master, and also introduces the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, who, likewise, never renounced religion in the aftermath of the Revolution, embodying her in the unforgettable character of Margarita.

That’s why master and Margarita do not join the magnificent four of Woland, Azazello, Koroviev and Kot Begemot, but go to Eternal Rest, under the order of Yeshua (Jesus Christ).

Indeed, although all four Russian poets: Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky and Yesenin, were Russian Orthodox, they cannot be called particularly religious either in their way of life or in their philosophical outlook.

***

Neither Pontius Pilate nor Mark the Ratkiller qualify for the nickname “Fierce Monster.” It remains to be suggested that this nickname was given in Yershalaim to Pilate’s dog Banga. The only description of this dog comes from Margarita in the 32^nd chapter of the novel, titled Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge. –

“Now Margarita could see that by the side of the heavy stone armchair sparkling  in the light of the moon, there lay a dark gigantic dog with pointed ears, and like his master was restlessly looking at the moon.”

And here is how Bulgakov in chapter 17 A Troublesome Day describes the dog whom the investigators brought with them to the Variety Theater:

“The team retreated, leaving up front a pale and upset Vasili Stepanovich. The man had no choice but to call a spade a spade and confess that the whole administrative top of the Variety Theater, namely, the director, the financial director, and the administrator, had vanished and their location was presently unaccounted for… After some time, investigators appeared in the Variety Theater building, accompanied by a muscular dog with pointed ears, of cigarette-ash color and with extremely intelligent eyes. Immediately the rumor spread among the staff of the Theater that the dog was none other than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And indeed that was him.

His behavior amazed everybody. As soon as Ace of Diamonds ran into the office of the financial director, he growled, bared his monstrous yellowish fangs, then lay down on his belly and with an expression of angst and at the same time fury in his eyes crawled toward the broken window. Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped upon the windowsill, and, raising his pointed muzzle upwards, howled wildly and maliciously.

He did not want to leave the windowsill, growled and shuddered and even attempted to jump out of the window. The dog was led out of the office and allowed into the vestibule, whence he exited the building into the street through the front door and led those who followed him to a taxicab stop, where he lost the trail he was following. After that, Ace of Diamonds was driven away.”

One cannot escape the similarity of description between Ace of Diamonds in Master and Margarita and Banga in Pontius Pilate.

If, according to Margarita, Banga was a dark dog, let us remember that she saw him at night under the moon. Ace of Diamonds, on the other hand, came with the investigators in daytime, and was described as being of cigarette-ash color.

Both dogs had pointed ears.

Banga, according to Margarita, was a gigantic dog. As for Ace of Diamonds, Bulgakov alludes to his gigantic size by referring to him “baring his monstrous yellowish fangs.”

…It turns out that I was right on both counts. The “fierce monster” in Yershalaim was the nickname of Pilate’s dog Banga.

And Bulgakov portrays both dogs identically.

Interestingly, even the idea of the dog itself comes to Bulgakov from Gumilev.

In his poem Memory, published in 1921 in the cycle A Pillar of Fire, that is, written right before his death, Gumilev writes about himself:

“The very first one, plain-looking and thin,

A fallen leaf, a child of wizardry…

A tree and a red dog –

That’s whom he took up as his friends…”

This is why Bulgakov ascribes to Yeshua the following words:

“You produce an impression of a very intelligent man. The problem is that you are too introvert, and that you have terminally lost your faith in people. But you must agree that it is not right to place all your attachment in a dog. Your life is meager, Igemon! – And here the one who was talking allowed himself to smile.”

Aside from the idea of the dog, Bulgakov used the idea of the tree, from Gumilev’s poem above, as the manner of execution was crucifixion, not hanging, whereas Pontius Pilate tells Yeshua:

“…Little has been written after you, but what has been written is quite enough to hang you.”

Apart from Gumilev’s poem, there is another reason, linked to Gumilev, to introduce a dog into both novels, meanwhile pointing to Gumilev. Aside from his participation in the Shop of Poets, the publishing of his collections of poems, and also the publication of the literary journal Apollon, Gumilev also participated, so to speak, before the first world war, in St. Petersburg’s night life, including his deep involvement in the literary night club having a very peculiar name: Stray Dog.

Aside from all these peculiarities, we find another indication in the reminiscences of Gumilev’s female student at the Living Word studio in the Revolutionary Petrograd, already after his return to Soviet Russia from Europe. The student’s name is Irina Odoevtseva. Among other things, she makes a note of Gumilev’s “ashy-gray complexion... His smile was also quite peculiar. There was something pitiable in his smile, but at the same time mischievous.”

Isn’t this how the beaten-up Yeshua smiled, in Bulgakov’s novel, chastising Pontius Pilate for his excessive “attachment to a dog.”

Introducing Gumilev’s features practically throughout his entire novel, Bulgakov also writes him into Yeshua’s personage. Even Yeshua’s age in the novel is deliberately misstated (27 years), in order to draw the reader’s attention to such a discrepancy. –

“...Two legionnaires brought in and placed in front of the procurator’s armchair a man of some 27 years of age…”

According to the G. P. Struve edition of Gumilev’s collected works, “different sources name as the date of the execution one of these: 23^rd, 24^th, 25^th, 26^th, and 27^th of August 1921. The official report on the Tagantsev case, including the list of the condemned and executed, was published in the Petrograd Pravda only on the 1^st of September.

N. S. Gumilev was listed in that report under #30, and the following was written about him:

“Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich, age 33, former nobleman, philologist, poet, board member of the World Literature Publishing House, not a Party member, former officer.”

In other words, just as I surmised, the investigator interrogating N. S. Gumilev had a pretty good idea of who he was. It’s somewhat baffling to find Gumilev’s age at the time of death stated as 33 (the age of Christ). As we know, Gumilev was born in 1886 and died in 1921, which makes him 35 years of age at the time of his death.

It is quite likely that the investigator made a deliberate mistake in stating Gumilev’s age, either being impressed by Gumilev’s demeanor, or being well-versed in his poetry, or both...

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. CDLXXIX

The Garden.

Gumilev.

Posting #1.

“Into my brain, my proud brain,

Thoughts have gathered…”

N. S. Gumilev.

 “Yes, -- continued Yeshua, somewhat surprised by the procurator’s knowledgeability, -- He asked me to express my view on state power. This question was of extreme interest to him.”

“And so, what did you say? – asked Pilate. – Perhaps you will tell me that you may have forgotten what you said? – But one could discern hopelessness in Pilate’s tone of voice.”

Pontius Pilate (read the investigator interrogating N. S. Gumilev) is now openly, but hopelessly, trying to help Yeshua (read Gumilev), virtually suggesting the life-saving answers to him.

From all these excerpts from the verbal exchange between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Nozri, in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, it becomes clear that M. A. Bulgakov is writing cryptically about the tragic fate of the great Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.

But if we read it under this angle, how Pontius Pilate is trying to save Yeshua, it is quite clear what exactly Bulgakov is trying to say.

It is very possible that Gumilev was interrogated by a Russian investigator who had been familiar with Gumilev’s poetry. Besides, he must have known only too well the details of the case which had caused Gumilev’s arrest in the first place, and strongly suspected that the person who told all those incriminating things about the poet, was primarily trying to save his own neck at the other’s expense. No wonder then that the investigator wanted to help Gumilev as much as he could, but the poet simply refused to be helped, and with each word was only digging a deeper grave for himself.

And no matter how skillfully Bulgakov was trying to mask it with the fantastical element, we do know that he is writing about Gumilev, once he has already introduced him in the novel under the guise of the hapless accountant Vasili Stepanovich Lastochkin.

In order to veil the reality (which is the interrogation of N. S. Gumilev), Bulgakov introduces a swallow who had just flown in, and also gives Pontius Pilate a vision of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, plus all that gobbledygook about the “Great Caesar.”

But even if we look at the beginning of the serious conversation, discarding everything which seems superfluous to it, we are perfectly clear about the fact that Pontius Pilate is indeed trying to help the arrestee.

The key wording here is “did you say, or you didn’t.” Failing to understand that Yeshua is truth incarnate, Pilate sincerely believes that he is thus trying to provide Yeshua with an opportunity to deny the incriminating evidence.

It is interesting how Bulgakov intersperses Pilate’s words with multiple dots, indicating pauses:

“Answer me! Did you say it?.. Or… did not… say… it?”

Even such extent of explicitness is insufficient for Bulgakov:

“Pilate was drawing out the word did not a bit longer than it is proper in court proceedings, and in his glance he sent to Yeshua a certain thought which he desired to instill in the arrestee.”

Obviously, that thought was “Deny it, deny it, even if it’s true.” But instead, Yeshua tells Pontius Pilate:

“Telling the truth is easy and pleasant.”

And once again Pontius Pilate gives Yeshua good advice:

“But when you say it, weigh each of your words.”

Thus, using the fantastical element, mysticism, and intrusion of supernatural forces, and also the story of hemicrania, invented by Bulgakov, boiling down to the fact that Pilate was suffering from the ailment, and Yeshua healed his affliction, Bulgakov, being a physician and a mystical writer at that, gets away with the real story, which is the interrogation of N. S. Gumilev by a Russian investigator.

Pontius Pilate was a Roman finding himself in a hostile country, where everything was alien to him, and where he certainly saw himself superior to all of his surroundings. He and the arrestee apparently could have nothing in common.

It was a different story, however, in the interaction between the Russian interrogator and N. S. Gumilev. Both must have been patriots of the same country. Gumilev, out of his patriotic fervor, signed himself up voluntarily for Russian military service during the first world war, in which he was awarded three Crosses of St. George for bravery. The Russian investigator must surely have received various materials pertaining to the person of the arrestee Gumilev. They were of the same Russian blood, all of which must have affected the investigator’s attitude toward the poet. At least such is the picture presented to us by Bulgakov.

No, Bulgakov does not depict Pontius Pilate as a “fierce monster.” Judging by the totality of the details, this nickname does not particularly suit Mark the Ratkiller, either, as we learn from Bulgakov that the man was afraid of Pilate’s dog. Let us reread that passage carefully:

“In the hands of the Centurion Ratkiller, a torch was flaming and smoking. The holder of the torch was watching from the corner of his eye, with fear and malevolence, the dangerous beast readying himself for a jump.”

In this 26^th chapter of Master and Margarita, titled The Burial, we find yet another complex association, indicating that Bulgakov not only endows Yeshua with certain features of Gumilev, but that in fact he is writing down Gumilev’s story of arrest and interrogation.

“No touching, Banga! – said the procurator in an ailing voice, and coughed. Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he continued. – Day and night and under the moon I have no rest. Oh gods! Yours, too, is a bad job, Mark. You cripple the soldiers.

In great amazement, Mark was staring at the procurator, who then came back to his senses.”

Let us note that Pilate’s reference to soldiers once again points to Gumilev, who volunteered for military service as a plain soldier and was extremely proud of this fact.

Meanwhile, the key words in the passage above are “to cripple” and “amazement.”

The “amazement” of Mark the Ratkiller is understandable. If he was Pilate’s army disciplinarian, he surely followed the law. Nobody would have allowed him to “cripple Roman soldiers.”

Pilate uses the word “to cripple” repeatedly. The first time he orders Mark to explain something to Yeshua without “crippling” him.

As I just said, Gumilev went through most part of the war as a soldier and was very proud of it. In his poetry collection The Pillar of Fire, which many consider his greatest achievement, there is a poem titled Memory, where Gumilev writes about his evolution, “about those who earlier lived in this body before me.” Eventually, he focuses on a certain soldier, who –

“…Traded his merry freedom

For the sacred, long-awaited battle.

He knew the pangs of hunger and thirst,

The troubled sleep, the endless road.

But St. George touched twice

His chest, untouched by a bullet.”

If the reader is still hesitant to accept this as proof, then this poem Memory has several other places, as Bulgakov takes several ideas from this poem for his Pontius Pilate.

As, for instance, why does Bulgakov give Pontius Pilate a dog as a friend? In that same poem Memory Gumilev writes:

“A tree and a red dog, --

That’s whom he took to be his friends.”

Why does Bulgakov make Mark the Ratkiller a “giant”?

“Memory, with the hand of a giantess

You guide life like one guides a stallion by the rein.”

And also in the poem Captains we find these very interesting lines:

“And it seems that in the world there are lands, as before,

Where human foot never tread,

Where giants dwell in sunny groves

And pearls shine through clear water.”

Why does Bulgakov put such an emphasis on Herod’s palace with its golden idols, and not on the Jewish Temple?

“I’m the sulky and stubborn builder

Of the Temple rising in the dark.

I’ve become jealous of the Father’s glory,

Both in heaven and on earth.

My heart will be burned by a flame

Until the day when there will rise

The walls of a New Jerusalem

On the fields of my native land.”

These eight lines of Gumilev’s poem Memory explain why Bulgakov was so vehemently refusing to publish Master and Margarita without Pontius Pilate in it.

To be continued…

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