The Garden.
Aphranius.
Posting #6.
“...And I will depart
from the pale people,
But why do I tarry before the
open grave?
Why am I not in a hurry into
the unknown?..”
K. D. Balmont. Why Am
I So Stifled?
The
most interesting conversation between the procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate
and the Chief of Secret Service Aphranius is about Varravan in Chapter 25:
“First of all, this accursed
Varravan – he doesn’t worry you, or does he?”
And
here Bulgakov writes a very strange phrase which ought to make the reader
think:
“Here the guest sent his special glance into the procurator’s
cheek. But the other was looking into the distance with bored eyes,
contemptuously grimacing and viewing the part of the city spread at his feet,
and now fading away in the twilight. The guest’s glance also faded away, and
his eyelids dropped down.
Having
ascertained that Pontius Pilate had no arriere pensée, Aphranius spoke.
– I would think that Varravan
has become as harmless as a lamb. – As the guest was speaking, his round
face became creased with little wrinkles. – Rioting
is inconvenient for him now.
Astoundingly,
having asked his question, Pontius Pilate “was looking
into the distance with bored eyes,” whereas Aphranius, for some reason,
“sent his special glance into the procurator’s cheek.”
Here
a particular Blokian poem comes to mind, from the poetry cycle Harps and Violins:
“Your
glance, I wish I could catch it,
But
you are turning away your glances.
Yes,
you are afraid to burn with your glance
The
barriers that have risen between us.”
Back
to the conversation about Varravan between Pilate and Aphranius:
He has become too famous? – asked Pilate with a sneer.
As always, the procurator has
a delicate understanding of the issue.
Who
are they talking about here? Two poets had left Russia around the time of A.
Blok’s and N. Gumilev’s death. One of them was Andrei Bely, and it is quite
likely that it is Bely whom Pontius Pilate [Bryusov] and Aphranius [Balmont]
have in mind, talking about Varravan. After all, Bely had written the
blockbuster novel Peterburg about the
Revolutionary Movement in Russia at that time and about the Secret Police that
was watching that Movement with great attention.
According
to Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, in 1922 Andrei Bely was already in Germany.
“But in any case – the
procurator observed worriedly, and his long finger with the black stone of the
signet went up – We’ll have to…
Oh, Procurator, you may be
certain that for as long as I am in Judea, Varravan will not make a single move
without being closely followed.
Well, now I am relieved, as I
am always relieved when you are here.”
The
second poet in the conversation must have been Balmont himself, who had left
Russia before the deaths of Blok and Gumilev, in 1920, and according to Marina
Tsvetaeva:
“So will Balmont remain in Russian poetry as a guest from overseas,
bearing gifts, sweet-talking, enchanting it – by storm – and likewise sunk.
Balmont on Bryusov.
On 12th Russian June, 1920, … Balmont was going abroad.
I have a separate entry about this departure – flying-away! I shall limit
myself to two outcries, the penultimate to the Imaginist Kusikov: Don’t be friends with Bryusov! – and the
last one from the already departing truck – to me::
And you, Marina, tell Valery
Bryusov that I am not sending him my farewell regards!
***
(I did not pass on the non-regards. Bryusov was graying rapidly.)”
In
the same memoir Bryusov and Balmont Marina
Tsvetaeva writes:
“Bryusov’s communisticity [sic!] and Balmont’s anarchisticity.
Plebeianism of Bryusov and aristocratism of Balmont. (Like Bonaparte, Bryusov
is a plebeian, not a democrat.) Majesty (insular) of Balmont and Caesarism
[sic!] of Bryusov.”
Marina
Tsvetaeva’s meaning of “Bryusov’s
communisticity” boils down to the Bryusov
Institute, as Bryusov believed that people can be taught how to write
poetry. This opinion was apparently shared by Gumilev. Having returned to
Russia in 1918, he was teaching poetry in a number of the so-called “kruzhki”
(clubs). [Bulgakov wrote about these in the chapter A Troublesome Day.]
One
of such clubs was The Sounding Shell
[Rakovina]. Gumilev taught poetry there. Putting such an emphasis on the
sink [also Rakovina in Russian!] in
master’s basement apartment, Bulgakov is clearly sending a message with it.
This becomes especially clear in the following passage of Master and Margarita:
“She [Margarita] would come, and before
anything else she saw her duty to put on an apron, and in the narrow anteroom,
where that selfsame sink was, which for some reason was such a source of pride
for the sick man [master], she would start making breakfast…”
It
is through introducing such details that Bulgakov is pointing out that the
character of master is comprised of three prototypes – all Russian poets –
Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, and Nikolai Gumilev. The word “rakovina/sink/shell”
is one such clue leading us to Gumilev.
Meanwhile,
Marina Tsvetaeva goes on:
“...Balmont, like a true revolutionary, one hour after the
Revolution, in the first hour of its stability, found himself against [sic!]. Bryusov, at the same
time and for the same reason – for [sic!].
Balmont – if not a monarchist, then because of his revolutionary
nature.”
Calling
Balmont’s monarchism “a
Ludwigian-Wagnerian palace” – Marina Tsvetaeva comes to the conclusion that
Balmont is a contradictory nature: “Revolutionary
– Monarchist – Balmont.”
Balmont
was forced to flee Russia in 1905 on account of his revolutionary activity. He
returned in 1913 after a general amnesty was declared in connection with the
celebration of the 300th Anniversary of the House of Romanov.
The
tsarist Okhrana was spying on him when he was abroad. Back to Russia, however,
he must have been sorely disappointed in the course of the Russian Revolution.
In 1920, he was gone again, never to return.
To
be continued…
***
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