The Garden.
Posting #24.
“The Gouvernorate of Tula, Tolstoye Crossing.
The town of Cerm nearby, where Ivan
[of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov]
had a conversation with the devil…”
Marina Tsvetaeva.
As
if Andrei Bely’s desire to belong were not enough, Marina Tsvetaeva offers us
in her memoirs incontrovertible proof of Andrei Bely being indeed Matthew Levi’s
prototype.
Even
before her meeting with Andrei Bely at the apartment of the Russian poet Ellis
[pseudonym of Lev Lvovich Kobylinsky, translator of Baudelaire and one of the
most passionate adherents of Early Symbolism], Marina Tsvetaeva was traveling
in the Tula Gouvernorate in Southern Russia and found herself at a celebration
of someone’s name-day.
A
local noblewoman, estate owner, started a conversation with Marina Tsvetaeva.
She had three daughters whom, compared to the “rosy, healthy and sensible” Marina Tsvetaeva, she called “dry like goats and
completely crazy. Especially Bichette – that’s how her grandmother had called
her for her eyes and for her leaps.”
[Marina
Tsvetaeva offers a very interesting and I would say literate description of
that meeting. I recommend that the reader read through her complete memoirs of
Andrei Bely. Differently from the account of V. F. Khodasevich, which I find
mean-spirited and biased, Marina Tsvetaeva’s are lively, written with a great
sense of humor, and read like an entertaining work of fiction.]
While
in Moscow, Bichette happened to attend one of Andrei Bely’s readings of his
poetry. Having found out his telephone number, she called the poet to ask him
about the color of his eyes. It turned out that she had made a wager about it
with her sisters.
Having
learned this whole hilarious story from the mother of the three sisters, Marina
Tsvetaeva related it to Andrei Bely during their meeting in Berlin fourteen
years later in 1922, already after the deaths of Blok and Gumilev.
As
could be expected, his wife having left him, Andrei Bely became ecstatic:
“…And what color were her
eyes? Bichette? Bichette? A little she-goat? Probably gray? And like this (cuts
the air slantwise) – and like a real
goat’s?”
Overwhelmed,
Andrei Bely starts complaining that Bichette had never written to him because
she had died. –
“Bichette, with goat’s eyes
who is like this with joy that I had told her on the phone what color my
eyes are... 14 years ago. She is now – a Valkyrie... Or rather she was a
Valkyrie… I know that she died… How poetic!”
And
perhaps it is Andrei Bely’s poetic imagination that transports him 14 years
back. When he is asked: “Which reading was it? Already here?” [Regarding the girl with eyes of a goat, Bichette] – Andrei Bely exclaims [are you ready
for this?] –
“Of course here because I am
now there [sic!], because what is there is now here, and
there is no here except there!”
And
as if that alone weren’t enough, Andrei Bely proceeds with his philosophical
tirade:
“There is no now
except then, because then is eternal, eternal, eternal! That’s
what Foeth’s presently truly is.”
Afanasy
Foeth [1820-1892] was a famous Russian lyric poet of German descent. Curiously,
it is in precisely this place dealing with “there-here,
now-then and presently,” that the most interesting part begins.
Andrei
Bely’s tirade gives Bulgakov the idea of “coinciding” both of his novels,
namely the main novel Master and
Margarita and the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate, placing the same Russian poets both “here and there” as prototypes of his characters living two millennia
apart.
***
…Due
to his profoundly suspicious nature, Andrei Bely starts doubting the very
existence of this Bichette:
“You haven’t made this up,
have you? (Suspiciously and aggressively.) Because I don’t remember anything of this, no eyes over the phone… I
believe you, of course, but… Because this is supremely important.”
Andrei
Bely comes to a conclusion:
“Because this is supremely
important. Because if she [Bichette] was – it had to be my destiny. My
non-destiny. Because I had no destiny. And only now I realize why I perished.
How much I perished!”
Also
very important for the understanding of how a 20th-century writer M.
A. Bulgakov was able to transport a number of Russian poets into a time so far
away and a place so foreign, is the following conversation in Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoirs:
“…Bely, studying the embossment [sic!] on the tablecloth, as though
searching within it for some ancient Runes, letters, traces, – suddenly popped
up his head and flooding me [Marina Tsvetaeva] with the light of his anything
but gray eyes obviously unseeing [sic!] me –
Bichette… Bichette… there’s
something that I remember, but it doesn’t coincide! I was quite little then, I
almost wasn’t, I just wasn’t…”
There
is a good reason why in the article Andrei
Bely (The Urn. Poems. Griffin
Publishing House. Moscow 1909) Gumilev writes about Andrei Bely:
“Where lies Andrei Bely’s charm, why do we want to think and talk
about him? Because there are motifs in his creative work and these motifs are
truly deep and unusual. He has enemies: time and space, and he has friends:
eternity and the ultimate goal.”
Apparently,
this is applicable to Andrei Bely’s life, not only to his creative work. It is
quite possible that eternity was his ultimate goal. After all, he was a
mathematician. It must have been something like:
å = ¾
It
is appropriate here to remind the reader what I wrote about Andrei Bely’s
“Eternity” in Three Masters in One:
“I’m
again overwhelmed by the austere tune,
The tune of the ages about a
new coming…
And eternity knocked on my
window in a thunderstorm.”
The
following is a quintessential moment:
“I wasn’t, there was I,
it. You surely understand me? (A perennial question of all who do
not expect to be understood, to the point that they do not wait for an answer.
[Marina Tsvetaeva’s own note.]) Just one
second. Wait! It will pop up presently. (An imperious gesture toward me.
[Marina Tsvetaeva’s note again.]) It will
appear right now! But why Bichette – when – Biquette! Because – and I am ready
to ascend the scaffold for this, that it is – Biquette! But why Biquette when
it is Bichette?”
Here
Marina Tsvetaeva comes to Andrei Bely’s aid and starts singing a French
children’s song to him:
“Ah,
tu sortiras, Biquette, Biquette,
Ah, tu sortiras de ce chou
là.”
[Ah,
you’ll come out, Biquette, Biquette,
Ah, you’ll come out from that
head of cabbage.”]
And
she explains:
“That’s because in your
infancy, when you were not yet, this song was sung to you by a French – no,
Swiss M-lle who was [underlined by Tsvetaeva] with you.
A pause. I am sitting literally flooded by the elation pouring from
his eyes, clothed by it like by a cloak [sic!]. Andrei Bely is so much
overcome:
Believe me that for this
Biquette – note that I am now [talking] about Biquette – I am telling this
cabbage goat that for this Swiss milk cabbage infancy goat I am ready for the
whole ten years in a row from morning till late night carry cobblestones on me.
And I must tell you that never in my life had I respected anybody like I
respect you this very minute.”
All
this incredible bliss displayed by Andrei Bely could not escape the attention
and great interest of Bulgakov, and in his own inimitable way he is using this
part of Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir in his Master
and Margarita.
To
be continued…
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