The Garden.
Posting #25.
“...May you be cursed,
Beelzebub,
The sly tempter, –
Haven’t you whispered in my
ear
That I am the New Savior?
Oh, cursed be, be cursed!
Nobody hears me…
The frightened goats
Have run off into the steppe!”
Andrei Bely. The
Evening Sacrifice.
Marina
Tsvetaeva believed that Andrei Bely was living in another, ethereal world. Her
following words bear witness to that:
“Dear Bichette, is it
possible that you may still be alive and may read this? And what if you were
the first to meet him [Andrei Bely] at the entrance [to the other world], took
him by the hand and led – you gray-eyed him gray-eyed, you ever-young him
ever-young – through the groves of the blessed [sic!] – his true homeland.”
All
this because in Marina Tsvetaeva’s eyes Andrei Bely wasn’t of this world.
That’s why everything he did in the real world was so foreign to all. Only
Marina Tsvetaeva’s green eyes were able to discern in this man the ultimately
restless soul of Andrei Bely.
And
because of these memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva Bulgakov endows so many characters
in his literary creations with the features of Andrei Bely, of all people.
Indeed,
of all Russian poets Andrei Bely was the most childlike. That’s why Bulgakov
took his words (as recorded by Marina Tsvetaeva) seriously about him having no
destiny. –
“Bely, studying the embossment on the tablecloth, as though
searching within it for some ancient Runes, letters, traces [of his destiny?.. Like he did it in Egypt…]”
In
some strange way, these “Runes, letters, traces,” which Andrei Bely is closely
examining in a Berlin café, according to Marina Tsvetaeva, are connected in
Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate with the
“goat parchment.” All the more so, since Andrei Bely, in his religious poetry
collection Crimson Mantle in Thorns,
in the poem The Evening Sacrifice,
writes:
“I
stood there like a fool
In my sparkling crown,
In a golden chiton…
Alone, alone, like a pole,
In faraway deserts,
Waiting for throngs of people
On bent knees…”
[Another poem about a false prophet. And here it
comes! –]
“Attracted
by my light,
Came goats of the steppes…
I dropped my light
And wept woefully:
May you be cursed, Beelzebub,
The sly tempter, –
Haven’t you whispered in my
ear
That I am the New Savior?
Oh, cursed be, be cursed!
Nobody hears me…
The frightened goats
Have run off into the steppe!”
It
is from this poem by Andrei Bely and from Marina Tsvetaeva’s story about
Bichette, that M. A. Bulgakov constructs the following passage in his Pontius Pilate:
“There’s one going and going
around with goatskin parchment, scribbling after me non-stop…”
Reacting
to Yeshua’s words: “I am beginning to worry that this mix-up is going to last for a very
long time. And all because he was writing down after me incorrectly,” –Pontius
Pilate warns Yeshua:
“I repeat, but for the very
last time: Stop pretending that you are crazy, felon. Not much has been written
after you, but there’s enough here to have you hanged.”
This
passage clearly demonstrates that Andrei Bely is indeed the prototype of
Matthew Levi. And considering that Yeshua only talks about Matthew Levi, while
Bulgakov never actually shows them together [about it later in this chapter],
the author gets away with the habit of filling the character of Yeshua with
certain features – now of Blok, now of Gumilev, and now of Bely.
But
let me assure the reader that this tricky ruse has led quite a few Bulgakov
researchers astray, and quite successfully at that. I have found a confirmation
to my ideas of that nature in Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev’s Articles and Sketches on Russian Poetry.
In
Gumilev’s analysis of the poems of the totally unknown to me Russian poet Tikhon
Churilin, Gumilev writes this:
“…In terms of literature, [Churilin] is tied to Andrei Bely. He
[Churilin] often succeeds in turning his poems in such a way that ordinary,
even worn-out words assume the character of some kind of primeval savagery and
novelty. His theme is a man coming close to insanity, occasionally even being insane.
But while the real madmen depict birds and flowers, his poems have strict logic
of madness in them and truly nightmarish images.”
This
supports my thought that Andrei Bely actually metamorphosed himself into the
characters he was writing about. Whether it was a merchant, or an arrestee, or
a hunchbacked freak, or a hated bridegroom, or a false prophet, or a madman…
In
these metamorphoses, Andrei Bely was both the actor and the director of his
creation.
As
for Bulgakov, he makes his characters more complex by sometimes using several
prototypes for the same character or, like in the case with Andrei Bely, by
splitting the same prototype into several characters. In order to figure out
what is going on in Bulgakov’s works, one must know Russian literature and
particularly Russian poetry very well.
But
how much more interesting it is in this case to write a novel, a novella, a
short story, or even a play, when the author uses character traits of a real
person! And even more interesting is to be juggling with celebrities,
especially famous writers, poets, composers who wrote their own librettos, like
Mussorgsky, for instance. See my Duets in
the Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.
***
Returning
to the tablecloth in whose embossment Andrei Bely was trying to discern some
Runes, or sacred letters. Bulgakov uses this idea several times both in Pontius Pilate and in Master and Margarita.
Already
in the 1st chapter the reader is introduced to a number of “sons of
God” in different world religions, as well as to the philosophical works of
Kant and Strauss.
We
need to point out here that there is very little difference between what
Pontius Pilate tells Yeshua about his madness and what Woland has told Kant:
“You Professor… have thought
up something awkward. It may be clever, but too incomprehensible. You will be
mocked.”
Kant
would be mocked for creating a “5th proof of the existence of God”
after he had demolished the 4 proofs proposed before him.
It
will be only 24 chapters later (after Chapter 2) that the reader will find out
why Matthew Levi was incorrectly recording Yeshua’s words and that “this confusion will last for a very long
time.” It turns out that –
“…the writing represented a disconnected chain of some kind of
sayings, dates, household notes, and poetry fragments…”
Which
corresponds to the already quoted passage from M. Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Andrei
Bely. –
“Bely, studying the embossment on the tablecloth, as though
searching within it for some ancient Runes, letters, traces…”
By
the same token, “they will be mocking”
Matthew Levi who did not have clean parchment, and the one he had, the used
goat parchment, must have been stolen from some shop, in the absence of money
to buy it, or perhaps picked up from garbage.
To
be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment