The Garden.
Posting #23.
“You must know,
Igemon, that I am going to slaughter a certain man in Yershalaim. I’d like to…
There will be more blood.”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita/Pontius Pilate.
Aside
from the desire to belong, Andrei Bely, as we have seen from Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs and from his own poetry, has a passion for revenge. In the sub-novel Pontius Pilate of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov divides this passion of Matthew Levi
into an acute compassion for Yeshua and a pure hatred for Judas, whom he
desires to kill after the death of Yeshua in Chapter 26 The Burial.
“All of a sudden, Levi approached the table. You must know, Igemon, that I am going to slaughter a certain man in
Yershalaim. I’d like to… There will be more blood.”
Pilate
disingenuously wonders if Matthew Levi wishes to slaughter him. Levi responds
glumly:
“I won’t be able to slaughter
you... I am not so stupid to count on that. But I will slaughter Judas of
Kyriath, and I shall devote the rest of my life to doing it.
Here a bliss showed itself in the procurator’s eyes. With his
finger he beckoned Matthew Levi to get closer, and said:
And that is something you
won’t be able to do, so don’t bother. Judas was already slaughtered tonight.”
A
visibly impressed Matthew Levi “softened up,” and at last agreed to accept from
Pontius Pilate “a roll of clean
parchment.”
The
point is that Pontius Pilate heard the name of Matthew Levi for the first time
during the interrogation of Yeshua. Pilate had asked Yeshua:
“So it was you who were going
to destroy the Temple building and incited the people to do so?.. It is clearly
written here: incitement to destroy the Temple. This is what people testify to.”
Yeshua
responds:
“These good people… have
learned nothing and got totally mixed up over what I had told them. Generally
speaking, 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... There’s
one going and going around with goatskin parchment, scribbling non-stop; but
once I looked into that parchment and was horrified. Positively not a word
written there was something that I ever said. I was begging him: please, for
the love of God, burn your parchment! But he tore it out of my hand and ran
away.”
Understandably,
Pontius Pilate himself, having taken the parchment on which Matthew Levi had
written Yeshua’s words, could not make anything out. The reader has to wait
through twenty-four chapters of Master
and Margarita, that is, from Chapter 2 until Chapter 26 in order to learn
what it was that Matthew Levi had scribbled down:
“Having taken away the knife stolen [by Matthew Levi} from a
bakery, Pontius Pilate demanded that he be shown the charter which you are carrying with you, recording Yeshua’s words…
Levi searched inside his clothes and produced a roll of parchment.
Pilate took it and unrolled it. He stretched it out between fires, and
squinting, began to study illegible ink signs. It was difficult to make out
these crude lines. Pilate frowned, brought his eyes close to the parchment
itself, following the lines with his finger. He managed to figure out that the
writing represented a disconnected chain of some kind of sayings, dates,
household notes, and poetry fragments [sic!].
A few words, though, Pilate was able to recognize:
There is no death. Yesterday we
ate sweet spring bakkurot…
Making grimaces from straining himself, Pilate was squinting and
reading: We shall see the clear river of
the water of life. Humanity will be looking at the sun through a transparent
crystal.
And then Pilate shuddered. In the last lines of the parchment he
discerned the words: a greater vice…
cowardice…
Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt gesture handed it
back to Levi.”
The
reader will learn why Pontius Pilate reacted to the word cowardice so painfully in my forthcoming chapter The Bard.
As
for right now, the reader’s attention ought to be focused on the two words: “goat parchment. It is also necessary to
notice that among the items written on the parchment are “poetry fragments.”
In
other words, Bulgakov clearly masks among all sorts of nonsense the fact that
Yeshua’s prototype is a poet, namely, the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. Pointing
to this are Pontius Pilate’s words in the second chapter during his
interrogation of Yeshua:
“You, wretch, believe that
the Roman Procurator would release a man saying what you said? Oh gods, gods!
Or maybe you think that I am ready to take your place? [And here it comes!] I
do not share your thoughts!”
In
other words, Bulgakov clearly shows that V. Ya. Bryusov, who happens to be
Pontius Pilate’s prototype, did not share the political views of N. S. Gumilev,
a devout monarchist. Bulgakov is basing his text here on Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs:
“I am often coming across accusations to the effect that Bryusov
had sold his quill to the Soviet Power. But I must say that among all walkovers [to the Soviet side] he may
have been the only one who had not betrayed or sold [his allegiance]. Bryusov’s
place is precisely in the USSR.”
Tsvetaeva
confirms this opinion by the following words:
“...What kind of political system and what kind of world-conception
could be more fitting for this hero of labor and volya [V. Bryusov] than the
world-conception placing volya [sic!] as its cornerstone, and the political
system not only bringing out – in its Anthem – the slogan: Labor shall become the sovereign of the world, but like Bonaparte
establishing the Order of Heroes, establishing the Order of Heroes of Labor...
Bryusov’s service to the Communist idea was not forced upon him: it was a
service of love.”
Marina
Tsvetaeva also builds a logical foundation under the edifice she has erected,
pointing out that Bryusov was both “fame-thirsty” and “power-hungry” at the
same time. –
“Like a genuine power-lover, he [Bryusov] eagerly and at once
submitted himself to the system which in some degree promised him power.”
Thus
M. Bulgakov accepts Marina Tsvetaeva’s point of view, showing in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate of the novel Master and Margarita that N. S. Gumilev
could have received support from V. Ya. Bryusov, who was in a position to give
it, but never did.
To
be continued…
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