The Garden.
Aphranius.
Posting #7.
“And he was very
unhappy,
Like unhappy is every poet.
Then he was put against the
wall,
And he was shot to death.
And there is no cross or a
mound
On his grave. – Nothing.”
Irina Odoevtseva. [A
Ballad about Gumilev.]
With
his unique sense of humor, Bulgakov points in the direction of K. D. Balmont as
one of the prototypes of Aphranius. Having presented Aphranius with an
expensive ring for a job well done, Pontius Pilate says farewell to Aphranius,
and so does the reader. Bulgakov writes:
“Aphranius bowed and said: A
great honor. Procurator! – He started retreating, while bowing.”
Knowing
Bulgakov’s style, I must draw the reader’s attention to the repetition of the
word “bow.” This repetition is deliberate.
In
her memoirs, Marina Tsvetaeva emphasizes that, departing from Moscow in 1920,
Balmont shouted to her at the very end:
“And you, Marina, tell
Bryusov that I am not bowing to him.”
Bulgakov
repeats the word in order to confuse the researcher, which is of course a habit
of his. Having spent so much time on polishing his novel Master and Margarita, who can be surprised?
And
also, in the episode with money, Bulgakov persistently points to Balmont being
Aphranius’ prototype. Taking his leave to get to the implementation of Pontius
Pilate’s order of assassinating Judas, Aphranius reassures Pilate:
“The guest adjusted his heavy sash under the cloak and said:
I have the honor to wish you
good health and joy.
Ah, yes! – exclaimed Pilate
in low voice. – I’ve completely forgotten. There is this matter of my debt to
you!
The guest was astounded…”
[How
come he was ‘astounded,’ having just ‘adjusted
his heavy sash under the cloak,’ thus rather explicitly sending a signal to
Pilate that there was this little question of money here? The game is being
played by both sides...] –
“…Really, Procurator, you do
not owe me anything!
But that isn’t so, remember?
When I was entering Yershalaim, there was this crowd of beggars… I wanted to
throw them some money, but I had none on me and I borrowed from you.
Oh, Procurator, that must
have been some trifle small change!
Even a trifle debt ought to
be honored!
Here Pilate turned back, picked up the cloak lying on the chair
behind him, pulled a leather bag from under it and offered it to his guest, who
bowed, receiving it, and hid it under his cloak.”
Another
“bowed”! But not only that.
In
her memoirs, Marina Tsvetaeva compares Balmont with Bryusov, writing this:
“Balmont: An open hand – throwing, in Bryusov – the screeching
key.”
We
must again marvel at Bulgakov’s ingenuity. In one stroke of his pen he turns
the hand of Pontius Pilate [Bryusov] into a “throwing” hand, whereas the hand
of Aphranius [Balmont] is still a “giving” hand.
And
yet, the prototypes of both Aphranius and Pontius Pilate are poets. Bulgakov is
constantly stressing it in the 25th chapter, drawing the reader’s
attention to the eyes of each one of them. On account of his eye “slits,”
Aphranius has already got a place in my chapter Cats. But also Pontius Pilate “was casting glances at his guest
[Aphranius] through squinting eyes.” It is already in the 1st
chapter of Master and Margarita that
the word “squint” comes up:
“…Yes, sarcoma,”
squinting like a cat, he [Woland] repeated the sonorous word.”
As
for Aphranius’ eyes –
“…Normally the visitor would hide his little eyes under the cover
of his rather strange, as though swollen, eyelids.”
Many
photographs of Gumilev correspond to this description of the eyelids. Bulgakov
draws the reader’s attention also by describing the glances of Pilate and Aphranius.
Thus,
Pilate:
“…involuntarily directed his glance [sic!] over there.”
Or:
“Here the guest [Aphranius] sent his special glance into the
procurator’s cheek. But the other was gazing into the distance with bored eyes
and a disdainful grimace on his face.”
And
again:
“The guest’s glance lost its light.”
On
several other occasions Aphranius closes his eyes in the middle of a
conversation, thus underscoring Yeshua’s behavior before death:
“All the time he was trying
to look into the eyes of one or another of those around him, and all the time
he was smiling with some kind of embarrassed smile.”
This
means that Bulgakov was familiar with the reminiscences of Gumilev’s student
Irina Odoevtseva who wrote (op. cit. vol. I, XXXVI):
“His smile was also quite
peculiar. There was something abject in his smile, but at the same time
mischievous.”
Or
perhaps Bulgakov may have heard something from other sources?
But
there is yet another reason for this, which Bulgakov reveals in the next 26th
chapter of Master and Margarita: The
Burial. When Aphranius reports to Pontius Pilate that Judas from Kyriath
has been killed, he has the feeling that four eyes are looking at him: the eyes
of a dog and the eyes of a wolf.
Remembering
that the procurator in this scene has his dog Banga with him, it is pretty much
clear whose eyes are the eyes of a dog. I could never understand Bulgakov’s
reason for endowing Pontius Pilate with the eyes of a wolf until I read Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Bryusov, where she on many occasions calls him “a wolf.”
Describing
her first meeting with Bryusov in a bookshop on Kuznetsky Most (one of my
favorite streets in Moscow), Tsvetaeva writes:
“Behind the left shoulder,
which is an Angel’s proper place, – a
dog’s brusque bark never heard before, but instantly recognized. I raise my
eyes – Bryusov.”
Tsvetaeva
is just sixteen in this 1908 episode.
In
1911, having received a literary prise from Bryusov himself, and describing
this event in her life in her memoir, Marina Tsvetaeva “for
the first time figured out that Bryusov was a wolf. Because of his grin: only
not ours, human, – a wolf’s grin. (The scowl, the glare, the glower.)”
To
be continued…
***
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