The Garden.
Aphranius.
Posting #9.
“…The sleep lasts
three minutes.
I hurry. With whom – I won’t
look!
You sleep. Three minutes.
Too long –going to Moscow!
A Lightning way – Reserved:
From my dream
I’ve jumped into yours.
You are dreaming me…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. From
the Sea.
“In a white cloak with a blood-red lining, sporting the shuffling
cavalryman’s gait, early in the morning of the 14th day of the
Spring month Nissan, the Procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate came out into the
roofed colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
Together with him came the First Cohort of the Twelfth Lightning Legion…”
In
her memoirs, Marina Tsvetaeva frequently uses the adjective/adverb “lightning.” For instance, in her
reminiscences of the Russian poet K. D. Balmont, she writes:
“Balmont with a sudden surge of a cat’s gentleness: Marina! Put your arm in mine. I,
frightened: You are already arm-in-arm
with Varya. I don’t want a threesome.
Balmont lightningly [sic!] – There
is no threesome. There are two
twosomes: mine with Varya and mine with you. I to Balmont: Balmont, you know the word of Koyransky
about Bryusov: Bryusov is a perfect example of talentlessness overcome?
Balmont lightningly: Un-overcome!”
Bulgakov
takes the word “Lightning” only partially from Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, but also
from her poetry. In a charming 1926 poem From
the Sea she writes:
“…The
sleep lasts three minutes.
I hurry. With whom – I won’t
look!
You sleep. Three minutes.
Too long –going to Moscow!
A Lightning way – Reserved:
From my dream
I’ve jumped into yours.
You are dreaming me…”
Being
done with the “Lightning,” I am
moving on to the “Twelfth.” This is
already easier, as Bulgakov takes this word from the poetry of Blok (master’s
prototype), namely from his sensational poem The Twelve, where Jesus Christ appears. (Or does he?)
In
such a manner Bulgakov is trying to bring it to the reader that both these
poets are present in his novel.
I
would also like to bring to the reader’s attention that the word “Twelfth” is used by Bulgakov only once
in the 2nd chapter of Master
and Margarita: Pontius Pilate.
After
which he refers to the Legion simply as “Lightning,”
as Blok died in August 1921, while M. Tsvetaeva was still alive after
Bulgakov’s death.
This
exchange notwithstanding, Bulgakov, as the reader remembers from my chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil, unites
Balmont and Marina Tsvetaeva in the characters of Aphranius and the Greek woman
Niza, a married woman, wife of a carpet merchant in Yershalaim. Just like M. A.
Bulgakov never ceases to amaze us with his incredible sense of humor, by the
same token, his skill at using material taken from poems, letters, notes, and
articles of various Russian poets is quite striking. Indeed, Bulgakov’s works
ought to be read like detective stories, turning the reader into a Sherlock
Holmes (using the words of Bulgakov himself).
Isn’t
it interesting and entertaining to read Bulgakov that way?!
And
so, in the character of Aphranius we have a fusion of two Russian poets – K.
Balmont and N. Gumilev – who used to be called “foreigners.”
Marina
Tsvetaeva characterizes these two poets best:
“A tempting comparison of Balmont and Gumilev. The exotic character
of the one and the exotic character of the other. The presence in Balmont and
with rare exceptions the absence in Gumilev of the theme Russia… [The ending here is
quite extraordinary:] The non-Russianness of Balmont
and the wholly Russianness of Gumilev.”
I
support Tsvetaeva’s paradoxical thought by the fact that Balmont left Russia at
the same time that Gumilev returned.
***
N.
S. Gumilev, while being of a high opinion of Bryusov, recognized only three
poetry collections of Balmont: Burning
Buildings, Let’s be Like the Sun, and Only
Love.
Curiously,
precisely these three themes have entered Bulgakov’s works. And even if we
judge M. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita by
these titles only, it is easy to imagine that they had become the cornerstones
of Bulgakov’s work.
Although
fires are present in Blok’s poetry, they are not the same fires burning in
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. In
Blok they are fires of the soul, fires of being in love.
Meanwhile
Bulgakov gives us fires of two buildings. One of them is a food store for the
privileged. The other is the Griboyedov House, probably burned to bring it
all-new out of the ashes, an authentic and genuine Russian literature. That’s
the meaning of the “burning buildings”
in Bulgakov.
As
for another collection of poems by Balmont, Let’s
Be Like the Sun, someone counted up the occurrence of the word “sun” in Master and Margarita for the BVL. (26.) Not to mention the fact that
Marina Tsvetaeva carries on the torch even further, insisting that each poet is
a sun.
And
this is precisely how Bulgakov expresses it, especially in the case of Pontius
Pilate, whose prototype, as we already know, is V. Ya. Bryusov. –
“Pilate raised his head and stuck it right into the sun.”
And
also in Part II of Master and Margarita:
“No, wait! I know what I am
getting myself into. But I am doing it because of him, because I have no more
hope for anything in the world. But let me tell you: If you ruin me, you will
be ashamed of yourself. Yes, ashamed! I am perishing because of love! And
thumping her chest, Margarita cast a glance at the sun.”
This
excerpt also serves as an illustration of the third poetry collection by
Balmont: Only Love.
In
all these examples, the sly Bulgakov is trying to confuse his reader. As for
me, they just show that Balmont is indeed hidden in Bulgakov’s works.
The End.
***
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