The Garden.
Gumilev.
Posting #1.
“Into my brain, my
proud brain,
Thoughts have gathered…”
N. S. Gumilev.
“Yes, -- continued Yeshua, somewhat
surprised by the procurator’s knowledgeability, -- He asked me to express my view on state power. This question was of
extreme interest to him.”
“And
so, what did you say? – asked Pilate. –
Perhaps you will tell me that you may have forgotten what you said? – But
one could discern hopelessness in Pilate’s tone of voice.”
Pontius Pilate (read the investigator interrogating N.
S. Gumilev) is now openly, but hopelessly, trying to help Yeshua (read
Gumilev), virtually suggesting the life-saving answers to him.
From all these excerpts from the verbal exchange
between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Nozri, in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, it becomes clear
that M. A. Bulgakov is writing cryptically about the tragic fate of the great
Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.
But if we read it under this angle, how Pontius Pilate
is trying to save Yeshua, it is quite clear what exactly Bulgakov is trying to
say.
It is very possible that Gumilev was interrogated by a
Russian investigator who had been familiar with Gumilev’s poetry. Besides, he
must have known only too well the details of the case which had caused
Gumilev’s arrest in the first place, and strongly suspected that the person who
told all those incriminating things about the poet, was primarily trying to
save his own neck at the other’s expense. No wonder then that the investigator
wanted to help Gumilev as much as he could, but the poet simply refused to be
helped, and with each word was only digging a deeper grave for himself.
And no matter how skillfully Bulgakov was trying to
mask it with the fantastical element, we do know that he is writing about
Gumilev, once he has already introduced him in the novel under the guise of the
hapless accountant Vasili Stepanovich Lastochkin.
In order to veil the reality (which is the
interrogation of N. S. Gumilev), Bulgakov introduces a swallow who had just
flown in, and also gives Pontius Pilate a vision of the Roman Emperor Tiberius,
plus all that gobbledygook about the “Great Caesar.”
But even if we look at the beginning of the serious
conversation, discarding everything which seems superfluous to it, we are
perfectly clear about the fact that Pontius Pilate is indeed trying to help the
arrestee.
The key wording here is “did you say, or you didn’t.” Failing to understand that Yeshua is
truth incarnate, Pilate sincerely believes that he is thus trying to provide
Yeshua with an opportunity to deny the incriminating evidence.
It is interesting how Bulgakov intersperses Pilate’s
words with multiple dots, indicating pauses:
“Answer
me! Did you say it?.. Or… did not… say… it?”
Even such extent of explicitness is insufficient for
Bulgakov:
“Pilate was drawing out the word did not a bit longer than it is proper
in court proceedings, and in his glance he sent to Yeshua a certain thought
which he desired to instill in the arrestee.”
Obviously, that thought was “Deny it, deny it, even if it’s true.” But instead, Yeshua tells
Pontius Pilate:
“Telling
the truth is easy and pleasant.”
And once again Pontius Pilate gives Yeshua good
advice:
“But
when you say it, weigh each of your words.”
Thus, using the fantastical element, mysticism, and
intrusion of supernatural forces, and also the story of hemicrania, invented by
Bulgakov, boiling down to the fact that Pilate was suffering from the ailment,
and Yeshua healed his affliction, Bulgakov, being a physician and a mystical
writer at that, gets away with the real story, which is the interrogation of N.
S. Gumilev by a Russian investigator.
Pontius Pilate was a Roman finding himself in a
hostile country, where everything was alien to him, and where he certainly saw
himself superior to all of his surroundings. He and the arrestee apparently
could have nothing in common.
It was a different story, however, in the interaction
between the Russian interrogator and N. S. Gumilev. Both must have been
patriots of the same country. Gumilev, out of his patriotic fervor, signed
himself up voluntarily for Russian military service during the first world war,
in which he was awarded three Crosses of St. George for bravery. The Russian
investigator must surely have received various materials pertaining to the
person of the arrestee Gumilev. They were of the same Russian blood, all of
which must have affected the investigator’s attitude toward the poet. At least
such is the picture presented to us by Bulgakov.
No, Bulgakov does not depict Pontius Pilate as a
“fierce monster.” Judging by the totality of the details, this nickname does
not particularly suit Mark the Ratkiller, either, as we learn from Bulgakov
that the man was afraid of Pilate’s dog. Let us reread that passage carefully:
“In the hands of the Centurion Ratkiller, a
torch was flaming and smoking. The holder of the torch was watching from the
corner of his eye, with fear and malevolence, the dangerous beast readying
himself for a jump.”
In this 26th chapter of Master and Margarita, titled The Burial, we find yet another complex
association, indicating that Bulgakov not only endows Yeshua with certain
features of Gumilev, but that in fact he is writing down Gumilev’s story of
arrest and interrogation.
“No
touching, Banga! – said the procurator in an ailing voice, and coughed.
Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he continued. – Day and night and under the moon I have
no rest. Oh gods! Yours, too, is a bad job, Mark. You cripple the soldiers.
In great amazement, Mark was staring at the
procurator, who then came back to his senses.”
Let us note that Pilate’s reference to soldiers once
again points to Gumilev, who volunteered for military service as a plain
soldier and was extremely proud of this fact.
Meanwhile, the key words in the passage above are “to
cripple” and “amazement.”
The “amazement” of Mark the Ratkiller is understandable.
If he was Pilate’s army disciplinarian, he surely followed the law. Nobody
would have allowed him to “cripple Roman soldiers.”
Pilate uses the word “to cripple” repeatedly. The
first time he orders Mark to explain something to Yeshua without “crippling”
him.
As I just said, Gumilev went through most part of the
war as a soldier and was very proud of it. In his poetry collection The Pillar of Fire, which many consider
his greatest achievement, there is a poem titled Memory, where Gumilev writes about his evolution, “about those who
earlier lived in this body before me.” Eventually, he focuses on a
certain soldier, who –
“…Traded
his merry freedom
For
the sacred, long-awaited battle.
He
knew the pangs of hunger and thirst,
The
troubled sleep, the endless road.
But
St. George touched twice
His
chest, untouched by a bullet.”
If the reader is still hesitant to accept this as
proof, then this poem Memory has
several other places, as Bulgakov takes several ideas from this poem for his Pontius Pilate.
As, for instance, why does Bulgakov give Pontius
Pilate a dog as a friend? In that same poem Memory
Gumilev writes:
“A
tree and a red dog, --
That’s
whom he took to be his friends.”
Why does Bulgakov make Mark the Ratkiller a “giant”?
“Memory,
with the hand of a giantess
You
guide life like one guides a stallion by the rein.”
And also in the poem Captains we find these very interesting lines:
“And
it seems that in the world there are lands, as before,
Where
human foot never tread,
Where
giants dwell in sunny groves
And
pearls shine through clear water.”
Why does Bulgakov put such an emphasis on Herod’s
palace with its golden idols, and not on the Jewish Temple?
“I’m
the sulky and stubborn builder
Of
the Temple rising in the dark.
I’ve
become jealous of the Father’s glory,
Both
in heaven and on earth.
My
heart will be burned by a flame
Until
the day when there will rise
The
walls of a New Jerusalem
On
the fields of my native land.”
These eight lines of Gumilev’s poem Memory explain why Bulgakov was so vehemently
refusing to publish Master and Margarita without
Pontius Pilate in it.
To
be continued…
***
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