The Garden.
Caiaphas.
Posting #6.
“...Oh Rus, the stern
sorceress,
You will take what is yours
anywhere…
And can one live without you?”
N. S. Gumilev. Old
Homesteads.
30,000+
books, constituting Demyan Bedny’s library, pillaged from old homesteads of the
Russian nobility, going into disarray in the wake of the Russian Revolution and
Civil War…
Very
pertinently, Gumilev released a poem in 1916 in the Quiver cycle, titled Old
Homesteads. –
“Skewed
two-storey houses…
Old homesteads are scattered
All over the mysterious Rus…
At times, processions of the
cross and singing,
All bells ringing…
Rus is raving of God, red
flame,
Where angels can be seen
through smoke,
While they are obediently
believing in omens,
Loving what is theirs, living
by what is theirs…
Oh Rus, the stern sorceress,
You will take what is yours
anywhere.
To run? But do you love what
is new?
And can one live without you?
And one can’t part with
amulets,
Fortuna spins her wheel,
On the shelf alongside
pistols
Baron Brambeus and Rousseau.”
As
he is giving Matthew Levi’s parchment back to him, Pontius Pilate says:
“I see that you are a man of
books, and it is not fitting for you, a solitary man, to walk around in
pauper’s rags and without shelter. I have a large library in Caesarea. I am
very rich and I want to offer you employment. You will be sorting and properly
storing papyruses. You will be fed and clothed.”
Levi
stood up and said: “No, I don’t want to.”
And before that he turned down food offered by Pontius Pilate, although he had
not eaten for a long time.
“Most likely he looked like a city beggar, there were many like
that hanging around markets... The silence lasted for a long time, and was
interrupted by a strange behavior of the man brought to Pilate. He changed in
his face, staggered, and had his dirty hand not grabbed the edge of the table,
he would have fallen.”
This
is how Bulgakov depicts the meeting in the Crimea at the home of the Russian
poet M. A. Voloshin in 1923, when Andrei Bely returned to Russia from Europe.
Voloshin made a great effort to reconcile A. Bely with V. Ya. Bryusov, but the
relationship of the two would remain quite strained.
Describing
Matthew Levi as a pauper, Bulgakov touches upon the real situation in Russia
after the Revolution. Life was hard for all except the scum. Yes, Andrei Bely
lived to welcome the Revolution, but hostile forces took hold of it, at least
for a while, until the natural course of Russian history would relegate them to
the garbage dump.
***
Demyan
Bedny’s adventures in Bulgakov’s novel Master
and Margarita do not end with the character of Caiaphas. In the 20th
chapter of Bulgakov’s novel Moliere,
titled Egyptian Godfather, finds out
why in the novel Master and Margarita Russian
Easter falls on the late month of May. On May 12, 1664, Moliere’s great
three-act comedy Tartuffe, or the
Impostor, had its premiere, his most mysterious play about world
literature’s most famous hypocrite.
The
question arises right away: Why the most
mysterious? What secret has Moliere
hidden in this play?
Bulgakov
writes:
“This very personage, clearly presenting danger to the society
around him, was none other than a clergyman. All his speeches were filled with
sugary pious phrases and moreover, the hero [sic!] accompanies all his dirty
actions every step of the way with quotations from the Holy Scriptures.”
This
portrait of Tartuffe clearly points to Caiaphas, who, without quoting the Holy
Books, speaks about “God and the Jewish People” all the time.
Considering
that Bulgakov adds the following words to this portrait: “lecher and corruptor
of other men’s wives,” and as we know, Demyan Bedny was thrown out of the
Communist Party and the Writers’ Union on account of debauchery, it turns out
that Bulgakov uses some features of Demyan Bedny in his portrait of Baron
Meigel, whose prototype he borrows from the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs (see my chapter Guests at Satan’s
Great Ball: The Green Lady). It is very likely that Bulgakov either failed
to establish the identity of the husband of the Russian poetess Natalia
Poplavskaya, or simply decided not to use him as a prototype, judging this to
be unsafe for himself.
However,
Bulgakov does use such words as “a snitch
and a spy,” which in Master and
Margarita refer to Baron Meigel, making it quite likely that the presence
of Demyan Bedny does not end with the character of Caiaphas.
Bulgakov
writes this in his novel Moliere:
“I shall be brief [sic!]. Depicted in this play [Tartuffe] was a complete and finished
crook, liar, scoundrel, [and here it comes!], a snitch and a spy – a hypocrite.”
And
in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita: Chapter
23 Satan’s Great Ball I read:
“‘Yes, by the way, baron,
said Woland in a suddenly intimate lowered tone of voice, ‘rumors are going around about your excessive curiosity. They say that,
in conjunction with your no less developed talkativeness, it has started
attracting general attention. Furthermore, wicked tongues have already dropped
the word – a snitch and a spy…”
Once
again Bulgakov points to the law of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich
Romanov, who had lived in the time of Louis XIV. The law was called “Word and Deed.” [See my chapter Diaboliada, where the main character’s
prototype was the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.]
Meanwhile,
Woland continues:
“And even more, there is a
supposition that this is about to bring you to a sad outcome no later than in a
month. So, guess what, in order to spare you from the depressing anticipation,
we have decided to come to your assistance, taking advantage of the
circumstance that you insinuated yourself on me to be a guest of mine,
precisely with the purpose of spying and eavesdropping on everything you can.’
…The baron became whiter than Abadonna [whose prototype is N. S.
Gumilev], who was exceptionally white by his nature...”
To
be continued…
***
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