The Garden.
Caiaphas.
Posting #7.
“The Seal of Antichrist!
Judas! The Last Judgment!
You are still the same, the
Icon of Byzantium.
But brighter is your fire!
Hearts are forged and scorched…
Oh wise men… Deaf-mute slaves!”
Valerian Borodayevsky. A
Staff in Blossom.
Calling
Baron Meigel “an employee of the Entertainment
Commission,” Bulgakov invites in the
researcher an association with Ancient Rome, where the public demanded “bread and circuses” – that is, to be fed
and entertained. [In Russian, the same word is used here: “zrelishche,” to indicate both “entertainment” and “circuses.”] And
already at the end of Chapter 2: Pontius
Pilate, of the novel Master and
Margarita, Bulgakov presents one of such spectacles in Yershalaim. Only
Bulgakov calls it “a miracle.” He writes:
“...In the aggressive crowd, the people crushing each other are
climbing on shoulders, in order to see with their own eyes how a man who had
already been in the hands of death had broken out of those hands.”
And
also Bulgakov is drawing attention with the following expressions:
“And so, Pilate ascended the platform. As soon as the white cloak
with blood-color lining rose to a height over the edge of the human sea, the
blinded Pilate’s ears were hit by a sound wave: Ga-a-a!!! It started in a low volume, then increasing to a thundering
level. They saw me!, thought the
procurator... Pilate pointed to the right with his hand, without seeing the
criminals but knowing that they were there in their place... A moment came when
it seemed to Pilate that everything around him had disappeared altogether.”
Bulgakov
deliberately writes that Pontius Pilate could only hear the crowd, but could
not see it. In such a manner he indicates that this “miracle,” this spectacle,
has nothing to do with Pilate, that he has seen nobody and nothing… Can anybody
write like that?!..
When
Pilate cries out that only Varravan has been pardoned, he hears “roars, squeals, moaning, laughter, and whistles. Pilate
turned and went away without looking at anything. He knew that behind his back
onto the platform a shower of bronze coins, dates, etc. was pouring down.
[That’s Roman bread and spectacles for
you!] He knew that in the aggressive crowd, the people crushing each other are
climbing on shoulders, in order to see with their own eyes how a man who had
already been in the hands of death had broken out of those hands.”
This
is what explains why neither Pontius Pilate nor his prototype V. Ya. Bryusov
were members of the “Entertainment Commission.”
“Pilate opened his eyes, knowing that he was safe. The condemned
men could no longer be seen…”
On
this basis alone, Baron Meigel’s prototype cannot possibly be the same as
Pontius Pilate’s prototype.
These
two have nothing in common. However, there is a link between Baron Meigel and
Tartuffe. Bulgakov calls them both “a snitch and a spy.” And considering that
Tartuffe is simultaneously a “priest,” like Caiaphas, it turns out that these
two can indeed have the same prototype, for the lack of something better.
There
is one more character remaining, namely Judas. M. Bulgakov provides lots of
material in his novel Moliere on a
certain character named Michel Baron. In chapter 23, The Magic Harpsichord, Bulgakov writes that Baron was distinguished
“by rare beauty, and in addition to it, by such acting
skill which had probably never been seen before.”
Bulgakov
writes that Michel Baron “was the son of the late comedian of the Hotel of
Bourgogne Andre Baron.”
And
in Bulgakov’s 25th chapter of Master
and Margarita: How the Procurator Was Trying to Save Judas of Kyriath,
Pontius Pilate is asking Aphranius about Judas:
“Ah, that greedy old man from
Kyriath! Isn’t he an old man?
[Aphranius:] The man from
Kyriath is a young man.
[Pilate:] Well, what else?
[Aphranius:] Very handsome.”
And
in the 21st chapter of Moliere
Bulgakov writes:
“I have deliberately left the joyful news of this year for the
last. At Eastertime appeared before Moliere after four years of wanderings in
the provinces, matured and glistening with beauty, the 17-year-old Baron. A
rumor was born and persistently circulated in Paris that not a trace of former
hostility in Armanda [Moliere’s wife] toward the once impudent boy Baron had
remained, and that having fallen in love with the handsome great actor she had
become his mistress.”
Bulgakov creates another
triangle here: Moliere, Armanda, and Baron. Like in Master and Margarita, we have a husband (unknown), Margarita and
master. And another triangle in Pontius
Pilate: Niza’s husband (unknown), Niza and Judas.
But
as M. Bulgakov writes in the 8th chapter of Master and Margarita: A Duel Between a Professor and a Poet –
“One can be told a lot of
things, but it does not mean that all of them are to be believed.”
I
suggest that the researcher figure out who Professor Stravinsky’s prototype is.
Meanwhile, adieu!
At
this point I am staying with Marina Tsvetaeva’s version, which was picked up by
Bulgakov in the 18th chapter of Master
and Margarita, where he gives the name “Poplavsky” to one of Woland’s
guests, thus pointing to the young Russian poetess Natalia Poplavskaya who took
the penname Green Lady a la A. A.
Blok’s Fair Lady, his Muse.
I
am staying with the version that N. S. Gumilev was set up either by
Poplavskaya’s husband the baron or by her brother the poet. [See my chapter The Veiled Guests at Satan’s Great Ball: The
Green Lady.]
Meanwhile,
try to guess who is hiding in Bulgakov’s 18th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors
inside the character of Maximilian Andreevich Poplavsky.
As
for Marina Tsvetaeva’s reminiscences about Natalia Poplavskaya, I have
discovered that describing the “young man,” aka the “deer ears,” the clever
Marina – in what is totally unbelievable even for myself – described N. S.
Gumilev, and got away with it!
***
I’d
like to conclude Caiaphas with
Bulgakov’s own words:
“With the back of his hand, the procurator wiped his wet cold forehead,
looked down at the ground, and next, squinting at the sky, he saw that the
red-hot sphere was almost right above his head, and Caiaphas’s shadow had
shrunk near the lion’s tail…”
Thus
the words “red-hot sphere almost right above his head”
signify Pontius Pilate’s immortality, considering that his name would
forever be linked to the name of Christ, while the words “and Caiaphas’s shadow had shrunk near the lion’s tail”
are connected to the later poetry of Bryusov who published the poetry collection
titled The Mirror of Shadows. In it,
Bryusov depicts famous people of history. As N. Gumilev writes in his literary
article:
“Shakespeare instead of Marlowe, Raphael instead of Botticelli…”
Likewise,
Bulgakov, using the words “Caiaphas’s shadow had shrunk near the lion’s tail,”
compares Demyan Bedny with Bryusov, “who has told us, in Gumilev’s words, about
the demons who are always with us.”
The End.
***
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