The Garden.
After-Death
Vengeance.
Posting #3.
From Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita:
“I hear how in this coffin
[sic!] silence his lacquered shoes are creaking, and how the Champagne glass is
clinking which he has put back on the table, having drunk Champagne for the
last time in this life. And here he is!”
From
Gumilev’s After-Death Vengeance:
“...The
dead one wildly howled and wheezed,
Crawled over the floor,
trembling [sic!],
Glued to his face was the rot
Of cloudy ichor...”
And
here is Bulgakov again:
“The guest was literally shaking with anxiety. Bright spots were
burning on his cheeks, and his eyes shifted restlessly in great alarm. The
guest was stupefied, and that was quite natural: he was struck by everything
[he saw], and especially Woland’s attire. [He was wearing a “dirty patched up
nightshirt.”] However the guest received an outstanding welcome:
Ah, my dearest Baron Meigel!
– congenially smiling,
Woland addressed the guest, whose eyes were popping out onto his forehead...”
As
though he were praising Meigel, Woland continues:
“Yes, by the way, Baron,
said Woland in a suddenly intimate lowered tone of voice, ‘rumors are going around about your excessive inquisitiveness. They say
that, in conjunction with your no less developed talkativeness, it has started
attracting general attention…”
As
for “savage repulsiveness” in
Gumilev’s poem, Bulgakov writes:
“...Furthermore, wicked
tongues have already dropped the word – a snitch and a spy. 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.”
In
other words, Bulgakov’s reality here is likewise intertwined with a similar
scene in Pontius Pilate, but
contrarily. In Chapter 2, Yeshua tells the procurator about the circumstances
of his meeting with Judas:
“This is how it was, readily
began the arrestee. – The other day, in
the evening, I got acquainted near the Temple with one young man who called
himself Judas from the town of Kyriath. He invited me to his home in the Lower
City and treated me to a meal.”
A
good man? – asked Pilate,
and a devilish fire flickered in his eyes.”
First
we should look at the expression “This is how it was.” In Russian this reads: “Delo bylo tak.” M. A. Bulgakov takes the
word “delo” from the title of the Russian law during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich
Romanov: “Slovo i Delo” [“Word and Deed.” See my comments on this
most interesting subject in my chapter Diaboliada.]
Also
in my future chapter the reader will be in for a big surprise regarding the
meeting “near the Temple.”
“...A
very kind and inquisitive man, – confirmed
the arrestee. – He expressed the greatest
interest in my thoughts, and received me most hospitably. He asked me to
express my view on state power. This question was of extreme interest to him.”
A
very interesting picture is emerging here. Woland [the devil] is also, like
Judas, treating his guest Baron Meigel most hospitably. Bulgakov also indicates
that these scenes are identical by using in Pontius
Pilate such an expression as “a devilish fire
flickered in his eyes.” In Master
and Margarita proper, it is the devil himself who talks to Baron Meigel.
Another
giveaway word is “an inquisitive man” with regard to Judas, and “your extreme
inquisitiveness” with regard to Baron Meigel, linking the two situations and
pointing to their identicalness.
The
only difference between these scenes is that Judas invites Yeshua to his house,
whereas Baron Meigel insinuates himself into an invitation to Woland’s Ball.
And
also in the kind of death the two scoundrels suffer. Pontius Pilate orders
Aphranius to have Judas slaughtered, whereas Baron Meigel is shot by Azazello.
But
in both these scenes, the prototype of the killer is the same. It is the
Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.
How
does Bulgakov utilize the following stanza from N. S. Gumilev’s poem After-Death Vengeance?
“…Now
the bones have bared,
The stench was such one
couldn’t come near,
He was howling all the time,
and they didn’t dare
To have his coffin nailed…”
Bulgakov
plays upon the first two lines of this stanza in his 24th chapter The End of Apartment #50. It was not
enough for him to have Baron Meigel shot. This is what happened as a result of
Kot Begemot’s duel with the “plumbers”:
“A fire broke out on the parquet floor of the apartment under the
feet of the [plumbers] who had come in, and in the fire, in the same spot where
Kot Begemot had been writhing with a make-believe wound, there appeared, more
and more solidifying, the corpse of the former Baron Meigel with a pulled up
chin, glassy eyes. Pulling him out of there was no longer possible…”
Thus,
according to N. Gumilev’s wish, Baron Meigel’s corpse was burned so that his
“bones had bared.”
***
Going
further through Gumilev’s ballad After-Death
Vengeance:
“...The
third one is trembling,
Feeling an unbearable alarm,
And goes to pray to God... ”
This
is already Caiaphas’s portrait. He has become religious, but he does not fare
too well in Bulgakov. Pontius Pilate orders Judas’s slaughter with the proviso
that the killers will find out how much money Judas received from Caiaphas for
his treachery. Pilate discusses this matter allegorically in his conversation
with the Chief of Secret Service Aphranius in the 25th chapter How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from
Kyriath. –
“I have received information
that he [Judas] will be slaughtered tonight [on Pesach]. This information is
accidental, dark, and spurious. Someone among the secret friends of HaNozri
[Pilate means himself] has conspired to kill him [Judas] tonight… [And here it comes!] As for the money received for his betrayal, it
is going to be tossed over to the High Priest with the note: Returning the
cursed money. ”
To
which Aphranius responds to Pontius Pilate that he believes that this is going
to cause a very big scandal.
Afranius
returns in chapter 26 The Burial:
“Aphranius took out from under his cloak a moneybag hardened by
congealed blood and sealed with two seals. This
is the moneybag which the killers tossed into the house of the High Priest
Caiaphas. The blood on this bag is of Judas from Kyriath…”
[As
to the details of this most interesting and lengthy conversation, see my
earlier sub-chapter The Garden: Aphranius.]
To
Pontius Pilate’s question whether there was a note in the bag, Aphranius
replies:
“Yes, just as you suggested,
Procurator. But [you may see for yourself]... Here Aphranius tore off the
seal from the package and showed what was inside to Pilate.
Wait! What are you doing,
Aphranius? These seals must be the Temple’s seals!
Procurator need not worry
about this question, said
Aphranius, resealing the package.
Do you really have all these
seals? – laughed Pilate.
But it could not be
otherwise, Procurator,
replied Aphranius sternly, without any laughter.
I can imagine what happened
at Caiaphas’s place!
Yes, Procurator, it caused
quite a commotion. They invited me right away. To my question whether any money
had been paid to whosoever at Caiaphas’s palace, I was told categorically that
there had been no such thing.”
N.
S. Gumilev writes:
“...Thus
he [the third one] died, undisturbed,
But no one dared tell
What he happened to see
Before that pure bed…”
As
Caiaphas’s prototype is the poet Demyan Bedny, I’ve already written quite a lot
about him in my sub-chapter Caiaphas. Having
been expelled from the Communist Party and from the Writers’ Union for his
debauchery, Demyan Bedny made a 180-degree turn, starting to write panegyrics
to Russian patriotism. He died right after the end of the Great Patriotic War
in May 1945.
Closing
his ballad After-Death Vengeance, N.
S. Gumilev writes:
“Do
not do an evil deed –
The
vengeance of the dead is cruel.”
…From
the very beginning I had been insisting that the “Magnificent Four”
(Woland/Mayakovsky, Azazello/Yesenin, Koroviev/Pushkin and
Kot-Begemot/Lermontov) came from the other world in order to help master.
Little did I know that they had come to avenge N. S. Gumilev’s death, and their
own.
The
End.
***
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