Who is Who in Master?
Posting #6.
“The hurricane was tearing up the garden.”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
We
have established that M. A. Bulgakov’s special attention to the word “darkness”
is because of A. A. Blok’s article The
People and the Intelligentsia.
But
even here Bulgakov leaves a puzzle for the researcher. In his little paragraph
(see above), Blok uses the word “darkness” 3 times. As for Bulgakov, he uses
the word in a very interesting fashion (see above), closing one chapter with it
and opening the next chapter with the same sentence, with the exception of the
last words: “…Yes, Darkness.”
The
question arises as to why Bulgakov does it. The literary device is interesting
in itself. I am using it myself in this work when I take as an epigraph to a
posting the same words that appear at the end of that very posting.
So,
where is the puzzle here? It is in the fact that five chapters before that, in
the 19th chapter Margarita.
opening Part II of the novel Master and
Margarita, Bulgakov uses that same passage. He writes that having returned
from the dark windowless room into her bedroom, Margarita sat for about an hour
holding in her lap the fire-damaged notebook, turning its pages and rereading
what had neither the beginning nor the end after the burning:
“The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city
so much hated by the Procurator…
It
now becomes clear why at the very end of the 24th chapter The Extraction of Master Bulgakov gives
the beginning of this phrase when Margarita receives all burned notebooks and
starts reading them, beginning with the first words of the phrase:
“The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea…”
In
the 19th chapter Margarita,
having met and quarreled with Azazello, she was ready to leave, when turning
her back on Azazello, she heard his words:
“The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea…”
Now
the researcher is dealing with two more repetitions of the same half-sentence,
which accounts for 4 such repetitions altogether. The number of repetitions
points to the Magnificent Four coming to Moscow from the realm of the dead, the
Russian poets: Pushkin, Lermontov, Yesenin and Mayakovsky. Their own “darkness”
had come too early for them: Pushkin at 37 (killed in a duel), Lermontov at 26
(killed in a duel), Yesenin at 30 (cut his wrists), and Mayakovsky, like
Pushkin, at 37 (shot himself). Such a horrendous loss for Russian poetry! Such
a horrendous loss for Russian literature as a whole!
Bu
if we add up all occurrences of the word “darkness” including the last two, the
number comes up to 8. It is all-too-easy to explain. A second “Magnificent
Four” is added to the first one. It consists of 3 Russian poets of the Silver
Age (A. Blok and N. Gumilev, both perished in August 1921, and Andrei Bely,
dead in 1934) and the only woman among the 8: the Russian poetess Marina
Tsvetaeva, Margarita’s prototype, to
whom Bulgakov owes so much! She returned to Russia from Europe shortly before
Germany attacked the USSR. She survived Bulgakov by a year, dying in 1941, yet
Bulgakov shows her as dead, when she goes to eternal rest together with master.
It
is amazing how Bulgakov’s thinking in this case coincides with the thinking of
Tsvetaeva herself, who in 1941, shortly before her death wrote the remarkable
poem You Laid the Table for Six. [See
my chapter Margarita Beyond Good And
Evil.]
As
for A. Blok’s article The People and the
Intelligentsia, it shows that already in 1908 Blok foresaw his death. –
“…Baronov’s solution [of the question of the people versus the
intelligentsia] does not satisfy me. I’d like to pose this question harsher and
more pitilessly: this is the most painful, most feverish question for many of
us. I am even afraid that it’s not a question anymore. Isn’t it happening
already as we are speaking here that some kind of terrifying and unspeakable
deed? Isn’t someone among us already condemned irretrievably to perish?”
These
words of Blok turned prophetic. 13 years later in August 1921 both most famous
poets of the Silver Age – Blok and Gumilev – were dead.
Summarizing
all said, in this short passage on the first page of the 25th
chapter of Master and Margarita,
Bulgakov has veiled five Russian poets. First he shows Gumilev in the guise of
the Temple’s glistening scaly cover. The Temple signifies not just Russian
Symbolism, as A. Blok represents it in his article, but Russian literature as a
whole. Recognizing N. S. Gumilev as a rising star, both in poetry and in his
literary criticism and prose, Bulgakov uses the Temple’s glistening scaly
appearance in reference to Gumilev’s Dragon
from his unfinished philosophical long Poem
of the Beginning. At the same time, he calls Russian literature as a whole
“the great block of the Temple.”
Therefore
Bulgakov’s words ought to be understood as an allegory:
“As soon as the smoking black brew would be torn asunder by the
fire, out of the pitch-black darkness upwards soared the great block of the
Temple with its gleaming scaly covers. But as it died down for a moment, the
Temple would become immersed into the dark chasm, several times reemerging from
it only to plunge back again, and each time this plunge was accompanied by the
rumble of catastrophe…”
How
can we understand that? In Bulgakov, “catastrophe” means the death of a poet.
Here
is another passage from the same excerpt, which we need to look at:
“…The torrent came down all of a sudden, and then the thunderstorm
turned into a hurricane…”
Here
Bulgakov describes the Russian Civil War, using Blok’s word “thunderstorm,”
which “turns into a hurricane.” The following passage points to that war:
“In that same place where around noon, near the marble bench in the
garden, the procurator and the High Priest were having their conversation, with
a burst sounding like that of a cannon, a cypress broke like a cane.”
The
word “cannon” here changes the whole passage, opening Chapter 25. This is a
keyword indicating to the researcher that he is dealing with an allegory of the
Russian Civil War.
Then
how are we to understand Bulgakov’s next sentence? –
“...Together with water mist and hail, carried onto the balcony
under the colonnade were broken off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and
sand. The hurricane was tearing up the garden.”
At
this point I need to go back to the very beginning of Blok’s article The People and the Intelligentsia. Blok
wrote this article as a response to the presentation of a certain German
Baronov [I found nothing substantial about him on the Russian Internet]. –
“...When social excitement settled down and the river of social
life returned into its banks (in 1908!) lots of rubbish remained on
those banks...”
Baronov’s
words above directly relate to Bulgakov’s lines about the hurricane tearing up
the garden. The word “garden” signifies the Russian society of the early 20th
century. Thunderstorms are the Revolutions shaking up Russia since 1905. And
the hurricane is the Russian Civil War and the foreign intervention, in which a
great many people died, including two Russian poets: Blok and Gumilev.
Therefore,
when Blok already on the second page of his article raises a series of
questions regarding Baronov’s presentation (including: “Isn’t
someone among us already condemned irretrievably to perish?”) he
obviously has in mind Baronov’s “rubbish.”
To
be continued…
***
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