The Garden.
Gumilev.
Posting #5.
“…And blood was
streaming through the veins faster,
And the muscles of the arm
got stronger…
You were luring me with a
song of Paradise,
And you and I, we shall meet
in Paradise.”
N. S. Gumilev. Death.
In Gumilev’s early poetic cycle Romantic Flowers (1903-1907), we can find answers both to the ashy
color of the dog and to its gigantic size.
In the poem Death,
Gumilev writes:
“Gentle,
pale, in ashy garments,
You
appeared with kindness in your eyes.
This
was not how I had met you before,
Amidst
howling horns and clashing swords.
You
[death] seemed so golden-drunken,
Baring
your glittering breast,
You
were, amidst the mist of blood,
Charting
the course to the heavens.”
In the next poem In
the Skies Gumilev writes about celestial constellations:
“…And
the she-bear night was fleeing,
Catch
her, Prince, catch her,
Tether
her and tie her to your saddle…”
Here Gumilev is obviously alluding to the
constellations Ursa Major and Orion.
“And
then you point out the she-bear night
To
your Warrior-Dog.
The
dog bites in a deadly hold,
He
is brave, strong, and cunning,
He
has carried his beastly hatred for bears
From
times immemorial…”
The prince on a horse, that is an eques, like Pontius
Pilate, is the hunter Orion.
The warrior-dog, of the constellation Canis Major, is
transformed in Bulgakov into the dark gigantic dog with pointed ears who, like
her master (eques in Bulgakov and prince in Gumilev, that is, a hunter) is
worriedly gazing at the moon.
In other words, Bulgakov replaces Gumilev’s she-bear
night with the moon. And now it becomes clear that Bulgakov’s superbly poetical
description which follows is deeply influenced by the poetry of N. S. Gumilev.
–
“...[On Woland’s bidding], the enormous
city [Yershalaim] lit up, with the glittering idols reigning over it with a
garden over it, richly flourishing after many thousands of these moons.
Directly toward this garden there stretched
the lunar path long awaited by the procurator, and the first one to run
up this path was the dog with pointed ears. The man in a white cloak with red
lining… shouted something in a hoarse voice… one could only see that following
his faithful guardian, it was he who was now running up the lunar path. Here
Woland waved his hand in the direction of Yershalaim, and the city vanished.”
After twelve thousand moons [sic! Here Bulgakov
employs the Chinese calendar counting time in moons – why it is so will be
explained in my chapter The Bard],
Pontius Pilate finally is about to meet again with Yeshua in the environs of
Yershalaim, just as was previously suggested by the arrestee in their first meeting.
–
“…I
might suggest that you, Igemon, leave the palace for a while and take a walk
somewhere in the environs, well, at least in the gardens [sic!] on the Eleon
Mountain… and I would accompany you with pleasure. A few new thoughts have come
to my head… and I would readily share them with you, considering moreover that
you produce an impression of a very intelligent man.”
This is why Bulgakov uses the word “chelovek, man”
toward Pontius Pilate in the 25th chapter, as already in the second
chapter Yeshua thus calls the procurator.
And this is why Woland asks master:
“Let
us not interfere with them. And maybe they will come to an understanding of
some sort…”
Bulgakov returns to this same theme a third time in
the Epilogue, showing this same meeting in a dream of the historian Ivan
Nikolayevich Ponyrev, formerly the poet Ivan Bezdomny. –
“…From the bed to the window stretches out
a broad lunar road, and ascending this road is a man in a white cloak with red
lining, who starts walking towards the moon. Alongside him walks a young man in
a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The two of them are talking about
something passionately, they argue and want to agree on something…”
A very interesting 1918 poem by N. S. Gumilev from the
poetry collection Pearls is titled In the Desert. This poem is allegorical.
Gumilev doesn’t compare himself to Christ here, as would be customary in Russian
poetry. He however gives himself away by the poem’s title, starting the poem
thus:
“Long
has the water run out in the skins,
But
I shall not die like a dog:
In
memory of the marvelous Heracles
I’ll
first submit myself to the pyre…”
And also the last two lines:
“…I
will also drink sweet nectar
In
the fields of the azure country.”
It is clear now why in the 16th chapter The Execution of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita there are two dogs
on the hill, while Matthew Levi is looking at the skull of a third:
“...What
a strange consonance exists
Between
two adversarial fates!
He
was a hero, I – a vagabond…”
That’s why already in the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate Yeshua
replies to Pilate’s question: “Where do
you live?” – with the words: “I have
no permanent place of living. I travel from town to town.” To which Pilate
observes: “This can be put concisely. In
a word – a vagabond.”
All this points to the fact that in the person of
Yeshua, Bulgakov shows the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.
“...He
[Heracles] – a demigod, I – a demi-beast…”
It is interesting why Bulgakov introduces the
character of Ratkiller in Pontius Pilate.
Who is Ratkiller? At least, Bulgakov builds him as Heracles. Telling his
story, Pilate paints both Ratkiller and the Germans as demi-beasts.
“Good people attacked him like
dogs attack a bear. The Germans clung to his neck, his arms, his legs…”
Bulgakov takes this also from N. S. Gumilev, that is,
from his poem In the Skies, in the
poetry collection Romantic Flowers:
“...Catch
her, Prince, catch her,
Tether
her and tie her to your saddle…
And
then you point out the she-bear night
To
your Warrior-Dog.
The
dog bites in a deadly hold,
He
is brave, strong, and cunning,
He
has carried his beastly hatred for bears
From
times immemorial…”
Also in the same excerpt about Germans, Pilate for the
first time calls Yeshua a “philosopher.”
“Throughout [the swallow’s] whole flight, a certain formula developed in the by now light
and clear head of the procurator. It went like this: The Igemon has deliberated on the case of the wandering philosopher
Yeshua, nicknamed Ha-Nozri, and has not found anything criminal in it… Due to
this fact, the death sentence against Ha-Nozri, pronounced by the lesser
Synhedrion [that is, by Caiaphas], is not approved by the procurator.
This also proves that Bulgakov thought N. S. Gumilev
to be innocent, as he is the only one to serve as the full-fledged prototype of
Yeshua, albeit with certain features of Blok and Bely included in the portrait.
The End.
***
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