The Garden.
Caiaphas.
Posting #4.
“To
this end was I born,
and for this cause came I into the world,
that I
should bear witness unto the truth.
Every one
that is of the truth heareth my voice.”
John 18:37.
And
so, “What is Truth?” if we look at
the exchange between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua from the angle of poetry, that
is, how Bulgakov shows it as a conversation between the father of Russian
Symbolism V. Ya. Bryusov and N. S. Gumilev, who had gone his own way.
Pointing
to the same thing is the word “physician,” which is being used twice by Pontius
Pilate. Yeshua [N. S. Gumilev] understandably denies being one. Gumilev came to
belong to the class of “hypnotizers” in poetry. That’s why Bulgakov makes such
a heavy emphasis on the word “voice” in the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate. –
“Levi Matthew? Yes, Levi
Matthew – came to him a high-pitched voice tormenting him... The answering
voice was as though pricking Pilate in the temple and was excruciatingly
painful... And this voice spoke... And again he heard the voice...”
In
this conversation Yeshua [Gumilev] reminds Pontius Pilate [Bryusov] that it was
the latter who created Russian Symbolism, which was embraced by new poets and
practically replaced Pushkin’s influence on Russian poetry for a while.
Gumilev
believed that he had come to replace Bryusov’s Symbolism with his own “Adamism,”
his name for Acmeism: “As Adamists, we are a little bit like the beasts of the woods.”
Professor
G. P. Struve writes:
“Still even after the death of Gumilev, Bryusov insisted that
Gumilev had never been an Acmeist, but had remained a Symbolist. Meanwhile,
Bryusov both misunderstood and underestimated the later Gumilev. The highest
point of Gumilev’s Acmeism is his poetry collection Alien Sky.”
And
so, in this argument each poet (that is Bryusov and Gumilev) held his own
ground.
Bulgakov
shows that Pontius Pilate overcomes his hemicrania by his own effort:
“Sternly and sullenly, Pilate was boring the arrestee with his
eyes, and no longer were these eyes cloudy. The all-too-familiar sparks
reignited in them.”
To
Pilate’s question whether Yeshua knew a certain Judas from Kyriath, Yeshua
answers in the affirmative. –
“The other day, in the
evening, I got acquainted near the Temple with a certain young man…”
Bulgakov
is giving an indication that Judas was a poet too.
“...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.”
Here
Bulgakov is confusing the researcher by ascribing to Yeshua words that N. S.
Gumilev would never have uttered, such words as:
“…A time will come when there
will be no [worldly] power: no Caesars, or any other kind of power.”
Gumilev
was an avowed monarchist, and Bulgakov does it all contrarily, hoping that his
readers will be able to see through the ruse to which he frequently resorted
throughout his works, in accordance with the “game of types” invented by
Gumilev, in which the participants were assigned roles contrary to their character
and convictions.
That’s
why Gumilev and Blok were anathema to Demyan Bedny. Not only were they Orthodox
Christian believers, but Gumilev was a monarchist as well.
When
Yeshua realizes that he is facing a death sentence, he asks Pontius Pilate to
let him go. Here Bulgakov yet again shows the difference between Bryusov, a
revolutionary expelled from school and a merchant’s son, and Gumilev, a
monarchist from the family of a military surgeon. Their political views were
incompatible, hence:
“You, wretch, really believe
that the Roman Procurator would release a man saying what you said? Oh gods,
gods! Or maybe you think that I am ready to take your place? I do not share
your views! – Pilate’s face was distorted by a spasm.”
Preparing
for his meeting with Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate sees the Temple of Yershalaim.
And here is how Bulgakov describes it for the first time:
“...with a defying-description block of marble with golden dragon
scales instead of a roof.”
This
mystical description of the “Temple” can be easily explained with the help of
Gumilev’s poetry, that is, his Poem of
the Beginning about a dragon holding the secret of existence. Bryusov’s “Temple of Symbolism” is covered “with
golden dragon scales instead of a roof.” Here is the Acmeism of the
Russian poet Gumilev! [See more about it in my chapter The Porcelain Pavilion.]
“Four ruffians have been
sentenced to death. The first two have been captured by the Roman power after a
fight. The other two – Varravan and HaNozri – have been apprehended by local
authorities and condemned by the Synhedrion. According to the law, one of these
two criminals will have to be released on the occasion of the Holiday of
Pesach, which begins today…”
Pontius
Pilate’s intercessions fall flat on Caiaphas’s deaf ears. Three times does Caiaphas
insist that the man to be released is Varravan, rather than HaNozri.
Despite
the ‘anguish’ overcoming Pontius Pilate, he was suddenly visited by the thought
of a “mysterious immortality.” But there is no puzzle here. It is the
immortality of the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev, falsely accused of a crime he
did not commit, and left helpless to face the firing squad. Nobody stood up for
him in time, and if it is true that Bryusov approached Maxim Gorky who tried to
approach Lenin, that “help” came too late. To threats made by Caiaphas, Pontius
Pilate responds with a threat of his own:
“Now will my message fly –
and not to the Viceroy in Antiochia, and not to Rome, but straight to Capraea –
to the Emperor himself. Message about how you are releasing from capital
punishment known rebels in Yershalaim...”
If
we transpose these words to the parallel poetic reality, there is a quite
feasible explanation that V. Ya. Bryusov did indeed approach Maxim Gorky, as
nobody else had a similar authority to intercede on behalf of poets and writers
finding themselves in trouble.
That’s
why Bulgakov calls him “the Emperor” here, all the more so considering that for
some time Gorky had been living on the Italian island of Capri. There was no
greater name in the Revolutionary Russia at the time among the literary world
than that of Maxim Gorky.
To
be continued…
***
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