The Garden.
Caiaphas.
Posting #5.
“Lasciate ogne speranza,
voi ch'entrate.”
“Abandon hope all ye
who enter here.”
Dante. Inferno.
Returning
to the exchange between Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, Bulgakov shows how it was
with Demyan Bedny.
1. To begin with, Bulgakov uses the word “tightly.” For
all his sacrilege against the Russian people and the Russian Orthodox religion,
Demyan Bedny was evicted from his Kremlin apartment, also losing his membership
in the Communist Party, as well as his membership in the Writers Union.
2. Secondly, Bulgakov shows that the personal secretary
of Demyan Bedny was watching his boss and recording his moves. Hence,
Bulgakov’s “Watch yourself, High-Priest!”
3. Thirdly, Bulgakov’s words: “With
a cold wet hand, he [Pilate] tore the buckle off the collar of his cloak, and
it fell on the sand.” And then, “having
received [Caiaphas’s] response as to which of the two criminals were to be
released and learning that it would be Varravan, the procurator said: Very well,” and ordered the
secretary to write it down in the protocol, thus pointing out that when Demyan
Bedny’s secretary was reporting on his boss to the higher-ups, he was told that
he must have everything in writing, which made it not “gossip and innuendo,”
but Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s “Word and
Deed.”
I will reveal the significance of the buckle, which
the procurator tore off so roughly that it fell on the sand, in another chapter,
in the meantime offering the researcher and the reader the challenge of solving
this puzzle by themselves. Bulgakov writes that Pontius Pilate “squeezed the buckle, which the secretary picked up from the
sand, in his hand, and solemnly said: It’s
time.”
4. Fourthly, all that talk about faith, about the people,
about God, is ludicrous, coming from Demyan Bedny. Living among Russians, he blasphemed,
denigrating the Russian religion and the people professing it. That’s why he
could infuriate anybody. Which is why I am returning to the words of the pious
Prince Conti from Bulgakov’s novel Moliere,
and insisting that this is why the daring speeches are given to Bryusov
[Pontius Pilate], while the defense of religion is assigned to a fool and
lackey Demyan Bedny.
And
indeed, how can a religious man foulmouth other religions? And especially a
religious man living in a foreign country among people of a different faith?
Bulgakov
uses the word “lackey” in his novel Moliere
for a good reason, as what he has in mind is by no means Sganarelle, who
rightfully deserves to be called “durak, fool.” Ivan-Durák is a personage of
many Russian fairytales, and he always wins at the end.
As
for the word “lackey,” it is a very negative word in the Russian language,
uncannily corresponding to the original last name of Demyan Bedny – Pridvorov.
Bulgakov
takes this from A. S. Pushkin who, following Lomonosov, writes in his letter to
his wife Natalia Goncharova of 10 May, 1834:
“I can be a
subject [having in mind his rank of Kammerjunker at the Royal Court] or a
slave, but I shan’t be a lackey or a buffoon even to the Tsar of Heaven.”
Neither
Demyan Bedny nor any of his relatives were ever courtiers, at the tsar’s Court.
So where does this buffoonish last name Pridvorov come from? Had Demyan Bedny
had any brains, he would never have foulmouthed the country where he lived, or
the people among whom he was living. He also should have stayed away from
mocking the Russian religion, which never proselytizes, and would never have
tried to do it to him.
In
other words, Demyan Bedny was a stupid man who himself cut the bough of the
tree on which he was sitting.
It
now becomes clear the whole idea of retribution for the death of Yeshua (N. S.
Gumilev) at the end of the 25th chapter of Master and Margarita: How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from
Kyriath.
In
order to remind the reader how Bulgakov likes to confuse his reader with his
puzzles, let me bring attention to the word “pleasant,” which Bulgakov is
playing with in this chapter, bearing in mind that the prototype of Pontius
Pilate is the Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov.
As
for the word “pleasant,” it belongs to the Russian poet Andrei Bely who happens
to be the prototype of Matthew Levi in the subnovel Pontius Pilate, as well as of Varravan whom Pilate and Aphranius
were discussing just a page before. Thus Bulgakov confuses the professional
researcher. That’s why firsthand sources, such as Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs,
are so important. It is from her memoirs that Bulgakov is taking so much of his
information.
But
if we take the expression from the novel Moliere:
“Fool-lackey” – here researchers are facing a more complex association.
Demyan Bedny managed to rise pretty high, probably due to being an accomplished
lackey. And then he fell pretty low, probably due to being a stupid lackey.
Still,
Bulgakov’s use of the word “pleasant” points to Andrei Bely, who appears as ‘Matthew
Levi’ at the end of the next 26th chapter The Burial.
And
how elegantly does Bulgakov close the 25th chapter, when the Chief
of the Secret Service takes leave of Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov writes:
“Only now did the procurator see that the sun was no longer there,
and that twilight had come.”
In
other words, K. D. Balmont, who wrote the poetry collection Let’s be Like the Sun! and happens to be
the prototype of Aphranius, leaves and takes the sun with him.
And
when the deed of killing Judas was done, Aphranius reported to Pilate that the
avengers had thrown the package over the fence at the back of Caiaphas’s
palace.
This
story apparently corresponds to the one in which Demyan Bedny’s secretary was
passing his “notes,” as Bulgakov draws the researcher’s attention to the word
“note,” when Aphranius is being asked whether a note had been passed on
together with the package, as he had been asked. In such a fashion Bulgakov is
hinting about Stalin’s note, written in 1937 and concerning Demyan Bedny, who
had just published an ugly lampoon titled Inferno:
“Tell this ‘Dante’ that he
can just as well stop writing.”
Aphranius
supports this version with the words:
“Yes, exactly so [together
with a note], just as you’ve guessed, Procurator… As a matter of fact… –
Here Aphranius tore off the seal from the package and showed its content to
Pilate.”
Apparently,
this package contained all the notes written by Demyan Bedny’s secretary.
Here
the story of Caiaphas ends in Bulgakov.
But
not quite…
The
story does not quite end there. As a matter of fact, after his departure from
the Kremlin, the library which Demyan Bedny had collected for himself in the
old houses of the nobility – all 30,000+ volumes of it – stayed in the Kremlin.
To
be continued…
***
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