Who is Who in Master?
Posting #8.
“…And perhaps only a
few centuries are left
Until our world, green and
old,
Is invaded by predator hosts
of sands
From the flaming youthful
Sahara.
They will cover the
Mediterranean Sea,
And Paris, And Moscow, and
Athens,
And we shall believe in the celestial
lights,
Bedouins on our camels.”
N. Gumilev. Sahara.
As
for the previous book, contoured like a hump inside the armchair, Bulgakov
tricked me here, having written: “A book was lying in
the armchair, contoured like a hump.”
The
words “armchair” and “hump” here point toward N. S. Gumilev. The word “hump”
indicates a camel on whose back Gumilev crossed the Sahara Desert on his two
journeys to Africa, reading Ronsard. As for the word “armchair,” it belongs to
Gumilev on account of his poems in the collection Alien Sky:
“I’ll
drop my body into the armchair,
I’ll screen the light off
with my hands,
And will be crying, long,
long crying…”
Right
away, Bulgakov shifts to Andrei Bely, using the word “ashtray,” which clearly
shows the title of A. Bely’s book Ash.
It shows that figuring out “who is who in master” is not so easy. Like for
instance is the case in the scene with the “sofa,” where Margarita does this:
“As she was talking, she slipped off the
sofa, crawled to master’s knees, and, looking into his eyes, started stroking
his head.”
This
is already reminiscent of A. Blok’s poem:
“...Crawl
up to me, and I’ll hit you,
And
like a cat you’ll scowl at me…”
Immediately
Bulgakov shifts back to Andrei Bely with his fears and repetitions:
“Ah, you, you… ah, you!..”
In
her memoirs of Andrei Bely, Marina Tsvetaeva writes:
“I’m sitting part of a circle [at a restaurant] when suddenly over
everything – over everybody – stretched-out arms: You? You? (He never knew my name.)”
And
again on the next page:
“You? You? That was you! Was
it really you?”
The same thing is being
repeated in chapter 13 of Master and
Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero – where master burns his manuscript
of Pontius Pilate, and Margarita
comes back. Telling this story to Ivan Bezdomny, master continues: “You… you? – and my
voice broke…”
And
before this, in the same chapter, as master is talking to Ivan:
“However, you, you will again forgive me, but
I am not mistaken, you are an ignorant man… So this is it, so this is it…
Unsurprising!..”
Bulgakov
is apparently aware of Andrei Bely’s habit of repeating words. Thus, also in
talking to Margarita in the basement, master does the same thing: “So be it! So be it!”
And
Margarita does the same thing too, when she talks to master, whenever Andrei
Bely takes over master’s character.
When
in Chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time!
master is watching Azazello, “never taking his eyes off him,” when Margarita
pours him brandy, it is already Alexander Blok, who has the following pertinent
poem:
“There
is this game: walking in cautiously,
So that people’s attention
would be lulled;
And, finding the prey with
your eyes,
To watch that prey
inconspicuously…”
Bulgakov
himself draws the researcher’s attention to the fact that the three poets
within master’s character are shifting from one to another all the time. For
instance, in the following line:
“…What the devil
hypnotizers?!..”
We
are getting proof here that we are dealing with Blok, who does not accept N.
Gumilev’s thesis in their continuous argument that poets are “hypnotizers.”
Bulgakov is also hinting here that Gumilev is about to appear somewhere in this
chapter.
Now,
here is Azazello’s conversation with master shortly before their departure from
Moscow:
“The storm is already
booming, do you hear it? It’s getting dark. The stallions are digging up the
earth, the little garden is shuddering. Say farewell to the
basement.”
This
piece belongs to Blok because of Blok’s poetry, and also most likely because of
his article The People and the
Intelligentsia. There is a reason why chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time! of Master
and Margarita also opens with “the darkness that
came from the Mediterranean Sea…”
And
also, in his literary article Without
Deity, Without Inspiration Blok writes, as the researcher remembers, about
an approaching storm:
“...A horrible decay was felt in Russian society, the air smelled
of a thunderstorm [sic!], great events were brewing...”
And
particularly pointing to the Russian poet Alexander Blok is Bulgakov’s
Shakespearian allusion:
“It was only then that the rain started pouring, turning the fliers
into three gigantic bubbles in the water.”
Blok’s
first poetic cycle in his 2nd book of poetry (1901-1908) has the
title Bubbles in the Earth, where A.
Blok is using a quotation from Macbeth as
the epigraph:
“The earth hath
bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them.”
Macbeth.
Bulgakov
draws the reader’s attention to the interchangeability of master’s prototypes
in his farewell conversation with Ivan:
“Yes, said master, and his
voice sounded to Ivanushka unfamiliar and hollow.”
And
next, master turns into, or rather, inside master appears – his third
magnificent prototype, namely, the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.
Bulgakov
is very careful and shows what happened to Gumilev through Margarita:
“Wait! One more word, asked
Ivan. – And have you found her? Has she
remained faithful to you?”
“Here she is,”
replied master, and pointed to the wall. A dark Margarita separated from the
white wall and approached the bed.”
In
this passage Bulgakov is giving credit to the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva
who was not afraid to write about Gumilev’s death in several of her poems.
Had
it been master “separating from the white wall,” many people might have
understood it unequivocally. Do not forget that in the 29th chapter
Bulgakov makes his first attempt to prompt the reader/researcher that Gumilev
is indeed present in his novel Master and
Margarita, as Bulgakov sends to Woland on the roof of the Rumyantsev Museum
none other than Matthew Levi who comes out of the wall. –
“…Out of the wall came a ragged, soiled in clay, somber man
in a chiton, wearing home-made sandals, with a black beard.”
Bulgakov
here shows Gumilev in two ways, as Matthew Levi comes immediately after the
storm, all dirty and covered in clay, as he had just taken Yeshua’s body off
the pole. Bulgakov clearly shows to Russian litterateurs that he has read
Gumilev’s article about Andrei Bely, in which Gumilev wrote that in Bely’s
poetry he has enemies: time and space.
Matthew
Levi, whose prototype is Andrei Bely, appears on the roof of the Rumyantsev
Museum in Moscow already in the 20th century 2,000 years later.
Wrong century, wrong city.
Time
and space…
To
be continued…
***
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