Who is Who in Master?
Posting #10.
“Be silent, hide,
and conceal
Your feelings and your
thoughts…”
Fedor Tyutchev.
A
good example of how difficult it is in Bulgakov to separate the three
prototypes of master is presented by the “wall.” Remarkably, this theme turns
up twice in a row in chapter 29 The Fate
of Master and Margarita is Determined and in the next chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time!
Although
it was rather late in my work on Bulgakov, and only with Marina Tsvetaeva’s
help, that I established the presence of N. S. Gumilev in Master and Margarita, the great Russian writer with the most tragic
fate of all: it is he who is the most closely associated with the “wall,”
having been shot by a firing squad in a mass execution. Hence the expression
“to crowd at the wall.”
However,
in Gumilev himself I have not found either in his poetry or prose any addressment
of the theme of the wall as such, which would be linked to the theme of death,
that is, death by the firing squad. (There are several times when the word
“wall,” singular or plural, is used, but without a thematic significance to
make it a keyword.)
But
even if the theme of the wall-as-death had been present in Gumilev, Bulgakov would
rather have preferred the verses of another poet. Just as well as he knew the
poetry of Alexander Blok, Bulgakov was familiar with the poetry of the 19th-century
Russian poet Fedor Tyutchev (1803-1873).
In
the 1907-1914 poetry cycle Iambs, in
a titleless poem, Blok writes:
“Oh
how you laughed at us,
How you hated us
For our soft-spoken verses
That had loudly exposed
you!
But we are still the same,
we are poets… ”
[And
not some “poetic vermin,” according to Marina Tsvetaeva.] Meanwhile, Blok
closes his poem with Tyutchev’s words:
“But
remember Tyutchev’s testaments:
Be silent, hide,
and conceal
Your feelings and your
thoughts…”
Yes,
indeed. A lot can be learned from poetry. Poets are precise. And so, Bulgakov
turns to the poetry of A. Blok, Gumilev’s contemporary, whose fate was not much
better. Both died tragically at about the same time in August 1921. Thanks to
Blok, in chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s Time!
Bulgakov depicts a mystical visit of the already dead master and Margarita to
the psychiatric clinic to see the poet Ivan Bezdomny. Of these three personages
– master, Margarita, and Ivan – only one prototype, Marina Tsvetaeva, was alive
at the time when the action takes place. In 1925, Ivan’s prototype Sergei
Yesenin fled from a psychiatric clinic in Moscow to Petrograd where he
committed suicide by cutting his wrists in a hotel. He bled to death like
Pushkin after his duel with D’Anthes.
In
1925 Marina Tsvetaeva was living in Europe. In this surreal scene Bulgakov
allows two Russian poets to say farewell to each other, as Tsvetaeva and
Yesenin had known each other in life.
After
talking to master about verses and the novel Pontius Pilate, Ivan asks master:
“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. She was looking at the youth with
sadness, and sorrow could be read in her eyes.
In
the 1902-1904 poetry cycle Crossroads Blok
has a titleless poem:
“What
is happening to you – I don’t know,
And I won’t hide it from you
–
You are sick with a
transparent whiteness.
Dear friend, you will learn
what it is,
You will learn it next
spring…”
Having
used this Blokian poem, even though Blok wrote it about an ailing woman, not a
man, Bulgakov understood that he was confusing the researcher. However, this
confusion was part of Bulgakov’s plan.
-Blok continues:
“…You
will know when, lying in the pillows,
You won’t be able to stretch
your arms over your head...”
And
in Bulgakov:
“Margarita approached the bed... Poor, poor one!, Margarita was whispering soundlessly, and bent over the bed... Yes, yes – whispered Margarita and bent toward the lying man. – Here,
let me kiss you on your forehead and everything will turn out well for you, the
way it should. The lying young man embraced her neck with his arms, and she
gave him a kiss.”
Meanwhile,
Blok continues:
And then it will descend onto
your bed,
That monotonous non-stopping
sound.
The shadow from the oil lamp
will flicker and alarm,
Someone separating from
the wall [sic!]
Will come up and slowly lay
down
A gentle shroud of snowy
whiteness…”
I
find a double meaning here in Blok’s last lines. To begin with, it is the death
of N. S. Gumilev, pointed to by the “wall.” And secondly, it is the 1925 death
of S. A. Yesenin, whom Marina Tsvetaeva used to know.
What
a terrific scene has Bulgakov presented us with on the basis of Blok’s poem!
I’d
like to mention yet another Blokian poem here from his 1906-1908 poetic cycle Faina from The Spell by Fire and Darkness, inspired by M. Yu. Lermontov.
I
am making such an emphasis on poetry because the poets of the Silver Age were
not just reading the Russian poets of the Golden Age A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu.
Lermontov, but found inspiration in their works.
Bulgakov
knew Russian poetry very well indeed, and did not just use it in his works. He
used poets themselves, making them prototypes of his characters. Young Russian
litterateurs must study Bulgakov, learning how to write with his help, as ideas
in poetry enrich prose.
Bulgakov
goes in this with Pushkin, who wrote in his poem The Prosaic and the Poet:
“What
are you, prosaic, fussing about?
Give
me a thought whatever you like:
I’ll
sharpen it at the end,
I’ll
feather it with a flying rhyme,
I’ll
put it on a tight bowstring,
I’ll
make an arc of my supple bow,
And
then I’ll send it wherever it flies,
To
the detriment of our foe!”
To
be continued…
***
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