Who is Who in Master?
Posting #12.
“...Petronie, you are
grimacing, may I be hanged
If you are unhappy with my
Siracusan!..”
N. S. Gumilev. The
Prodigal Son.
Returning
to the theme of master in chapter 30 It’s
Time! It’s Time! – I am again coming up with the Russian poet Alexander
Blok in the wine poisoning scene where master and Margarita have been poisoned
by Woland’s gift brought to master’s basement apartment by Azazello.
While
working on my chapter The Magic of the
Sorcerer Moliere, I managed to look at this scene under a somewhat
different angle. Chapter 21 of Bulgakov’s novel Moliere closes with the following sentence:
“Here the friendship of the two playwrights was cut asunder as
though by a knife, and Moliere started hating Racine.”
In
the poisoning scene of Master and
Margarita we have two men and a woman. This may well be M. A. Bulgakov’s
take on the real-life triangle of Blok, his wife Lyubov Dmitriyevna Mendeleeva,
and Andrei Bely.
The
friendship of the two most famous poets of the Silver Age was also cut asunder as though by a knife. Blok shows it in a
titleless poem from his 1908-1913 poetry cycle Retribution:
“You
are sitting in the room alone.
Can you hear?
I know: you are not sleeping
now…
You are breathing and not
breathing.
Why was the light behind the
door extinguished?
Don’t be afraid!
I am your long-forgotten
hour,
I am knocking – open up!
Open up and answer my
question:
Was your day bright?
I brought you a regal shroud
As my gift to you!”
Remember
that Azazello brings the poisoned wine to master and Margarita wrapped in “dark
coffin brocade.” –
“...Out of a piece of dark coffin brocade, Azazello produced an
utterly moldy jug...”
[See
more about it in my chapter Margarita
Beyond Good And Evil.]
And
also Blok writes about his pain in the 1907-1914 poetry cycle Iambs where there is a very interesting
titleless poem:
“I’m
Hamlet, And the blood is freezing
When perfidy is weaving its
nets,
And in the heart the first
love is alive,
Love for the only one in the
world…
You, my Ophelia,
Have been taken far away by
the cold of life,
And I perish, a prince in his
own land,
Pierced by a poisoned blade.”
Bulgakov
here gives us another clue, even though Azazello’s prototype is Sergei Yesenin
and not Andrei Bely. Bulgakov enjoys confusing the reader, especially the
researcher. And indeed, what’s wrong with replacing one Russian poet with
another? Like Yesenin, Bely, too, has poems with knives in them. If the
researcher knows poetry well enough, he should come up with Blok’s poem Guardian Angel in this case.
Bulgakov
writes in chapter 30 It’s Time! It’s
Time! –
“Poisoner!
– was the last thing master had the time to shout. He wanted to grab a
knife from the table, to stab Azazello with it, but his hand helplessly slid
off the tablecloth; everything surrounding master in the basement was now
colored black and then disappeared altogether. He fell backwards, and in his
fall, cut the skin of his temple against the corner of the bureau’s board.”
Bulgakov
writes that master “felt that the end was coming.” That
end was death.
Bulgakov
takes two lines from this Blokian poem:
“…And
the soul has been killed by the poison of tenderness,
And this hand shall not raise
a knife…”
Feeling
that he is dying, poisoned by the wine once drunk by Pontius Pilate, master
reaches for the knife on the table, but his strength fails him. Darkness comes.
–
“Everything surrounding master in the
basement was now colored black…”
And
in Blok’s Guardian Angel:
“…Looking
into this black chasm with you…”
Having
brought master and Margarita back with a few drops of the same wine he used to
poison them, Azazello objects to master’s assertion that he and Margarita must
be dead:
“Ah, I understand, said
master, you have killed us, we are dead.
Ah, how clever it is! How timely! Now I understand it all.”
And
here is how Blok closes his poem:
“…Shall
we be resurrected? Or perish? Or die?”
And
in Bulgakov:
“Then fire!” exclaimed
Azazello. “Fire, which started everything,
and which we end everything with.”
And
in Blok’s Guardian Angel:
“Obey!
Dare! Do not leave! Get away!
Is there fire or darkness
ahead?”
And
in Bulgakov:
“Burn, burn, former life!
Burn, suffering! shouted Margarita.”
To
be continued…
***
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