Who is Who in Master?
Posting #17.
“I love you, my
Guardian Angel in darkness,
In darkness that is with me
all the time on earth…
For having been my radiant
bride,..”
Alexander Blok. Guardian
Angel.
The
next situation in which Alexander Blok also takes center stage consists of
several components.
“The arrestee was the first to speak: I see that some kind of trouble has occurred because of my talk with
that youth from Kyriath. I am having a premonition that a misfortune has
befallen him, and I am very sorry for him...”
The
Procurator is struck by the fact that Yeshua still does not realize the danger
of his situation, and starts asking him whether Yeshua believes “in any gods.”
“God is One, and in Him I
believe.
Then pray to him! Pray hard.
Although this won’t help. You have a wife?.. Abhorrent city!.. Had you been
slaughtered before your meeting with Judas from Kyriath, you would surely have
fared better...”
A
lot of interesting material pertaining to Blok is contained here. As always I
resort to poetry. In 1906, he wrote the poem Guardian Angel about his love for his wife, who later abandoned him.
This is how we can explain Yeshua’s answer to Pilate’s question: “You have a wife?” –
“No, I am by myself.”
Then
Blok moves on to himself:
Because I want to but dare
not to kill –
Take revenge on the
faint-hearted who lived without fire,
Those who have humiliated my
people and me!
Who locked up the free and
the strong in prison,
Who long disbelieved my fire,
Who wishes for money to
deprive me of the light of day,
Who wants to buy a dog’s
obedience from me,
Because I am weak and ready
to succumb,
Because my ancestors are
generations of slaves…
And the soul has been killed
by the poison of tenderness,
And this hand shall not raise
a knife…”
This
Blokian poem does not contain the word “slaughter,” which is used not by Yeshua
but by Pontius Pilate. Which is the reason why I am putting together the
following two lines from Blok’s Guardian
Angel:
“...Because
I want to, but dare not to kill –
And this hand shall not raise
a knife…”
“To
kill” using “a knife” means to “slaughter.” Yeshua does not intend to take
revenge on Judas. Revenge never enters his head. He feels sorry for Judas
because as a result of his visit Judas may get in trouble.
The
word “slaughter” in Bulgakov is connected with Pontius Pilate, who uses this
word in conjunction with the word “premonition” in the 25th chapter
in order to impress on Aphranius that Judas is going to be slaughtered. In a
very interesting fashion, Bulgakov conveys this dialogue between the procurator
and the chief of secret police. On the one hand, it is not in Pilate’s interest
to openly admit to Aphranius that it is he who wishes Judas to be slaughtered.
Which is why Pilate orders the assassination in a convoluted way. He has no
proof that someone else wants to murder Judas, but insists that such
information exists.
“Such information exists. Let
me not talk about it. Moreover, it is accidental, dark, and unreliable. But I
am obligated to foresee everything. Such is the burden of my office…”
[And
here it comes!]
“And more than anything else
I must trust my premonition, for it has never failed me yet…”
And
then again Pilate tries to convince Aphranius:
“And still, they will
slaughter him tonight – stubbornly repeated Pilate. – I have this premonition, I’m telling you! Never once has it failed me.”
Why
does Bulgakov borrow this word from Yeshua and passes it on from the 2nd
chapter of Master and Margarita to the
25th?
Apparently,
this journey of “premonition” from Yeshua to Pontius Pilate can be explained by
the following words of Bulgakov in chapter 2:
“It seemed to the procurator that he had left something unsaid with
the condemned man, and perhaps even something unlistened to.”
So
what could it be? It is quite possible that Pilate understood Yeshua’s words
backwards, because it is precisely Pilate who was trying to convince Aphranius
that Judas was to be slaughtered on Paschal Night. But it is most likely that
Pilate was influenced by other words of Yeshua after he had finally understood
with Pilate’s help that some people wanted to kill him and asked the procurator
to let him go.
The
subsequent feeling of guilt affected Pontius Pilate. He was also overcome by
sheer humiliation, having directly asked Caiaphas three times to have Yeshua
released, and having been denied his request.
Using
the word premonition, not only was he
able to convince Aphranius to have Judas slaughtered without giving him an
express order to do so, and thus maintaining his deniability. In such a manner
he avenged both the death of Yeshua and his own failure in the face of
Caiaphas’s stubborn resistance by having the blood money returned to the High
Priest on the same Paschal Night.
This
is when Aphranius fully understood what was expected of him. Bulgakov writes:
“Imagine how pleasant it will
be for the High Priest to receive such a gift on holiday night!
Not only pleasant! – replied the guest [Aphranius], smiling. – I suppose that there will be a very big
scandal there.”
As
my chapter The Garden with Caiaphas
in it has already come out, we can note here, without a spoiler in the making, that
apparently V. Ya. Bryusov appealed to K. D. Balmont, but lost. Bulgakov
describes this scene somewhat prematurely. The procurator’s “premonition” was a
premonition of Bryusov himself, as he must have been struck by the virtually
simultaneous deaths of his two best students, the two greats: Blok and Gumilev.
Bryusov’s
“premonition” proved itself right. Three years later, in 1924, the same “poetic
vermin” (Marina Tsvetaeva’s term to designate the worst of the worst in the
literary circles of Russia) would destroy him too.
To
be continued…
***
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