GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXIV

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #20.

What can be done! We are clearing the way

For our distant sons!..””

Alexander Blok. To Poets.

The second line at the end of Blok’s poem Poets, about a “small pearly cloud” is taken from Lermontov’s 1841 poem The Cliff:

“A small golden cloud passed a night

On the breast of a giant cliff;

In early morning she sped away,

Merrily playing on the azure.

But there remained a wet trace

In the wrinkle of the old cliff.

Alone he stands immersed in deep thought,

And he is softly weeping in the desert.”

All subsequent poets of the Silver Age have been weeping over these poems. Blok deliberately avoids identifying the flower, while calling the small cloud “pearly.” The latter comes out of Lermontov’s 1840 little play in verse The Journalist, The Writer, And The Reader, where Lermontov describes his moments of inspiration:

“Writing about what? There comes a time

When both the mind and heart are filled,

And rhymes, comradely like waves,

Stream chirping, one after another,

Rushing forth in a free sequence.

The wondrous luminary rises

In half-awakened soul;

And words are stringing along like pearls

Onto thoughts breathing with strength...”

[More in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.]

And so, if in Night Violet Blok shows Pushkin with his troop, in the poem Poets he turns to his other idol Lermontov, killed in 1841 in a duel at the age of 26.

Turning to the philistine reader, Blok writes that the life of a poet is superior to philistine life. It is filled with inspiration and lofty dreams:

“…At least the poet has

[Maiden’s] braids, and little clouds, and a golden age,

None of these are accessible to you!..”

And again at the end he compares himself to a dog:

“Let me die under a fence, like a dog,

So what if life has trampled me into the ground? –

I believe it was God who has covered me with snow,

It was the blizzard kissing me…”

Also Bulgakov through his word “wonder” points to the great Russian poets Pushkin and Lermontov. The first one wrote the truly wondrous poem:

“I remember the wondrous moment:

You appeared before me…”

That’s why the guest [master] is expecting “wonder” from Ivan Bezdomny, but it never comes.

And in Lermontov’s play in verse The Journalist, The Writer, And The Reader I read:

“…The wondrous luminary rises

In half-awakened soul…”

Here we also have a “wonder” happening.

The idea of turning the poet Ivan Bezdomny into a historian also comes to Bulgakov from Blok’s 1908 poem To Friends:

“…Secretly hostile to one another,

Envious, deaf, alienated,

What can be done! Each of us has tried

To poison his own house.

All the walls are soaked in poison,

And there is no place to put down one’s head…”

Blok continues the theme of “poets-enemies”:

“…Traitors in life and friendship,

Wasters of empty words.

What can be done! We are clearing the way

For our distant sons!”

Turning to the event of his death, Blok is concerned about what the critics are going to write about him.

“…When under a fence in nettles

The wretched bones will rot,

Some later historian

Will write an impressive work…”

And in Bulgakov’s 13^th chapter of Master and Margarita:

“Historian by education, just two years before, he [master] had been working at one of Moscow’s museums…”

This is how Bulgakov reintroduces Blok into master’s character. Bulgakov himself needed to read many books about the Crucifixion of Christ in order to become historically competent and he had done his work splendidly. For instance, he substituted nails with ropes, as the Romans tied the condemned to wooden cross-planks with ropes, instead of driving nails into their hands and feet.

Bulgakov also wrote an engaging work that can be called “impressive” in terms of the scope of the material included in the novel Master and Margarita.

Blok is worried that—

“…The cursed [historian] will only torture

The totally blameless lads [poets]

With dates of birth and death

And a heap of lousy quotations…”

M. Bulgakov obviously does nothing of the kind. He introduces Russian poets into the novel Master and Margarita incognito, leaving the difficult but joyful, rather than sad, task of recognizing the prototypes of his characters to such lucky researchers as myself.

O Lucky… Woman!             

Now this is how Blok closes his poem:

“…I wish I could bury myself in wild grass,

Lose myself in sleep forever!

Be silent, cursed books!

I never wrote you!”

These words of Blok finally explain why Bulgakov wrote this:

“After a silence, Woland spoke to master:

So it’s back to the Arbat basement? And who is going to write? What about the  dreams, the inspiration?

I have no dreams and I have no inspiration either, replied master. – I’m not interested in anything around me except her. – He put his hand on Margarita’s head again. – I’ve been broken, I am bored, and I want to be back to the basement.

And what about your novel? Pilate?

It’s hateful to me, that novel, replied master. – I have suffered too much because of it.

And to you I say, replied [Woland] with a smile, addressing master, – that your novel will still bring you more surprises.

This is very sad, said master...”

Here we already have M. Yu. Lermontov, whom Blok loved so much. And Blok in this scene is master’s prototype. Remember that to Lermontov belongs the famous expression: “It would have been funny had it not been so sad.”

“…No, no, this is not sad, said Woland.”

I do not know what exactly Woland/ Bulgakov meant by “surprises.” The subject of the conversation here is master’s novel Pontius Pilate. I think that “surprises” are the solutions to the puzzles posed both in the novel Master and Margarita and in the subnovel Pontius Pilate. For me personally the big first surprise was solving the mystery of the Dark-Violet Knight. But my whole work on Bulgakov’s works has been a sheer delight, I would call it a joy for me.

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