GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DLX

The Bard.

Barbarian at the Gate.

Professor Kuzmin.

Posting #4.

“So, what is the power? What are the charms?”

Marina Tsvetaeva.

Returning to Professor Kuzmin and the three Abrau-Dyurso labels, formerly the three ten-ruble banknotes paid to Kuzmin by Andrei Fokich Sokov for the medical visit.

It remains to be said that Professor Kuzmin is clearly connected with A. S. Pushkin, which is the reason for the calamity that befalls him. In his Articles and Notes, Pushkin writes A Footnote about The Monument to Prince Pozharsky and Citizen Minin. –

“The inscription To Citizen Minin is obviously unsatisfactory: to me he is either Commoner Kuzma Minin nicknamed Sukhorukoy [Withered-Arm] or Duma Nobleman Kuzma Minich Sukhorukoy, or finally Kuzma Minin, Elected Man From the Whole State of Muscovy as he is presented in the Charter on the Election of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. He sat in the Duma as a Duma Nobleman...”

And here it comes:

“...In 1616 there were two of them [sic!]: he [Minin] and Gavrila Pushkin. They were receiving 300 rubles salary...”

A. S. Pushkin was extremely proud of his ancestry. In N. M. Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, his ancestors are being mentioned by name twenty-one times. Seven Pushkins were signatories to the Charter on the election of the first Tsar of the Romanov Dynasty, but apparently Pushkin was proud the most of Gavrila Pushkin who sat in the 1616 Duma together with Kuzma Minin.

Hence, Bulgakov chooses Professor Kuzmin’s name: Kuz[ma] + Min[in]. And hence comes the connection with Pushkin. There is a special reason for the glassed and framed photograph in Professor Kuzmin’s office. Bulgakov draws the researcher’s attention to it twice. The first time when the buffet vendor [Osip Mandelstam] “wildly gazes at some photo group behind glass.” Perhaps, he may have recognized someone?

The second time it was that naughty sparrow who danced the ‘Halleluiah Foxtrot’ on Professor Kuzmin’s desk, after which he flew upwards, “hung in the air, and then, with a powerful swing, pecked with his as-though-made-of-steel beak, the glass of the photograph capturing the full University Class of 1894, broke the glass into small fragments, and then flew out of the window.”

As the researcher knows already from me, the sparrow was none other than Azazello, whose prototype happens to be the poet Sergei Yesenin.

Professor Kuzmin for some reason changes his mind on calling his former classmate Professor of Neuropathology Bure. Instead, he telephones to order “leeches.”

“Two hours later Professor Kuzmin was sitting on his bed in the bedroom with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears, and on his neck. At the foot of his bed, over the silken quilted blanket, sat the white-moustached Professor Bure, compassionately looking at Kuzmin, while consoling him to the effect that all of it was stuff and nonsense.”

In order to figure out the personage of Professor Kuzmin, we must read this passage closing the 1^st part of Master and Margarita as a detective story. In order to do that, we must know how to look for and to find clues. The most important thing here is to establish what the prototype of Professor Kuzmin has in common with the historical personality of Kuzma Minin, a principal fighter for Russian independence from a foreign invader.

“[Addressing] an all-people’s gathering at the Cathedral of Nizhny Novgorod... in front of the people, the elected Zemsky Starosta [Headman] of Nizhny Novgorod Kuzma Zakharovich Minin-Sukhorukov, beef-trader by occupation, spoke thus:

Fellow Orthodox Believers, let us desire to help the Moscow State. That will be a great deed. We will accomplish it, with God’s help. And how much praise will be poured on us from the Russian land that from such a small town as ours such a great deed will come: I know that as soon as we take it upon us, many other towns are going to join us, and we shall rid ourselves from the alienkind.

On Minin’s advice, the people of Nizhny Novgorod decided upon Prince Pozharsky [to lead the militia].

[And so the monument still stands on Red Square to these two brave souls.]

...The main force of the people’s militia was located near Arbat Gates: Minin and Pozharsky were there [with their men].”

(Taken from N. I. Kostomarov’s Russian History Through the Lives of Its Principal Makers.)

In other words, the strike force of the Russian militia was situated in the area where Bulgakov settles master, where he lived in one of Arbat side streets.

Vasili Klyuchevsky (whose celebrated course of Lectures on Russian History was, commendably, studied on audiotape by V. V. Putin) also confirms that Kuzma Minin was a “beef vendor.” The word stands for a more common word “merchant,” although the Russian “kupets” has long lost its erstwhile frequency.

Kupets, merchant... Eureka!

I remember seeing this word somewhere in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, in connection with two Russian poets in particular: Andrei Bely and Valery Bryusov. I leafed through Tsvetaeva’s memoirs and found what I was looking for:

“The poet of the will. Who had such power over the living people and destinies as Bryusov? Balmont? He was an attraction. Blok? He was a disease. Vyacheslav [Ivanov]? He was listened to. Sologub? He was avidly heard. Whereas Bryusov was obeyed. Magus and sorcerer, only about Bryusov, this dispassionate master of lines.

So, what is the power? What are the charms?

Non-Russian [power] and non-Russian [charms]: Freedom unaccustomed to in Rus, supernatural, wondrous, in a magical faraway kingdom where, like in a dream, anything is possible. Anything except naked freedom, that is. And Russia was seduced by that naked freedom of the magical faraway kingdom, she [Russia] bowed to it and bent under it... And here it comes! ...By the Roman freedom of a merchant’s son from Moscow [V. Bryusov], somewhere from Trubnaya Square… A fairytale?”

And so, Bulgakov, who was extensively using Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs, depicts the Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov in yet another one of his characters: Professor Kuzmin, whose name very easily comes out of the following “Formula”:

Kuz[ma] + Min[in] = Kuzmin.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DLIX

The Bard.

Barbarian at the Gate.

Professor Kuzmin.

Posting #3.

“...Who will sit on those dark thrones?..”

Alexander Blok. The Violet West Oppresses.

The theme of the “armchair” is connected in Bulgakov with A. S. Pushkin, who in his article My Notes on the Russian Theater writes the following:

“...Before the start of an opera, a tragedy, a ballet, the young man takes a walk between all ten rows of the armchairs, steps on all feet, talks to all acquaintances and strangers... A sizable part of our stalls (that is, of the armchairs) is too preoccupied with the fate of Europe and Fatherland, too tired of travails, too deep in thought, too self-important, too cautious in expressing the movements of the soul, to participate in any way in the dignity of the dramatic art. And if at half-past-six the same faces appear from military barracks or the Council to occupy the front rows of the reserved chairs, this for them more a matter of conventional etiquette than a pleasant respite...”

M. Bulgakov was a theater buff and dreamt of having all of his works staged. He certainly read Pushkin’s articles about theater. In Chapter 5 Extraordinary Events of his Theatrical Novel, Bulgakov gives his own take on Pushkin’s article quoted above:

“There are such young people, and you must surely have met them in Moscow. These young people find themselves in the editorial offices of journals and magazines at the exact moment when a new issue is coming out, but they are not writers [sic!]. They are very visible at all dress rehearsals and in all theaters, but they are not actors. They attend artists’ exhibitions, but they do not draw or paint themselves. They call operatic prima donnas not by their last names but by first names and patronymics. Also by first name and patronymic they call persons occupying positions of responsibility, even though they are not personally acquainted with them. At a Bolshoi premiere they squeeze between the seventh and the eighth row of the stalls, waving their hand amiably to someone in the dress-circle; at the Metropol they are sitting at a table by the fountain, and multicolored lamps throw their lights on their bell-bottomed pants.”

And back to A. S. Pushkin:

“One more note. These great people of our time wearing on their faces the monotonous seal of ennui, hubris, preoccupation, and stupidity, inseparable from their kind of business, these habitual front-row spectators, frowning through comedies, yawning through tragedies, napping through operas, attentive perhaps only in ballets – aren’t they supposed to necessarily cool down the acting of our most ardent artistes and bring laziness and languor into their soul, if nature has endowed them with a soul?”

Bulgakov’s attachment to the theater helped him write sharply, carefully adhering to the minutest detail. I am always surprised by Bulgakov’s style, which is precise and concise. Each word matters, each word has a hidden meaning.

For instance, the word “armchair” is not as simple in Bulgakov as it is in Pushkin. For me, an armchair is always an item of comfort. I like to sit in an armchair when I am writing or reading. This reminds me of Gumilev’s line:

“I’ll drop my body into an armchair…”

But how can we understand Bulgakov writing something like this:

“...The furnishings of [Financial Director Rimsky’s] study, aside from the desk, included a number of old posters hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water on it, four armchairs...”

At first sight everything seems simple. As Financial Director of the Variety Theater, Rimsky sits in one of the chairs, while the three others are for his visitors. But, as the reader and researcher already know from me, Bulgakov’s Rimsky represents the Russian music composer, a member of the Mighty Bunch, Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov [See my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: The Duets]. Also, before the séance of black magic, Koroviev pulls from his little pocket underneath the buttoned-up vest, a gold watch, pointing to the composer’s opera The Golden Cockerel, after Pushkin’s fairytale. Therefore we got to think about something else.

Although in his novel Master and Margarita Bulgakov directly uses the names of three famous composers: Berlioz, Stravinsky, and Rimsky [Korsakov] and also indirectly points to them through their operas: Eugene Onegin by P. I. Tchaikovsky, Faust by Gounod, there are more complex associations there too.

In the 15^th chapter Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream Bosoy practically loses his mind in the presence of the interrogators, portraying Pushkin’s/Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

Also indirectly, Bulgakov is giving his own version of The Golden Cockerel in Chapter 14: Glory to the Cockerel! in the scene with Rimsky, Varenukha, and Gella.

And so, we have Bulgakov’s Rimsky representing N. A. Rimsky Korsakov. We also have M. P. Mussorgsky who is represented by Stepa Likhodeev, where Stepa refers to Stenka Razin and Likhodeev to likhiye dela. As we know, Pushkin has a Song of Stenka Razin, written in 1826.

As for the characters of M. A. Berlioz and Professor Stravinsky, they have no connection to music in M. A. Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita.

Now, what may the chairs in Rimsky’s office represent?

Considering that the word “kreslo” (armchair) in Bulgakov is associated with Pushkin, signifying theater stalls, where is the connection to Pushkin here? We can see it through the Pushkin-related operas of two composers present in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita: M. P. Mussorgsky with his one Pushkin opera: Boris Godunov and N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov with his three Pushkin operas: The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Golden Cockerel, and Mozart and Saglieri.

Bulgakov could not possibly seat four composers in four chairs, which leaves us with the supposition that the mystical meaning he is concealing here lies in the four Pushkin operas written by the two composers, as I have just indicated.

I am tempted to remember the 1904 poem by Blok: The Violet West Opresses:

“There are few of us, all in long cloaks;

Sparks are spurting and iron mails are shining,

We are raising dust [Pushkin] in the north,

And leaving azure in the south.

Setting up thrones for other ages…”

(That is, leaving their works for the posterity who will read them.)

“...Who will sit on those dark thrones?..”

(In other words, who will prove worthy of such inheritance? Bulgakov chooses two composers: Mussorgsky with his one Pushkin opera, placed above Rimsky-Korsakov with his three Pushkin operas.)

Does it coincide with the following lines of Blok? –

“…Each has split his soul in half

And set up dual laws…”

Brilliantly done by Blok!

To be continued...

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DLVIII

The Bard.

Barbarian at the Gate.

Professor Kuzmin.

Posting #2.

“The kitten was purring on the couch,

Looking at me indifferently…”

Sergei Yesenin.

Ah, how many cats there are in the world.

We are continuing our study of the scene where the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov visits the office of Professor Kuzmin, imploring him to “stop” his liver cancer.

The patient obviously realizes that the doctor is taking him for a madman. Then comes the time to pay for the visit.

“...The buffet vendor took out 30 rubles and put the money on the table, and then suddenly, softly, as if he was operating with a cat’s paw, he put on top a tinkling column of gold coins wrapped in a piece of newspaper.

And what is this? – asked Kuzmin, twirling his moustache [sic!].

Do not disdain this, Citizen Professor! – whispered the buffet vendor. – I’m begging you, stop the cancer!

Put away your gold! – said the professor, being proud of himself.

Ehh! – cried the buffet vendor dejectedly, tenderly eyeing the professor, taking back the gold coins, and backing away toward the door.”

So, this is where Osip Mandelstam was stealing his sentences and ideas from. He was stealing from Pushkin! Pushkin’s poetry is pure gold, like everything he had ever written. The word “madman” is also taken by Bulgakov from Pushkin, but I have already written about it in another chapter.

As for the buffet vendor’s “faith” in everything that Koroviev said, how could he believe otherwise when Pushkin himself told him the exact amounts of money hidden by the buffet vendor under the floor boards, as well as his savings in five savings banks. Money talks!

But there is a far more complex explanation, as Pushkin wrote the following in his Letter to the Publisher of Georgi Konissky:

“...And will you also kindly explain the meaning of your critique of the almanac My New Home, which you have so propitiously compared to a scrawny cat meowing on the roof of an abandoned house? The comparison is quite amusing, but I do not see anything of importance in it...”

Pushkin closes this paragraph with the words from the Bible: “Physician, heal thyself!”

There can be no doubt that Bulgakov read this material written by Pushkin, as in the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors Bulgakov uses Pushkin’s “cat” 3 times directly and 1 time indirectly.

As for the almanac My New Home, it is also played upon by Bulgakov. Having got rid of Berlioz by sending him under a tram and having got rid of Stepa Likhodeev by dispatching him to Yalta, a My New Home celebration of sorts takes place at the emptied no-good apartment #50 of the jeweler’s widow, courtesy of Woland & Cie.

Bulgakov writes about the first cat, who is by no means “scrawny.” –

“In front of the fireplace, upon a tiger skin there sat, benevolently squinting at the fire, an enormous black cat.”

That was #1.

The second time it’s the impertinent kitten, when the housemaid Gella hands Andrei Fokich his hat which the latter promptly puts on his head.

“...His head for some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in his hat; he took it off and, jumping up in fear, cried out in a low voice. What he was holding in his hands was a velvet beret with a worn-out rooster feather stuck in it. [Once again taken by Bulgakov from Pushkin’s note about Walter Scott.] The buffet vendor crossed himself. At that very time, the beret meowed, turned into a black kitten, and jumping back onto the head of Andrei Fokich, stuck all his claws into the baldness of his head. Emitting a cry of desperation, the buffet vendor started running down the stairs, and the kitten fell off his head and sprinted up the staircase.”

Isn’t it true that Bulgakov is enjoying himself in this scene which he has taken from a passage I’ve quoted from Pushkin?

The third time a cat appears indirectly, as though by magic something feline is transferred from the “black kitten” that was previously the “velvet beret with a worn-out rooster feather” – to Andrei Fokich himself:

“...The buffet vendor took out 30 rubles and put the money on the table, and then suddenly, softly, as if he were operating with a cat’s paw, [sic!] he put on top a tinkling column of gold coins wrapped in a piece of newspaper...”

Here Bulgakov gives the researcher a dual reference to Pushkin. The first time it is “suddenly, softly, as if he were operating with a cat’s paw” [because of that “scrawny cat meowing on the roof of an abandoned house”]. And the second time also pointing to Pushkin, when inside newspaper wrappings, instead of the expected shredded paper (the poetry of the buffet vendor Osip Mandelstam), there is gold in there, pointing to the golden quality of Pushkin’s poetry.

Having refused the gold and about to leave for home after the workday, Professor Kuzmin saw that in the place of the ten-ruble banknotes left by the buffet vendor were three labels taken off bottles of the Abrau-Dyurso sparkling wine.

“Devil knows what this is! – mumbled Kuzmin. – He happens to be not only a schizophrenic, but a crook as well!”

Professor Kuzmin runs into the anteroom to check if his topcoat may have been stolen too (there is a very interesting story about it, but it belongs to another chapter). He is already out of his doctor’s coat, and his eye is caught by the top of his desk. And here comes the fourth – and last – appearance of a kitten in our story of cat-counting.

“In the exact spot where the [Abrau-Dyurso] labels used to be, there was a black orphaned kitten sitting, with an unhappy little face, meowing over a saucer of milk. Kuzmin felt the back of his head going cold.”

It becomes clear from all of this that the character of Professor Kuzmin is somehow connected to Pushkin, just like the character of the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov, whose prototype happens to be the poet Osip Mandelstam. However, the discovery of Professor Kuzmin’s prototype belongs somewhat later in the present chapter The Bard, where it is organically fused with other discoveries awaiting both the reader and the researcher in this out-of-this-world chapter.

Meantime, the reader may contemplate over the question why Bulgakov leaves Professor Kuzmin “on his bed in his bedroom with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears and on his neck. At the foot of his bed, over the silken quilted blanket sat the white-moustached Professor Bure, compassionately looking at Kuzmin, while consoling him to the effect that all of it was stuff and nonsense. Outside the window it was already night.”

The last phrase points to the fact that both of them – Kuzmin and Bure – are poets. A similar ending goes with Chapter 6: Schizophrenia, Just As Was Said:

“The poet had spoiled his night, while the others were having a feast, and this could never be restored. He only had to raise up his head from the lamp toward the sky to realize that the night had vanished irretrievably. The cats hustling near the veranda had a morning look. The poet was being unstoppably attacked by the day.”

...As for the three ten-ruble banknotes turning into three labels from Abrau-Dyurso wine bottles, I am also suggesting the researcher to figure out that puzzle, as it gives us proof of a connection between Professor Kuzmin and Koroviev/Pushkin. It’s for a good reason that Bulgakov has chapters about schizophrenia. In the 18^th chapter we are looking at multiple personalities, considering that the “black orphaned kitten,” the “pestilent sparrow,” and the “sister of mercy with a man’s crooked ear-to-ear mouth with a single fang” – are all none other than manifestations of Azazello, who is also the poet Ivan Bezdomny, having the same prototype in the Russian people’s poet Sergei Yesenin.

In Dr. Kuzmin’s case, the picture of multiple personalities expands even further, and I am writing about all of them in this chapter The Bard.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DLVII

The Bard.

Barbarian at the Gate.

Professor Kuzmin.

Posting #1.

Physician… Kill Thyself!

For a moment it looked as though I was done with Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, but unfortunately for the reader, it isn’t so. Together with the reader, we have amazing excursions still in store for us into Russian literature and history.

And all this because of Bulgakov’s passion for the armchair...

I found the “armchair” theme most interesting in itself, but I wasn’t quite getting it in its complexity until I got to Chapter 18: The Hapless Visitors which closes the 1^st Part of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. My bright enlightenment came with the last episode of this chapter.

The buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov, whose prototype is the poet Osip Mandelstam, having somewhat ominously paid a visit to the no-good apartment #50, decides to seek help from the best liver specialist in the medical profession Professor Kuzmin. –

“I’ve just learned from credible hands...that in February next year I am going to die of liver cancer. I implore you to stop [the disease].”

[And here it comes!]

“Professor Kuzmin, just as he was sitting, fell back against the high leather gothic back of his armchair.”

[Which, by the way, is Bulgakov’s clue as to the prototype of Professor Kuzmin. I suggest that the reader may try to solve this puzzle.]

The whole scene presented by Bulgakov here is absolutely hilarious as right before his departure from the ill-fated apartment, the hat of Andrei Fokich turns into a “velvet beret with a worn-out rooster feather.” And right when the terrified buffet vendor crossed himself –

“—the beret meowed, turned into a black kitten, and jumping back onto the head of Andrei Fokich, stuck all his claws into the baldness of his head...”

The bald head of Andrei Fokich was all scratched by the kitten’s claws. He had it bandaged at the nearest pharmacy.

“The woman behind the counter exclaimed: Citizen! Your whole head has been scratched up!”

This was the reason why Professor Kuzmin found it so hard to understand the buffet vendor whose teeth were clattering as he yelled:

“Pay no attention to the head, no relation! Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it!”

In reality, though, the head had plenty to do with it. I already quoted Pushkin before, writing in his article The Russians in 1612:

“…In our time, by the word ‘novel’ we understand a historical epoch developed in a fictional narrative. [And this is what Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita represents.] Walter Scott carried after him a whole crowd of imitators. But how far are they all from the Scottish bard. Like Agrippa’s disciples, having conjured up the ancient demon, they could not control him, and became victims of their audacity. Into the age where they wish to transport the reader, they themselves resettle with a heavy baggage of homegrown habits, prejudices and daily impressions. [And here it comes!] Under the beret [italicized by Pushkin], canopied by feathers, you will recognize a head coiffed by your hairdresser...”

Why am I quoting this passage from Pushkin’s article? Because it is none other than Pushkin in the guise of Koroviev who supplies Woland with all relevant information about the buffet vendor, his savings, his imminent death “in nine months, in February next year, from liver cancer, at the clinic of 1^st MGU, Room number four.”

Not only does Koroviev employ the contemporary language of that time, but he is also dressed accordingly – in rags.

In other words, Bulgakov is a master of his craft. He does not transport himself into Pushkin’s time, but takes him into his own time, which is obviously more familiar to Bulgakov – without losing control over Pushkin’s spirit for a second. The “victim of Pushkin’s/Koroviev’s audacity” thus becomes not Bulgakov himself, but the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov, whose prototype, and likewise, Nikolai Ivanovich’s, in Chapter 20: Azazello’s Cream, is the poet Osip Mandelstam.

Returning to the head of Andrei Fokich, scratched by the kitten’s claws, I can’t help but draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Andrei Fokich came to Woland for the reason that the money he had received at his buffet during the séance of black magic had turned into shredded paper. Please note that the Russian words M. Bulgakov is using: “izrezannaya golova/head,” “rezanaya bumaga/paper” – have the same root “-rez-” which is of course deliberate on his part. The verb “rezat’” means “to cut.”

And so, we have “izrezannaya golova” and “rezanaya bumaga.” What does it tell the reader? Especially after Woland asks the buffet vendor to show him the shredded paper.

“The buffet vendor was astounded. Inside the torn piece of a newspaper were ten-ruble banknotes.”

I already wrote in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: A God-Fearing Lecher that shredded paper and ten-ruble banknotes [chervontsy] present an allegory. In his poetry, Osip Mandelstam was using words, sentences, phrases from other authors’ poetry. Hence, the buffet vendor’s head, “izrezannaya/cut” by the kitten Azazello, signifies Mandelstam cutting his verses out of both his contemporary poets’ works and 19^th-century Russian poetry.

As for the professor whom Sokov came to see about ‘stopping his liver cancer,’ I will be turning to him as soon as I am done with Koroviev’s story.

As soon as justice was restored, that is, as soon as the cut paper turned into banknotes, which Pushkin in particular had received for his work, Bulgakov writes a very strange at first sight scene:

“...All at once Koroviev ran out of the study, clutched the buffet vendor’s hand, started shaking it and imploring Andrei Fokich to pass his regards to all, to all...”

This strange scene has a direct connection to A. S. Pushkin, and I present it in another chapter. Meanwhile you can try to find the solution of this puzzle by yourself.

In spite of this scene, or maybe because of it, Bulgakov writes the following:

“I’ve just learned from credible hands...that in February next year I am going to die of liver cancer. I implore you to stop [the disease].”

Professor Kuzmin is baffled: “Excuse me, I don’t understand. Have you seen a doctor?”

The buffet vendor answers in a most strange fashion: “What doctor? You should have seen that doctor!”

Andrei Fokich’s teeth suddenly start clattering: “This liver cancer. I am begging you to stop it.

But wait, who’s told you that?

Believe him! – ardently implored the buffet vendor. – If anyone knows, he does!

I don’t understand anything! –said the professor, shrugging his shoulders and rolling back from his desk in his armchair. – How can he know when you are going to die? Besides, he is not a physician!”

The joke here is on the researcher. This whole situation is presented by Bulgakov in Pushkin’s words, if only one knows where in Pushkin to be looking for it. Another puzzle?

To be continued…

***

NOTE TO THE READER

At this juncture, I find it necessary to state that the extent of my writing intentions is limited to literary criticism, as defined by the content already posted on this blog, and so it will remain. I have no interest in moving outside this subject matter now or at any time in the future.

Galina Sedova.

On my part, I confirm my wife’s statement. Moreover, as I have stated on a number of occasions, I am what I am in my postings, and none of my future writings, if any, will ever go beyond the scope of what constitutes my published track record to date.

Neither my wife nor I have any other ambitions.

Alexander Artem Sakharov.

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DLVI

The Bard. Genesis.

M. A. Berlioz.

Posting #39.

“…But, my poor friend, –

Oh have you been able to discern

Her dress, both festive and wondrous,

And those strange spring flowers?”

Alexander Blok. To My Double.

In the opening lines of the poem we have been discussing, Blok feels sorry for his life: Work, work, work, and while you are working, others will have it sweet. But as the poem closes, Blok is happy with it and he is happy with himself. Although he has worked all through the night on this poem, he has it “sweet” at the end. The poem has turned out admirably. It feels here, like in Blok’s several other poems, that he enjoys playing the role of Harlequin. (About which later, when we will be discussing another terrific poetic cycle of A. A. Blok.)

Now it becomes much easier to understand the poem I Walked Among the Guests in a Black Tuxedo. As is often the case, not just in his poems, but in his life as such, Blok tries to pass off his wishful thinking for reality.

No one presses his hand painfully. Blok feels the pain when he presses the brass doorknob too hard. He is all alone.

In his loneliness, Blok is a perfect fit for master’s character. This is why I never tire of repeating that Blok is perfect for the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita, as he is playing two parts in it: both of master and Margarita, in his out-of-this-world imagination.

There is no woman either in the poem In the Dunes. Having come to this place by train to breathe in some resinous air of the pines in the great outdoors, the poet most probably must have noticed someone’s footprints in the sand. And just like in the poem about a beautiful soldier’s wife whom he actually never had seen, Blok merely imagined to himself a woman with “resinous hair,” “reddish eyes, from the sun and the sand,” and a “beastly gaze.”

Differently from Bulgakov’s master, Blok was –

“…Yelling and chasing her away…

Next, yelling and calling her to me,

In [Blok’s] flaming eyes

She is still running, and all of her is laughing –

Her hair is laughing,

And her feet are laughing,

And laughing is her dress…”

But how come that in the preceding poem Over the Lake, Blok uses such expressions about himself,

Describing his reaction to the appearance in the cemetery scene of an officer kissing and leading away “a thin, delicate girl.”

The first reaction, as Blok writes:

“I laugh! I’m running up,

I’m throwing at them

Pine cones and sand,

I squeal, I dance, I yell…”

In other words, these two poems from the poetic cycle Free Thoughts show us how Blok lets these things off his chest, whereas nothing like that happens in reality.

So how does Bulgakov deliver this wild side of the poet in the first meeting of master and Margarita?

Here are the words which had always surprised me and which I could never explain to myself until I discovered master in Blok. –

“…Love sprung on us like out of nowhere a killer appears in the back alley, and struck us both. So strikes a lightning strikes; so strikes a Finnish knife.”

Differently from Blok’s poems where the woman does not talk, in Bulgakov’s novel, Margarita is the first to speak. –

“Do you like my flowers?”

Here we must point out that that the idea of the flowers comes to Bulgakov also from Blok.

In the 1901 poem To My Double from the poetic cycle Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok writes:

“…But, my poor friend, –

Oh have you been able to discern

Her dress, both festive and wondrous,

And those strange spring flowers?”

In this poem, Blok is most likely writing about buttercups, but I am convinced that Bulgakov had in mind acacia flowers, for very clear reasons. (See my chapter The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita, posting #XXVII.)

Master’s response to Margarita’s question about the flowers is unequivocal. “No!” Blok’s favorite flowers were roses. We find roses very frequently in his poetry He even has a play The Rose and the Cross. This explains Bulgakov’s emphasis on roses both in Master and Margarita and in Pontius Pilate.

Only now, after I had come to the conclusion that Blok’s traits are definitely present in master’s character, I understood why in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate, in the 25^th chapter How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from Kyriath two white roses appear:

“But for the roar of water, but for the bursts of thunder… one might have heard the Procurator mumbling something, talking to himself. And had the unsteady flickering of the celestial light turned  into a constant light, an observer would have seen that the procurator’s face, with eyes inflamed from recent insomnia and wine is expressing his impatience, that the procurator not only stares at the two white roses drowned in the red pool, but that he is incessantly turning his face to the garden toward the watery mist and sand, that he is waiting for someone, impatiently waiting…”

In this case, the two white roses symbolize master, who wrote the novel Pontius Pilate, and Margarita, who found in this novel her life.

***

This is the end of the rather lengthy subchapter of the chapter The Bard, subtitled: Genesis: M. A. Berlioz. In my next offering of The Bard: Barbarian at the Gate, the researcher will finally learn why Bulgakov parts Berlioz with his head.

***