Who is Who in Master?
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev.
Posting #2.
“I do like the chosen
one of freedom,
The seafarer and the shooter,
Ah, the waters sang for him
so sonorously,
And the clouds envied him.”
N. S. Gumilev. Memory.
We
continue now with N. Gumilev’s extraordinary Ballad.
The
Maiden of the Moon is clever. –
“In
her soft voice one could hear the sounds of a string,
In her strange glance a question was fused with the answer,
And I gave the ring to this
maiden of the moon
For the unfaithful hue of her
scattered braids…”
It
is impossible to imagine that the Maiden of the Moon would be anything but
beautiful, and, as for her superior mind, Gumilev underscores it in his line: “In her strange
glance the question was fused with the answer.” To make it even more
convincing, the poet met her at the “heights of consciousness.”
As
for Bulgakov, he writes:
“All that master said about her was absolute truth. He described
his beloved correctly. She was beautiful and intelligent.”
As
for the very first meeting of master and Margarita, it was, just like Gumilev’s
meeting with the Maiden of the Moon, “strange.”
“She turned from Tverskaya
into a side street and looked back… Thousands of people were walking up and
down Tverskaya Street, but I can assure you that she saw me alone [sic!], and
her look was not only alarmed, but I can even call it unwell. And I was struck
not so much by her [Margarita’s] beauty as by the singular, unseen by anyone,
loneliness in her eyes.”
Judging
by this description, it is clear that Margarita was not a happy woman. Like
Gumilev’s Maiden of the Moon, there was a sadness in her.
***
As
I already wrote on several occasions elsewhere, the first meeting of master and
Margarita was arranged by the demonic force, and by that time Margarita had
already been a “witch,” as she was wearing the same type of gauntlet gloves as
Woland was.
But
all of this takes place in the fantastical perception only. In reality a
“witch” [a woman] means a “wizard [a man],” i. e. “magus,” “sorcerer,”
“magician” with “charms,” as poets were called at the turn of the 20th
century. By using the word “witch,” Bulgakov thus shows that Margarita had a
poetess (namely, Marina Tsvetaeva) as her prototype.
But
even if we dismiss the fantastical element completely, it is perfectly clear
that both of them, master and Margarita, were unhappy in their private lives.
N.
S. Gumilev, in his Ballad, does not
conceal the fact either, that his meeting with the Maiden of the Moon had been
prearranged by his friend Lucifer. It was for this purpose that Lucifer had
given him the golden ring with a ruby in it, knowing full well that the poet
was going to give it away to her.
“And
laughing at me, despising me,
Lucifer opened the gates of
darkness to me.
Lucifer presented me with a
sixth stallion,
And DESPAIR was the
stallion’s name.”
In
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, such
an outcome would not be possible. Here we are looking at a constellation of
Russian poets. The magnificent four are helping master and Margarita. Not to
mention the fact that Yeshua Himself participates in the fate of the couple,
sending Matthew Levi as His messenger to Woland.
In
his own inimitable way, Bulgakov plays here upon Matthew 16:25:
“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose
his life for my sake shall find it.”
In
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
master loses his life as a result of writing the novel Pontius Pilate about Jesus Christ’s last day on earth.
Using
Margarita’s vivification to make his point, Bulgakov shows how the expression
of her face changes in death, how having been an angry witch in life, she goes
back to being a woman after she loses her life.
Such
deep changes in self are depicted by Gumilev in his poem Memory opening the best cycle of his poems A Pillar of Fire. –
“Only
snakes are shedding their skin
So that their soul would
mature and grow;
Alas, we are not like snakes:
We are changing souls, not
bodies.”
What
Gumilev means here is that people, as they grow, change both outwardly and
inwardly. And there comes a time when looking back a person may not like his
own self.
“The
very first one, plain-looking and thin,
A
fallen leaf, a child of wizardry…
Memory,
you cannot find a sign,
You
won’t convince the world that it was me…”
That
was Gumilev’s glimpse of his childhood…
“…And
the second one… said that life was a friend of his,
And the world was just a rug
under his feet.
I don’t like him at all, it
was he
Who wanted to become a god
and a tsar,
He hung the sign ‘poet’
Over the door to my silent
home.”
Gumilev
does not like himself, either, as a youth. But he definitely likes himself as a
traveler:
“I do
like the chosen one of freedom,
The seafarer and the shooter,
Ah, the waters sang for him
so sonorously,
And the clouds envied him.”
Next
Gumilev remembers his military years, when he volunteered for military service
in the first world war. He is proud of that period in his life.
Gumilev
is a poet, that’s why he is writing about his soul, but we call it a man’s
character, as he matures and becomes smarter and better with each trial that
life is putting him through.
To
be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment