The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting #15.
“…And in that valley
there were two springs:
One was flowing with the
water of life…
The other was flowing with
the water of death…”
A. S. Pushkin. Ruslan
and Lyudmila.
In
M. A. Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius Pilate
of the novel Master and Margarita, on
the order of Pontius Pilate (Valery Bryusov being his prototype), the Chief of
Secret Service Afranius (his prototype being the Russian poet K. D. Balmont)
hires two assassins to murder Judas.
[Here Bulgakov follows
N. S. Gumilev in the latter’s “game of types” where the players are given
directly opposite personal qualities to play out. For this reason, the Russian
poets featured as prototypes of Bulgakov’s characters need to be studied very
carefully. Very often their representation is contrary to what they have been
in real life. Thus, for instance, unlike Afranius, the epitome of a brilliant
spymaster, Balmont had never been involved in spying. On the contrary, he was
continuously spied on himself, – by the Tsarist police both in Russia and in
France.
Very often in such
representations mysticism is involved. Bulgakov had a perfect understanding of
such matters, no wonder in his famous letter to Stalin he called himself “a
mystical writer.”]
“There was nobody in the garden… Over Judas, thundered and chanted
choirs of nightingales… Instead of Niza, a man’s athletic figure jumped onto
the road and something glistened in his hand. Judas uttered a weak scream and
bolted backwards, but a second man blocked his way.
How much did you get now?
Speak, if you want to save your life!
Thirty tetradrachms… here’s
the money, take it, but spare my life!
The man in front of Judas snatched the purse from his hands. At
that same moment, behind Judas’ back, a knife swung up and stabbed the lover-boy,
like lightning, under the shoulder blade. Judas was thrust forward, his hands
with warped fingers raised into the air. The man in front caught Judas on his
own knife and sank it to the hilt into Judas’ heart... A few seconds later,
there was no one alive left on the road… Meanwhile, the whole Garden of
Gethsemane was bursting with nightingale singing.”
Two
men, two stabs, as Bulgakov chose two Russian poets as prototypes of Yeshua –
A. A. Blok and N. S. Gumilev, who both perished because of “poetic vermin,” to
use an expression of Marina Tsvetaeva [who happens to be the prototype of both
Margarita and Niza].
As
I already wrote, Bulgakov points to the chilling deaths of both Blok and
Gumilev in Chapter 25: How the Procurator
Tried to Save Judas from Kyriath.
“At the Procurator’s feet, there stretched an unremoved red pool,
as though of blood, and fragments of the shattered jug were scattered there… 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 [he is expecting the return of
Afranius], 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…
[He is anxious to order the killing of Judas.]”
Thus,
if in Bulgakov’s Chapter 23: Satan’s
Great Ball Baron Meigel’s blood turns into wine in Woland’s chalice
fashioned out of Berlioz’s dead head, as he hands it over to Margarita.
“Drink!”
Two
voices in Bulgakov:
“Margarita’s head was spinning, she staggered, but the chalice
[with Meigel’s blood] already found itself at her lips, and some voices – she
could not discern whose, whispered in both her ears:
Be not afraid, Queen! The
blood has long seeped into the soil, and where it had been spilled, grapes are
already growing...”
The
voices weren’t those of either Koroviev or Kot Begemot. They belonged to the
two brutally murdered Russian poets:
Pushkin and Lermontov.
This
is the only way we can explain that the spilled blood had already seeped into
the ground, and enough time had passed for that ground to bring forth the
grapes used in the making of this wine.
***
It
is not only Ruslan’s terrible death that brings him together with his author A.
S. Pushkin. The ringing in Margarita’s ears is also taken from Pushkin’s poem Ruslan and Lyudmila.
In
the scene of the “sword,” the dwarf suggests to the giant to lie down flat on
the ground, and whoever is the first to hear the “ringing” [perhaps the sound
of a sword and armor] will become the sole owner of the sword. Once again it is
all the other way around. The giant heard the sword only when the dwarf brought
it down on his neck, cutting off his head. Still, the sword ended up with the
giant after the dwarf carried the sword and the head of his brother to a
deserted place where nobody was supposed to find the sword because the giant
head was placed right over it.
In
Bulgakov’s Chapter 25 of Master and
Margarita it is already the wine spilled from a broken jug which symbolizes
the blood of two great Russian poets, this time not of the Golden Age (early 19th
century), but of the Silver Age (early 20th century) of Russian
poetry – A. A. Blok and N. S. Gumilev, whose deaths are poetically depicted by
Bulgakov in this chapter.
But
here is Pushkin:
“...All
night the insensate Ruslan
Was lying in darkness under
the hill.
Hours were flying, like a
river
Blood was flowing from the
inflamed wounds…
And Chernomor? Stuck behind
the saddle
In a sack forgotten by the
witch…
Having heard nothing for a
long time,
The wizard peeped out – Oh
wonder!
He sees the hero slain,
Lying drowned in his blood…”
At
this time the Russian land was under the attack of the Pechenegs. –
“…All
Kiev was alarmed by a new threat!
But meantime the prophetic
Finn,
The mighty sovereign of the
spirits,
[Having learned about
Ruslan’s death,
Set off for the magic valley]
And in that valley there were
two springs:
One was flowing with the
water of life,
Merrily bubbling over the
stones;
The other was flowing with
the water of death…
A couple of Spirits, since
the beginning of the world,
Were silently guarding the
densely overgrown bank…
With two empty jugs the
hermit appeared before them.
Interrupting their ancient
sleep,
The spirits departed from him,
full of fear…”
Bulgakov
pursues the theme of the jug in Master
and Margarita.
To
be continued…
***
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