The Bard.
A Little Town.
Posting #1.
“…My
friends are dead people…”
A. S. Pushkin. A Little Town.
I must admit that it was a big surprise for me to
discover yet another “Magnificent Four”
of Russia’s 20th-century poets in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.
Initially, I was thinking that with the chapter Woland Identity my work would be over.
But I also have to admit how exciting for me is this
continuing work that I am now plunging myself into, wholeheartedly. So far, I
have picked just three works of A. S. Pushkin, which I will be focusing on, but
who knows how large this new sapling is going to grow.
And so, we begin with an early Pushkin work, written at
the age of 16.
The title of the present chapter, The Bard, is not so much addressing Pushkin as a poet, as it looks
at him as a mentor, bubbling with ideas which he freely passes on to the
subsequent generations of Russian poets.
In this chapter, especially having added the new “Magnificent Four” of Russia’s 20th-century
poets, namely, Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Nikolai Gumilev, and Marina
Tsvetaeva, it becomes necessary to demonstrate their succession from the
originator of Russian poetry, A. S. Pushkin, as his language has indeed become
the gold standard of modern Russian language.
Pushkin’s influence on Russian literature is
boundless. Those who understand this learn not only from Pushkin himself, but
also from other poets who have followed Pushkin.
Among such last examples may be Vladimir Vysotsky,
poet, songwriter, actor, and legend, whose funeral in 1980 was attended by the
whole of Moscow. Listening to the songs of this incredible nugget, I can easily
trace the influence of those Russian poets about whom I have already written so
much in the course of my work.
Vladimir Vysotsky would never have been so popular or
so proficient, had he not studied the best of what had been written before him…
***
In his first work, titled A Little Town, written by Pushkin at the age of 16, we can trace a
very interesting interconnectedness between the Russian mystical poet of early
20th century Alexander Blok and the Russian mystical writer of the
first half of the 20th century Mikhail Bulgakov.
I have come to the conclusion that, having studied the
creative work of Blok and of other Russian poets, Bulgakov discerned, and
agreed, with their idea of tracing and using hidden ideas for their own works.
This turned out very useful for Bulgakov, as all these poets whose poetry he
was using, would find their place in Bulgakov’s works, particularly, in Master and Margarita.
Pushkin’s A
Little Town is a charming poem, written by a 16-year-old lad soon after the
rout of Napoleon’s Grande Armée by
the Russian troops and the subsequent liberation of all Europe.
A. S. Pushkin narrates his epistolary tale from the
person who had obviously been a participant in the wars of liberation. It is
devised as a letter to an old friend after a two-year silence, caused by the
author’s two-year sojourn in St. Petersburg, busy putting his affairs in order.
The issue must probably be his pension, after settling which, he retires to a
small town where the hero has rented a little house and starts living a life of
a “lazy philosopher.”
And so, our story begins. Running ahead of myself, I
need to warn the reader that at the end, he or she is in for a big surprise. By
now it must be obvious that, by my nature, I just cannot do without surprises.
“I’m
living in a little town, unknown and happy,
I’ve
rented a light-filled house with a sofa and a fireplace;
Three
simple little rooms – No gold or bronze in them,
And
patterned cloth doesn’t cover their parquet.”
It is from this poem that Bulgakov gets his idea to
put master, who has just won 100,000 rubles in a lottery, in a small but
separate flat in the basement of a real estate developer’s house. Master has
just two rooms, though.
“Having won 100,000 rubles, Ivan’s
mysterious guest did the following: He dropped his room on Myasniskaya Street
and rented from a developer in a side street off Arbat two rooms in the basement
of a small house with a little garden…”
Is it possible not to admire Bulgakov’s masterful
touch: master rents a two-room basement flat from a developer living in a small
house [sic!]. Bulgakov clearly shows a continuity from Pushkin and his “Little Town.” Side streets off Arbat can
well pass off for a little town in itself, although they are located in the
very center of Moscow close by the Kremlin. (See my notes about this historical
district of Moscow, where Alex and I used to live, in my chapter The Fantastic Love Story of Master and
Margarita, posted segment XXVI.)
“…A
perfectly separate little flat, plus an anteroom and in it a sink with running
water… I was sitting in the other, altogether tiny room… – the guest began
to measure space with his hands. – So,
here is a sofa, and another sofa facing it. And a little table between them,
and upon it, a beautiful night lamp… And right here a small writing desk…”
And if in Pushkin we have:
“…And
while, my precious friend,
Lit
by the fireplace,
I’m
sitting by the window
With
paper and a quill…”
– in
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, we
have master saying –
“…I opened
the window and was sitting in the other, perfectly tiny room… How extraordinary
is the smell of lilac! And my head was becoming light from tiredness, and
Pilate was flying to its conclusion…”
And this is all because of Pushkin’s –
“…Windows
[opening] into a happy garden,
Where
ancient linden and bird-cherry tree are blooming,
Where
in the midday hours I get cool shade
From
the dark covers of the birches…”
And this is what we read in Bulgakov:
“…tiny
windows right over the walkway leading from the gate, and right in front, just
four steps away under the fence, lilac, linden and a maple tree. Ah, ah, ah!”
Already on page 2, Pushkin’s hero is relishing his
solitude:
“…Hiding
in the study,
I
am not bored being by myself,
And
often in a rapture
I
forget the whole world…”
And here is Bulgakov:
“The historian
lived alone, having no relatives and almost no acquaintances in Moscow.”
It was while reading this poem by the 16-year-old
Pushkin that I made a huge discovery for myself:
“…My
friends are dead people,
Priests
of Parnassus…”
It is from right here that Bulgakov took the idea of
surrounding himself with dead people, namely by the two sets of the
“Magnificent Four” of great Russian poets, where only the second set features
the sole woman-poet of the eight, the only one still alive at the time, but who
would survive Bulgakov himself by just one year…
To be continued…
***
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