The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #7.
“Have mercy,
Queen, he croaked. Would I allow
myself to serve vodka to a lady?
This is pure alcohol!”
myself to serve vodka to a lady?
This is pure alcohol!”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
In so far as the connection between cognac and M. Yu.
Lermontov falls into the picture, Chapter 23 Great Ball at Satan’s is followed by Chapter 24 The Extraction of Master. In this
Chapter 24 Bulgakov writes:
“Staggering, Margarita approached the table
and leaned on it...”
It is understandable that Margarita was tired, but she
was only 30 years of age, and should not have experienced such weakness. She
was clearly in delirium, having been poisoned by Azazello’s cream. In her
semi-conscious state she was barely functioning, having irrational visions and
delusions.
“Well, what? Have you
been severely tormented? – asked Woland.
Oh, no, messire! – replied Margarita, but
barely audibly.
Noblesse oblige, remarked the Cat, and
poured some colorless liquid into a faceted glass for Margarita.
Is this vodka? – asked Margarita weakly.
The cat jumped up on his stool, taking offense.
Have mercy, Queen, he croaked. Would I allow myself to serve vodka to a
lady? This is pure alcohol!
Margarita smiled and made an effort to push away the glass.
Drink it with confidence,
– said Woland.”
These words indicate that some of Lermontov’s poetry
is revolutionary, such as On the Death of
the Poet, which is why Bulgakov compares it to pure alcohol.
“Silently, Woland raised his glass and
clinked it with Margarita’s. Margarita drank hers obediently, thinking that the
alcohol would be the end of her. But nothing bad happened. A living warmth swam
through her stomach... After the second glass she drank, the candles in the
candelabra were burning brighter and there was more flame in the fireplace.
Margarita felt no intoxication...”
The fact that this is not about alcohol, but about
poetry, is supported by Bulgakov’s following words:
“Begemot cut a slice of pineapple, put some
salt on it, some pepper, ate it, after which he cavalierly swallowed a second
shot of alcohol, making the others burst into applause.”
That’s why Margarita experienced no alcoholic
intoxication. It wasn’t the pure alcohol that she was drinking but M. Yu.
Lermontov’s poetry that she was listening to.
In the 30th chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! a winetasting ceremony is taking place in
master’s basement flat. Yet again it is Azazello who brings “Woland’s gift” to
master. It is only after Azazello drinks up the cognac served to him by
Margarita that he “remembers” about the Falernian wine once drunk by the procurator
of Judea. In this scene, Bulgakov follows Marina Tsvetaeva:
“…Breaking
away like the drizzle from a fountain,
Like sparks from rockets,
Breaking in, like little
devils,
Into a sanctuary of sleep and
incense,
My poems about youth and
death –
Unread poems! –“
And so the “cognac” which Marina Tsvetaeva/Margarita
offers Azazello is precisely this poem. At last on this day –
“...My
poems, like precious wine,
Will have their time to come.”
[See my posted chapter Margarita Beyond Good And Evil #CCCXL.]
Although Azazello does not exactly “break in,” he is in a sense “a little devil.” “A sanctuary” in this case is a poet’s, any poet’s, dwelling, and
master’s “basement” is one of
these.
And how can we forget about “youth and death”? –
“Quite naturally, such a rarity [Marina Tsvetaeva’s precious
wine!] drew great
attention from Margarita and master. Out of a piece of dark coffin brocade,
Azazello produced an utterly moldy jug. The wine was sniffed, poured in glasses;
they looked through it at the light in the window, disappearing before the approaching
storm. They saw how everything was turning into the color of blood.
Here’s to Woland’s health! – exclaimed Margarita, raising her glass.
All three of them put the glasses to their lips and took large gulps
from them...”
This is how poetically Bulgakov depicts the
winetasting of the Falernian. And both of them – master and Margarita – die
together. How romantic! Although, by other indications, master and Margarita
die simultaneously, but in different places – she in her mansion, he in the
psychiatric clinic.
***
At the Abrau-Dyurso estate, special cellars were built
where champagne wines were brought to maturity in reservoirs transformed into
pools by Bulgakov’s imagination. Awesome!
But the fact that Bulgakov puts master in a
basement/cellar shows that there has to be a hidden meaning in it. It so
happens that Bulgakov, although not a poet himself, considered Pontius Pilate, written by master in his
basement, a truly masterful work. It took some genius-doing to mask events of
his [Bulgakov’s] own time to such an extent that – the criticism of the Church
notwithstanding – no one has been able to solve the true nature of the
sub-novel Pontius Pilate. This sub-novel
can by no means be treated as a “Gospel of the devil.” The times in which
Bulgakov lived and depicted in his works were devilish times.
If the Church has found features of theosophy in the
novel, these are features of his time, which he never shared. Let us not forget
that one of the main heroes of both Master
and Margarita and Pontius Pilate
is none other than the Russian mystical poet and writer, and also a
mathematician and revolutionary, Andrei Bely, who most certainly dabbled in
theosophy until he had become disillusioned in it, and turned away from it. As
for Dr. Steiner who had borrowed many of his ideas from Mme Blavatsky and whose
lectures Andrei Bely had been addicted to in Europe, Bely ended up cursing
Steiner and calling him “the devil.”
Knowledge is power, and at the end knowledge always
leads to the truth. Researchers for some reason did not see in the “masonic
triangle” a triangle of another kind: the love triangle of one woman and two
men, which happens twice in Bulgakov’s novel, and in both cases we find Andrei
Bely as one of the men.
In the first case, he shares the triangle with V. Ya.
Bryusov who described this triangle in his novel The Fiery Angel. The woman in it is Nina Petrovskaya (wife of a
prominent publisher).
The second triangle comes into existence between
Andrei Bely and his friend Alexander Blok over Blok’s wife Lyubov Mendeleeva.
Bulgakov’s devil is a complex character, but curiously,
Bulgakov does not pick for the role of Woland the rather obvious persona of Dr.
Steiner. No! Noticing in the Russian Revolutionary poet V. V. Mayakovsky an
interest in Andrei Bely, Bulgakov gives his devil certain features of Andrei
Bely. As for Dr. Steiner, he is just a ploy to mislead the reader and
researcher, to put them on a false track.
Endowing the devil with some Andrei Bely features
becomes particularly clear in the scene on the roof of the Rumyantsev Museum
[State Lenin Library in Moscow], as in the 29th chapter of Master and Margarita: Master’s Fate is
Determined, Matthew Levi, whose prototype is Andrei Bely, appears on the
roof of the building with Yeshua’s message for Woland.
Considering that Azazello is a participant in the
meeting between Matthew Levi and Woland, it is hard to imagine even within the
psychological thriller that such splitting would occur in front of a witness,
that is, Azazello. Even more so realizing that here is another Bulgakovian
puzzle, which will be solved in another chapter, still unwritten at this time.
The following words of Matthew Levi point to the
puzzle in question:
“He [Yeshua] is asking that she who loved and suffered
because of him [master] be taken too, for the first time pleadingly [sic!]
Matthew Levi addressed Woland.”
They are talking here about Margarita, whose prototype
is Marina Tsvetaeva, and I am presently getting over to her memoirs.
To be continued…
***
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