The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #13.
“They
can tell you many things, but you don’t have to believe them all.”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
We continue with the parallels between Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and A. S. Pushkin’s
Egyptian Nights.
Also explainable is the coincidence of the two “Pontius
Pilates.” One is the account of Woland, the other is the creation of master. We
accomplish this task with the help of A. S. Pushkin’s work Egyptian Nights. While Charsky gives the theme for improvisation to
the Italian, who immediately starts his improvisation; as soon as Ivan Bezdomny
confesses that the reason for his own commitment to the psychiatric clinic is
Pontius Pilate, and relates “yesterday’s story on Patriarch Ponds” to master,
the guest starts interrupting Ivan with his exclamations:
“Well,
well, go on, go on, I implore you! But for the sake of everything sacred do not
miss anything! Ivan didn’t miss anything, it was easier for him this way to
tell the story, gradually getting to the moment when Pontius Pilate in a white
mantle with blood-colored lining came out on the balcony. At this point the
guest prayerfully clasped his hands and whispered: Oh, how I guessed it! Oh, how I guessed it all!”
A.S. Pushkin describes this phenomenon in the
following fashion:
“Amazing!
– [said Charsky] – Somebody else’s
thought has barely touched your ear, and has already become your property, as
though you’ve been nurturing it, cultivating it, developing it without stop.
Amazing, amazing!..
The improvisator replied: All talent is unexplainable. How does it happen
that the sculptor sees a hidden Jupiter in a piece of Carrara marble? Why does
a thought come out of a poet’s head already armed with four rhymes? Likewise,
none except the improvisator himself can understand this rapidity of
impressions, this close tie between his own inspiration and an alien outside
will…”
And so, one more interpretation. Master has not
written any novel. Chapter 13 closes with the following words:
“Tell
me, what happened after that to Yeshua and Pilate?, asked Ivan, I am begging you, I want to know.
Ahh,
no, no, replied the guest
with a twitch of pain. I cannot remember
my novel without a shudder. Your acquaintance from Patriarch Ponds would have
done it better than I can. Thank you for the conversation. Good bye.”
Aside from master’s words:
“Pilate
was flying toward the end, the end! And I already knew that the last words
would be: …the Fifth Procurator of Judea Eques Pontius Pilate…”
– the reader actually knows nothing about his novel Pontius Pilate. Which only proves that
it was written by Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev. Instead of an improvisation, the
reader gets a history of master’s misadventures with the editor, who happens to
be none other than M. A. Berlioz, who sets hostile critics upon poor master.
Everything becomes all-too-clear as Bulgakov camouflages
his novel Pontius Pilate. the real
events of that time –tragic for everyone in Russia – including World War I, the
Revolution, the Civil War, the Entente Intervention, the preparation for the
imminent war with Hitler’s Germany – the time when it was sometimes difficult
to distinguish friend from foe.
Considering that the whole conversation about Pontius
Pilate takes place between master whose prototype in this particular case
happens to be Andrei Bely (see my chapter Who’s
Who in Master) and the poet Ivan Bezdomny, mysticism comes very much into
play here. I have already written that Andrei Bely and M. A. Bulgakov, like
many other poets and writers, such as N. V. Gogol, A. A. Blok, and F. M.
Dostoyevsky, as well as N. S. Gumilev, were deeply interested in mysticism and
wrote works saturated with it. (I am writing specifically about Andrei Bely’s
mysticism in my chapter The Garden:
Matthew Levi.)
But what if the reader asks: how come? Hasn’t
Margarita read two chapters of Pontius
Pilate, presumably written by master? At least such is an impression given
by Bulgakov himself!
But Bulgakov has already given us the answer in
Chapter 8: A Contest Between a Professor
And a Poet, in which Professor Stravinsky is talking with the poet Ivan
Bezdomny about Pontius Pilate. Committing Ivan to the psychiatric clinic,
Stravinsky tells him:
“Do
not strain your head [sic!] and try to think less about Pontius Pilate. [And here it comes!] They can tell you many things, but you do not
have to believe them all.”
I have already mentioned that having been struck by
the story of Pontius Pilate, which he heard on Patriarch Ponds, Ivan Bezdomny
stopped writing verses, entered an academic school and became a historian. It
was he, Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, who wrote the novel about Pontius Pilate.
But where is Margarita here, and who is Margarita? –
the reader will ask. This question is easily answered. In the Epilogue Bulgakov puts in sharper focus
the picture started in Chapter 30: It’s
Time! It’s Time! – when master and Margarita fly into Ivan’s psychiatric
clinic to say farewell. This scene makes it perfectly clear that both master
and Margarita are already dead.
In his madness, Ivan decided not to write poetry
anymore. During his stay at the psychiatric clinic, he had understood a lot,
and it was probably then that he decided to become a historian, in order to
write his own story of Pontius Pilate. Having seen Margarita, Ivan obviously
approved of his creation:
“See how well
everything has turned out for you. Not so for me. Here he fell into
thinking and pensively added: But maybe
it has, too. ”
In other words, having written a love story of master
and Margarita, Ivan started thinking about finding a “true” woman who would
love him.
It is therefore only fitting that in the Epilogue Bulgakov shows us Ivan
Nikolayevich Ponyrev, a scholar at the [fictitious] Institute of History and
Philosophy, a married man. His wife, whatever her name may be – is Margarita. Besides, Bulgakov never
mentions her real name.
That’s why I say that it is only fitting to compare these
two stories with A. S. Pushkin’s Egyptian
Nights. Just like there is no one coming to see Charsky – the Italian
improvisator’s visit is entirely a product of Pushkin’s imagination – nobody
comes to see Ivan in the psychiatric clinic either. All of this is entirely a
product of Bulgakov’s imagination, who is really the author of both the novel Master and Margarita and the sub-novel Pontius Pilate within it.
I have always insisted that no one came to see Ivan at
the psychiatric clinic (except the authorized personnel of course). And now I
have the proof: Bulgakov was following his idol Pushkin with his Egyptian Nights in three chapters. This
is the reason why Pontius Pilate only
has four chapters in it, although in the 27th chapter The End of Apartment #50, Bulgakov
writes that “out of the ashes came the novel.” However, this is not so,
because Bulgakov is actually giving us two chapters: Chapter 25: How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of
Kyriath and Chapter 26: The Burial.
And that’s it.
While in Chapter 13 The
Appearance of The Hero, in relating his story to Ivan Bezdomny master says
the following:
“A fire was burning in the
furnace, the rain was whipping at the windows. Then the last thing happened. I took
out of the desk drawer the heavy copies of the novel –sic!] and the
draft notebooks, and started burning them…”
Here too, the reader is dealing with the Russian poet
Andrei Bely, who published a poetry collection titled Ashes with an article “Instead
of a Preface,” where he noted negative influences of capitalism in Russia,
both in urban and rural settings.
[About Andrei Bely, see my chapters Alpha and Omega, and also The Trio.]
To be continued…
***
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