The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #14.
“…You
are not getting anything,
But
you have given me a promise
To
be the mistress of my house.”
Alexander Blok. Sketches. 1917.
Throughout A. S. Pushkin’s whole work Egyptian Nights runs the eternal
question of a Christian: pure art or profit. Hence, the two characters: of
Charsky who is embarrassed of being a poet, yet cannot live without writing
poetry, and of the impoverished Italian improvisator with his “savage greed and simple-hearted love of
profit.”
Here we find the split of Pushkin himself, showing in
a letter to his wife Natalia Goncharova:
“Do not try to scare me, wifey, do not tell
me that you have become a coquette; I shall come to you without having the time
to write anything, and without money we shall run aground. So you better leave
me in peace, and I will be working and make haste.”
Having returned from the Urals to his estate of
Boldino, Pushkin puts his “Notes” on
Pugachev in order. –
“If the Tsar allows me [to publish] my Notes, we’ll have some 30,000 [rubles]
net money. We will pay up half our debts and live in ease.”
And the same thing after receiving Natalia’s next
letter. –
“Do not expect me back this month [October
1833], expect me at the end of November. Do not hinder me and do not frighten
me. Be well and look after the children.”
A. S. Pushkin saw nothing prejudicial in getting money
for his work. He published his own works, using the money the Tsar loaned to
him. The fact that Charsky and the Italian improvisator are the two sides of
Pushkin himself is reflected in Pushkin’s following words:
“Victory!
You got it made! The Princess *** is providing you with her hall. Yesterday...
I managed to recruit half of Peterburg. So
print your tickets and the announcement. I guarantee you if not a triumph, then
at least some profit.
Which
is the most important thing! – joined the Italian, expressing his joy with lively movements
intrinsic to his Southern nature.”
This is why A. S. Pushkin chooses an “Italian” for the
role. Pushkin was himself of a passionate Southern nature. He was of African
descent on his mother’s side.
The reader must be asking himself/herself how all this
relates to Master and Margarita? The connection
is direct and unambiguous.
Although master was writing his novel Pontius Pilate pursuing “art for art’s
sake,” not so was Margarita’s ambition. She was “promising
fame, spurring him on.” This is how master summarizes the result:
“And I went out into life,
holding it [the manuscript of Pontius
Pilate] in my hands, and then my life
was over.”
Without Margarita, master would probably never have
taken such a radical [and perhaps lethal] step as to offer his manuscript to
the publisher. But Bulgakov has an even more convincing argument in Chapter 22:
With Candles.
Having arrived in the “no-good apartment #50,”
Margarita perceives Woland’s intention to stop the chess game he is playing
with Kot Begemot. On Koroviev’s subtle suggestion, she asks Woland not to
interrupt the game, adding her own statement:
“I
beseech you not to interrupt the game. I believe that chess magazines would
have paid good money for the opportunity to publish it.”
And so, I was right having written the chapter Strangers in the Night on the
psychological thriller of Master and
Margarita, in which Margarita exists exclusively in master’s imagination.
Looking at Bulgakov’s novel under the angle of Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights, we may say that master is Charsky and Margarita is
the “Italian.”
As for the “Italian” himself, he appears in Bulgakov’s
Master and Margarita already in the 1st
chapter: Never Talk to Strangers.
Naturally, Bulgakov makes everything contrarily, as his “Italian” is by no
means “impoverished.” Bulgakov’s “foreigner,” as he appears to Berlioz and
Bezdomny, is strikingly different:
“He [Woland] was dressed in an expensive gray suit and foreign-made
dress shoes of the same color as the suit. His gray beret was cockily
tilted onto his ear; he had a walking stick under his arm, with a black knob
shaped as the head of a poodle. He looked about forty years of age. His mouth
was somewhat twisted. Clean-shaven. A brunet [sic!]. His right eye was black,
the left one for some reason green. Black eyebrows, one higher than the other.
In a word, a foreigner.”
On this one page alone, Bulgakov uses the word
“foreigner” three times, and on the next page five times. In the course of the
whole chapter, the word “foreigner” appears 24 times, not counting the word
“intourist” [a Russian abbreviation for “foreign tourist”] which occurs twice.
Not to mention individual uses of such phrases as “zagranichny gost’” [“guest
from abroad”], etc.
Berlioz and Bezdomny are trying to guess the
foreigner’s nationality, suspecting him of being a German, an Englishman, a
Frenchman, a Pole. But they never reach the list of possibilities to include an
Italian. It would have been too obvious for Bulgakov.
The proof can be found in the word “Frenchman.” Having found a stranger in
his study, Charsky addresses him in French, to which the “poor nomadic artist”
replies in Italian. A. S. Pushkin starts the description of the guest with an
“unfamiliar head,” then we have the “stranger,” which Bulgakov uses 4 times,
giving preference to the word “unknown,” which he uses 11 times.
Giving the portrait of the “stranger,” A. S. Pushkin
portrays himself. Indications of this are a dark-skinned face and a pale high
forehead overshadowed by black clumps of hair. (This is probably how Pushkin describes
his hair in large curls.)
And so, Bulgakov is using Pushkin’s story Egyptian Nights, sending the poet
himself as an apparition to M. A. Berlioz. An amazing literary device!
The following lines from A. S. Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights are connected in
Bulgakov with Margarita:
“The palace glittered; the songs of the choir
Were resounding to the sounds of flutes and lyres;
The Queen [Cleopatra] was enlivening the luxuriant feast.
And hearts were rushing to her throne...”
Whatever Azazello neglected to tell Margarita about
the purpose of her visit to the foreigner was filled in by Koroviev when
Margarita arrived at the no-good apartment #50.
“You are a very intelligent
woman, and you obviously have guessed by now who our host is. Every year, the
messire throws one ball. It is called the Ball of the Spring Full-Moon, or the
Ball of a Hundred Kings.
Well, here it is. The messire
is a bachelor But a hostess is needed. You have to agree that without a hostess… [sic!]”
Margarita’s role, as she summed it up for herself, as
she was answering Woland’s questions:
“I am
not in the least tired, and I had a lot of fun at the ball. So, had it lasted
longer, I would have gladly offered my knee so that thousands more
gallows-birds and murderers might keep touching it with their lips… – Margarita’s
eyes filled with tears.”
The point is that during the ball Margarita’s legs
were giving in; every minute she was afraid of bursting into tears. Her worst
suffering was caused by her right knee, which had been kissed too much by the
succession of “suicides, poisoners, gallows-birds,
panderers, jailers and cardsharps, executioners, snitches, turncoats, crazies,
snoops, profligates... Margarita’s right knee had swollen, its skin turned
blue... In a second, without understanding how it happened, Margarita found
herself in a room with a pool in it, and there she burst into tears because of
the pain in her arm and leg, falling down on the floor… Once again she was
taken under a shower of blood, once again her body was kneaded, and once again
Margarita was revived.”
It is obvious that here Bulgakov refers to the
execution of N. S. Gumilev, who was one of master’s three prototypes. Master’s
blood brings Margarita back to her senses. She agrees to all these deprivations
just to learn at least some news about master. Dead or alive, she must know,
she has to know!
To be continued…
***
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