The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #16.
“...And
so he accepted the challenge of bliss
Like
he had accepted the challenges of war
In
deadly combat…”
A. S. Pushkin. Egyptian Nights.
It is quite possible that Bulgakov’s idea of Satan’s
Great Ball was influenced by Marina Tsvetaeva, when she calls Marie-Antoinette
“the Queen of the Ball.”
Bulgakov is amazing. Having arranged the “Ball of a
Hundred Kings,” he installs Margarita as the Queen of that Ball. As for Margarita’s
devotion to master, Bulgakov also takes it from Marina Tsvetaeva, as she
believes that Marie-Antoinette would never have abandoned Napoleon, had she
been married to him.
As for the ball itself, Bulgakov substitutes “choirs
of singers” by “orchestras” because of the Russian poet M. Yu. Lermontov, who
played several musical instruments and managed as Kot Begemot to book some of
the best dead musicians to play at the Ball.
If Cleopatra had become pensive over a golden chalice,
then in Bulgakov the wine (champagne) gushes in a stream and flows into the
first pool. But, as the reader knows, there is a real chalice in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, fashioned out of
the skull of M. A. Berlioz, courtesy of Woland’s sword.
And yes, as Pushkin wrote in his Egyptian Nights, about the three aspirants to bliss with Cleopatra,
only to be beheaded at the first ray of morning dawn, so does Bulgakov, cutting
off the head of Berlioz by the coming tram (Berlioz’s prototype, as I already
mentioned several times, is the Russian poet and literary critic V. Ya.
Bryusov), by covering under that umbrella two more personages of Master and Margarita, namely, Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy who ends up in a psychiatric clinic and Professor Kuzmin, whose
head is all covered with leaches, representing the new generation of “poets.”
Having done away with Blok and Gumilev in 1921, these “poets” do away with
Bryusov in 1924, who was of course a very interesting poet who exerted a large
personal influence on all movements of Russian poetry of the time.
Considering that Pushkin writes in his Egyptian Nights:
“...I
swear that under the sword of death
The
lucky men’s head [sic!] shall roll…”
– only one “head” [singular] has rolled, but three men
have been affected – by the same token, Bulgakov has just one head being
cut-off, yet creating three personages related to the theft of Pushkin’s
material in Boris Godunov by an
unscrupulous but skillful adventurer, and to “completing” A. S. Pushkin’s deliberately
“unfinished” story Egyptian Nights – by
Bryusov [Professor Kuzmin].
The name “Kuzmin” is in Bulgakov’s case the composite
of the first and last names of the real historical personage Kuzma Minin, who
was behind the popular uprising of the Russians against the Polish invasion,
following the death of the Russian Tsar Boris Godunov.
Hence, Bulgakov’s continuous sequence of three
personages: Berlioz – Bosoy – Kuzmin, with the prototype of all three being the
Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov, who, in contrast to the “natural” Russian poet A.
S. Pushkin, brought French Symbolism into Russian literature.
Bulgakov needed the character of Professor Kuzmin to
reinforce his success with the characters of M. A. Berlioz and N. I. Bosoy.
With these three personages, Bulgakov inserts Russian history into his work of
fiction, while Pushkin recommends Russian writers to follow the example of Sir
Walter Scott by inserting their novel into history.
Bulgakov does this very skillfully as though comparing
his own time of the Revolution and Civil War and the anticipation of the
imminent attack of Germany on the USSR, to Russia’s Time of Troubles in early
17th Century.
If Pushkin’s Cleopatra becomes “pensive over a golden
chalice and hangs low her amazing head [sic!], in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita (Chapter 23: Satan’s Great Ball) Woland hands
Margarita the chalice fashioned out of Berlioz’s dead head, and sternly
commands her:
“Drink!”
“Margarita’s head
was spinning, she staggered, but the chalice already found itself at her lips… Without
opening her eyes, Margarita took a gulp, and a sweet stream ran through her
veins, a ringing started in her ears…”
[See my chapter Margarita
Beyond Good And Evil.]
Thus Bulgakov closes the full circle of his tale about
betrayal.
***
In A. S. Pushkin’s story Egyptian Nights Pushkin really shows that not only rhymes are at
ease with him: “two come themselves,
bringing a third along” – but also that Pushkin is in control of his
inspiration, that when he creates, he is free as a bird, even when someone else
gives him a theme for composition. He then uses this theme in his own way. In
this Bulgakov follows Pushkin, fired up by a single line or even by the theme
on a page or of a whole chapter. In this case Bulgakov reworks the material of
interest to him under his own angle, so that it starts fitting his thoughts and
his design.
In fact, the reading of great works of literature must
help young writers, serve as an impetus for their own inspiration. In other
words, it must help young writers to become improvisators of “an alien outside
will” propelled by what they have read.
The following lines from Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights support my thought that
Pushkin writes this about himself:
“...And
so for you there is no such thing as labor, or cooling down, or that kind of
anxiety which precedes inspiration? Amazing, amazing!..”
***
The idea of describing guests at “Satan’s Great Ball”
comes to Bulgakov also from A. S. Pushkin’s Egyptian
Nights. In the 3rd chapter of Pushkin’s story, closing this last
chapter with a poem about Cleopatra, he writes:
“...Suddenly
one comes out of the crowd,
Two
others come out after him.
Their
step is daring, their eyes are clear;
She
stands up toward them;
It
happened: three nights have been bought,
And
the bed of death is calling them...
Pushkin says who the three are:
The
first one Flavius, a daring warrior,
Having
grown gray-haired in the Roman army;
He
could not take it from a woman –
That
haughty contemptuousness,
And
so he accepted the challenge of bliss
Like
he had accepted the challenges of war
In
deadly combat…”
Next comes the second suitor:
“…Criton
comes after him, a youthful sage,
Born
in the groves of Epicurus,
Criton,
an admirer and a singer
Of
Charites, Cypride, and Amur...”
The third one is given the most attention, and there
is a good reason for that: A.S. Pushkin is describing himself:
“...The
last one had not passed his name to the ages.
His
cheeks were gently shaded by the first down;
Exultation
was gleaming in his eyes;
An
inexperienced force of passions
Was
boiling in the young heart –
And
sorrowfully did the proud queen
Rest
her gaze on him…”
To be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment