GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXCIV

The Bard.

The Desperado-Flibustier.

Posting #1.

The enormous carcass of the ship

Rushes fast through the desert of the Sea,

As though somewhere there is land

Toward which it strives avidly.

K. Balmont. Dead Ships.

In the 5^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Griboyedov Affair –

“...before the white ghost marching together with a burning light, who turned out to be not a ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny – a most famous poet...”

–whom nobody recognized in the poet Sergei Yesenin. In this connection, I had to think a lot over the bizarre apparition which showed itself on the preceding page:

“…And there was at midnight an apparition in hell. A dark-eyed handsome with a dagger-beard came out on the veranda, dressed in a tuxedo and encompassing his possession with a regal glance…”

The “regal glance” alone already indicates that this personage’s prototype is a poet. M. Bulgakov continues:

“Talking and talking were the mystics that there had been a time when the handsome guy was not wearing a tuxedo, but was girded by a wide leather belt, with pistol grips sticking from under it, and his hair, of raven wing color, was tied together by scarlet silk, and there was a ship sailing under his command in the Caribbean Sea under a black coffin flag with Adam’s head (the head of death) upon it…”

Here emerging are lines from K. D. Balmont’s poetry cycle Dead Ships. The most representative poem in this cycle, and also the most interesting, is the penultimate one (#6):

“Screeching, runs among the waves

A gigantic coffin, a floating skeleton.

In the bodies of the deceived swimmers

The source of vibrant life has dried up.

The enormous carcass of the ship

Rushes fast through the desert of the Sea,

As though somewhere there is land

Toward which it strives avidly.

Behind it, screeching, amidst the ripple,

Others are madly rushing,

And apparitions of ships

Are troubling the regions of the seas.

And the waves are whispering among themselves

That they must not be allowed any farther,

And the mass of snow and ice

Has risen up like a white crowd.

And there is no sepulchral dirge for them,

The world of the sleepy desert is soulless,

And only the red glow of the Sun

Is burning, like a funereal torch.”

To be continued…

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