The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #12.
“Are you a writer? – the
poet asked interestedly.
The guest’s face darkened, and he shook his fist
at Ivan, saying after that: I
am master.”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
Turning back now to Master and Margarita, I’d like to note several clues which Bulgakov
used to point to A. S. Pushkin.
In the 1st chapter of Egyptian Nights, Pushkin writes about Charsky:
“...In his study,
furnished like a lady’s bedroom, nothing spoke of a writer; no books scattered
on tables or under tables; the divan wasn’t stained with ink; there was none
of that disarray which betrays the presence of the Muse [sic!] and the
absence of a broom and a brush.”
In the 20th chapter of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov describes Margarita’s bedroom:
“...In Margarita Nikolayevna’s bedroom all
lights were on and they illuminated a complete disarray in the room.
Lying on the bed, on the blanket, were shirts, stockings, underwear. Crumpled
underwear was lying simply on the floor alongside a box of cigarettes [sic!]
crushed in agitation.” Shoes were sitting on a night table alongside an
unfinished cup of coffee and an ashtray with a smoldering cigarette stub in it.
A black evening dress was hanging over the back of a chair. The room smelled of
perfume…”
And so, in Pushkin’s depiction of Charsky’s study, “there was none of that disarray…”
And in Bulgakov, “all lights
were on and they illuminated a complete disarray…”
But when Azazello telephones Margarita, the evidence
that Bulgakov is following A. S. Pushkin’s Egyptian
Nights keeps mounting:
“Margarita hung up the receiver and at once
something started a wooden hobble in the next room and began beating on the
door. Margarita thrust open the door and a floorbrush with its bristles up,
dancing flew into the bedroom. The end of the stick was drum-beating on the
floor, kicking and aiming for the window. Margarita squealed with delight and
mounted the floorbrush...”
And in A. S. Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights:
“There was none of that disarray
which betrays the presence of the Muse and the absence of a broom and a brush.”
In other words, disarray points to the presence
of the Muse. And that Muse is Margarita, whose prototype is the Russian
poetess Marina Tsvetaeva.
Awesome!
In her memoirs of Andrei Bely, titled Captive Spirit, Marina Tsvetaeva writes
about her meeting with Bely’s fiancée Asya Turgeneva:
“And what a wondrous name you
have. (Questioningly. And your name
is really Marina, and not Maria? Marina: of the Sea. Do you smoke? (Without
a word I hand her my cigarette holder.) She
smokes, and her eyes are green, and she is Of-The-Sea…”
Marina Tsvetaeva’s daughter wrote that her mother “was smoking papirosa cigarettes in Russia which she filled
[with tobacco] by herself.” Bulgakov probably knew that, hence in the 20th
chapter of Master and Margarita:
Azazello’s Cream Bulgakov has lines about “a box
of cigarettes crushed in agitation” and “an
ashtray with a smoldering cigarette stub in it.”
Not only the heroine of Master and Margarita, but master as well, have something from A. S.
Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights in them. –
“One morning, Charsky felt that happy
disposition of soul, when the illusions are represented in their brightest
colors, when vivid, unexpected words present themselves for the incarnation of
one’s visions, when verses flow easily from the pen, and sonorous rhythms fly
to meet harmonious thoughts. Charsky was mentally plunged into a sweet oblivion,
and the world and the trifles of the world and his own particular whims no longer
existed for him. He was writing poetry.
Suddenly the door of his study creaked, and
a stranger’s head appeared. Charsky gave a sudden start and frowned.
“Who
is there? He asked with vexation, inwardly cursing his servants, who were
never in the anteroom when they were needed.
The stranger entered. He was tall and lean
and appeared to be about thirty years of age. The features of his swarthy face
were very expressive: his pale, lofty forehead, shaded by dark locks of hair,
his black, sparkling eyes, aquiline nose, and thick beard surrounding his
sunken, tawny cheeks, indicated him to be a foreigner. He was attired in a
black dress-coat, already whitened at the seams, and summer trousers (although
the season was well into the autumn); under his tattered black cravat, upon a
yellowish shirt-front, glittered a false diamond; his shaggy hat seemed to have
seen rain and bad weather. Meeting such a man in the woods, you would have
taken him for a robber; in society – for a political conspirator; in an anteroom
– for a charlatan, a seller of elixirs and arsenic…”
And in Bulgakov’s 13th chapter The Appearance of The Hero:
“Sleep was crouching toward Ivan, and he already imagined both a
palm on an elephant leg and a cat walking past him, not a scary one but a merry
one; in other words, sleep was just about to cover Ivan, when suddenly the
barred screen door moved sideways noiselessly, and a mysterious figure
materialized on the balcony, hiding from the moonlight, and warning Ivan with
his finger, whispering: Tss!..”
Cautiously peeping inside from the balcony, was a clean-shaven,
dark-haired man of about 38 years of age with a sharp nose, alarmed eyes, and a
tuft of hair hanging down his forehead.”
Charsky calls his uninvited guest a “stranger,”
whereas Bulgakov calls him an “unknown,” which means essentially the same both
in English and in Russian.
If in Pushkin, “a pale, lofty
forehead is shaded by dark locks of hair,” in Bulgakov, “a tuft of hair is hanging down [master’s] forehead.” I
would say that these descriptions are pretty similar. One cannot imagine such
an absurdity as Bulgakov taking Pushkin’s description of the Italian word for
word to apply to his master. Bulgakov’s goal was to play a game of “Get It?”
with the researcher, whether or not the researcher would guess that Pushkin is prominently
present in the novel Master and Margarita.
Although Bulgakov never wrote anything like “an unknown head appeared,” but
only that someone “was peeping into the room from the balcony,” the result is
all the same. No one can “peep inside” a room with anything but his head.
The reader must have noticed already that Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights end with a severed head:
“...I
swear that under the sword of death
The
lucky men’s head shall roll.”
A second coincidence is the conversation
between Charsky and his guest, the impoverished Italian improvisator. Charsky
is unhappy when the Italian calls him “confrere.” Having learned that he is not
a “musician” but an “improviser of poems,” Charsky regrets having been so
“cruel” with his guest.
In the 13th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero, in a conversation
between Ivan Bezdomny and his guest (master), when the latter learns that Ivan
is a poet, his reaction, unlike Charsky’s relief, is disappointment, even
though, as he confesses, he has never read his poems.
A third coincidence is in the use of the word
“robe.” Whereas Pushkin’s Charsky is dressed in a “golden Chinese robe girded
by a Turkish shawl,” master is dressed in hospital underwear, slippers on bare
feet, and a brown robe [sic!] over his shoulders.
A fourth coincidence has Charsky wearing a
“brocade skullcap.” Having learned from master that he had written a novel Pontius Pilate, Ivan Bezdomny asks him:
“Are you a writer? – the
poet [Ivanushka] asked interestedly.
The guest’s face darkened, and he shook his fist at Ivan, saying
after that: I am master.
He became stern and produced out of the pocket of his hospital robe
a totally soiled little black cap with the letter “M” embroidered on it in
yellow silk. He put the cap on, and showed himself to Ivan in profile and en
face, in order to prove that he was master.
To be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment