The Bard.
Barbarian at
the Gate.
Professor
Kuzmin.
Posting #17.
“...Dried
up and empty...
Remain
forever mute...”
A. S. Pushkin. To My Inkwell.
The most challenging scene for me happened to be the
scene with the inkwell in the 18th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors. Bulgakov writes:
“Meantime, the sparrow seated itself on the
gifted inkwell and took a dump in it. (I am not joking!) Then it flew up and
hung in the air…”
Working on the present chapter The Bard, I continued looking through and rereading A. S. Pushkin’s
poems, where I practically stumbled upon his 1821 poem To My Inkwell. (I am not joking!)
Bulgakov uses an inkwell both in Master and Margarita and in The
Theatrical Novel – already in the 2nd
chapter: A Fit of Neurasthenia. (See
my chapter A Dress Rehearsal for Master
and Margarita.)
A 22-year-old Pushkin begins his poem with these
words:
“Friend
of an idle thought,
My
inkwell…
In
moments of inspiration
I
had my recourse to you,
And
called upon my Muse
To
a feast of imagination.
My
treasures
Are
hiding at your bottom…”
Pushkin is grateful to his inkwell:
“…The
quill wanders around the book,
Finding
without any trouble
Endings
for my verses
And
an assuredness of expression…”
Telling how he writes his verses with the help of the inkwell,
Pushkin has a request for it:
“…Times
of cold boredom,
Emptiness
of the heart,
The
gloom of separation,
The
ever-present reveries,
My
hopes and feelings,
Without
flattery and artless,
Do
pass them on to paper…”
M. Bulgakov borrows Pushkin’s inkwell, as the poet wishes
the inkwell to remind others of him, after his death:
“…And
when the bank of Hades
Will
take me away forever…”
[Pushkin uses the Russian word “Ad.” That’s where the monogrammed “AD” Abrau-Dyurso labels
come from, in Bulgakov.]
“…When
my quill, my joy,
Will
go to sleep forever,
And
you [inkwell] will cool down,
Orphaned,
in an empty corner,
And
will forever leave
The
poet’s quiet home…”
Pushkin expects his dear friend Chadayev to pick up
the inkwell after its owner’s death:
“...Dried
up and empty,
Between
two of his paintings,
Remain
forever mute [sic!],
An
adornment to his fireplace...”
Pushkin does not wish to be forgotten, and the last
words of his poem To My Inkwell speak
about that:
“Do
not attract the eyes
Of
the demanding society,
But
remind his friends
Of
the true poet.”
And that’s what Bulgakov does: he reminds. Everything
is simple in the Theatrical Novel:
“In that dream I was struck by my
loneliness, I felt pity for myself. And I woke up in tears. I switched on the
light, the dusty light bulb hanging over the table. It cast light on my
poverty: a cheap inkwell, a handful of books, a stack of old newspapers...”
But in Master
and Margarita Bulgakov writes: “a gifted inkwell.” Immediately the question
arises: Gifted by whom? The interpretation here is also very simple, and it
proves again that we are dealing with Professor Kuzmin’s prototype, namely with
V. Ya. Bryusov. Pushkin does not present Bryusov with his inkwell but bequeaths
to Chadayev, who is expected to adorn his fireplace with it. –
“...Dried
up and empty,
Between
two of his paintings,
Remain
forever mute [sic!]...”
Pushkin’s disposition notwithstanding, Bryusov decided
to “finish” Pushkin’s presumably “unfinished” works. In particular, he
“completed” Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights,
to which Marina Tsvetaeva reacts with indignation in her memoirs of Bryusov:
“…Alien by all his nature to mystery, he does not honor it, and
does not sense it [the mystery] within the unfinished state of a creation. Pushkin did not have a chance to do it, so I
[Bryusov] will bring it to completion. A barbarian’s gesture. For, in some
cases to ‘complete’ is no less, but maybe even more barbarity than to destroy.”
Quite justifiably, Marina Tsvetaeva uses the word
“mystery” here, which supports my idea in the narrower sense of the word, as in
his Egyptian Nights Pushkin portrays
himself both in the character of Charsky and in the character of the Italian
improvisator. This is already a split-in-two, which Bulgakov’s sharp eye must
have caught at once. If we now take the last (second) poem of Pushkin’s story,
it also becomes clear that the poet portrays himself in the character of the
third claimant to Cleopatra’s bed, the youth who buys one of the three nights
at the price of his life. Thus it also becomes clear that Pushkin is averse to
depicting the “mystery” of that
night.
To be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment