The Bard.
Berlioz Is
Dead.
Kuzmin Is In
Leeches.
Long Live
Bosoy!
Posting #14.
“The
bankers know:
We
are rich without limit,
When
pockets do not suffice,
We
stash in the fireproof [safe]…”
V. V. Mayakovsky. I Love.
Nikanor
Ivanovich’s dream is most interesting not for what he saw when sleeping, but
for the celebrities whom Bulgakov is hiding in the chapter devoted to his
dream. The identities of these celebrities will be revealed in this chapter.
It’s
time to move on to the person of the program
presenter. This is how Bulgakov introduces him in the 15th
chapter: Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream:
“...From behind the stage came an artiste in a tuxedo, smoothly
shaven, his hair parted, young, and having very pleasant facial features...”
The
word “artiste” occurs 22 times in this chapter. In the 18th chapter The Hapless Visitors it can be found 11
times, and in the 12th chapter Séance
of Black Magic just 3 times.
Considering
that in chapters 12 and 18 M. Bulgakov uses the word “artiste” in relation to
Woland [Satan], whose prototype is V. V. Mayakovsky, I decided to take a closer
look at the text in Chapter 15, to find out whom the author has in mind here.
And indeed, just a few pages later, I received another clue that Bulgakov is
most likely pointing to Woland’s prototype, that is, to the Revolutionary poet
Mayakovsky:
“The program presenter stared straight into the eyes of Kanavkin,
and Nikanor Ivanovich even imagined that light rays emitted out of those eyes,
piercing through Kanavkin, as though they were X-rays... I believe! – finally exclaimed the artist and extinguished his
gaze.”
Only
Woland had one burning eye. In Chapter 22 With
Candles Bulgakov writes:
“Two eyes were peering into Margarita’s face. The right eye with a
golden sparkle at the bottom would bore anyone to the bottom of their soul,
while the left eye was empty and black...”
Interrogating
Nikolai Kanavkin about the whereabouts of his hidden foreign currency, the
“artiste” continues lecturing him:
“Money – continued the
artiste – must be kept in the State Bank
in special dry and well-protected areas, but by no means in your aunt’s cellar,
where it can be significantly damaged by, say, rats! Really, shame on you,
Kanavkin!”
In
the Epilogue to his “tragedy” Vladimir Mayakovsky, the poet writes:
I was writing all of this
about you, poor rats [sic!]
I was sorry I did not have a
tit:
I would have fed you from
that mamma!
These days I ‘ve kind of
dried up. I am a holy fool of sorts.
But come to think of it, who
and where would have given to thoughts
Such a superhuman dimension?!”
In
the same year 1913 in the poem After a
Woman, Mayakovsky writes:
“Having scared off the prayers in the highest by the
hoof,
They caught God in the sky with a noose,
And, having plucked Him, with a smirk of a rat,
They dragged Him mockingly through the slit under the
door.”
As
for “State Banks,” in his satirical poem I
Love, Mayakovsky compares himself to… Pushkin’s Miserly Knight:
“Pushkin’s
miserly knight descends
Into
his cellar to admire and rummage,
This
is how I return to you, my beloved…
It
is my heart, I admire what is mine…”
And
before that, who does Mayakovsky compare his beloved to? –
“By
myself I won’t be able to carry a grand piano
(Even less a fireproof safe),
And if it’s not a safe, not a
grand piano,
Then would I be someone
To carry my heart, having
taken it back…”
So,
who is Mayakovsky trying to take his heart back from? From a beloved whom he
has compared to a State Bank?
There’s
some love for you!
“The
bankers know:
We
are rich without limit,
When
pockets do not suffice,
We
stash in the fireproof [safe]…”
Total
mockery of his “beloved” immediately follows:
I
have stashed my love for you
As
a treasure in the iron [safe],
I
walk around, happy like Croesus…”
Here
Mayakovsky does not even disguise his disdain for his “beloved.” Who is she,
anyway? The reader will find her, who made him, that is, was good for, “some 15
rubles of lyrical frippery” in my chapter The
Lion And The Servant Maiden,
I
am quoting Mayakovsky’s poem because the lines about the bank and about
Pushkin’s Miserly Knight make it
clear that the prototype of the “artiste” in the 15th chapter of Master and Margarita is indeed the Russian
poet V. V. Mayakovsky, same as Woland’s.
And
if this proof were not enough, I have this armor-piercing opening of the 1929
poem Beauties: Meditations at the Opening
of Grand-Opéra. –
“Corkscrewed
into a tuxedo,
Clean-shaven
to perfection,
I
am strolling like a grandee
Around
this Grand this Opera...”
And
in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
here is the first appearance of the “artiste” onstage:
“...From behind the stage came an artiste in a tuxedo, smoothly
shaven, his hair parted, young, and having very pleasant facial features...”
There
can be no doubt that the “artiste” in the 15th chapter of Master and Margarita is indeed Woland’s
prototype the heartthrob V. V. Mayakovsky.
To
be continued...
***
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