The Bard.
Bezdomny’s Progress.
Posting #3.
“Blow your whistle!”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
And
so, from the character of “Archibald Archibaldovich,” the Russian poet K. D.
Balmont leaps from the 5th chapter of Master And Margarita: The
Affair at Griboyedov, into chapter 8: The
Duel Between the Professor and the Poet.
When
a fight erupts at the restaurant between Ivan Bezdomny and the customers, no
one guessed that the prototype of the “famous poet” happens to be a truly
famous Russian people’s poet S. A. Yesenin.
Pity
no one’s guessed it, for Bulgakov has provided a thread for unraveling the ball
of yarn of the celebrities in Master And
Margarita and in other works of his. Yesenin indeed liked fighting and
brawls, especially when drunk. Bulgakov writes:
“While the waiters were tying up the poet with towels, a
conversation took place in the cloakroom between the ship’s commander
[Archibald Archibaldovich] and the doorman. You
saw he was in his underpants? – repeated the pirate.
– Have mercy… I understand it
myself. There are ladies sitting on the veranda.
– Dames have nothing to do
with it. It’s all the same to the dames, – replied the pirate, literally
incinerating the doorman with his eyes…”
[The
words: “incinerating with his eyes” point to K. D. Balmont, who wrote the
poetry collection The Burning Buildings.]
“– A man in underwear can be
walking the street if he is accompanied by the police, and he is on the way to
the police precinct…
– So what am I going to do with you for this? –
asked the Flibustier. The skin on the doorman’s face took a typhoid hue, and
his eyes became like dead. He hallucinated that the black hair, now parted, was
covered by flaming silk.”
And
here we do have a double allusion to K. D. Balmont, both through the word
“flaming” (as in The Burning Buildings)
and through the word “silk.” At the end of chapter 18, The Hapless Visitors, Bulgakov introduces Professor Bure, whose
prototype is the Russian poet K. D. Balmont. (See my chapter A Barbarian At The Gate.)
“Two hours later Professor Kuzmin was
sitting on his bed in the bedroom with leeches hanging from his temples, behind
his ears, and on his neck. At the foot of his bed, over the silken quilted
blanket, sat the white-moustached Professor Bure, compassionately looking at
Kuzmin, while consoling him to the effect that all of it was stuff and
nonsense.”
In
this passage, Bulgakov reconciles the two Russian poets, K. Balmont and V.
Bryusov. According to Marina Tsvetaeva, Balmont left Russia never to return,
without mending bridges with his “foe” Bryusov.
“And you, Marina, tell
Bryusov that I am not bowing my adieu to him.”
A
very nice gesture on Bulgakov’s part. As I already wrote before, the “leeches”
here represent the “vermin of poetry” (Marina Tsvetaeva’s expression), which in
1924 overpowered the Russian Symbolist V. Ya. Bryusov in Moscow. Having found
conflicting reports about the circumstances of Bryusov’s death at the age of 50
(Marina Tsvetaeva hints that it may have been a drug-induced suicide), I tend
to think that, like many other poets, he may have taken his own life.
Still,
through the words “incinerating” and “flaming” Bulgakov is, as usual, trying to
lead the researcher astray, considering that Bryusov had written the novel The Fiery Angel about his triangle
affair with the married Russian poetess Nina Petrovskaya, whom he shared with
none other than the poet Andrei Bely. [See my chapter The Bard. Genesis. M. A. Berlioz.]
Continuing
to describe the fear of the “half-crazed doorman,” Bulgakov writes:
“…The doorman imagined himself hanging from a ship’s [mast]. With
his own eyes he saw his own tongue hanging out, and his lifeless head fallen on
his shoulder. But here the Flibustier took pity on him and extinguished his
sharp gaze.
Watch it, Nikolai! This is
the last time…
The commander issued orders succinctly, clearly and fast: Pantelei from the buffet. Police. Protocol.
Automobile. Psychiatric Clinic. – And he added: Blow your whistle!”
It
is simply amazing that the very same prototype, namely, K. D. Balmont, in the
person of Archibald Archibaldovich sends the poet Ivan Bezdomny to the
psychiatric clinic where he is admitted by a physician on duty in chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As It Was Said It Was [by
Woland], reappears in chapter 8: The Duel
Between the Professor and the Poet in the person of the celebrated professor
Dr. Stravinsky.
But
is that so?..
To
be continued…
***
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