Alpha And Omega.
Posting #39.
“I, Your Excellency,
wouldn’t be a buffoon not
only to a Prince, but even to
my Lord God.”
M. Lomonosov. Letter
to Count Shuvalov.
Having
written the material above, I decided to return to the 5th chapter
of White Guard where Nai-Turs appears
as an apparition in Alexei Turbin’s dream. –
“He was wearing a strange uniform. A radiant helmet on his head,
his body in chain-mail, and he was leaning on a long sword not found in any
army since the Crusades. A Heavenly radiance was following Nai like a cloud.
Are you in Paradise, Colonel?
– asked Turbin, feeling a
sweet trepidation never experienced by a person when awake.
In Pagadise [Nai-Turs always burred his r’s], – replied
Nai-Turs in a clear voice, perfectly transparent like a brook in city forests.
How strange, how strange! – spoke Turbin. – I thought that Paradise was a human dream. And such a strange uniform.
Let me ask you, Colonel, if you remain an officer in Paradise?
Them is in crusader brigade
nowadays, Mr. Doctor, – replied
Sergeant Zhilin. ”[More about him in my posted chapter Triangle.]
Telling
Alexei Turbin about Paradise, Zhilin points at the silent and proud Nai-Turs
leaving without a trace from the dream into an unfathomable darkness. Zhilin also
reveals a secret that he saw out of Paradise. –
“...And after him, slightly
later, an unidentified cadet in infantry formation…”
...Clearly
pointing here to Nikolka, Alexei Turbin’s brother. Having found himself in
Paradise in his dream, whom else could Alexei Turbin (that is, Bulgakov) find
there, if not his own brother?
Jumping
over all subsequent chapters of White
Guard right into the second chapter of Master
and Margarita: Pontius Pilate, I start thinking about Yeshua’s prototypes.
And now I come to the one who insists that he is “worthy of Paradise.”
I
am now thinking whether it is so. But of course it is! This prototype of Yeshua
also has a short story about Crusaders and poems of the same nature.
Conquistador.
A conquistador clad in iron armor,
I’m on my way, and happy are my steps,
Sometimes I rest in an enchanted garden,
Sometimes I bow to yawning chasms and
depths.
At times the starless sky breathes mist and
murmur,
I laugh and wait for dangers from afar,
I’m a believer in my lucky star,
I, conquistador clad in iron armor.
And if this soulless world allows me not
To triumph in life, and certain death’s my
lot,
I call for death, it’s coming willy-nilly.
I promise that I’ll fight it to the end,
And then perhaps with my dead, stiffened
hand
I’ll clutch at last that heavenly blue
lily.
In another poem A Knight With a Chain the poet writes:
“And
again I am a conquistador,
Conqueror of cities.
Once again I am walking over
cliffs,
And so that I remember every
feat,
I will attach a chain of
steel
To my silver helmet...”
As
the researcher can well see, the chain is made of steel in Gumilev, whereas Bulgakov
gives his Dark-Violet Knight (that is, A. S. Pushkin) a golden chain from
Pushkin’s Lukomorye.
The
same poet wrote the poem Gates of
Paradise.
“Not
under seven diamond seals is locked
The entrance to God’s
Paradise.
It does not attract with
glitter and lures,
And it is unknown to people.
It is a door in a wall long
abandoned,
Rocks and moss, and nothing
else,
Nearby a pauper, like an
uninvited guest,
And there are keys hanging at
his waist…”
It
is from this poem that Bulgakov borrows his own door “in
the black mossy wall completely fencing off the snowy pattern of the trees in
the garden.”
Only
in Bulgakov it wasn’t “Apostle Peter in tattered rags, pale and wretched, like a beggar.” It
was a “woman in black,” “half-falling into the wall,
stretching out her arms,” “her enormous eyes shining.”
***
Rereading
my subchapter A Tale of Two Colonels,
I found proof that Bulgakov is indeed showing the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev in
the character of Colonel F. F. Nai-Turs.
In
his Notes of a Cavalryman Gumilev
wrote about a giant hussar. –
“...A giant hussar
escorting some ten shyly huddling together prisoners, saw us and addressed our
officer: Your Honor, please accept the
prisoners. I’ll be running back there: there are more Germans left out there.”
As
for the name of Colonel Nai-Turs – Felix Felixovich, signifying “lucky” in
Latin. Freed slaves in Rome were frequently given the name Felix. This is also
a pointer toward Gumilev who in his poem The
Prodigal Son, in a conversation with two famous Romans: Petronius and
Cinna, calls himself “that squinting-eyed slave with the narrow skull.”
Curiously,
by giving Nai-Turs the name Felix, Bulgakov frees Gumilev from the latter’s
artificial self-proclaimed slavery.
Also
here Bulgakov is pointing to his subnovel Pontius
Pilate, knowing that Antonius Felix was the procurator of Judea after
Pontius Pilate. Also Tiberius Caesar had his own Felix, in charge of governing
his estates. And finally, the notorious Roman dictator Sulla was Lucius
Cornelius Sulla Felix.
To
be continued…
***
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