Alpha And Omega.
Posting #44.
“…His house is
magnificently decorated.
What chandeliers! What a china
set!
He has ordered a pianoforte
which can be
played on by a spider and a
night pot only
fit for a Spanish fly to relieve
itself on.”
From A. S. Pushkin’s letter to his wife.
And
so, Yulia Reise’s prototype must be a Russian poetess. But which one? I also
took notice of the following line: “…Alexei Turbin dimly
saw ahead of him, slipping close to the walls near the water drainage pipe, a
fragile black shadow…”
This
is how Bulgakov describes Yulia Reise, after which he calls her “the woman in black.” Apparently, this is where the
“black shadow is coming from.”
V.
Ya. Bryusov, who brought French Symbolism to Russia, wrote The Mirror of Shadows. Hence the infatuation of the poets of the
Silver Age with shadows.
I
found a “shadow” for the first time in Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry collection Secret Heat. Strange as it may seem, I
found it in the only poem of hers which I really liked at the time, reading
these poems for the first time. Marina Tsvetaeva is an extraordinary poet,
developing her own, unique style, and I needed to figure her out, which
eventually I did. –
“In
my huge city it’s – night.
From the sleepy house I walk
– away.
And people think: wife,
daughter, –
While I remembered one thing:
the night…”
This
highly unusual poem ends highly unusually:
“…Friends,
realize that you are dreaming me.”
And
before this comes the stanza which has been of the utmost importance to me:
“…There
is a black poplar, and in the window – a light,
And a ringing in the bell
tower, and in the hand – a flower,
And this here step following
– nobody…”
[And here it comes:]
“…And
this here shadow, and I am here – not…”
Awesome!
Bulgakov clearly uses this line in White
Guard. This 1916 Tsvetaeva poem is preceded by another poem, dated 1914: I Don’t Think, Don’t Complain, Don’t Argue:
“I am
a shadow from someone’s shadow…”
And
it is clear whose shadow that is. It is cast by the Russian poet V. Ya.
Bryusov, who wrote the Mirror Of Shadows.
Bulgakov points to that with the help of Alexei Turbin who, having learned from
Yulia Reise that Petlura’s cutthroats had been chasing him and shooting at him
because of an officer’s cockade on his papakha. Turbin then remembered “a dusty mirror… I took off everything, but forgot the cockade…”
Marina
Tsvetaeva writes: “And this here shadow, and I’m here – not.” It
means that she is asleep.
Having
brought Alexei Turbin into her home, Yulia Reise “ordered him to lie down, so
that she could say that he was her ailing husband.” Bulgakov does not say
anything about her husband, except that “he had left and mother wasn’t there
either.” From her intense demeanor one could see that the whole conversation
was unpleasant to her. No wonder. As the reader learns, she was Shpolyansky’s
mistress.
The
words of Marina Tsvetaeva from her 1919 poem The Comedian are very appropriate here:
“You
are not a fiancé to me, nor a husband,
Your head is in fog…
And as for loving the same
woman,
Let the hero of a novel do
that!”
And
so it is quite possible that Bulgakov takes Marina Tsvetaeva as the prototype
of Yulia Reise. This is apparently how Margarita was before she met master.
Tsvetaeva continues:
“I am
singing my lying blood
Inside my treacherous veins.
I am drinking to all my
treacherous lovers,
To all that are yet to come!”
As
always, Bulgakov’s answer ought to be found in a different chapter, namely, in
the 9th, that is coming before the 13th. Judging by the
description of the portrait of a man with golden epaulets, which so greatly
interested Alexei Turbin, this must have been a portrait of her father.
Bulgakov is writing about “an old portrait, dimly
gazing from which were touched by time epaulets of the 1840’s. My God, what antiquity! The epaulets
enthralled him.”
And
in chapter 19: “Ah,
it doesn’t matter. But I must come again into this strange and quiet little
house with the portrait in golden epaulets.”
I’ve
already written that Bulgakov takes his “little house” from A. S. Pushkin’s
letter to his wife Natalia Goncharova. But that same “little house” is directly
linked to Margarita’s prototype Marina Tsvetaeva, who wrote her childhood
“reminiscences” of Pushkin, calling them My
Pushkin. As the researcher already knows, Marina Tsvetaeva’s father was the
curator of the Pushkin Museum.
As
for Pushkin’s letter to his wife, I will quote from it here, to my sheer
delight. This letter sent from Moscow to St. Petersburg is dated September 30,
1832:
“...My affairs are in good shape. I see Nashchokin practically every day. There was a banquet in
his little house. They served a mouse dressed in sour cream under horseradish,
passing it off as a piglet. Pity there were no guests. In his will he bequeaths
this little house to you.”
Also
in a letter to his wife, dated 8 December, 1831, Pushkin writes:
“…His house [Nashchokin’s] (you remember him?) is magnificently
decorated. What chandeliers! What a china set! He has ordered a pianoforte
which can be played on by a spider and a night pot only fit for a Spanish fly
to relieve itself on.”
Thus
the word “little house,” while pointing to A. Pushkin also points by
association to M. Tsvetaeva, because of her beautiful childhood reminiscences My Pushkin. And where there is Pushkin,
there is always Lermontov, according to Marina Tsvetaeva herself, who writes
that poets always walk in pairs, like, for example, Goethe and Schiller. Thus,
it is most likely that the portrait was of Lermontov. I have a similar portrait
on my BVL book of Lermontov, and of course Lermontov was indeed a military man.
As
for the 19th chapter of White
Guard, it is here that M. Bulgakov on the one hand gives himself away while
on the other hand confuses the researcher into believing that master’s
prototype is none other than Bulgakov himself. Already in the second paragraph
Bulgakov writes:
“On February 2nd, a black figure walked through the
Turbin apartment, his head shaven and covered by a black silken cap [sic!]. It
was the resurrected Turbin himself.”
Here
is where the connection between master and Yeshua comes up. But as the
researcher already knows, there is nothing of the kind. Master’s prototypes in Master and Margarita have been three
Russian poets of the Silver Age: A. Blok, N. Gumilev and A. Bely. Yeshua’s
prototypes are those same poets, as my reader will find out from my chapter Who Is Who In Yeshua.
Having
written these two works, Bulgakov naturally created these two characters. More
power to him for that! Each Bulgakovian work has something of the author in it,
for Bulgakov is a genius. He is the only one who had the idea of either
enriching his personages with features of famous Russian poets and writers,
like he did it in his first novel White
Guard, using their biographies or works, or introducing the poets
themselves into his last novel Master and
Margarita.
But
what is also hidden in the 19th chapter of White Guard is its correlation with the 19th chapter of Master and Margarita, which has the
title Margarita. It is this chapter
that opens Part II of the novel Master
and Margarita. It is here that Bulgakov reveals whom he had picked as the
prototype of Yulia Alexandrovna Reise. Answering Alexei Turbin’s question, she
was partly honest to say that her husband was not there. “He has left.”
Yes,
the reader has guessed correctly. The prototype of both these characters, Yulia
and Margarita, is one and the same person.
Marina
Tsvetaeva.
To
be continued…
***
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