Alpha And Omega.
Posting #14.
“True, no one scorns
your shadow,
Man of fate!..”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Napoleon’s
Epitaph.
It
is quite possible that when Bulgakov unveils the portrait of Napoleon’s
vanquisher the Emperor Alexander I of Russia, in the novel White Guard, he may be pointing to M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Napoleon’s Epitaph:
“True,
no one scorns your shadow,
Man of fate! You are with
people, fate is over you;
Who knew how to elevate you,
only he could bring you down:
As for greatness, nothing
alters it.”
There
is a reason why A. S. Pushkin in his unfinished poem Bova compares Tsar Dodon, who has killed the lawful Tsar Bendokir
the Dimwitted, to Napoleon. –
“You
have heard, good people,
About the tsar who for the
whole twenty years
Never took off his armor,
Never dismounted his mettled
charger,
Everywhere he was flying
victorious,
Drowned the baptized world in
blood,
Neither sparing the
non-baptized,
And brought down into
nothingness
By the fearsome Angel
Alexander,
He is passing his life in
humiliation,
And now forgotten by all,
He is being called the
Emperor of Elba:
Such was tsar Dodon.”
Not
without reason, having armed himself with these two giants, Bulgakov writes the
following conversation between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua in the 2nd
chapter of Master and Margarita, titled
Pontius Pilate:
“So, you insist that you did
not incite the people to demolish or set fire to [sic!] or destroy in any other
way the Temple?
I, Igemon, incited nobody for
that kind of action. Do I look dimwitted? [sic!]
Oh, no, you do not look
dimwitted, – softly
replied the procurator, and smiled with some kind of strange smile. – So, swear that it wasn’t so.
What do you want me to swear
by? – asked the untied
[Yeshua].
Well, swear at least by your
life, – said the
procurator, – for it’s high time to do it as it is hanging
by a hair! You should know it.
You don’t think – do you? –
that you were the one who hung it[ my life on a hair], Igemon? If you do, you
are gravely mistaken.
Pilate shuddered and answered through his teeth: I can cut this hair, [you know!]
And in this you are mistaken
too – radiantly smiling
and shielding himself from the sun retorted the arrestee. – Do admit that surely only the one who hung it can cut the hair!”
And
indeed, it is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev who serves as Yeshua’s prototype
in Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate, and
follows M. Yu. Lermontov both in his life and in the works of the mystic M. A.
Bulgakov. Bulgakov introduces him not only in the character of V. P. Korotkov
in Diaboliada, not only in the
character of V. S. Lastochkin in Master
and Margarita and as Yeshua in Pontius
Pilate, but even in Bulgakov’s first novel White Guard, already in the 3rd chapter, as Junior Lieutenant
Fedor Nikolayevich Stepanov, artillerist, nicknamed Karas since his student
days at the Alexander’s School.
Let
us not forget that on the preceding page Bulgakov depicts a drunken party of friends
gathered at the Turbin’s flat. The word “smoke” occurs twice here, and the word
“fog,” which Bulgakov likes so much – three times. The word “smoke” is
understandable, in view of the smoking habits of the gathered men, although
Yesenin’s words in Memory of Bryusov
stand out:
“...We will
be able to blow Gogol and smoke.”
Which
is what Bulgakov is doing all the time. There is fog in the heads of the
partying group, on account of the consumed wine and vodka.
“Vodka, vodka, and fog!” –
writes Bulgakov, and also: “Fog was swaying in the
heads.” And this too: “Glaring in the fog are
the sassy words: You cannot sit upon a
hedgehog with a bare profile!”
Why
does Bulgakov need this? Naturally, to fog the brain of both the reader and the
researcher. So what, if a drunken company has gathered together? And cloaked in
this fog, Bulgakov starts highlighting the guests at the Turbin’s apartment.
The first among them is Victor Victorovich Myshlayevsky. The researcher may
have forgotten or merely have neglected to relate to this name the material
written by Bulgakov just one page before:
“...In cold sweat [on account of the dream he had just dreamed
about thieves], Vasilisa jumped up with a scream and the first thing he heard
was a mouse [“mysh” in Russian, as in
“Myshlayevsky”] with its family,
laboring in the kitchen over a bag of biscuits...”
The
dream about thieves turned out to be prophetic. Vasilisa had a hiding place
where he kept his valuables and money, of which he was rudely robbed by
nationalist “bandits.” We will return to this thought later on, but here I’d
like to note that with the help of the real “mysh” Bulgakov has posed a puzzle
about Myshlayevsky himself. I suggest the reader to solve it, but as for me, I
will be giving the solution in another chapter.
I
am now returning to the last of Alexei Turbin’s three friends: Fedor
Nikolayevich Stepanov, aka Karas, an artillerist. Bulgakov’s puzzle lies in the
word “Karas” (Carassius, Crucian carp),
which for some reason is missing from the “remarkable stove with its dazzling
surface” holding inscriptions both of the members of the Turbin family and of
the “tender and ancient childhood friends of the Turbins – Myshlayevsky, Karas,
Shervinsky.”
To
begin with, let me draw the attention of both the reader and the researcher to
the fact that Bulgakov writes “tender and ancient childhood friends,” who may
well be literary personages from books “smelling of ancient chocolate,” namely,
Natasha Rostova and captain’s daughter, as well as the authors of the books
themselves: M. Yu. Lermontov, aka Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky in Bulgakov, plus
V. V. Mayakovsky aka Bulgakov’s Victor Victorovich Myshlayevsky.
It
is amazing how right I was when I was visited by the thought that Bulgakov
decided as far back as in his young years to become a writer just because he
decided to write a book about Satan.
His
sister gives us a keen clue when she accuses him of “Satanic pride.”
It
turns out that even in his youth Bulgakov was planning V. V. Mayakovsky as the
prototype of his Satan.
To
be continued…
***
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