Alpha And Omega.
Posting #30.
“In front of the gates
of Edem
Two roses lushly blossomed.
But a rose is the emblem of
passion,
And passion is a child of the
earth…”
N. S. Gumilev. Two
Roses.
There
is a connection between the gardens of the City in Bulgakov’s first novel White Guard and the gardens of
Yershalaim in the Pontius Pilate subnovel
of his last novel Master and Margarita.
The
theme of the garden first appears in the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate,
when Yeshua [N. S. Gumilev] invites the igemon [Pontius Pilate] for a walk. –
“I would advise you, Igemon,
to leave the palace for a while and take a walk somewhere in the environs,
like, say, in the gardens on Mount Eleon.”
M.
Bulgakov also frequently mentions the garden adjoining both wings of the palace
of Herod the Great. He also mentions the “fig garden” where Yeshua had first
met Matthew Levi on the road to Bethlehem. But the most interesting description
of the garden adjoining Herod’s palace is given through an interesting device
by which he depicts the anger overwhelming Pontius Pilate when he hears High
Priest Caiaphas’s rejection of his request on behalf of Yeshua.
“Next, he [Pilate] turned back, threw a glance over the world
visible to him, and was surprised by the change that had occurred. The rosebush
heavy with roses was no longer there, the cypresses bordering the upper terrace
had vanished, so had the pomegranate trees and the white statue in the
greenery, and so had the verdure itself. Instead of those, some kind of brownish
goo started flowing, in it were embedded weeds, and all of it was moving
somewhere including Pilate with it. He [Pilate] tore the buckle off the collar
of his cloak, with a cold wet hand, and it fell on the sand. He was now carried
away, smothering and burning him was the most horrible of all angers: the anger
of powerlessness.”
This
is already so much closer to Gumilev’s 1908 poem The Gardens of My Soul from his poetry collection Romantic Flowers
“The
gardens of my soul are always fancy-patterned...
The plants in them are
uncommon like dreams…”
Like,
for instance, in Bulgakov’s same chapter 2 of Master and Margarita: Pontius Pilate:
“It was quiet in the garden. But coming out from under the
colonnade onto the sunlit upper platform of the garden with palms on monstrous
elephant legs…”
Meanwhile,
Gumilev closes his poem The Gardens of My
Soul with the following words:
“I am
not looking at the world of running lines,
My dreams defer only to the
eternal.”
And
in Bulgakov’s 2nd chapter of Master
and Margarita: Pontius Pilate:
“Immortality has come,
immortality…’ Whose immortality has come? This is what the procurator
didn’t understand, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him
freeze under the hot sun.”
And
also the last lines of Gumilev:
“So
let sirocco rave in the desert,
The gardens of my soul are
always fancy-patterned...”
However
in Bulgakov’s 25th chapter of Master
and Margarita: How the Procurator
Tried to Save Judas from Kyriath it is not a sirocco, but a hurricane that
is ravaging the garden:
“In that same place where around noon, near the marble bench in the
garden, the procurator and the High Priest had been having their conversation,
with a burst sounding like that of a cannon, a cypress broke like a cane...
Together with water mist and hail, carried onto the balcony under the colonnade
were broken off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and sand. The hurricane was
ravaging the garden.”
In
N. S. Gumilev’s poem The Gardens of the
Soul, the poet writes about “a maiden in the wreath of a great priestess,”
and asks “who would understand the hint of an ancient secret?” In Bulgakov,
however, in that same 25th chapter of Master and Margarita, having left Pontius Pilate, the chief of
secret service Aphranius descends the stairs from the upper platform to the
next terrace of the garden. Having left the palace on horseback, Aphranius goes
to the city to visit an acquaintance of his, who is Niza, wife of a Greek
carpet merchant.
On
Aphranius’ instruction, Niza steps into the path taken by Judas who has just
received money at the palace of Caiaphas. She arranged a meeting with Judas in
the garden beyond the city gates of Gethsemane. Being a married woman, after
all, Niza demanded that Judas wait for her until she goes into the garden far enough.
Bulgakov writes:
“…After the stuffiness of the city, Judas
was stupefied by the intoxicating smells of spring night. From the garden over
the fence poured a wave of smells of myrtles and acacias. In a few minutes
Judas was already running under the mysterious shadow of sprawling giant
olives. The road was rising up the hill. Judas was breathing heavily, at times
getting out of the darkness into intricately patterned [sic!] lunar carpets…”
At
last we come across the word “patterned,” closely similar to Gumilev’s, and
reminding Judas of the carpets he had seen at the shop of Niza’s jealous
husband. “There was nobody in the garden.”
And
so, Bulgakov uses Gumilev’s word “patterned,” but instead of the “great
priestess,” he has a rather loose married woman in the employ of the
procurator’s chief of secret police.
Returning
to the roses torn away by the hurricane, the researcher once again comes to
Gumilev’s poem Two Roses from his
poetry collection Alien Sky. But
first this quote from the 25th chapter of Master and Margarita: How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas from
Kyriath. –
“...the procurator is staring
at the two white roses drowned in the red [as though bloody] pool…”
As
soon as I realized that the two poets – Gumilev and Blok – are master’s prototypes,
alongside Andrei Bely, I understood that the two white roses are Bulgakov’s
gift to the two poets both dead within four days of each other in August 1921.
Rereading
Gumilev’s poetry, I came across his poem Two
Roses and immediately understood that it was this poem that gave Bulgakov
the idea to place two white roses in the red, as though bloody pool:
“In
front of the gates of Edem
Two roses lushly blossomed.
But a rose is the emblem of
passion,
And passion is a child of the
earth…”
Both
poets – Gumilev and Blok – were
religious men. They were also famous poets of the Silver Age of Russian
literature. They were published in many magazines and also published their own
poetry collections – in other words, they “blossomed.”
Many
poems of these poets were about love. As Gumilev further writes in his poem:
“…One
is blushing so gently…
The other breaks in crimson,
Burned by the fire of love…”
With
the two roses blossoming in front of the gates of Edem, Gumilev discourses on
the mysteries of poetry:
“…And
both being on the doorstep of knowledge…
Is it really how the Almighty
has judged?
Assigning the mystery of
passionate burning
To the rank of Heavenly Mysteries?”
This
poem by N. S. Gumilev partially explains why master, whose prototypes are both
Gumilev and Blok, does not make it to Paradise, but only to Rest.
To
be continued…
***
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