Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Posting #2.
“In
our wandering
Fishermen’s
fraternities
They
dance, not weep,
They
drink, not weep,
With
their hot blood
They
pay – not weep…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. The Poem of the End.
As for M. A. Bulgakov and his use of Marina
Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End, it all
becomes clear that the character of Margarita is drawn with the help of her
prototype’s (that is, Marina Tsvetaeva’s) material.
This is how we can explain Margarita’s “blood mantle”:
“Love
is flesh and blood.
A flower watered with own
blood…”
Also clearer becomes the poisoning with wine in order
to transmigrate the souls from the dead bodies of master in the psychiatric
clinic and Margarita in the mansion.
Marina Tsvetaeva writes in The Poem of the End that her lover [Andrei Bely] tells her at their
parting:
“I
didn’t want this. Not this.”
Marina Tsvetaeva adds from herself in parentheses:
“(Silently:
listen!
To desire – is the business
of the bodies.
And we are souls for each
other
From now on…)”
Further in Tsvetaeva comes a revelation. I never
thought that with her help I would be able to solve M. A. Bulgakov’s puzzle in
chapter 30 of Master and Margarita.
Having returned with master to his basement apartment
and hosting Azazello, sent to them, Margarita exclaims:
“Ah,
how happy am i! I.ve never been happier than this in my whole life! But do
forgive me, Azazello, for my nakedness!”
Azazello asked Margarita not to be concerned about it,
reassuring her that he had seen not only plenty of naked women, but also women
with their skin flayed [sic!].
Bulgakov takes this from Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End, also using the fact
that the prototypes of Margarita (Marina Tsvetaeva) and Azazello (Sergei
Yesenin) had known each other. They were also well familiar with each other’s
poetry.
In the 9th segment of The Poem of the End, Marina Tsvetaeva again writes about the soul:
“I am
no more than an animal
Wounded
in the abdomen by someone.
It’s
burning… [and here it
comes!]
As
though my soul has been flayed
Together
with the skin!
Like
vapor, escaped into a hole
The
notorious foolish heresy
Referred
to as soul.”
That’s why, pitying Marina Tsvetaeva, Bulgakov
transplants the dead Margarita’s soul from the mansion, where she is lying dead
from a heart attack, just in time for Azazello to snatch her soul on his way
back to master’s basement apartment, into her new body, made by Woland, lying
senseless in master’s basement apartment. [See my chapter The Transformation.]
As for the fraternity of poets, Marina Tsvetaeva
writes about such fraternities in The
Poem of the End:
“In
our wandering
Fishermen’s
fraternities
They
dance, not weep,
They
drink, not weep,
With
their hot blood [sic!]
They
pay – not weep…”
Another allusion to the death of Christ. Also, using
the word “fishermen,” Marina Tsvetaeva points to the Apostles of Christ, who
were mostly fishermen.
“In
our wandering fraternities
They
die, not weep.
They
burn, not weep.
And another pointer toward Andrei Bely:
“…Into
ash [sic!] and song
They
hide the dead
In
wandering fraternities.”
Here in Tsvetaeva we find both the puzzle and at the
same time the answer. Andrei Bely called his poetry collection Ash: “a work carried to term through the
years, which was met by the critics merely as an entertaining paradox.”
This poetry collection includes poems of 1908, and
also a few dated 1907, according to Andrei Bely himself. This collection has
several poetic cycles, opening with the cycle Russia. In this cycle, I find the 1908 poem On the Rails.
Hence the suggestion of Marina Tsvetaeva:
“…And
I was hoping we would die.
That
is simpler! – So are we leaving?..”
And now she enumerates the death options taken from
Andrei Bely’s poetry:
“–
Your route? Poison, rails [sic!], lead –
Take
a pick!”
In the Rossiya cycle,
I also find the “lead” (that is, the bullet) – twice:
“The
hitherto shattered shoulders –
You’ve
eaten them, leaden welt…”
[Obviously, the scar from a bullet wound.]
In the same 1906-1908 poem Convict, Andrei Bely, being a symbolist, closes it mystically:
“…And
someone with a shooting eye
Blinked
from a cloud toward the East.”
The convict was chased and the bullets caught him in
the river. The following words point to that: “Foaming
the leaden waters.” In other words, the convict was killed by a leaden
bullet:
“…Now
silently over the wave
He
was bobbing with a yellow face…”
And in the cycle Cobweb
of the same year1908, in its very first poem The Cripple, Andrei Bely is writing about “poison”: “An acute poison on
the heart.” He is distressed over being called a “cripple” with
“ugly humps in front and behind.” He is also called a “spider.”
“…What
did my meek wife
Tell
them, looking down,
When
she was dying
Resignedly
over the flowerbed…
How,
languishing day after day,
She
was becoming increasingly sorrowful,
How
the ugly humps were
Lying
down in bed by her side,
How
unable to bear her lot,
She
was hiding a vial of poison…”
The reader has guessed it! Andrei Bely is writing
about an old man marrying a young girl.
To be continued…
***
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