GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCIX

Guests at Satan’s Great Ball.

Posting #9.

“Revenge whelps bloody puppies…”

Sergei Yesenin. Pugachev.

When Bulgakov writes that Monsieur Jacques is a “dedicated counterfeiter,” he, naturally, points toward Pugachev. No matter how interesting S. Yesenin’s poem was, the poet borrowed its material from Pushkin. On the other hand, in the poem Pugachev [and how courageous a poet had to be to create Pugachev in verse after Pushkin used prose!] there is a counterfeiter present among the characters.

To one of the most interesting personages of Yesenin’s poem after Pugachev himself, namely, Khlopusha, belong the following words:

“…I was in hard labor and a convict,

I was a murderer and a counterfeiter…”

…As for the guest himself, Jacques, who came to the ball on a gibbet with a semi-rotten corpse dangling from it, it is Yesenin’s Pugachev who answers this question:

“Do you know that there is a rumor among the rabble…

That some kind of cruel guide

Brings the dead shadow of the Emperor

To the Russian expanse…”

(It is the shadow of the Russian Emperor Peter III, husband of the Empress Catherine II. Pugachev was impersonating the slain Peter in an utterly unconvincing attempt to legitimize his revolt.)

“...This shadow with a rope around its meatless neck,

Tugging at its dropped down jaw,

Dancing with its creaking legs,

Comes to avenge himself,

Comes to avenge upon Catherine,

Raising its arm like a yellow stake,

For the reason that she and her accomplices,

Having broken the white jug of his head,

Had ascended the throne.”

And then, Pugachev makes the announcement:

“SO LISTEN! FROM NOW ON FOR EVERYBODY

I AM – EMPEROR PETER!”

Thus Pugachev becomes a traitor to the State, and his violent end is predictable.

Just as Margarita is sitting on a bench in the Alexandrovsky Garden under the Kremlin Wall, on the same bench where she had been sitting with master exactly one year before, a funeral procession is passing her along the street across. It’s Berlioz being buried today.

It is most likely that Bulgakov introduces this scene on account of the following words of Pugachev:

“...Know that crawling into a dead name

Is the same as into a stinking coffin [sic!]...”

Bulgakov takes the theme of revenge from Yesenin’s Pugachev, where the poet writes:

“Revenge whelps bloody puppies…”

There is also a powerful scene in Yesenin’s Pugachev, when the imprisoned convict Khlopusha is offered freedom in exchange for the murder of Pugachev:

“Listen, convict! (this is what he said)…

There is this scoundrel, crook, and thief

Who wants to stir up Russia by a horde of robbers.

You can surely stick a knife in him?

(This is what he said, this is what he told me!)

And for this service you will find your freedom,

And silver will be jingling in your pockets…”

And also these incredible lines from Yesenin:

“It’s hard for the heart with the chandelier of revenge

To light up coarse thickets…”

Hence Bulgakov’s line:

“He lit the chandeliers, didn’t he?”

And now the death of Judas becomes clearer. Apparently, Afranius hires criminals, one of whom sticks a knife straight into Judas’s heart all the way to the hilt. [See my chapter The Garden: Judas for the prototypes of the two killers.]

Working on this material, unexpectedly for myself, I discovered the following lines in Yesenin:

“We’ll be attacking them with knives and obscenities,

Who is without a saber, strike with a brick!..”

When Berlioz tells Woland in the 1^st chapter of Master and Margarita:

“Tonight is known to me more or less accurately. It goes without saying that if a brick falls on my head on Bronnaya Street…”

– Woland replies [and here it comes!] –

“A brick never falls out of nowhere on anyone, authoritatively interrupted the stranger.”

Having written Pugachev in verse after Pushkin’s prose, Yesenin also had to be a pretty good alchemist. As his poem is extremely interesting and filled with Yesenin’s symbolism, I read and reread with great pleasure both this poem and his poem Land of Scoundrels, where Yesenin reveals himself in the character of Nomakh. This is the reason why Bulgakov makes Yesenin Azazello’s prototype in Master and Margarita.

Small discrepancies are possible if the main features coincide. Sometimes, however, it is the small details that matter the most. Considering that all the guests at the Great Ball of Satan come out of the personages of Master and Margarita and also out of their prototypes, I believe that I have performed a good job with the first guest. The main features here do coincide.

To be continued…

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