Poplavsky.
The Drowning
Uncle.
Posting #3.
“I demand
a third shot!”
Nikolai Gumilev.
If until now A. Tolstoy was writing about Gumilev’s bravery,
I am now turning to the story of Voloshin’s cowardice.
Voloshin fully understood the kind of dirty trick he
had played with his invention of a Cherubina
de Gabriak, and was in no condition to shoot. Tolstoy writes:
“...Several seconds passed. There was no
second shot. Then an enraged Gumilev shouted: I demand that this gentleman shoot. Voloshin said agitatedly: I had a misfire! Gumilev yelled again: Let him shoot a second time. I demand it! Voloshin
raised his pistol and I heard the trigger’s click but without a shot. I ran
over to him and pulled the pistol from his trembling hand, and made a shot into
the snow. The hammer tore the skin off my finger. Gumilev kept standing
motionless. I demand a third shot, he
said stubbornly. We [the seconds on both sides] entered into a consultation and
refused [Gumilev’s demand]. Gumilev picked up his fur coat, threw it over his
arm, and walked toward the automobiles.”
Not only is the Count Alexei Tolstoy right in this
story, but also Bulgakov, who must have heard the story of this duel. In so far
as I have read about it in contemporary sources, the poetry world had taken the
side of Gumilev against Voloshin. That’s why in the 18th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, Bulgakov
shows Azazello giving a beating to Poplavsky with his own fried chicken,
because of his meanness and cowardice.
Describing Azazello answering the call of Kot Begemot
to deal with Poplavsky, Bulgakov clearly alludes to Voloshin’s fear during his
duel with N. S. Gumilev. Bulgakov writes:
“Poplavsky felt that he was short of air, he got off the chair and
stepped back, holding his hand to his heart.”
With these words “holding his hand to his heart” Bulgakov wants to
point out that because of M. A. Voloshin, another poet died, not “the only
one,” but “one-of-a-kind,” as Tsvetaeva says in her memoirs, which must be a
great praise to any person. He was N. S. Gumilev’s teacher at the famous Lyceum
of Tsarskoye Selo I. F. Annensky. He died from a heart attack, having been
upset and depressed after a literary journal removed his scheduled for
publication poems in favor of the fake and non-existent instant celebrity “Cherubina
de Gabriak,” invented by Max Voloshin in a hoax involving his protégé Elena
Dmitriyeva.
What remains to be explained is why Azazello “instantly gnawed off the chicken leg and stuck the cleaned
bone into the side pocket of his bodysuit.”
In the 19th chapter Margarita, the heroine of Bulgakov’s novel is sitting on a bench
when an “unexpected neighbor” joins her there. –
“The surprising thing about this fellow was
that out of the little pocket where men usually carry a handkerchief or a
writing pen, a cleanly gnawed chicken bone was sticking…”
To be continued…
***
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