Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.
Posting #7.
“Rumble, New Bridge!
I hear how being born in your noise from
a charlatan father and an actress mother
is French Comedy…”
M. Bulgakov. Molière.
A
very interesting turn awaits the researcher in the 2nd chapter of
Bulgakov’s: A Tale of Two Theater Buffs. The two theater-lovers here are
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin himself and his maternal grandfather Louis Cresse, who
familiarized his grandson with the theater. “It turned
out that both the grandfather and the grandson loved the theater immeasurably!”
Bulgakov
introduces Molière’s grandfather in a very interesting fashion:
“And right here, in the light of my candles, appearing before me in
the opening door is a gentleman of the bourgeois type…”
Like Molière’s father
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, he was an upholsterer too.
And it comes to mind right
away that in the 22nd chapter of Master
and Margarita: With Candles, Margarita meets not just one or two, but four
theater lovers who themselves wrote plays, namely, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu.
Lermontov, S. A. Yesenin, and V. V. Mayakovsky, respectively Koroviev, Kot
Begemot, Azazello, and Woland. And the fifth – Marina Tsvetaeva herself.
Curiously,
the Prologue in Bulgakov’s Molière with its title I Talk to the Midwife echoes the title of
the first chapter of Master and Margarita:
Never Talk to Strangers, and thus, there is a strong affinity between the
opening titles of the two novels.
In
the second chapter of Molière: A Tale of
Two Theater Buffs, Bulgakov points to the presence in Master and Margarita of the Russian poet Alexander Blok, among the
plays he wrote is the 1906 play Balaganchik
(farce, fairground booth). This word can be found on frequent occasions in the
second chapter of Molière.
Also
on these pages we find a favorite word of Blok: “masks.” [See my chapter Strangers
in the Night.]
And
also pointing to Blok is the word “strangers,
unknowns,” prominently standing out in Blok’s poetry and of course in his
celebrated play The Unknown.
Also
striking in this chapter is the following paragraph:
“Rumble, New Bridge! I hear how being born in your noise from a
charlatan father and an actress mother is French Comedy, she screams shrilly,
and her rude face is sprinkled with flour.”
Apparently,
here Bulgakov has in mind the burgeoning Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, about to
become Molière, and his companion for
20 years Madeleine.
So,
how does that correspond to Master and
Margarita? In the 26th chapter The Burial, Bulgakov writes this:
“We shall now be always together, the vagabond
philosopher was telling him in his dream. Once
there is one, there is the other right there. They will remember me and immediately they will remember you! Me, a
foundling, son of unknown parents, and you, son of an astrologer king and of
the daughter of a miller, the beautiful Pila…”
We
are reading here about Bulgakov’s creation of the subnovel Pontius Pilate within the novel of Master and Margarita.
In
other words, if in the novel Molière M.A.
Bulgakov writes about the “charlatan father” Molière and the “actress mother” Madeleine as the parents of the
French Comedy, in the subnovel Pontius
Pilate he is offering his readers this puzzle: Who of the book’s personages may be the parents of Pontius Pilate?
Pilate’s
father, no matter how strange it may seem, happens to be Yeshua’s prototype the
Russian poet N. S. Gumilev. He is chosen by Bulgakov as the “astrologer king.”
He is a “king” because he is a poet. The idea that all poets are kings comes to
all significant poets of the Silver Age from A. S. Pushkin:
“Poet
– you are tsar!”
In
his poetry, Blok turns the tsar into the king. And so it goes. Why astrologer?
Bulgakov takes it from two sources.
To
begin with, it is Blok’s play The Unknown,
which is featured in my posted chapter Blok’s
The Unknown, but also in my not yet posted chapter The Magus, on account of its deep mysticism. In this play, Blok
features three main masculine personages: Poet, Blue, and Stargazer
[astrologer]. This is how Bulgakov gets his “astrologer king.”
Why
does the title “astrologer king” elude Blok?
Blok
liked to write about the stars, but Gumilev loved the stars, knew them, and
apparently was a dedicated student of astronomy. He also knew the legends
behind the stars and constellations. It was an amazing experience for me to
read Gumilev’s musings about the nightly sky in his Notes of a Cavalryman:
“…Sometimes we stayed in the forest for the whole night. Then,
lying on my back, I was looking at the countless, clear on account of frost
stars for hours, entertained by joining them in my imagination by golden
threads. Then I started discerning, as though on a woven golden carpet, various
emblems, swords, crosses, chalices, in incomprehensible to me, but filled with
non-human meaning combinations. Eventually, clearly outlined were the celestial
beasts. I saw how the Big Bear,
bringing down her muzzle, was sniffing out some creature’s track, how the Scorpio was moving its tail, figuring
out whom to sting. For a very short while I was overcome by an inexpressible
fear that should they look down and notice our Earth, it may turn into a
massive chunk of matted-white ice and fly in a complete disregard of all
established orbits, infecting all other worlds with its dread.
At this point I would usually in a whisper ask the soldier next to
me for makhorka, roll myself a cigarette, and with great pleasure smoke it
hidden inside my hands: smoking it in any different manner would allow the
enemy to make out our position.”
Isn’t
it true that although Gumilev is writing these lines about the nightly sky in
prose, they come out mysteriously poetic?
I’d
like to offer the reader a Gumilev poem from the poetry collection Romantic Flowers, which I am analyzing
elsewhere. (See my chapter The Garden.
Gumilev.) The title of the poem is In
The Skies:
“The
days shone brighter than gold
And
the she-bear night was fleeing,
Catch
her, Prince, catch her now,
Tether
her and tie her to your saddle…
And
then in the blue marquee
You
will point out the she-bear night
To
your Warrior-Dog.
The
dog bites in a deadly hold,
He
is brave, strong, and cunning,
He
has carried his beastly hatred for bears
From
times immemorial…”
The
she-bear here is obviously the celestial constellation Ursa Maior. And who is the Prince? He is certainly another
constellation: Orion the Hunter.
Same
thing about the Warrior Dog: Canis Maior.
Bulgakov
takes this Warrior-Dog from Gumilev and passes him on to Pontius Pilate as
Banga, the Procurator’s fear-inspiring giant dog. Even the intrepid and
invincible giant of a man Mark Ratkiller is afraid of Banga.
To
be continued…
***
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