“…Some Passerby With A Jug.”
Posting #6.
“…And now he spoke without any accent which,
devil knows why, now disappeared and now
reappeared...”
M. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
(Continued
from the previous posting…)
In
the 2nd chapter of White Guard,
Bulgakov offers Myshlayevsky’s portrait also during his first appearance in the
novel. However, because this is a portrait of a relatively young man, it may
not be altogether useful to the researcher.
The
first clue is Myshlayevsky’s “dirty shirt” which Alexei Turbin takes off
Myshlayevsky. Apparently, there is a “most dirty cambric undershirt” underneath.
The man has clearly just returned from the front. But the fact that Bulgakov
draws the reader’s attention to it twice, shows that he was already contemplating
dressing Woland in a similar fashion in Master
and Margarita. Here is the passage in point from the 22nd
chapter With Candles:
“Woland was
spreading himself all over the bed; he was dressed only in a long nightshirt which
was dirty and patched up on the left shoulder.”
Of
even greater importance here are Woland’s eyes:
“…Her eyes were drawn to the bed, sitting upon which was he whom
the poor Ivan had just recently on Patriarch Ponds been trying to convince that
the devil did not exist. That non-existent one was now sitting on the bed.
Two eyes were peering into Margarita’s face. The right eye with a
golden sparkle at the bottom would bore anyone to the bottom of their soul, and
the left [eye] was empty and black, something like the narrow eye of a needle,
like an entrance to a bottomless well of darkness and shadows.”
As
for V. V. Myshlayevsky’s gold teeth, in the same 2nd chapter of White Guard, Bulgakov writes:
“Myshlayevsky was deathly snoring, showing three gold crowns [in
his mouth]…”
However
in the 3rd chapter of Master
and Margarita: The Seventh Proof Bulgakov writes about Woland’s eyes
differently:
“And I have come to Moscow
just this minute, replied the professor perplexedly, and only now the
friends made the right guess to look into his eyes properly, and convinced
themselves that his left green eye was totally insane, while the right eye was
empty, black, and dead.”
If
we compare the descriptions of Woland’s eyes here and in chapter 1 (“The right eye black, the left eye for some reason green…”),
they do coincide. Then why is it that when Margarita sees Woland in the 22nd
chapter With Candles, Woland’s left
eye turns black from green, the formerly black eye loses this color, but merely
sparkles with a golden spark at the bottom of the eye?
In
such a fashion Bulgakov confounds the researcher and also shows that the
devil’s appearance is all too changeable, depending on his whim. He also points
out that several Russian poets are present in Woland’s character.
It
is perfectly clear, though, that V. V. Myshlayevsky confidently marches from
Bulgakov’s first novel to his last, from White
Guard into Master and Margarita.
And if these two personages – Myshlayevsky and Woland – have a prototype, he has to be the Russian
Revolutionary poet V. V. Mayakovsky, and no one else.
However,
Bulgakov attempts to confuse and confound the researcher in the 7th
chapter of White Guard, as he
describes Hetman Skoropadsky, transformed by the “skillful hands of a German
military doctor” into a “German major” in such a way that “the whole head of
the newborn German major was heavily bandaged to the effect that visible
remained only the right foxy eye [apparently green in color] and a thin mouth
that only slightly revealed the golden and platinum crowns.”
The
sly Bulgakov writes about two reports regarding Woland’s appearance. “In the
first… the man was of small stature, in the second the man was enormously tall.”
Which is explained by Anyuta’s words about V. V. Myshlayevsky in White Guard:
“Anyuta pressed [her face] to the window and recognized the face.
Myshlayevsky was extremely close to her. The eyes even in the dimly lit porch
were splendidly recognizable. The right eye in green sparkles, like an Ural
gemstone, the left eye dark… He also became shorter in stature [probably on account
of his dress: student’s, rather than military uniform]…”
Yet
again a reference to the reports in the 1st chapter of Master and Margarita corresponds to the
description of Anyuta, who was in love with V. V. Myshlayevsky in the 14th
chapter of White Guard.
In
order to confuse the researcher in the 1st chapter of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov pretends
to offer some help to the reader:
“We have to admit that none of these reports was any good. To begin
with, there was no limp at all in the man. His height was neither small nor
enormous, just tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side
and gold crowns on the right…”
However,
all this confusion with Myshlayevsky’s appearance notwithstanding, there is
direct evidence of his prototype being V. V. Mayakovsky, revealed during the
card game at the apartment of the Turbins. No reason to get Hetman Skoropadsky
involved. This is very important because, having visited White Guard and Master and
Margarita proper, Mayakovsky appears in the subnovel Pontius Pilate, only nobody notices him there. The researcher
surely remembers Woland’s words in the 3rd chapter of Master and Margarita: The Seventh Proof:
“The thing is… the
professor fearfully glanced back behind him and started talking in whisper: that I was personally present through all of
this: on the balcony of Pontius Pilate; in the garden when he talked to
Caiaphas; and on the platform, but only secretly, incognito, so to speak. So I
am imploring you – not a word to anyone, and complete secrecy! Tss!”
Reading
this excerpt again, I noted the following words, as Berlioz raises an objection
to Woland’s story:
“I am afraid that nikto [no
one] can corroborate that what you have told us happened in reality.
Oh, no! Kto can prove
it…” – the professor
responded with great assurance [And here it comes!], starting to speak in a
broken language, and suddenly mysteriously beckoned both friends closer to
himself… And now he spoke without any accent which devil knows why now
disappeared and now reappeared...”
Thus
Bulgakov himself is sending the researcher to the 2nd chapter Pontius Pilate, which I then decided to
reread under the language angle.
When
Yeshua was brought to Pilate, the procurator was the first to speak in Aramaic.
Apparently, Yeshua answered also in Aramaic.
Having
summoned the Centurion Ratkiller, Pilate addressed him in Latin, which the
centurion must have known well, being a Roman. At the same time, Ratkiller
spoke Aramaic to Yeshua with an accent, poorly articulating Aramaic words.
Using
the word “with a nasal twang,” Bulgakov tries to send the researcher toward the
Azazello character. But I have already revealed Azazello’s prototype as the
Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. An interesting picture emerges. Yesenin is the
prototype of two characters in Master and
Margarita, namely, the poet Ivan Bezdomny and the demon Azazello. By the
same token, V. V. Mayakovsky happens to be the prototype of the poet Ryukhin
and the devil Woland, plus Mark Ratkiller. Woland is naturally far more ancient
than Ratkiller. Being Satan, he obviously can speak any language as if he had
created them all.
Then
why would Woland’s accent now appear now disappear? Obviously, Woland could not
be present at Christ’s Crucifixion in his own image, for which reason he became
Mark Ratkiller. As Bulgakov writes in the opening chapters of Master and Margarita:
“The thing is… the
professor fearfully glanced back behind him and started talking in whisper: that I was personally present through all of
this: on the balcony of Pontius Pilate; in the garden when he talked to
Caiaphas; and on the platform, but only secretly, incognito, so to speak. So I
am imploring you – not a word to anyone, and complete secrecy! Tss!”
Bulgakov’s
genius discloses this secret with the words: “starting
to speak in a broken language, and now he spoke without any accent which devil
knows why now disappeared and now reappeared...”
Bulgakov
thus wants to show that Satan’s accent appears when he enters into a certain
role like that of the centurion Mark Ratkiller who speaks Latin but has a
difficulty with Aramaic.
To
be continued…
***
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