Magic Of The Sorcerer Molière.
Posting #8.
“…What is Nature to
me, or the Antiquity,
When I am filled with a
burning jealousy,
For you have seen in all her
resplendence
The Muse of Faraway Travels.”
N. Gumilev. To the
Departing Traveler.
In
the poetry collection Pearls (1907-1910)
in the poem Captains, N. S. Gumilev
writes about the “ship of the Flying Dutchman.” –
“The
captain himself, sliding over the abyss,
Was holding his hat with his
hand.
His other hand, bloodied but
iron-firm
Was clutching the steerwheel…”
Gumilev
writes that although many tales have been told about the Flying Dutchman, ––
“…But
the scariest and most mysterious of
all
For the daring foamers of the
sea ––
Is that somewhere there’s an outer
region –
There, beyond the Tropic of
Capricorn!
Lies the terrible sea road
Of the captain with the face
of Cain…”
What
comes to mind right away is the “terrible road” of Russia’s borderland/outer
region Ukraine in the 21st century. Where will this road lead the
sad country this time?
And
also, in the 1911-1915 poetry collection The
Quiver, Gumilev opens his Iambic
Pentameters with the words:
“I
remember the night like a black Naiad
In the seas under the sign of
the Southern Cross…”
As
for the mother of Pontius Pilate in Bulgakov’s subnovel Pontius Pilate, Bulgakov picks for this role the Russian poetess
Marina Tsvetaeva, who is the prototype of both Margarita and Niza in Pontius Pilate.
In
her 1926 poem From the Sea, Marina
Tsvetaeva writes:
“The
mill, the mill, the sea wheel,
The sea grinds all – the
mammoth and the butterfly.
About it – a pinch of dust –
Not ours to grind!”
Marina
Tsvetaeva here seems to call the sea a “mill.” But not quite! She also has
another name for the sea: “Prekrasnaya Melnichikha [Die Schöne Müllerin],” as
in Schubert’s song cycle. The name is translated into English as “The Lovely Maid of the Mill,” but I am
keeping the original German name which contains the most recognizable
association for the non-Russian reader.
“Sea!
Die schöne Müllerin!
The Continents are merely
shallows of the sea.
Sea! I plead guilty in
advance:
I brought you so much trash!
I brought you so much
nonsense,
All that my tongue has ground:
A whole marine skirtful!”
It
becomes perfectly clear here that Marina Tsvetaeva identifies poetry with die schöne Müllerin, as she uses such
words as “trash” and “nonsense” pointing to some of her own verses as not quite
adequate.
Looking
at this poem by Tsvetaeva, Bulgakov slightly corrects it with the help of A. S.
Pushkin’s poem The Water Maiden,
knowing how much Marina Tsvetaeva loves Pushkin, and also in order to make it
more difficult to discern her in Master
and Margarita.
If
Marina Tsvetaeva calls herself “of the
sea” in her memoirs, emphasizing her name “marina” as meaning “of the
sea,” then she is also identifying herself with the sea.
Thus
it turns out that Marina Tsvetaeva herself is die schöne Müllerin of the sea.
Bulgakov
uses this idea to transform Marina Tsvetaeva into a miller’s daughter, and
having Marina Tsvetaeva confess that her “soul is monstrously jealous; it would not tolerate me being
beautiful…” – Bulgakov improves on it, calling her “the beautiful
Pila,” where the name Pila is obviously derived from “Pilate.”
As
for the expression “a wandering philosopher,” Bulgakov uses it to stress N. S.
Gumilev’s love for travel. Calling his Muse “the Muse of Faraway Travels,”
Gumilev writes in the poem To the
Departing Traveler, from the same poetry collection The Quiver:
“No,
it’s not that I envy you
With such a painful grudge,
That you are leaving, and
that soon
You’ll be on the shores of
the Mediterranean Sea,
And that soon you will see
Rome and Sicily,
The places so dear to Virgil…
I have had this experience on
several occasions
Over the Arno, honoring
Dante’s custom
Of writing sonnets to
Beatrice.
What is Nature to me, or the
Antiquity,
When I am filled with a
burning jealousy,
For you have seen in all her
resplendence
The Muse of Faraway Travels.”
As
for philosophy, N. S. Gumilev’s poems, different from the poems of most other
poets, may be justifiably called philosophical discourses. We also must not
forget that unlike A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, Gumilev was actually teaching
people how to write poetry, no matter how strange it may sound.
To
be continued…
***
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