GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXIV

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #7.

“…Ah! How strange! As for me,

I can’t pull my feet away from the emptiness!

Like this!.. Or better still…like this…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. Memoir of Andrei Bely.

When the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov was eating the “flavorful juicy meat, he nearly choked on it [when] out of an adjacent room a large dark bird flew in and slightly touched the bald head of the buffet vendor. Having settled on the stone shelf next to the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl.”

The same thing happened to Margarita in the 22^nd chapter With Candles, when Koroviev was bringing her to Woland. –

“They walked among columns where they could hear rustlings and where something brushed Margarita’s head. She was startled.

Do not be afraid! – sweetly comforted her Koroviev. – Ballroom shenanigans of Begemot, nothing worse than that. And, generally speaking, I take it upon myself to suggest to you, Margarita Nikolayevna, never to be afraid of anything.”

But it wasn’t quite the way Koroviev explained it. Bulgakov writes in the same 22^nd chapter:

“Ai!, exclaimed Begemot. The parrots have scattered around, just as I predicted!

 And indeed, somewhere far off they could hear the noise of many wings.”

But this was not “the noise of many wings” when “something brushed Margarita’s head.” These were some kind of “rustlings.” The behavior of the parrots in the tropical forest also contradicts what happened to Margarita. At the ball, “red-breasted, green-tailed parrots were clinging to lianas, leaped from one to another with deafening screeches: I am entranced!”

It turns out that parrots are indeed very noisy birds. But an owl – a loner – may produce only rustlings. So it must have been an owl that brushed Margarita’s head with its wing. And it must have been the same owl that “slightly touched the bald head of the buffet vendor.”

The theme of the owl is closely connected with Margarita, but there is no Margarita as such in chapter 18. She appears in the next 19^th chapter appropriately titled Margarita, where the novel’s heroine compares herself to an owl, sitting under the Kremlin Wall. Bulgakov writes:

“Why am I sitting like an owl by myself under the wall? Why am I shut out of life?”

Here Bulgakov uses the word “wall” in order to point to the execution of the Russian poet Gumilev who was “put to the wall,” and shot by a firing squad. Gumilev is of course one of master’s three prototypes.

Bulgakov takes the idea of the “owl” from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Andrei Bely, titled A Captive Spirit. At the time when, following the death of Blok and Gumilev, Andrei Bely arrived in Berlin, Asya Turgeneva, Bely’s former wife divorced from him, appears at a Berlin café with a lover. This is how Marina Tsvetaeva describes the two of them:

“He must be madly in love with her!.. And see this mad love sitting in the [café] Pragerdiele, sulking like an owl and swallowing a yawn: How boring it is with her! Always silent, never talks, never smiles. Like some owl indeed… ”

Bulgakov introduces “clues” from the works of Russian poets, that is, he is leaving traces pointing to the prototypes of his characters. Sometimes he uses whole situations, like for instance in those same memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva:

“We are standing together, he and I, on the top of some kind of tower, I don’t remember where, only that it was very-very high. And he [Andrei Bely] in a swinging motion takes my hand, as though about to take me to a mazurka dance: Are you drawn to make a leap down there? Like this… (an infant-like smile) – Somersault-style! I honestly tell him that not only am I not drawn, but even the mere thought of it makes me sick. – Ah! How strange! As for me, I can’t pull my feet away from the emptiness! Like this! (He bends his body at the right angle stretching out his arms.) – Or better still… (bends backwards, his hair flowing back) – like this…”

This is where Bulgakov takes the idea of Margarita’s “flight” from. But is it really so? In chapter 21: The Flight, Margarita meets the Backenbarter. [See my chapter Backenbarter.]

I had to look through the works of A. S. Pushkin. Many of his poems were already marked with a small dot. I remembered something about a Cossack, there was a Hussar, an 1833 poem. The initial point of departure for Bulgakov.

Having been stationed in a new place, the hussar remembers the city of Kiev:

“So listen, near the river Dnieper

Our regiment was stationed, my hostess

Was pretty and kind,

And mark you, her husband had died.

And so I befriended her;

Well, no, I became jealous.

What could I do? The fiend must have tempted me.

I started thinking: why would she

Rise before the roosters? Who asks her to?

My Marusenka must be fooling around;

Where is the evil one taking her?

And I started keeping an eye on her…”

Feigning sleep, the hussar was secretly watching her, and this is what he found out about his Marusenka:

“…Holding a candle, she went into a corner

Where she took a phial from a shelf,

And mounting a broom near the stove,

She stripped stark naked, then

She took three sips from the phial,

And suddenly, riding upon the broom,

She whirled up the chimney and vanished…”

Apparently under the influence of this 1833 Pushkin poem, N. S. Gumilev wrote his own 1911 poem From the Serpent’s Lair, From the City of Kiev, in the poetry collection Alien Sky.

Meanwhile, Pushkin’s poem Hussar continues. The hussar has realized that his Kievan “lady” is an un-Christian alien and started sprinkling all corners with Holy water. –

“…And all pots, benches, tables,

March! March! – all leaped into the oven.

What the hell! – I thought, for now

It is my turn! And in a single gulp

I emptied the whole phial; believe it or not,

I suddenly whirled upward, like a feather.

Rapidly I fly, I fly, I fly,

I don’t remember and don’t know where;

I only yell to passing stars:

Hold to the right! – And I fall down to the ground.

I look: a mountain and on that mountain

Cauldrons are boiling, singing, playing…

And suddenly I see my Marusya running:

Go home! Who called you, busybody?

You will be eaten, here’s a poker,

Mount it and get lost, you cursed one!

I need a horse! – Here, stupid, here’s a horse!

And indeed: a horse is before me….

He leaped upwards, carrying me,

And we found ourselves in front of the stove…”

How simple everything is in Pushkin! –

“…I look: all is the same, as for me,

I am mounted, and under me,

It’s not the horse, but an old bench:

This is what happens sometimes.”

So how does this poem translate into Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita?

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXIII

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #6.

“Do what you want, quarter me, if you like...

Only listen! Take away from me that accursed one

Whom you have made my lover!”

V. V. Mayakovsky. Flute-Spine.

Having made an excursion into the theme of the Green Lady, I am presently returning to the theme of the window.

Having entered the anteroom of Apartment 50, Andrei Fokich is struck by its manner of lighting. Bulgakov writes:

“Through the multi-colored glass of the large windows (a fantasy of the irretrievably missing jeweler’s widow) an extraordinary light, reminding of a church, was pouring in…”

The fact that Bulgakov parenthesizes his own text: “(a fantasy of the irretrievably missing jeweler’s widow)” – poses yet another puzzle to the researcher. The chambermaid, whom Bulgakov for some reason is calling “maiden,” invites Andrei Fokich into the drawing room:

“Go inside the drawing room, said [Gella] as ordinarily as if she were attired in a proper human fashion. She slightly pushed the door leading into the drawing room, while she herself left the anteroom.”

This immediately raises the question: where could she go, a “maiden who had nothing on except a coquettish lace apron and a white headpiece”?

Although the description of the “maiden’s” dress is taken from a poem by Alexander Blok, the “maiden” herself is linked not to Blok but to V. V. Mayakovsky.

In the 1908-1916 poetry cycle Harps and Violins, Blok writes:

“In bottled-shaped high boots,

Pomaded with kvas,

With a new harmonica

He is standing under the porch.

On the porch stands the wiggly one,

Apron with lace,

Heels tapping,

Her face rosy.

My angel damsel!

Why are you laughing?

My angel damsel,

Let me kiss you!

– Look at you, why should I,

Unwashed muzhik,

Why should I, clean and white,

Be kissing you?”

Because of the behavior of the “wiggly one” in Blok’s poem, Bulgakov turns the “apron with lace” into a “coquettish lace apron” for Gella, and the word “white,” as the “wiggly one” calls herself, changes into a “white headpiece” in Bulgakov.

As for V. V. Mayakovsky, in his long poem Flute-Spine, we find the following lines:

“...And I instead, till early morning,

Horrified that you were taken away for love,

Was flouncing about,

Faceting screams into lines,

Already a half-crazed jeweler…”

This poem was written by Mayakovsky about Lila Brik and their relationship. If he calls himself an “already half-crazed jeweler,” Lila Brik was in his opinion not only “cursed” and “thought-up by a celestial Hoffmann,” but also a “jeweleress” as she was linked to the “jeweler” Mayakovsky.

Which is why Bulgakov, with his unique sense of humor, writes:

“[The maiden] slightly opened the door into the drawing room, while she herself left the anteroom.”

And two lines later, in parentheses:

“…(a fantasy of the irretrievably missing jeweler’s widow)…”

Apparently, the “shameless chambermaid” was invited by someone “for love.” I wonder if Gella left with a tap of her shoes, like the damsel from Blok’s poem. Bulgakov writes only that she had “golden slippers” on her feet.

While her “jeweler” was sitting “on some kind of enormous sofa, low and with cushions scattered on it,” his “jeweleress” – in the words of a Vysotsky song – left him for someone else:

“…I must have feasted her poorly.

An enormous cake stuck with candles

Withered with grief, and I myself dried up,

So with my neighbors and friends I finished up

The brandy intended for the Muse…

Years had passed, like people on a black list.

All’s in the past, I am yawning in wistfulness,

She left without a word, English-style,

But leaving two lines behind…”

Unlike Vysotsky’s experience with the Muse, Mayakovsky sees his own experience differently:

“I do not need you! I don’t want you!”

And he pleads with God:

“Do what you want, quarter me, if you like,

I will be the one to wash your hands, Righteous,

Only listen! Take away from me that accursed one

Whom you have made my lover!”

Bulgakov listens to Mayakovsky and removes Gella in chapter 27: The End of Apartment #50:

“…Flying out with the smoke from the fifth floor window were three dark silhouettes, apparently male, and one silhouette of a naked woman.”

Nobody had seen Gella after that. But there can be another explanation to it, can’t there? When Gella had slightly opened the door to the drawing room for Andrei Fokich, while leaving the anteroom altogether, she could just as well have entered another room, of which there were five.

So, where did Gella go?

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXII

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #5.

”Poplavsky tumbled down the staircase,

 holding his passport with his two hands.

 Having reached the turn, on the next flight

of steps, he knocked out the glass of the window

with his foot and sat down on one of the steps.

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

When master “cupped his hands and shouted so strongly that an echo started jumping over the desolate forestless mountains: FREE! FREE! HE [Yeshua] IS WAITING FOR YOU!” – Bulgakov writes:

“A lunar path stretched out, long-awaited by the procurator, and the pointed-eared dog was the first to run along that path. The man in the white cloak with red lining got up from his chair. It was impossible to make out whether he was laughing or crying, and what it was that he was shouting. One thing could be seen for sure, that he [Pontius Pilate] ran after his faithful guard.”

I had long been wondering what kind of dogs those were, Banga and Ace-of-Diamonds, until by sheer accident I found out that during Bulgakov’s lifetime a film came out in the USSR, titled Julbars, whose hero happens to be a special canine breed known as the East-European Shepherd.

In the 18^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, the theme of the window takes an unusual turn. –

“…Next the red-haired ruffian picked the chicken by the leg and hit Poplavsky’s neck flat with it, so violently and horrifically that the chicken’s torso bounced and flew off, while the leg remained in Azazello’s hand…

All was total confusion in the Oblonsky house, as was justly said by the famous writer Lev Tolstoy. This is precisely what he would have said in this case. Yes, all was total confusion in Poplavsky’s eyes.

Poplavsky tumbled down the staircase, holding his passport in his hands. Having reached the turn, on the next flight of steps, he knocked out the glass of the window with his foot and sat down on one of the steps. At this time, he could hear from below the cautious steps of a man walking up.”

(It was the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov, whose prototype happens to be the poet Osip Mandelstam [see my chapter God-Fearing Lecher].

“While the buffet vendor was walking up, Poplavsky ran down. Right near the entrance door, he saw the door leading to some kind of utility room. The glass in that door was knocked out. The economist slipped inside there.

At last there was the sound of a closing door on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Then there were the [little man’s] little steps [sic!]. A door opened on the floor below… The little steps died down. A woman’s voice. The voice of the sad little man… yes, that was his voice… He said something like: ‘Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake!’ Poplavsky’s ear was sticking through the broken glass. This ear caught something like a woman’s laughter. Fast lively steps coming down, and next a woman’s back flashing by. The woman was carrying a green oilcloth bag. She went through the entrance door into the outside yard… And the little steps of the little man [sic!] resumed… ‘Strange. He is going back!’ The sounds of the door. Little steps. The little steps dying down. A frantic scream. A cat meowing. The little steps [sic!] fast and punctuated, down, down, down! Poplavsky’s wait was rewarded. Crossing himself and mumbling something, the sad little man [sic!] flew by, without his hat with a totally insane face, his bald head scratched all over and his pants all wet. He started tearing at the exit door handle, in his horror having no sense of which way the door would open, to the outside or to the inside. At last he mastered the door and flew out into the sun, into the yard.”

Working on the theme of the window, I noticed for the first time that Bulgakov makes a special emphasis on the color green. And so, “the tiny elderly man with an incredibly sad face” has on his head “a hard straw hat with a green ribbon band.” Bulgakov writes:

“And so, having left the economist behind, on the stairs landing, the buffet vendor climbed up to the fifth floor and rang the doorbell of apartment #50.

The door was opened immediately, but the buffet vendor shuddered, took a few steps back, and did not enter right away. That was understandable. The door was opened by a young woman who had nothing on, except for a coquettish lacy apron and a white pin in her hair. She had golden slippers on her feet too, though. She was built flawlessly, and the only defect which could be counted in her appearance was a crimson scar on her neck. So do come in then, once you rang! – she said, staring at the buffet vendor with her green wanton eyes.”

And so, the green color is present on each of the three pages: “the green ribbon band” on the buffet vendor’s hat; “a green oilcloth bag” carried by an unknown woman; “green wanton eyes” of Gella.

The last thing is of most importance. Working on this subject I was already aware of Natalia Poplavskaya, a Russian poetess of the early 20^th century who titled her own poetry collection The Green Lady, probably as an allusion to Alexander Blok’s Fair Lady.

Secondly, although the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva had “green eyes,” we ought not to fall for this Bulgakovian trick. Bulgakov is merely pointing to Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir of V. Ya. Bryusov, from which it was that I learned about Natalia Poplavskaya. (See my chapter Guests at Satan’s Great Ball: The Green Lady.)

Like myself, Bulgakov figured out that Tsvetaeva was writing about the arrest and execution of the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev, in the section titled An Evening of the Poetesses.

Marina Tsvetaeva is also describing her manner of dress at that event:

“…And so, on that day, I was presented to Rome and the world [an allusion to Urbi et Orbi] in a green, something like an under-cassock, you wouldn’t call it a dress (a rephrasing of a better-times coat), which candidly (meaning: tightly) strapped by – not even an officer’s but a cadet’s, from the 1^st Peterhof School of Ensigns – belt.”

So even Marina Tsvetaeva, wearing green, is pointing to Natalia Poplavskaya’s “Green Lady.” She names Poplavskaya alongside the other poetesses 9 all-in-all in number, to match the number of the Muses.

It’s some very important information, considering that even in our present time it is not conclusively established who set up Gumilev, and Marina Tsvetaeva may somehow have got this information from her husband Sergei Efron, an intelligence officer.

She disguised this information masterfully as a fictional conversation between a “sable-tails” woman and a “deer’s-ears” man. But, I repeat, it was only a scene produced by her unique imagination. In reality, she either saw or heard something different… What superb detective stories could she have written!

I think that Bulgakov must have learned a lot from Tsvetaeva, not just used some material of hers.

Wherever Bulgakov uses material of other poets and writers, those poets and writers are present in some form in Bulgakov’s works, whether as a tolstovka frock, or a bumblebee, or a gold watch [Rimsky], or a squid [Blok], or horn-rimmed glasses [Mayakovsky], or an owl [Tsvetaeva], or a Lovelass.

On a number of occasions, Bulgakov deliberately confuses the researcher, like, for instance, with his use of the word “hell.” Supposedly, it should refer to K. D. Balmont, because he happens to be the prototype of Archibald Archibaldovich. However, the word “hell” refers to Mayakovsky…

As I already wrote before, in order to figure out Bulgakov, one must be familiar with Russian poetry pretty well.

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXI

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #4.

“She stretched out her arm as far as she could, starting to scratch the lower window latch with her feet, meanwhile shaking the frame. Her arm began to stretch like it were made of rubber, and was now covered by cadaverous green rot.”

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

Indeed, the theme of the window is playing a large role in Bulgakov. But it reaches its apogee in the next 14^th chapter Glory to the Rooster!

We must put everything in its place right away. In the person of the financial director of the Variety Theater, Bulgakov shows us none other than the Russian music composer N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Among his three operas based on Pushkin subjects, we find The Golden Cockerel. (See my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: Duets.)

Chapter 14 of Master and Margarita opens with scandalous street scenes in the aftermath of the séance of black magic. The reader sees these scenes through the eyes of a morally decent man looking out his office window facing Sadovaya  Street, namely Rimsky. Bulgakov writes:

“In the bright illumination of strong streetlights, he [Rimsky] saw a lady in nothing but a slip and purple drawers. Around this lady was an agitated crowd producing that same laughter that was causing a chill all over the back of the financial director… Then Grigory Danilovich [Rimsky] saw another lady in pink underwear…”

Rimsky was a moral man, for which reason he “hit himself on the head and jumped away from the window.” Having sat at his desk for a while, he decided to call his superiors. Bulgakov writes:

“Twice the upset director put his hand on the telephone receiver and twice took it off. And suddenly in the dead silence of the office the apparatus itself burst into ringing straight into the face of the financial director. A soft woman’s voice, smarmy and dissolute at the same time, whispered into the receiver: Don’t you call anywhere, Rimsky, or else it will be bad for you. Feeling shivers over his back, the financial director put down the receiver and for some reason looked at the window behind his back. Through the sparse and still barely covered with greenery branches of the maple tree, he saw the moon speeding onward inside a transparent cloud. For some reason drawn to those branches, Rimsky was peering into them, and the more he looked, the stronger and stronger was the fear that overwhelmed him.”

What follows next is the story of Varenukha, who came to Rimsky’s office with an evil design implanted in his head. As we know by now, Varenukha’s prototype is the world-famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. (See my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: The Lion and the Servant-Maiden.)

Having discovered that Varenukha wasn’t casting a shadow, Rimsky “looked back in desperation, as he was retreating toward the window facing the garden, and in this window, flooded by moonlight, he saw, leaning to the glass, the face of a naked young woman, and her bare arm sticking through the transom and trying to open the lower latch. The upper one had already been opened…

Rimsky was doused by an icy wave, but fortunately for him, he did not collapse… The girl was in a hurry and inserted her red-haired head into the transom. She stretched out her arm as far as she could, starting to scratch the lower window latch with her feet, meanwhile shaking the frame. Her arm began to stretch like it were made of rubber, and was now covered by cadaverous green rot. Finally, the greenish fingers of the dead woman gripped the head of the window latch, turned it, and the window frame itself started to turn.

Rimsky realized that his death had come. The window opened wide, but instead of the night freshness and the aroma of the linden, the smell of cellar burst into the room. The dead woman stood on the windowsill. Rimsky clearly saw patches of decay on her breast…”

(In order to learn more about it, see my earlier mega-chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: The Duets, and The Lion and the Servant-Maiden.)

The story of the window in G. D. Rimsky’s office continues in the 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita, A Troublesome Day, as investigators appear, bringing a certain remarkable dog with them:

“After some time, investigators appeared in the Variety Theater building, accompanied by a muscular dog with pointed ears, of cigarette-ash color and with extremely intelligent eyes. Immediately the rumor spread among the staff of the Theater that the dog was none other than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And indeed that was him…”

Isn’t it true that this dog strongly reminds of Pontius Pilate’s dog Banga?.. In such a case, he cannot be a Great Dane!

“...His behavior amazed everybody. As soon as Ace of Diamonds ran into the office of the financial director, he growled, baring his monstrous yellowish fangs...”

Indeed, Pilate’s Banga was feared in Yershalaim for a good reason. However, the procurator believed that the popular nickname “Fierce Monster” belonged to him, and not to the dog. But as the researcher remembers, even the Centurion Ratkiller, a giant of a man, was eyeing the procurator’s dog with undisguised fear.

Yet in the 17^th chapter of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov writes:

“…[Ace of Diamonds] then lay down on his belly, and with an expression of angst and, at the same time, fury in his eyes crawled toward the broken window…”

At first it seems that the scene described above does not conform with Banga’s behavior in chapter 26 The Burial. Bulgakov writes:

“…In the hands of the Centurion Ratkiller, a torch was flaming and smoking. The holder of the torch was watching from the corner of his eye, with fear and malevolence, the dangerous beast readying himself for a jump.

 “No touching, Banga! – said the procurator…”

But in the 17^th chapter Bulgakov writes this:

“…Overcoming his fear,[ Ace of Diamonds] suddenly jumped upon the windowsill and, raising his pointed muzzle upwards, howled savagely and malevolently.

He did not want to leave the windowsill, growled and shuddered and even attempted to jump out the window. The dog was led out of the office and allowed into the vestibule, whence he exited the building into the street through the front door and led those who followed him to a taxicab stop, where he lost the trail which he was following. After that, Ace of Diamonds was driven away.”

Bulgakov loves parallel realities, which in this case accounts for the dogs – Banga and Ace of Diamonds – being the same. Like Ace of Diamonds, Banga had his own share of fears. In the 32^nd chapter of Master and Margarita: Forgiveness And Eternal Refuge, Bulgakov writes:

“If that be true that cowardice is the gravest vice, then perhaps dogs are exempt from it. The only thing the brave dog [Banga] was afraid of was a thunderstorm.”

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXX

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #3.

“I would have died of happiness now,

Had I been privileged of such a destiny…"

Sergei Yesenin. To Pushkin.

Bulgakov has exposed Ryukhin’s prototype as Mayakovsky, but has concealed the fact that Mayakovsky is also present in Woland, as well as in a few other characters of Master and Margarita.

But if the researcher could easily figure out Ryukhin, other characters were by no means easy. At the end of chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, Ryukhin is talking to the famous monument of A. S. Pushkin in Moscow:

“That whiteguarder was shooting and shooting at him and shattered his hip and ensured his immortality.”

Bulgakov through Ryukhin’s rant is writing about the lethal duel between A. S. Pushkin and D’Anthes, in which the Frenchman hit Pushkin in the abdomen, causing severe bleeding and death.

However, V. V. Mayakovsky appears in the novel Master and Margarita also in the 5^th chapter The Affair at Griboyedov. –

“Then the words were heard: “Call the doctor!” and someone’s gentle fleshy face, clean-shaven and well-fed, in horn glasses, appeared before Ivan. “Comrade Bezdomny,” the face started speaking in the Jubilee voice, “Calm down! You are upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich, no, simply Mischa Berlioz…”

I am analyzing this scene and Ivan’s furious reaction in it in my chapter Woland Identity. Here, however, I will only say that by using the expression “Jubilee voice,” Bulgakov unmistakably points to Mayakovsky who in 1924, celebrating the 125^th Anniversary of Pushkin’s birth wrote his famous poem Jubilee.

Also worth noting is the fact that the Russian poet S. A. Yesenin, on his wife’s advice, committed himself to a psychiatric clinic in Moscow, on account of his alcoholism, and fled from it in order to end his life (in 1925) in then-Leningrad (now back to St. Petersburg), to be as close to Pushkin as possible.)

Researchers have not paid attention to the phenomenon of splitting, as they did not know how to explain it, but in fact, explaining it is all-too-easy. The word is mysticism.

For instance, I already wrote that while telling Margarita about the guests at Satan’s Great Ball, Koroviev was seeing himself as a young man. –

“Begemot’s example was followed only by the ingenious dressmaker and her escort, unidentified young mulatto…”

I already wrote that whenever Bulgakov is using the word “neizvestnyi” (unknown, unidentified), what he has in mind is a very well-known person. This is how Bulgakov identifies the “young mulatto”:

“...Both of them plunged into the cognac, but at this point Koroviev caught Margarita’s arm, and they left the bathers to their own devices...”

Bulgakov also leads researchers off the right track by such words as “poisoned by an explosion of neurasthenia,” so that they might think that Mayakovsky has become Maksudov’s prototype in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel. But the researchers have paid no attention to the “restaurant towels dropped off by the departing policeman and Pantelei… Ryukhin attempted to pick them up, but instead, hissed for some reason with malice: Let them go to hell! Why am I hustling like a fool here? – He pushed them away with his foot and stopped looking at them.”

In order to explain why Ryukhin “hissed for some reason with malice: Let them go to hell!” – we need to jump from chapter 6 of Master and Margarita into chapter 23: The Extraction of Master. The researcher here is dealing with Woland responding to Margarita’s desire to pardon Frieda and saying this sarcastically:

“I don’t even know what to do! One thing only is left to me now: get myself a bunch of rags and stuff them into every crack in my bedroom.”

Woland’s words surprise Margarita, to which Woland explains:

“I am talking about compassion, – explained his words Woland, never taking his fiery eye off Margarita. – Sometimes totally unexpectedly, it penetrates through the narrowest little cracks. That’s why I am talking about rags.”

Now it becomes understandable why Ryukhin got so angry. He had a feeling of compassion toward Ivan, even though Ivan was hardly in a welcoming mood, under the circumstances. Ryukhin was angry toward himself.

I also remembered that in the 16^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Execution, which comes to Ivan in a dream, while he is a patient in Professor Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic, there is a place which directly touches upon the theme of compassion:

“Ratkiller disdainfully looked askance at the dirty rags lying on the ground under the poles, which recently had been the criminals’ clothes discarded by the executioners, and called up two of the latter, ordering them: Follow me!”

And so three characters of the novel Master and Margarita show different reactions on the subject, but all three of them are connected to the theme of compassion.

Woland is thus testing Margarita. Ryukhin is angry with himself over the feeling of compassion. Ratkiller is a centurion and he has no compassion whatsoever.

Mind you, all three of them have a connection to rags. (In Ryukhin’s case, to towels.)

But the most interesting thing is that all three have the same prototype: V. V. Mayakovsky, and their connection to “rags” is clearly established, which proves that I am right in my choice of the prototype.

Only in the 13^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero, Bulgakov’s attachment to the theme of the window becomes quite clear. Bulgakov writes:

“I lay down on the sofa [an allusion to Blok] and fell asleep without turning on the light... I woke up with the sensation that the squid was there… [another allusion to Blok: see my chapter Who is Who in Master]. Feeling around with my hand, I was barely able to turn on the lamp. My pocket watch showed 2 AM. .I had gone to bed like a man falling sick and woke up sick. I suddenly imagined that darkness was about to push in the glass and pour in, and I would be drowned in it, like in ink.”

Amazing storytelling! Bulgakov’s mastery is shining through again, as he doesn’t use the word “window” because the word “glass” does not only suffice, but is also more poetic in this context.

As Margarita returns to master’s basement apartment, Bulgakov writes that “someone started scratching the window softly.” Why scratching?

I already wrote that Marina Tsvetaeva saw all poets as cats who walk by themselves. She took this idea from Kipling.

Promising to return to the basement in the morning, Margarita left master alone.

“A quarter of an hour after she left me, there was a knock on my door…”

Having returned to the basement three months later, master “was shivering from cold in the little yard…” In front of master and below, were weakly illuminated little windows draped with curtains.

Windows again!

To be continued…

***

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXIX

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #2.

“Head forward, he tore into the curtain of the

window. The crash was fairly loud, but the

glass behind the curtain wouldn’t give a crack.

 So this is the kind of glass knickknacks you’ve

 got yourselves here! Let go of me! Let go!”

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.

Next time the theme of the window reappears in chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said:

“The woman pressed a button in the small table, and onto its glass surface popped up a glittering little box and a sealed ampule.

Ah, so that’s how it is?! – said Ivan, with a hunted-down expression, gazing around. – Well, all right then! Farewell!!! – And, head forward, he tore into the curtain of the window.

The crash was fairly loud, but the glass behind the curtain wouldn’t give a crack, and a moment later, Ivan Nikolayevich was struggling in the hands of the orderlies. He wheezed, tried to bite, screamed:

So this is the kind of glass knick-knacks you’ve got yourselves here! Let go of me! Let go!”

It’s amazing, but in the process of my work on the theme of the window, I for the first time took notice of the fact that having come to the Griboyedov House to look for the professor there, Ivan was “redirected” to the psychiatric clinic. Bulgakov writes:

“The flabbergasted public not only at the restaurant, but on the boulevard itself, and in the windows of the buildings facing the restaurant’s garden, watched how a young man, swaddled like a doll, was carried out, drowning in tears, spitting with the intent of hitting Ryukhin, of all others…”

And all this despite being carried out by five burly men. And also, already later at the psychiatric clinic, a doctor asks Ivan:

“And why the little icon?

Well, yes, the little icon… – Ivan blushed. – It was this little icon that scared them the most. –Once again he pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin.”

Naturally, one can explain this by virtue of a certain animosity exhibited by Yesenin toward Mayakovsky, but a far more interesting way of explaining it would be by imagining Ivan’s intuitive perception in Ryukhin of the spirit of Professor Woland whom he desperately tried to catch, but never could.

Bulgakov hints at this suggestion through the words of the physician on duty:

“Schizophrenia, one must assume. He saw someone, perhaps, who affected his dysfunctional imagination, Or perhaps he was hallucinating…”

…How can we now miss the connection between the poet Sashka Ryukhin and the professor-consultant? After all, the two of them have the same prototype: the Russian revolutionary poet, a contemporary of S. A. Yesenin, namely, V. V. Mayakovsky. This is precisely what Bulgakov is pointing to:

“…It was this little icon that scared them the most. –Once again he pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin. – But the point is that he is the consultant, and let us be candid about it – he is in cahoots with the demonic force – and you cannot catch him just like that.”

There is a double meaning here. The point is that V. V. Mayakovsky in his long poem Flute-Spine did not mince any words:

“There I blasphemed,

Yelled that there is no God,

And God brought up such one from the depths of hell

That before her a mountain will get excited and tremble,

And He brought her up and commanded:

Love!

God is content. Under the heavens, in a wringer,

The exhausted man has become wild and extinct.

God is rubbing the palms of his hands.

Thinks God: ‘Just you wait, Vladimir!’

It’s to his, his [that is, God’s] mind came the idea,

So that someone would not figure it out,

To give you [witch] a real husband…”

Calling Margarita a “witch” in the 19^th chapter of Master and Margarita: Margarita, Bulgakov also gives Margarita “a real husband.” As for Mayakovsky’s words: “So that someone would not figure it out,” no one has really figured out the truth in the earlier passage from chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, that when Ivan “once again pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin: He is in cahoots with the demonic force,” I have deliberately omitted the word “consultant,” to make it clear what I have in mind. The poem Flute-Spine was written by Mayakovsky in 1915, and Sergei Yesenin must surely have read it. –

“If we were to sneak to the door of the bedroom

And make a sign of the cross over your quilt,

I know, there will be a smell of burnt wool,

And sulphurous smoke will come from the flesh of the devil.”

And indeed, Bulgakov’s devil (Woland) spends much of his time in the bedroom. It is in the bedroom that Woland meets Margarita. His bedroom smells of sulphur because Gella is rubbing sulphurous ointment into his knee.

Thus, in his poem Flute-Spine V. V. Mayakovsky confesses that he is dealing with the “demonic force.” Turning to God in desperation, Mayakovsky is pleading with him:

“Do what you want, quarter me, if you like,

I will be the one to wash your hands, Righteous,

Only listen! Take away from me that accursed one

Whom you have made my lover!”

Introducing into the poem the words: “I will be the one to wash your hands, Righteous,” Mayakovsky is alluding to the action of Pontius Pilate in the New Testament of the Bible, who was refused by the Jewish Synhedrion to set Jesus free and washed his hands symbolically, to show his refusal to accept responsibility for his death.

“Pressing the miles of streets under the sway of my steps,

Where shall I go, hiding this hell?..”

To be continued…

***