Who is Professor Persikov in Reality?
Posting #5.
“...And
I am sitting on the marsh. Blooming over
the marsh, never aging,
knowing no betrayal is
my purple flower which I call the night
violet.”
Alexander Blok. The
Night Violet.
The
idea of showing Margarita as a “niece” comes to M. A. Bulgakov from Marina
Tsvetaeva’s memoirs of Osip Mandelstam. Surely, Bulgakov could know about
Mandelstam’s promiscuity from other sources. Calling the wife of Colonel
Tsygalsky his “sister” [see my chapter The
God-Fearing Lecher], O. Mandelstam is giving himself away.
Marina
Tsvetaeva writes that “in 1918, in a corridor, when I
refused to shake your hand – you fuss, you mumble, tossing back your head but
blushing to the ears. I have some things to tell about your primuses and
sisters, but I am too squeamish!”
That
same night the niece from Saratov was banished from the apartment of the
Sempleyarovs. Strangely, Bulgakov writes about this banishment in chapter 27: The End of Apartment 50. Quite a
revelation! Isn’t it the apartment visited by Margarita herself?
One
more coincidence. Chapter 12 The Séance
of Black Magic closes with a march. Likewise, chapter 23, Satan’s Great Ball, closes with this:
“Without opening her eyes, Margarita took a gulp, and a sweet
stream ran through her veins, a ringing started in her ears. It seemed to her
that ear-splitting roosters were crowing, that somewhere someone was playing a
march.”
If
this isn’t enough proof that Margarita and the niece from Saratov are the one
and the same person, only a bit younger, how can it be otherwise?
In
the 6th chapter of Fateful
Eggs Bulgakov shows Professor Persikov, yet again leading the researcher
off the right track, as he takes this idea from the Blokian Retribution, thus seemingly suggesting
that the prototype of Professor Persikov may be A. A. Blok.
“Not looking at anyone, noticing no one, not responding to
pushes and soft and gentle calls of prostitutes, inspired and lonely, crowned by an unexpected glory,
Persikov was struggling through Mokhovaya Street toward the fiery clock near
the Manezh.”
The
fact that Blok’s wife had left him notwithstanding, this excerpt already
contains two articles of proof that Professor Persikov’s prototype in the
novella Fateful Eggs is not Blok, but
the Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov.
Proof
#1 is the use of the word “glory.” In her memoirs of Bryusov, Marina Tsvetaeva
writes:
“Passion for glory… Bryusov alone thirsted for glory. This ‘Stone
Guest’ was a lover of glory.”
Proof
#2. Like a “fiery stove” there is a “fiery clock,” pointing to Bryusov’s novel The Fiery Angel.
However,
the picture itself comes from Blok:
“You
wander, wander no end.
Among
the sick and lecherous crowds,
There
is no longer any feeling or a thought,
The
empty eyes have no more shine,
As
though the heart, from all the wanderings,
Has
aged by ten years…
Now
a lantern drops its shy light…
Like
a woman from behind the corner.
Now
someone crawls up obsequiously,
And
the heart is squeezed in a hurry
By
an inexpressible anguish…”
As
for the description of Professor Persikov’s Institute in chapter 3, it is also
influenced by Blok’s works, as well as by his articles about the state of
Russian literature in his time. (See my chapters Who is Who in Master and The
Garden: Caiaphas.)
Bulgakov
writes:
“Inside the scientist’s study, hell knows what was going on.
Tadpoles were crawling out of the study all around the Institute. In the
terraria and simply on the floor, in all nooks and corners, vociferous choirs
were howling, like they were in a marsh.”
In
his poem Night Violet: A Dream (1906),
Alexander Blok writes:
“The
evening city was left behind me…
Where the sky, tired of
covering
The actions and thoughts of
my fellow citizens,
Fell into a marsh…”
In
the course of reading this poem, it becomes clear that Blok is writing about “a forgotten country
Which is called Night Violet.”
Blok’s
idea comes from Pushkin’s excerpt from the poem Bova. (About Bova, see my chapter The Bard. Genesis. Berlioz.) In this poem Tsar Dodon has called a
council to discuss how to make short shrift of the Korolevich Bova. Dodon (an allegory
of Napoleon) has assembled for this meeting “bearded men.” The brave Mirovzor
came, and Polkan, and the white-haired Arzamor, and Gromoburya…”
And
this is what they decided: “You don’t need Bova. To hell with the Korolevich!”
“Bova”
here is an allegory of the young Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who defeated
Napoleon following the French invasion of Russia in 1812 against the better
judgment of Napoleon’s foremost adviser Talleyrand, one of the greatest
political minds in history.
Taking
Pushkin’s poem Bova as his model,
Blok builds his story about Pushkin, calling it Night Violet. [See my chapter Who
is Who in Master.]
“…On
and on – the Princess is noiselessly spinning,
Lowering her parted hair over
her work.
Intoxicating us with sweet
sleep,
Making us drink the potion of
the marshes,
Enveloping us in a nighttime
fairytale,
While she herself is blooming
and blooming,
And the Violet breathes in
the marshes,
And the spinning wheel keeps
spinning noiselessly,
Spinning on and on and on…”
Strange
as it may seem, Blok calls poetry a “marsh.” He liked to be alone when he was
working. It was then that his “spinning wheel kept spinning noiselessly, Spinning on and on
and on” in the poet’s solitude. “And I am sitting on the marsh” – writes Blok. – “Blooming over the
marsh, never aging, knowing no betrayal is my purple flower which I call the
night violet. ”
The
“purple flower” is Blok’s finished poem titled Night Violet. Blok has just spent a productive night by himself,
working on his poem.
Blok writes:
“…My
town is left behind the marsh,
But the night violet is
blooming,
And its purple flower is lit…”
In
the 3rd chapter of Bulgakov’s novella Fateful Eggs: Persikov Caught
It, we find this:
“In all nooks and corners,
vociferous choirs were howling, like they were in a marsh.”
In
other words, many poets and writers of that time were singing in the same voice
on the same themes, without creating anything original. Bulgakov writes:
“The over-expanding marsh generation was eventually eradicated by
poisons, the cabinets were aired.”
In
other words, the run-of-the-mill literature of the time was of no interest
whatsoever, and its publishing stopped altogether. In a 1908 poem, Blok is
writing about poets:
“…Secretly
hostile to one another,
Envious, deaf, alienated,
What can be done! Each of us
has tried
To poison his own house.
All the walls are soaked in
poison,
And there is no place to put
down one’s head…”
It
becomes quite clear now why Blok liked his walks outside the city so much.
To be continued…
***
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