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 19th 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…
***
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