Monday, September 17, 2018

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXXII



The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #15.


…But my fearsome avenger wasn’t sleeping:
His visage was lit with wrath
During these nights upon a rock…

Alexander Blok.


Bulgakov gives the following words to master:

Don’t cry, Margo, don’t torment me. I’m gravely ill. – He [master] grasped the windowsill with his hand as though attempting to jump upon it and run away, and snarled, peering into those seated in the room. And then he screamed: I am frightened, Margo, my hallucinations have started again! The sick man lowered down his head, and went on peering into the ground with his sulky sick eyes.”

After Koroviev brought master back to life with three glasses, presumably of pure alcohol (but as a matter of fact, as the reader knows, the action is taking place at the psychiatric clinic, following master’s conversation with Ivan), it seems though, that master was given too much medication to quieten him down. His own memories are killing him, and master is gradually coming to his senses.
Blok writes:

“…I tamed with charm and flattery
Those who were the first to come.
But countless are the enemy forces!
Bristling with revenge,
The others kept crawling…

Bulgakov turns this into the words of Kot Begemot:

Me! -confirmed the flattered cat and added: It is gratifying to hear how so politely you are treating a cat. Cats, for some reason, are usually addressed as ‘thou’, although there hasn’t ever been a cat who drank with anybody to Bruderschaft.—
For some reason it seems to me that you are not quite a cat, replied master with some hesitation.”

But even this failed to impress the researchers of Master and Margarita, even though Koroviev and Kot Begemot were inseparable as befits the poets of the Golden Age, whom the poets of the Silver Age venerated.
Here, as I’ve put all the dots correctly, master’s words indicate that of the three prototypes constituting his character master’s prototype is Alexander Blok, because Bulgakov uses Blok’s poem with regard to flattery of which Blok is writing. (See my chapter Who is Who in Master).
...Aside from master, the “eyewitness” visited by all these hallucinations in the 24th chapter of Master and Margarita, Blok writes:

…And having left the guard at nighttime
I ventured into the enemy camp.
A fallen angel, I was met
In their camp, like a youthful god…
Like a beautiful nebozhitel [heaven-dweller],
Was I noticed by the Tsarina,
And I entered her chamber,
That same chamber that turned to ashes
Back on earth…

And so, master, his hallucinations notwithstanding, was well received by Koroviev (A. S. Pushkin), Kot Begemot (M. Yu. Lermontov), Woland (V. V. Mayakovsky), and Azazello (S. A. Yesenin). The Tsarina is none other than Marina Tsvetaeva, who happens to be Margarita’s prototype in Bulgakov’s novel. She meets master with tears and sobbing.
Even the last words I quoted about the “chamber that turned to ashes” [in this case the no-good apartment #50] is being used by the superbly sensitive writer such as Bulgakov is, when Kot Begemot sets fire to the apartment in chapter 27 The End of Apartment #50, whereas it is Azazello who sets fire to master’s basement and the developer’s building.
Meanwhile, Blok continues:

…But my fearsome avenger wasn’t sleeping:
His visage was lit with wrath
During these nights upon a rock…

Bulgakov’s “avenger” is Woland, that is, V. V. Mayakovsky who was deeply grieving the deaths of A. A. Blok and N. S. Gumilev. The Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva is writing about this in her letter to another Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev’s first wife. –

Dear Anna Andreevna!
All these days dark rumors have been going around about you. Let me tell you that your only friend, in my view (friend – action!) among the poets has proved to be Mayakovsky, like a stricken bull wandering around the Poets’ Café. Stricken by grief – he really had such a look. It was also he who sent a telegram through acquaintances with inquiries about you.
These days I have spent at the Poets’ Café in the hope of learning about you – what freaks they are! What wretches! What bastards! Everything is here: homunculi and automata, and neighing horses, and Yalta train conductors with lipstick on their lips…

Bulgakov used this fragment in his Theatrical Novel, but put it in his own way. It is Maksudov who sends a telegram to Bombardov in the 13th chapter I Perceive The Truth. Bulgakov writes:

“As Bombardov had no telephone, that same evening I [Maksudov] sent him a telegram of the following content: Come wake. Going mad without you, don’t understand.

(See my chapter Theatrical Novel: A Dress Rehearsal For Master And Margarita.)

Here I would like to note that Bombardov’s prototype is none other than V. V, Mayakovsky, whereas S. L. Maksudov’s prototype is A. A. Blok.
And also in the 32nd chapter: Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge, Woland is telling master this in particular:

Wouldn’t you like, like Faust to sit over a test tube in the hope of sculpting a new homunculus?

Returning to Alexander Blok’s poem which alludes to the famous Schubert song Aufenthalt –
In the 10th chapter of Master and Margarita: News From Yalta, Varenukha, having dialed the number of Stepa Likhodeev’s apartment –

“...Varenukha was for a long time listening to the thick buzzing in the receiver. Amidst these buzzes, from somewhere in the distance, came the sound of a heavy dark voice, singing: …cliffs are my refuge…

This is where the Russian poet Alexander Blok was expecting help from (he was German on his father’s side). –

…But my fearsome avenger wasn’t sleeping:
His visage was lit with wrath
During these nights upon a rock…

To be continued…

***



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