Wednesday, September 19, 2018

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXXXIII



The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #16.


“…I am not hiding from you,
Just look at me:
I am standing among fires,
Singed by tongues of flames
Of the Infernal Blaze.

A. Blok. From the Cycle Retribution.


Blok writes:

...And the dawn looked into my eyes,
My meager day had arrived.
Only a flutter of wings sounded,
Someone dove into the sky past me,
Like an infuriated shadow…

In Bulgakov, the “infuriated shadow” is Woland in chapter 29 of Master and Margarita: The Fate of Master and Margarita is Determined. After the visit of Matthew Levi on the roof of the Rumyantsev Building, Woland orders Azazello to "fly to them [master and Margarita] and to arrange everything.”
And indeed, having transported the souls from the original bodies of master and Margarita into the bodies created by Woland (the originals died in the psychiatric clinic and the mansion respectively), Azazello is suggesting that they say farewell to master’s basement apartment.
Bulgakov writes:

“Three black horses were snorting by the shed, quivering, exploding the ground in fountains…”

In chapter 32 of Master and Margarita: Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge, the word “refuge” appears only for a second time, and only in the title of the chapter. Bulgakov calls the horses: “magical black horses.

Also Bulgakov is reacting to the following Blokian stanza:

“…I am not hiding from you,
Just look at me:
I am standing among fires,
Singed by tongues of flames
Of the Infernal Blaze.

These lines of the poet are rather referring not to master as a character in the novel Master and Margarita, but to the great master who wrote the novel Master and Margarita, having devoted his whole life to it: M. A. Bulgakov himself.
Returning now to the troika that allegedly flew out the window of the no-good apartment #50, one after another, besides master’s own testimony, admittedly caused by a hallucination, the researcher has another witness going by the nickname Annushka-the-Plague:

“Annushka the Plague for some reason tended to rise extremely early, but today something got her up even earlier before dawn, shortly after midnight. She was already on her way somewhere when from the landing upstairs after the banging of the door, somebody rolled down the stairs and crashing into Annushka, threw her aside, so that she knocked the back of her head against the wall…”

As I wrote before, Annushka was not a credible witness either.
The first to emerge from the apartment 50 was Aloysius Mogarych. “He was thrust upwards to where the glass in the window had been pushed out by Poplavsky’s foot, and through that window – feet first – flew into the yard.”
The other testimony is not consistent with the first one: “Azazello shouted: Out! – Mogarych was turned upside down and thrust out of Woland’s bedroom through the open window.”
Yes, these two testimonies contradict each other.

Next comes a certain Nikolai Ivanovich No-Last-Name, whose prototype happens to be the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. Having received a paper certifying that he had attended Satan’s Great Ball against his will, he vanished without a trace.
However, according to the testimony of Annushka-the-Plague, “the door upstairs pounded again, and another someone ran down, dashing past her, and like the first one [Mogarych], left the building through the window without any thought of crashing on the asphalt.”

When Annushka-the Plague dashed to the window the first time, expecting to see a man down below who had fallen to his death (Mogarych), with a suitcase at that. But there was nothing splashed on the asphalt in the yard down there.

Same thing with Nikolai Ivanovich, the man “with a small beard and a slightly piglety face.” Nowhere in the yard could he be seen either.
The third one, without a beard and in a tolstovka, ran down from upstairs a short time later, and likewise flew out through the window.
Thus, both these testimonies: one from the overmedicated and hallucinating master, the other from the gossip-mongering Annushka who had bumped her head against the wall, – have any credibility whatsoever.

What happened, though, was that in chapter 18, The Hapless Visitors, a certain Maximilian Poplavsky, an economist-planner, having learned about the death of his nephew Berlioz, had the misfortune of meeting Azazello who, having discovered a one-legged fried chicken in Poplavsky’s suitcase, grabbed the chicken by its remaining leg and hit Poplavsky’s neck with the chicken flat, hard, and horribly so that Poplavsky tumbled down the stairs. Having reached the lower landing, he pushed out the glass of the window on the next landing with his foot, sat down on one of the steps, then got up and ran downstairs.
He was already downstairs when he spotted a door leading to a maintenance room. The glass in this door had been pushed out.
Apparently, the glass had been pushed out some time before and never replaced. It was what Annushka saw. Having banged her head on the wall, everything was in confusion in Annushka’s head, paraphrasing Bulgakov’s quote from L. N. Tolstoy, who is included in Bulgakov’s novel as Varenukha.
And still, Bulgakov wrote some very interesting material both in the 18th chapter and in chapter 24.

Finding herself among these three men in the 24th chapter The Extraction of Master is Margarita’s maidservant Natasha. She appears on the scene right after Aloysius Mogarych:

How will it be your pleasure, my dear donna, to dispose of your retinue? Personally, I have no need for them, said Woland. Here through the open door ran in Natasha, naked as she was and threw out her hands to her.
Margarita Nikolayevna, my dearest, please, plead with them on my behalf! – She looked toward Woland askance. – Let them keep me here as a witch. I don’t want to go back to the mansion. I’m not gonna marry either some engineer or some technician! Monsieur Jacques himself proposed to me!
Natasha unclenched her fist and showed what looked like gold coins…”

Bulgakov writes:

“...Margarita cast a meaningful glance toward Woland. The other gave a nod. Then Natasha hugged Margarita’s neck, gave her a loud kiss, and with a triumphant cry flew out the window.”

To be continued…

***


No comments:

Post a Comment