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…
***
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