The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #9.
Who has broken my door bars?
Whom did you open the doors
to,
Having dozed off,
servant-girl night?
Alexander Blok. Snow
Mask.
If
A. S. Pushkin offers to the hussar a poker for the return trip, which poker
then magically changes into a horse, then Bulgakov in the 21st
chapter of Master and Margarita: The
Flight seats Margarita into a light-bay open car.
I
have underlined the word light-bay
because this color is customarily associated with horses, rather than with
cars.
In
that same chapter The Flight Margarita
meets the author of the poem Hussar.
(See my chapter Backenbarter.)
There
is good reason why in the next 22nd chapter With Candles Margarita landed “on some totally
deserted cemetery where Azazello was waiting for her. Margarita mounted her
floorbrush, while Azazello jumped on his long rapier. Both leaped into the air
and in a few seconds landed near the building Number 302-bis on Sadovaya
Street…”
This
brings to mind Professor Stravinsky’s words in chapter 8 A Duel Between the Professor And the Poet of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita:
“They
can tell you many things, but you don’t have to believe them all, do you?”
In
such a manner Bulgakov explains Pushkin’s words in the poem Hussar:
I need a horse! – Here,
stupid, here’s a horse!
And indeed: a horse is before
me.
I am looking for the bridle –
no bridle.
The stallion leaped upwards,
carrying me,
And we found ourselves in
front of the stove.
I look: all is the same, as
for me,
I am mounted and under me,
It’s not the horse, but an
old bench:
This is what happens
sometimes.”
Seeing
that his listener does not react, the hussar adds this:
“…He
started twirling his long moustache,
Adding: No offense, but there
is a rumor
That you, my lad, may not be
a coward,
But you are stupid, and we
have seen things!”
Bulgakov
explains all of this better, but if the researcher reads the prose of Sergei
Yesenin, who happens to be the prototype of both the poet Ivan Bezdomny and the
demon Azazello, he or she would understand that Marusenka was sipping her
potion bit by bit, whereas the hussar emptied the phial in a single gulp.
Which
is why he was imagining all those outrageous things.
The
same Pushkin poem Hussar is the key
to solving Woland’s puzzle contained in the same 22nd chapter of Master and Margarita: With Candles. Bulgakov writes:
“The naked witch, that selfsame Gella who had caused so much dismay
in the respectable buffet vendor [Andrei Fokich Sokov] of the Variety Theater, and the very same who,
most fortunately, had been surprised by a rooster during the night of the
famous séance, was sitting on a rug on the floor by the bed, stirring something
in a pot which emitted sulphurous vapor…”
Gella
was brewing an ointment to rub Woland’s knee with. When she left, Margarita
offered Woland her services.
“My close friends insist that
this is rheumatism, said Woland without taking his eyes off Margarita, – but
I strongly suspect that this pain in the knee is a souvenir from one charming
witch, with whom I became closely acquainted going back to the year 1571, in
Brocken Mountains on Devil’s Pulpit.”
It
is becoming eminently clear here that the researcher is dealing with the poet
Andrei Bely in the role of Woland, considering that at the same time as he was
having an affair with the wife of his friend Alexander Blok, he was having
another triangle with Nina Petrovskaya, a married woman having an affair with
the Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov. Bryusov depicted this love triangle in his
novel The Fiery Angel. (See my
chapter The Bard. Genesis. Berlioz.)
It
had to be Andrei Bely, of course, because the action takes place in the late
Middle Ages in Germany, and Andrei Bely has acknowledged enemies: time and
space, as the Russian poet and critic N. S. Gumilev wrote in his article.
Therefore,
the researcher is not dealing with V. V. Mayakovsky in the role of Woland here.
But Bulgakov immediately confuses the reader. To Margarita’s exclamation: “Ah! could it be?!”
Woland responds:
“Nonsense!
In another 300 years it will go away!”
Here Bulgakov is obviously using Mayakovsky’s poem A Conversation With a Financial Inspector
About Poetry. –
“…And
having considered the lasting effect of
my poems, please recalculate my income, spreading it over 3oo years!”
And
so, the “charming witch” with whom Woland [in this case, Andrei Bely] got
acquainted in Germany, was the Russian poetess Nina Petrovskaya. Having moved
to France, she tried to commit suicide, but having jumped out of a window she
only managed to break a leg. The clever Bulgakov turns this broken leg of Nina
Petrovskaya into Woland’s rheumatic knee.
As for the word “witch”, it
only means a “poetess”, as poets are called “wizards, magi, sorcerers…”
Which returns me to the magic
bird. [See my chapter Birds: The Owl.]
The owl is connected with the poetry of A. Blok. Already in the 5th
cycle of the poetry collection Verses
About a Fair Lady, Blok writes:
“…My
eyes are the eyes of an owl…”
In
various poems of the 1904-1908 second book of Alexander Blok, I find these:
“In
dark crevices, where storms are breathing,
I see green malevolent eyes.
Is that you staring? Or is
that the old crone – the owl?”
And
in A. Blok’s 1907 poetry cycle Snow Mask
I read in the poem Away! –
“…Who
are you? Who are you?
Daughters of paradise! Away!
Fly away!
Who has broken my door bars?
Whom did you open the doors
to,
Having dozed off,
servant-girl night?
My cell is guarded by owls –
You cannot help oblivion and
loss!..”
[See
my chapter Strangers in the Night.]
To
be continued…
***
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