The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting #23.
“The tsar saw in front
of him
A table with a chessboard on
it.
Now upon that chessboard he
put
A troop of soldiers made out
of wax
And arranged them in a well-shaped
order..."
A. S. Pushkin.
“…You can frighten the lady…”
Bulgakov
gives these words to Woland, whose prototype in the novel is V. V. Mayakovsky.
In the latter’s play Mysteria-Bouffe
among the characters we find a “lady” who is not among the clean ones or
unclean ones, but totally by herself…
[Mayakovsky
calls his play: “A Heroic, Epic, and
Satirical Depiction of Our Epoch.” Isn’t it true that all Bulgakovian works
can also be called “heroic, epic, and satirical depictions” of Bulgakov’s own epoch?]
After
having been saved from the Great Flood, the clean ones want to elect a tsar to
rule over the unclean ones, so that the latter [industrial workers and such]
would resume working for the clean ones. At this point the Lady inquires:
“Gentlemen! Tell me – will it
be a real tsar or a make-believe one?”
The
clean ones are adamant: “A real one! A real one!”
And
then the Lady says:
“Ah! Then I’ll be the Lady of
the Court!”
And
in Bulgakov’s Chapter 31, when Woland forbids Kot Begemot from whistling in the
presence of the lady who can be frightened by such an exhibition, Margarita
protests to Woland:
“Ah, no, no, Messire, let him
whistle. Let him amuse us, or else, I am afraid, all this may end up in tears.”
There
is a little hint here, leading to a deck of cards, where “Lady” [in Russian: Dama]
is one of the cards, in English: Queen.
[Also see my chapter The Spy Novel.]
As we find ourselves in Bulgakov’s Chapter 22: With Candles, Margarita, on Koroviev’s advice, asks Woland not to
stop the chess game the devil is playing with Kot Begemot. –
“I
beseech you not to interrupt the game. I believe that chess magazines would
have paid good money for the opportunity to publish it. Azazello quietly
chuckled with approval, and Woland, having looked attentively at Margarita,
observed as though to himself:
Yes, Koroviev is right: how
whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!”
Curiously,
the company had been missing a [Queen/Lady/Dama]. Being merely a maidservant,
Gella wouldn’t do. Talking about “blood,” Woland may be alluding to Sergei
Yesenin’s words: “Poets are all of one
blood,” and also to the words of Marina Tsvetaeva: “A red skirt, the devil in blood.”
Marina
Tsvetaeva takes the words about the “red
skirt” from Pushkin’s Monk, in
which the devil was tempting the old monk by a “white maiden’s skirt.”
As
for the chess game, A. S. Pushkin lavishly praises his wife Natalia Goncharova
in a letter, for learning how to play the game. –
“I am grateful to you, my
love, for learning how to play chess. This is something you cannot do without
in any well-organized family. I’ll write to you about it later.”
And
here is a short, also unfinished poem about chess that Pushkin wrote:
“The
tsar saw in front of him
A table with a chessboard on
it.
Now upon that chessboard he
put
A troop of soldiers made out
of wax
And arranged them in a well-shaped
order.
The figurines are sitting
ominously
Akimbo on their horses;
Wearing calico gloves,
In feather-adorned pointed
helmets,
With broadswords resting on
their shoulders…”
Also
in a letter to his wife, dated 8 December 1831, he describes just the house
where he might have seen a chess set like that.
“...His house [Nashchokin’s] (you remember him?) is magnificently
decorated. What chandeliers! What a china set! He has ordered a pianoforte
which can be played on by a spider and a night pot only fit for a Spanish fly
to relieve itself on.”
In
the same letter of 30 September 1832 where he commends his wife on her effort
to play chess, Pushkin continues:
“...I see Nashchokin
practically every day. There was a banquet in his little house. They
served a mouse dressed in sour cream under horseradish, passing it off as a
piglet. Pity there were no guests. In his will he bequeaths this little house
to you.”
Pushkin
and Natalia Goncharova had four children together: “Mashka, Sashka, Grishka and Natashka” – as he called them in the
colloquial manner.
In
the earlier quoted “chess poem” Pushkin depicts the first Russian Emperor Peter
the Great:
“...Here
he ordered a tub
To be filled with water,
And he let a host of
beautiful ships
Set sail inside it...”
[Having
learned the craft of shipbuilding in Holland during his famous incognito trip
across Europe, Peter the Great enjoyed his personal participation in the
building of the Russian Fleet, which would eventually facilitate Russia’s
crushing victory over the Swedish superpower of the time.]
“...Sailboats,
launches and rowboats
Made out of walnut shells –
And the transparent little
sails
Are like butterfly wings,
And the ropes…” [here the poem breaks off.
To
be continued…
***
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