The Bard. Genesis.
Posting #28.
“And he opened my
chest with his sword
And tore out my fluttering
heart.
And into the gaping hole he
thrust
A coal flaming with fire…”
A. S. Pushkin. The Prophet.
…And
so, both in Bova and later in his
wonderful fairytale Ruslan and Lyudmila
– Pushkin’s hero finds a magic sword. There is a dungeon in the poem Bova and a cellar in Ruslan and Lyudmila. Bulgakov substitutes
Pushkin’s dungeon for room #118 in Dr. Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic. He
describes the cellar, or rather, master’s basement apartment, in Chapter 13: The Appearance of the Hero, in
Chapter24: The Extraction of master,
and in Chapter 30: It’s Time! It’s Time!
In
the 4th chapter: The Chase, Bulgakov produces a sword (an epée, to be precise). –
“Ivan Nikolayevich ran back to where he had been talking to the
professor, and it so happened that he had not left yet. Lanterns were lighting
up on Bronnaya, and a golden moon was shining over Patriarch Ponds. In the
always deceptive light of the moon, it appeared to Ivan Nikolayevich that the
other man [Woland] was standing there – holding not a walking stick but a sword
under his arm.”
The
4th chapter of the Theatrical
Novel (which I’ve dubbed A Dress Rehearsal for Master and Margarita for the benefit of the researcher who will undoubtedly
benefit from reading this novel in uncovering the prototypes for the characters
of Master and Margarita. The best
example is a certain Bombardov, who is a thoroughly mystical figure in
Bulgakov. His name speaks for itself. Hiding right in it is A. S. Pushkin, the
Bard of Russian literature.) – is called I
Am With Sword. In this chapter, the main character S. L Maksudov is visited
by a rather mystical figure, namely, by the publisher-editor of the magazine Motherland – Rudolfi, who wishes to
acquaint himself with Maksudov’s unpublished novel, on account of which S. L.
Maksudov is about to take his own life. Rudolfi arrives at the most dramatic
moment when Maksudov, holding the finger of his trembling hand on the trigger
of a loaded gun, is waiting for the signal to pull the trigger, which is going
to be the bombastic stage entrance of Mephistopheles in Gounod’s opera Faust, which Maksudov is listening to, on
the radio. (This mysterious personage is being treated with considerable
attention in my chapter The Guests at
Satan’s Great Ball.)
Thus,
a “sword” in Bulgakov signifies the fact that its owner is the author of
unpublished works.
But
should the researcher tread the path slyly drawn for him by Bulgakov, the
researcher is going to lose. Rudolfi and Woland are hardly birds of a feather.
They do not have the same prototype at all.
In
the 18th chapter of Master and
Margarita: The Hapless Visitors, Bulgakov describes the anteroom of the
no-good apartment #50:
“The whole large and semi-dark anteroom was jam-packed with unusual
objects and garments. Thus a mourning-black cloak, lined with some flaming
cloth was thrown on the back of a chair. A long sword with a glittering golden
hilt was lying on the console table under the mirror. Three swords with silver
hilts were standing upright in the corner, as plainly as some umbrellas or
walking sticks…”
Because
I am writing the chapter The Bard, I
begin with A. S. Pushkin, who said, comparing Moscow and St. Petersburg:
“Moscow is the maiden’s room, while St. Petersburg is the
anteroom.”
Apparently,
Moscow had changed some from Pushkin’s to Bulgakov’s time, because when Andrei
Fokich Sokov (see my chapter A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries: A God-Fearing Lecher for his prototype) comes to see
“the Gentleman Artist” at the no-good apartment #50, the “shameless housemaid”
Gella opens the door for him. (See A
Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries: The Lion And The Servant Maiden regarding hers.)
The
sword with a golden hilt belongs to Woland, whose personage includes glimpses
of the Russian poet Andrei Bely, on account of his poetry cycle Gold in Azure, of which Bely was
exceedingly proud, and he even revised it twenty years later, in 1922, probably
having some connection to the deaths of A. Blok and N. Gumilev the year before.
The
line: “Three swords with silver hilts were standing
upright in the corner, as plainly as some umbrellas or walking sticks”
is also influenced by Andrei Bely’s 1906 poem Funeral Service:
“I am
lying in numbed flowers,
Crimson, –
In hyacinths pink and lilac,
And white [sic!]...
Come, ladies-guests and gentlemen-guests, –
Whisper: Oh my God! –
While leaving umbrellas and
walking sticks
In the anteroom [sic!] –
There they are, my bones…”
The
three swords with silver hilts belonged to Koroviev, Kot Begemot, and Azazello.
[That is, to Pushkin, Lermontov, and Yesenin.]
Also
included among these poets are Mayakovsky [Woland] and Andrei Bely, whose
features were used by Bulgakov in the personage of Woland for the reason that
Mayakovsky himself used these features in his play Mysteria Bouffe.
Having
figured out the situation with the swords/epées, I am returning to A. S.
Pushkin, who writes about swords in Bova and
in Ruslan and Lyudmila. Curiously,
Pushkin’s magic sword in Ruslan and Lyudmila
is found inside a cellar.
In
Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita the
basement/cellar is the place where master lives. Amazingly, though, a cellar
can also be found in the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate, in the 26th chapter The
Burial.
Reporting
to Pontius Pilate about the killing of Judas, Aphranius insists that “Judas was killed not in the city of
Yershalaim itself.”
“No way can I allow the
thought that Judas could have become prey to some suspicious characters inside
the city line. One cannot secretly slaughter someone in a city street. It means
that he had to be lured into some kind of cellar [sic!]. But the Service was
already looking for him in the Lower City, and would surely have found him by
now. But he is not inside the city, for which I vouchsafe.”
At
this point I am offering the reader to solve the following Bulgakovian puzzle:
What was the “sword” in the basement apartment where master lived? My own
solution will follow soon.
In
Chapter 30: It’s Time! It’s Time! of Master and Margarita, there is a scene
of poisoning:
“Poisoner!
– was the last thing master had the time to shout. He wanted to grab a
knife from the table, to stab Azazello with it, but his hand helplessly slid
off the tablecloth; everything surrounding master in the basement was now
colored black, and then disappeared altogether. He fell backwards and, in his
fall, cut the skin of his temple against the corner of the bureau’s board.”
Depicting
the poisoning of master and Margarita in master’s basement apartment, Bulgakov
clearly has 2 associations here. Both point to the execution of N. S. Gumilev.
The
first association is connected with Gumilev’s play Love-Poisoner [sic!], which I am reconstructing from the memoirs of
Mme. Nevedomskaya. Gumilev improvised this play-in-verse on the spot in 1911 in
Russia to a small audience whose members “ordered” personages of their choice
starting with Colombina, Pierrot and Harlequin, a wounded knight in a
monastery, a cardinal, a Gypsy, a ghost, etc.
Unfortunately,
Gumilev’s play was never penned down, and only a general recollection of it
exists.
A
wounded knight finds himself in a monastery where his wounds are tended to. He
falls in love with the young Sister Maria, but their mutual love seems doomed
because Maria is a nun. Fortunately, the knight’s uncle, a cardinal, is
visiting the monastery. Being a man of worldly acumen, he uses his authority to
help the lovers, and manages to overcome the resistance of the Abbess. Then
suddenly they learn from an old Gypsy woman that Maria’s father had killed the
Knight’s father, which precludes such a marriage. But an arriving Pantomime
troupe (Colombina, Pierrot and Harlequin) sways the situation in favor of Love.
But before the couple can be married, the ghost of the Knight’s father appears
and condemns the marriage. In despair, Maria drinks poison, and the Knight
stabs himself.
Mme.
Nevedomskaya concludes her reminiscence of this event:
“His [Gumilev’s] enthusiasm and quaint fantasy enthralled us [the
participants] completely and we obediently played out those personages whom he
was impressing on us.”
The
scene of the poisoning of master and Margarita may have been taken by Bulgakov
from precisely this play, of which Bulgakov may have heard from another source,
perhaps from some other participant of the memorable event. Who knows?
To
be continued…
***
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