GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DXLV

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 4^th 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 4^th 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namely, by the publisher-editor of the magazine Motherland – Rudolfi, who wishes to acquaint himself with Maksudov’s unpublished novel, on account of which S. L. Maksudov is about to take his own life.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Thus, a “sword” in Bulgakov signifies the fact that its owner is the author of unpublished works.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 18^th 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 26^th 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…

***