The Bard. Genesis.
Posting #29.
“…In shining armor,
like in fire,
A wondrous knight upon a
horse,
A rushing storm, he pierces,
cuts,
And, flying, blows his
roaring horn...
It was Ruslan…”
A. S. Pushkin. Ruslan and Lyudmila.
As
I already wrote, M. A. Bulgakov was stunned by the execution of N. S. Gumilev
in 1921, and already in 1923, while he was very busy writing his beloved novel White Guard, he also wrote the highly
unconventional novella Diaboliada.
Its main character and hero, as I state in my chapter Diaboliada, is the Russian officer V. P. Korotkov, whose prototype
is certainly Gumilev, whose tragic death Bulgakov couldn’t possibly pass without
notice in his works.
Also
in Diaboliada we can already see
Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila. But
Soviet literary censorship did not understand that deeper essence of Bulgakov’s
novella and, making me wonder, the provocative novella was published in 1923,
probably on account its entertaining “devilry.”
[I
will be returning to Diaboliada in my
later chapter Varia.]
And
so the first association [see my previous posting] of the poisoning
scene in master’s basement apartment points to N. S. Gumilev’s impromptu play Love-Poisoner, even more so, knowing
that Margarita, before her meeting with master, intends to poison herself, and
after the fiasco with master’s novel, she wants to poison the critic Latunsky.
And, of course, later in the novel Azazello poisons them both – master and
Margarita – in that basement apartment.
There
is no doubt that the novel Master and
Margarita at least in most of its aspects is a love story, hence the play Love-Poisoner points to the fact that at
least one of master’s prototypes is the Russian poet N. S. Gumilev.
The
second association is no longer the poisoning by itself, but the fact
that master wants to grab a knife from the table, in order to stab Azazello
with it.
Thus,
Bulgakov combines in Master and Margarita
the poisoning and the stabbing already prominently present in Gumilev’s play Love-Poisoner. As always, Bulgakov does
it in his own unique way, making sure that solving his puzzles would not be too
easy.
The
admonition of Gumilev’s Colombina: “Christ
commanded us to love!” is also taken by Bulgakov into account, as Azazello
brings the lovers back to life through the use of the new bodies made by
Woland, in which the souls of master and Margarita will from now on abide,
since the old bodies have died: master’s in the psychiatric clinic, and
Margarita’s inside her mansion.
There
is still another association, namely, the one connected to the basement. This
is the third association having to do with Gumilev’s death as such.
Showing master’s death in the basement, Bulgakov is pointing to the 1918
execution of the Emperor Nicholas II’s family in the basement of a building in Yekaterinburg/Sverdlovsk
(renamed after the man who signed the family’s death warrant.).
Bulgakov
obviously could not depict the death of Gumilev in his novel unmasked: as it had been in reality.
Like all other condemned prisoners in his group, Gumilev was taken beyond the
city limits and shot there. I’d like to quote the poem about his death, written
by a student of his, Irina Odoevtseva. –
“And
he was very unhappy,
Like unhappy is every poet.
Then he was put against the
wall,
And he was shot to death.
And there is no cross or a
mound
On his grave. – Nothing.”
It
is impossible here not to remember and return to Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila:
“The
Kievans’ heart was confused;
They are running in orderless
crowds,
And they see: in the field
among the foes,
In shining armor, like in
fire,
A wondrous knight upon a
horse,
A rushing storm, he pierces,
cuts,
And, flying, blows his
roaring horn...
It was Ruslan. Like God’s
Thunder,
Our warrior fell upon the
infidels;
Wherever whistles the
fearsome sword,
Wherever the angry stallion
rushes,
Heads are flying off the
shoulders everywhere,
And screaming rows are
falling upon rows.
And in one moment, the battle
dale
Was covered with mounds of
bloodied bodies,
Still living, crushed,
decapitated…
The Pechenegs are seized by
dread,
Their throngs are punished by
a Russian sword.
Kiev is elated… The mighty
warrior flies across the city,
His victorious sword in his
right hand;
The spear is shining like a
star;
Blood streaming from his
brass mail,
A beard is streaming from the
helmet…
The people, overwhelmed and
elated,
Are crowding and shouting all
around…”
Whereas
A. S. Pushkin is extolling a great Russian hero’s victory in battle, Bulgakov
depicts the blood-soaked years of the Revolution and the Civil War in Russia,
allegorizes on the deaths of the best Russian poets of his time.
Chapter
31 of Master and Margarita: On Vorobievy
Hills starts with the following words:
“The thunderstorm had been carried away
without a trace…”
These
words form a perfect sequence with the last words of the previous 30th
chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! As soon
as the head nurse at the psychiatric clinic Praskovia Fedorovna admits the
truth about master to Ivan Nikolayevich, Ivanushka understands everything:
“…You better tell me,
asked Ivan intimately, what happened
right now in the next room number one hundred and eighteen?..
…Your neighbor has just
passed away, whispered
Praskovia Fedorovna…
…I knew that! Let me assure
you, Praskovia Fedorovna, that right now in the city one more person has passed
away. I even know who, – here Ivanushka smiled mysteriously. – It was a woman [Margarita].”
***
And
so, the killing in the basement does take place. But where is the “sword”?
As
I already said before, using the word sword/epée, Bulgakov points to written
works of literary fiction. He also considered each of his own works to be a
“sword.” And although he had been given “friendly advice” not to ever try to
have his novel published, or at least to have it published without the
sub-novel Pontius Pilate, Bulgakov
had to know that the time had to come, after his death, that he would be published
to great acclaim.
Right
before his death, Bulgakov made the last revision of Master and Margarita, which is the one that I am using in my work.
Draft versions must be terribly interesting, I admit, but they definitely stand
in the way of the scholar’s research, more than they can ever help. The reason
is that Bulgakov was well aware of the fact that his papers were constantly
monitored by the authorities, who needed to be misled to no lesser extent than
the reader about the author’s plans. Fully aware of the secret forces at work, regarding
his Pontius Pilate, Bulgakov could
not possibly give up his towering masterpiece.
That was his magic “sword” in master’s basement!
To
be continued…
***
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