The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting 4.
“I DO NOT SHARE YOUR
THOUGHTS!!!
Or maybe you think that I am
prepared
to take your place?”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master
and Margarita.
Without
explicitly giving the name of M. A. Berlioz, M. A. Bulgakov alongside Marina
Tsvetaeva clearly thought that by the end of his life Bryusov was
“fraternizing” with “the vermin of literature.” Apparently, Bulgakov himself
had approached Bryusov on account of his first novel White Guard, but had received a rejection. Still, in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate Bulgakov shows us the
repentance of Valery Bryusov, who is of course the prototype of the Roman
Procurator of Judea.
If,
in the 2nd chapter of Master
and Margarita, Pontius Pilate warns Yeshua about his coming brutal death (“It would have been better had you been
slaughtered before your meeting with Judas from Kyriath”), and responding
to Yeshua’s worried words:
“Why
don’t you let me go free, Igemon? – suddenly asked the arrestee, and there
was alarm in his voice. – I see that
[some people] want to kill me.”
–
he angrily bursts out:
“I DO NOT SHARE YOUR
THOUGHTS!!! Or maybe you think that I am prepared to take your place?”
–
then in the last 26th chapter of the sub-novel: The Burial Pontius Pilate has a dream:
“…He [the procurator] even laughed in his sleep happily… He
immediately set off along the radiant path up toward the moon. He was walking
accompanied by [the dog] Banga, and side by side with him walked the wandering
philosopher. They argued about something terribly complicated and important.
The argument was especially interesting and incessant, with neither one able to
out-argue the other…”
At
this point Bulgakov inserts himself into the argument with the following
question:
“…Are you really, with all your
great intelligence, allowing yourself the thought that on account of a man who
had committed a crime against Caesar, the Procurator of Judea would ruin his
career?”
The
reader gets a positive answer here. Bulgakov:
“Yes, yes, – Pilate was
groaning and sobbing in his sleep. – He
will certainly ruin it. [Having
learned from his bitter experience, Bryusov would have certainly changed his
position. Having destroyed A. Blok and N. Gumilev, the “vermin” went after its
“mentor.” Bryusov died in 1924 at the age of fifty.] In the morning he wouldn’t have ruined it
yet, but now at nighttime, having weighed it all on the scales, he is ready to
ruin it. He will go to the extremes to save the totally guiltless mad dreamer
from the execution…”
Perhaps
Bulgakov heard the same rumors about Bryusov as Tsvetaeva did? But, unlike her,
he may have believed them? This is what Tsvetaeva thinks:
“And had Bryusov turned out from his posthumous papers, as rumors
have it, not only a non-communist, but an ultra-monarchist, his monarchism and
counter-revolutionism would have been on paper. There was nothing in Bryusov of
the contra, of the revolutionary in a revolution. Like a consummate
power-seeker, he willingly and immediately submitted himself to the system
which in one way or another promised him power…”
Apparently,
Bulgakov thought otherwise. Considering that the novel Master and Margarita closes with a similar dream, but this time not
of Pontius Pilate but of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, now the historian Ivan
Nikolayevich Ponyrev:
“…After the injection, everything changes
before the sleeping man. From the bed to the window stretches out a broad lunar
road, and ascending this road is a man in a white cloak with red lining, who
starts walking towards the moon. Alongside him walks a young man [N. S.
Gumilev] in a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The two of them are
talking about something passionately, they argue and want to agree on something.
Gods, gods!.. You just imagined this… Can
you swear?.. Behind them walks, quiet and majestic, a gigantic sharp-eared
dog…”
Considering
that the prototype of both the poet Ivan Bezdomny (the historian Ivan
Nikolayevich Ponyrev) and the demon Azazello is the great Russian poet Sergei
Yesenin, we ought to point out that Yesenin was a disciple of Bryusov, and in
1924 he even wrote a poem in memoriam of his teacher. Little did he know then
that the very same “vermin” that had sent Bryusov to the grave at 50, would
bring him to suicide just one year later, in 1925, at the early age of 30.
The
best memories of Bryusov come to us from N. S. Gumilev:
“...Bryusov, who had restored to Russia the noble art, forgotten
since Pushkin’s times, of writing poetry simply and correctly...”
It’s
precisely from Gumilev’s notes and articles that I had understood certain
places in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
where I can now clearly feel the poetry of Bryusov himself. Gumilev writes –
“And finally, in the poem To
Someone, opening with the line: Farman
or Wright or whoever you are – he [Bryusov] comes closely to modernity,
which poets are usually so afraid of, and comes out the winner.”
And
in the 3rd chapter of Master
and Margarita, The Seventh Proof,
Bulgakov reproduces it in the argument between Berlioz and Woland:
“Your story is most
interesting, Professor, responded Berlioz with a condescending smirk. But I am afraid that nikto [no one] can
corroborate that what you have told us happened in reality.
Oh, no! Kto [One] can prove
it… responded the
professor with great assurance.”
It
is also impossible to understand the Epilogue
of Master and Margarita without
resorting to Gumilev:
“But anyway, what happened next in Moscow after on Saturday evening
at sunset Woland left the capital, vanishing along with his retinue from
Vorobievy Hills?..”
[Once
again it is important to stress that master and Margarita left Moscow in order
to meet Sunday dawn at the place of their final Rest.]
Continuing
with Bulgakov:
“…For a long time across the capital there was going a heavy buzz
of all kinds of improbable rumors [just like the buzz about the novel Master and Margarita after Bulgakov’s
death]. There was the whisper: Demonic
force… Educated people took the side of the investigation: It was the work
of a gang of hypnotizers [sic!] and ventriloquists who had a marvelous command
of the art.”
N.
S. Gumilev uncovers the secret of the “hypnotizers” in his article On French Poetry of the XIX Century. –
“As a critic and historian of literature, Valery Bryusov stands up
to his full size in this book. He immediately takes control of the subject and
hypnotizes [sic!] the reader, proving how simple it is. Here is Romanticism,
taking its source from Andre Chenier. Here is the link through Theophile
Gauthier to the Parnassians. The Parnassians were caught in the charmed circle
of form and convention [hence the ‘charms’]. Stephane Mallarme and Paul
Verlaine break this circle – hence Symbolism. This last one, in turn, breaks
into three main movements: pure Symbolism of Henri de Regnier; the Belgian
school of Georges Rodenbach; and the scientific poetry of Rene Thiele. And as
is his usual habit, Bryusov wished to conceal himself behind this magnificently
simple system, so that we, seeing the edifice, can judge about its builder only
by the distant echo of the last hammer blows… He gave away his opinion, his
whim, perhaps, so that others would be breaking lances over him. [This shows
the independence of Bryusov’s thinking.]
But there is a way of discerning a poet’s soul, no matter how well
the poet tries to conceal it. One has to read through his poems and by the
flaring-up rhymes, by the internal shifts of rhythm, one can reconstruct the
poet’s heartbeat. [Gumilev is implicitly praising Bryusov’s mastery as a poet
and translator.]”
To
be continued…
***
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