The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting 6.
“Bryusov told us about
the demons who are always with us.”
N. C. Gumilev. Theophile
Gauthier.
Both
in Pontius Pilate and in Master and Margarita Bulgakov makes an
emphasis on the moon. In the 3rd chapter The Seventh Proof Bulgakov writes:
“The sky over Moscow as though faded, and one could see quite
distinctly high up there the full moon – not yet golden, but white...”
The
episode closes with the appearance of the moon once more:
“...Trying to get hold of something, Berlioz fell on his back...
and had just enough time to see up there – to his right or to his left he could
not figure out anymore – the gilded moon...”
Thus
yet again, using N. Gumilev’s poetry already in the first chapter of Master and Margarita, Bulgakov picks the
tram as the instrument of killing Berlioz, just like Gumilev, in the poem The Tram That Lost Its Way, compares
this instrument of cutting off people’s heads to human life as such. [See my
chapter Mr. Lastochkin in A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.]
Unbelievable
courage on the part of Bulgakov!
Woland’s
question: “If
there is no God, who governs man’s life and, generally speaking, the whole
order on this earth?”
Ivan
Bezdomny’s answer: “Man himself governs.”
Woland
gives examples that this isn’t so: “And it could get even worse. Just as our man
has decided to go to Kislovodsk [for recuperation] – here the foreigner
squinted his eye at Berlioz – a trifle
thing one might say, but he cannot accomplish even that, because for an unknown
reason, his foot will suddenly slip, and he will fall under a tram! Would you
even consider arguing that it was he who had governed himself that way?
Wouldn’t it be more correct to think that somebody totally different from him
had governed this over him? – And here the stranger [Woland] laughed with
an odd laugh.”
An
amazing conversation! At the very beginning of Chapter 1, “Berlioz was overwhelmed by fear, unreasonable but so strong
that he had a desire to run away from Patriarch Ponds without ever looking
back.”
Berlioz
thought that “his heart was playing tricks on him… he
must have been way too tired... It was time to drop everything to the devil and
go to Kislovodsk [sic!].”
Berlioz
did not like his conversation with Woland, but he did not react to the word
“Kislovodsk,” dropped by Woland.
And
an amazing thing. Berlioz had been sitting on the boulevard bench throughout
the whole story told by Woland in Chapter 2,titled Pontius Pilate, about the arrest and trial of Jesus Christ. Here,
like nowhere else, shines Bulgakov’s genius, as the prototype of both Berlioz
and Pontius Pilate happens to be the same man, namely, the Russian poet Valery
Bryusov.
The
whole pandemonium taking place before the reader’s eyes, from the first chapter
of Master and Margarita onward, is
based on the sole line from N. S. Gumilev’s article Theophile Gauthier:
“Bryusov told us about the demons who are always with us.”
It
is quite astonishing that in her memoirs about V. Ya. Bryusov, Marina Tsvetaeva
writes, comparing Bryusov with the celebrated Russian poet Konstantin Balmont:
“Bryusov did not summon the demon, Balmont could not control him.”
In
this instance Marina Tsvetaeva is paraphrasing A. S. Pushkin. To use his
criticism, Walter Scott’s writer contemporaries, “like Agrippa’s disciples, having conjured up
the ancient demon, could not control him, and became victims of their audacity.”
(Incidentally,
as a teenager, I had a subscription to the complete edition of Walter Scott’s
works in 30 volumes, and I read them all, since the age of 13. Commenting on
this obsession of mine at the time, my older sister said that I must have lost
my mind.)
***
Bulgakov’s
devil appears in the novel Master and
Margarita early in the first chapter. –
“And just at that time when Mikhail Alexandrovich [Berlioz] was
telling the poet how the ancient Aztecs were molding figurines of Vitzliputzli
out of dough, the first person appeared in the alley.”
This
“person” was obviously Woland.
M.
A. Berlioz appears in Bulgakov’s novel right at the start of the 1st
page of Chapter 1, titled Never Talk to
Strangers, the author’s invitation to the reader to guess who these
“strangers” are.
The
point is that in 1907 V. Ya. Bryusov published his novel The Fiery Angel, passing himself off as the editor and translator
of a medieval German manuscript. The beautiful heroine of this novel – Renata –
is possessed by an evil spirit in the 16th-century Rhineland. As a
child, Renata had been visited, in a vision, by a Fiery Angel. At first Renata
falls in love with Count Heinrich von Otterheimer, seemingly an incarnation of
the Fiery Angel. Having then met Landsknecht Ruprecht, she embarks on a search
for the Count who has disappeared. In order to find the missing Count, Renata
and Ruprecht study demonology. He gets acquainted with Dr. Faust,
Mephistopheles, and the scholar of the Occult – Agrippa. As for Renata, she
summons the devil himself and flies to a nightly meeting of witches. Possessed
by demons, Renata pushes Ruprecht to kill Count Heinrich.
Ruprecht
has been wounded. He gets closer to Renata, who declares her love for him.
However, she has another vision of the Fiery Angel and leaves Ruprecht, going
to a monastery where she becomes a nun. Her new name is Maria. She confesses to
the Inquisition about her cohabitation with the devil and about other sins.
Ruprecht offers her to flee, but she passes away in his arms, convinced that
her Fiery Angel is going to release her from her sins.
A
year later, in 1908, Bryusov published this novel again, but this time under
his own name.
Bulgakov
gives out the true story of The Fiery
Angel on the fifth page of Master and
Margarita, only nobody notices it. Following the story of sarcoma and the
tram, the “Stranger” [Woland]
addresses the poet Ivan Bezdomny:
“I see that you would like to
smoke? … The stranger slowly pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket.
Both the editor and the poet were not so much impressed by the fact that the case
contained precisely those cigarettes – Nasha
Marka – [which the poet had requested], as by the case itself. It was of an
enormous size, made of solid gold, and when the lid was opened, a diamond
triangle sparkled on it with blue and white fire.”
Had
researchers solved this puzzle, everything would have fallen in its place.
Unfortunately, I was not familiar with Bryusov’s creative work, because I am
not a literary critic by profession. I only hit the jackpot when I discovered
in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs the triangle of personal connections of Alexander
Blok, his wife L. D. Mendeleeva, and Blok’s friend Andrei Bely. But even after
that it did not enter my head that the triangle on Woland’s cigarette case was
pointing in that direction. I had taken a different route, discovering V. Ya. Bryusov
in the character of Pontius Pilate before I had discerned Bryusov also in the
character of M. A. Berlioz.
In
this chapter I prefer to finish this line in the opposite manner. That is, I
first write about what I’d come to at a later time and only after that I bring
to the reader how I actually uncovered the character of Berlioz.
The
reader will understand why I am doing this, in good time.
To
be continued…
***
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