The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting 7.
“…How lively, how
entertaining are the scenes of ancient Russian life!
How truthful and filled with good-natured
merriment are the characters…”
A. S. Pushkin. Yuri
Miloslavsky.
And
so, the triangle on Woland’s cigarette case points to a love triangle. There
are three participants in it.
“Renata”
is the Russian poetess Nina Petrovskaya, translator, and wife of S. A. Sokolov,
publisher of the Gryphon Publishing
House. It was she who translated the
Italian fairytale Pinocchio by Carlo
Collodi, while the Russian writer Alexei Tolstoy used her translation to write
his derivative version known to all Russian children as The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino.
In
his novel The Fiery Angel, Valery Bryusov sort of describes his affair
with that woman, assuming the role of the Knight Ruprecht. As for the role of
Count Heinrich, his prototype is also a real figure, namely, Andrei Bely.
Although
Andrei Bely himself has described his affair with the wife of Alexander Blok,
it must have been later than Valery Bryusov describing his own affair with
Andrei Bely’s mistress.
At
an earlier time, Andrei Bely was showering his irony all over Bryusov:
“Tipping over old Köln onto the regular life of his contemporary
Moscow, Bryusov was losing the borderline between life and fiction. In this
way, Muscovites in his representation started living as contemporaries of the
Magus [Agrippa] von Nettesheim, of Erasmus, and of Dr. Faust. And the area
between Köln and Basel became that between Arbat and Znamenka.”
It
is quite likely that on account of Bryusov’s novel The Fiery Angel, Bryusov and Bely parted their ways, as their
reconciliation came only in 1923 in the Crimea at the hereditary estate of the
Russian poet Max Voloshin, just one year before Bryusov’s death.
As
for the description of the triangle on Woland’s cigarette case, it is
undoubtedly pointing to Andrei Bely, as well as to Valery Bryusov.
To
begin with, the case is made of solid gold, “and when the lid was opened, a diamond triangle sparkled on it with
blue and white fire.” The key words here are gold, blue, white, and fire.
A. Bely’s poetry cycle Gold in the Azure
accounts for gold and blue, while his name Bely, White, speaks for itself. The word
fire pushes us toward Bryusov’s Fiery Angel, and thus to Bryusov
himself.
Returning
to the married woman Nina Petrovskaya, the third point of the triangle, we must
note, that she ended up rather badly. She tried to commit suicide three times,
having left Russia for Europe after the Revolution, and only on her third
attempt was she successful. Before that, she jumped out of the window of the
hotel where she lived, and having broken her leg, got a permanent limp.
With
his unusual sense of humor and not knowing which of her legs had developed the
limp, Bulgakov in his depiction of Woland, through witness reports of him,
states in the first report that this man [Woland] was limping on his right
foot, whereas a second report claims that the man limped on his left foot.
Thus,
even the traits of Nina Ivanovna Petrovskaya, the woman from the second
triangle of Petrovskaya, Bely, and Bryusov, are passed on to Woland in the
shape of a limp.
***
Woland's
character is complex. And now, as I intend to write about the motive for the
death of Berlioz, I must first make a detour. The point is that while creating
the Woland personage, Bulgakov wants to keep this personage under control. As I
already said before, Bulgakov was clearly familiar with A. S. Pushkin’s Articles and Sketches, in this case with
Pushkin’s article Yuri Miloslavsky, or
the Russians in 1612, where he writes the following:
“…In our time, by the word
‘novel’ we understand a historical epoch developed in a fictional narrative.
Walter Scott carried after him a whole crowd of imitators. But how far are they
all from the Scottish bard. Like
Agrippa’s disciples, having conjured up the ancient demon, they could not
control him, and became victims of their audacity.”
(Agrippa’s Disciple is a legend about a
real person: the alchemist Agrippa von Nettesheim [1486-1535]. There are
variations of it in Southey’s ballad Youth
and in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Disciple.)
Bulgakov
obviously did not want that to happen to him. Meanwhile, Pushkin continues:
“…Into the age where they
wish to transport the reader, they themselves resettle with a heavy baggage of homegrown
habits, prejudices, and daily impressions.”
Bulgakov
does not let that happen to him, as the action of his novel Master and Margarita is taking place in
his own time. these are his players, mostly all dead by the year 1930, who
continue to play out the roles assigned to them by Bulgakov. Two of them,
Pushkin and Lermontov, come out of the first half of the 19th
century into the first half of the 20th century. Two other poets,
namely Gumilev and Blok, die in 1921 that is also before Bulgakov sits down to
write his novel.
In
his article Yuri Miloslavsky, or the
Russians in 1612, Pushkin praises the author M. N. Zagoskin for his
depiction of “our
good people, boyars, Cossacks, monks, rebellious shishes [hobos] – all of this
correctly guessed, all of this living, feeling, like it ought to have lived and
felt in Minin’s Time of Troubles…”
...Although
Bulgakov transports the modern reader into his own contemporary time, which is foreign
to most of us today, still the reader of Master
and Margarita may justly say with Pushkin:
“…How lively, how
entertaining are the scenes of ancient Russian life! How truthful and filled
with good-natured merriment are the characters. The author is not rushing his
tale, he dwells on detail, makes sideways glimpses, but never bores the
reader’s attention. The conversation, lively and dramatic when it uses simple
colloquial speech, reveals a master of his trade.”
This
is the reason why Bulgakov uses so much lower-classes vernacular when it comes to
Koroviev, who represents A. S. Pushkin in Master
and Margarita.
Bulgakov
has also followed Pushkin’s advice when he criticizes the author of Yuri Miloslavsky, or the Russians in 1612:
“Mr. Zagoskin’s gift visibly
fails him when he approaches real historical personages.”
In
his novel Master and Margarita, Bulgakov
brings out great Russian poets, who already in his time had long become
“historical personalities,” as prototypes of his characters. Bulgakov does not
err with regard to the “language and costume” of these personalities. Likewise,
the “eloquence” of the poets themselves is demonstrably present, as Bulgakov
makes active use of their poetry throughout the book. What makes his novel all
the more interesting is Bulgakov’s creation of complex characters, frequently
combining in a single character, features of several Russian poets, like, for
instance, in master’s character.
While
M. N. Zagoskin transports his readers from the 19th century into the
year 1612, also on Russian territory, Bulgakov transports his readers in the
sub-novel Pontius Pilate into the
times 2000 years before, the place being Yershalaim and the historical figures
being Pontius Pilate Procurator of Judea and Yeshua Ha-Nozri, better known to
the world as Jesus Christ.
And
what a surprise awaits the reader in Pontius
Pilate! The same faces of the same prototypes of great Russian poets
transported from the novel Master and
Margarita into the monumental sub-novel from one set of personages to
another set. For instance, M. A. Berlioz, appearing already on the 1st
page of Chapter 1, reappears as Pontius Pilate on the 1st page of
Chapter 2. Both personages having the same prototype in V. Ya. Bryusov of the
Silver Age of Russian poetry, after Pushkin’s Golden Age. Bryusov was the first
Russian poet of the Symbolist Movement, influencing such poets as Andrei Bely,
Alexander Blok, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and others.
To
be continued…
***
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