The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting #9.
“Hic depositum est
quod mortale fuit…”
[From a famous epitaph.]
In
my chapter Woland Identity I have
already successfully proven that Bulgakov picks as Woland’s prototype the great
Russian Revolutionary poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Hence, Bulgakov’s
emphasis on the “double V” in Woland’s name, whose original German name (such
as in Goethe’s Faust) is spelled with
a single Vau – Voland.
In
this chapter I will be continuing the Woland theme, but right now I am going to
remind the reader that V. Mayakovsky [Woland] appears already on the first page
of Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita
(together with his contemporaries: the Russian poets Valery Bryusov [Berlioz]
and Sergei Yesenin [Ivan Bezdomny]) in the form of the drinks: Narzan mineral water and Abrikosovaya water.
Bulgakov
also uses the word “head” in the 1st chapter already, when Woland
tells Berlioz that he is going to die not from a brick falling on his head, but
in a different manner: his “head will be cut off.”
For
some reason Bulgakov is dead set on this thing, as he returns to Berlioz’s
cut-off head again and again throughout his novel Master and Margarita.
On
the one hand, this may be on account of Pushkin, whose unfinished works
Bryusov, who is Berlioz’s prototype, so much liked to “complete.” But
considering that in Chapter 13 of Master
and Margarita: The Appearance of the
Hero, Bulgakov introduces the editor’s name, and that name is Berlioz, I
believe that it was personal for him. It is quite likely that Bulgakov himself
on his arrival in Moscow may have turned to Bryusov for help [Bryusov’s
official position was Head of Lito,
Literature Department] and got a rejection.
It
is also possible that as Bulgakov was showing Bryusov his completed first novel
White Guard, he may also have shown
him his first drafts of the novel that would later become known as Master and Margarita and that could have
happened before Bryusov’s death in 1924. Who knows?
The
3rd chapter of Master and
Margarita: The Seventh Proof closes with the following words:
“...The tram covered Berlioz and hurled
under the grid of the Patriarch alley over to the cobblestone slope was a round-shaped
dark object. After rolling down the slope, it started jumping from stone to
stone of Bronnaya Street. It was the severed head of Berlioz.”
Having
reconstructed in this manner N. S. Gumilev’s great poem A Tram That Lost Its Way, written in 1920, one year before the
poet’s death [see my chapter A Swallow’s
Nest of Luminaries: Mr. Lastochkin, that is, Gumilev], Bulgakov traced the
route taken by Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny from Malaya Bronnaya Street in Moscow
to Patriarch Ponds. Omitting the word Malaya [Lesser] in the name of the
street, Bulgakov leads Bryusov onto the “Greater” road toward immortality,
giving him several roles to play, including the role of Pontius Pilate. [See my
chapter The Garden.]
The
last sentence in the passage quoted above reads:
“It was the severed head of Berlioz.”
However
this sentence by no means closes the subject. The next 4th chapter
of Master and Margarita: The Chase opens
with the sentence:
“…Two ambulances carried away: one – the headless body and the
cut-off head [sic!] to the morgue; the other – the wounded by glass splinters
beautiful operator of the tram to the hospital.”
Bulgakov
is clearly putting an emphasis on the word “head.” –
“…The poet [Ivan Bezdomny] rushed toward the tourniquet as soon as
he heard the first scream, and saw how the head was jumping on the pavement.”
Returning
to the head right away, Bulgakov writes:
“He [Ivan Bezdomny] was trying to understand just one thing: how
was it possible that he had just now been talking to Berlioz, and a minute
later – the head?”
And
again on the same page:
“He [the mad professor, that is, Woland] had said it unequivocally
that a woman was going to cut off the head of Berlioz?!! Yes, yes, yes! And
wasn’t the tram operator a woman? What was going on? Eh?”
Stressing
yet again that Berlioz’s prototype had to be a very well-known figure in
Russian literature, Bulgakov keeps writing about the cut-off head in the next 5th
chapter The Griboyedov Affair. The
title name is that of the great Russian writer and poet A. S. Griboyedov who
died a horrific violent death in 1829 at the age of 34 at the hands of a
rioting mob in Tehran, Persia.
But
the name in the title denoted the Griboyedov House and Restaurant in Moscow,
the headquarters of the Massolit literary association, headed by the late
Berlioz. In other words, Berlioz was not merely the editor of an important
literary magazine, but a preeminent administrative figure in the literary
world.
Which
makes the trail leading to Bryusov even more visible. However, the literary
scholars of Master and Margarita do
not seem to have ever thought in this direction. What a pity!
At
the head of LITO [Bulgakov’s “Massolit”], M. A. Berlioz [aka V. Ya. Bryusov]
was in charge of many important administrative functions outside his literary
responsibilities. His job was also to approve or deny sanatorium vouchers for
literary workers, allowing them to take recuperative vacations in health facilities
near Moscow, in the Crimea, and in other such places.
Another
function was the distribution of the highly sought state country-houses, known
as dachas, but the most important entitlement distributed to the members was
the so-called “living quarters question,” which the reader knows about from the
story told by Koroviev to Margarita during their first meeting.
All
these questions directly concerned Bulgakov, a novice in Moscow, having
recently arrived from “the serpent’s
lair, the town of Kiev.”
All
of this could considerably add to Bulgakov’s animosity toward Bryusov. On that
particular night the members of the board of Massolit were waiting for the
arrival of their chairman, but the chairman never arrived. And once again
Bulgakov returns to the theme of the head,
which is not at Massolit as expected, but at the morgue, as unexpected. There, “deposited on three zinc tables was what until recently had
been M. A. Berlioz.” (This so uncannily sounds like Isaac Newton’s
epitaph at Westminster Abbey in London: “Hic
depositum est quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni.”)
Bulgakov
continues (perhaps with a gusto?) –
“On the first table was the naked, covered in dry blood body with a
broken arm and a collapsed rib cage; on another, the head with missing front
teeth, with dimmed open eyes, impervious to the bright lights; and on the third
table, a pile of blood-soaked rags.”
Bulgakov presents a very
gruesome scene to the reader. No, he does not like Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov
at all! And he keeps rubbing it in:
“...Around the headless corpse stood both the medics and the
representatives of the inquiry... Those standing around the remains of the
deceased were discussing the best way to proceed: whether to sew the cut-off
head to the body or for the purpose of exhibiting the body at the Griboyedov
Hall to simply cover the dead body up to the chin with a black cloth…”
To
be continued…
***
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