The Bard. Genesis.
M. A. Berlioz.
Posting #22.
“...One gray-haired
monk in his old age
Had a cat, had a Psalter, and
a Rosary,
A capuche, an alb, and a
bottle of green vodka…”
A. S. Pushkin. The
Monk.
A
serious researcher must be wondering why Bulgakov always draws such attention
to this non-existent blackness of Koroviev. Before that, in Chapter 21 The Flight, Bulgakov presented Pushkin
as some kind of naked fatso in a black silken top hat. His feet were covered in
detrital mud, so that it seemed as though the bather was wearing black shoes
[sic!].
Yes,
certain features of A. S. Pushkin can indeed be found in the character of
Bulgakov’s Satan: Woland. Although Bulgakov equips Woland with a walking stick
with a black knob in the form of a poodle’s head, which points to Andrei Bely
[see my chapter The Garden: Matthew Levi],
however, instead of a dog in Woland’s retinue, a black cat appears already in
Chapter 4, joining Woland and the Checkered One [A. S. Pushkin], when “the
troika walked off Patriarch Ponds, with the cat walking on his hind legs.”
Bulgakov
takes the idea of the cat from the unfinished Pushkin work The Monk. There is a good reason why in Chapter 4 The Chase Ivan rushes back to where he
was talking to the professor. It appeared to him as though the other was
standing there holding under his arm not a walking stick but a sword.
In
the Theatrical Novel Bulgakov
explains what it means in Chapter 4: I am
with Sword, when Maksudov receives a visit from the Publisher Rudolfi. (See
my chapter The Guests at Satan’s Great
Ball.)
What
does it mean?
Replacing
the walking stick with a sword, Bulgakov reveals that Woland’s prototype is a Russian
poet or a writer. Bulgakov does it with a twist, as the personage of Rudolfi
conceals that selfsame Rudolf Steiner whom Andrei Bely called “the devil.”
There are plenty of such charades and pitfalls throughout Bulgakov’s works. Let
us remember that in his Notes of a Young
Physician, written back in 1925, he writes that thanks to village women he
had become a Sherlock Holmes.
That’s
why he creates an ambiguity, subtly suggesting that Woland could be Rudolf
Steiner. When Ivan asks Woland whether he is German –
“Me? – asked the
professor and suddenly got into thinking. – Yes,
probably I am, – he said.”
The
only thing it shows is that Andrei Bely was wondering whether the devil Rudolf
Steiner was German or Austrian.
In
his Notes on the Cuffs, Bulgakov, having come to Moscow, gives
a description of Mayakovsky, whom he had never seen before, and, having learned
from a poster that Moscow is celebrating Mayakovsky’s 12th
Anniversary, he writes the following:
“I’ve never seen him but I know... I just know. He is about 40
years old, of very small height, balding and bespectacled, very agile. Short
rolled-up pants. Serves, doesn’t smoke. Has a large apartment with window
drapes, shares it with a former Advocate of the Court who is now [after the 1917
Revolution] not an Advocate anymore, but an administrator of an official
building. He lives in a study with a non-working fireplace. Likes cream butter,
funny verses, and order in his room…”
This
description never ceases to amaze by its colorfulness. Isn’t this a portrait of
Bulgakov’s Ryukhin? What does the real Mayakovsky have to do with it? The real
Mayakovsky was very tall, young, handsome, enjoying great success with women, a
bachelor who never married. An honest man at that.
So
why is Bulgakov portraying Mayakovsky as the opposite of what he was? Surely,
he had heard enough about the great Revolutionary Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky to
represent him properly, had he wanted to do just that?!
Next,
Bulgakov puts everything in its place:
“...Favorite author – Conan Doyle [sic!] ...”
In
other words, the reader and the researcher had to figure out easily enough that
Bulgakov’s portrayal of Mayakovsky must surely be a puzzle in itself.
Is
it possible that contemplating over his future book about Satan, Bulgakov may
have envisaged Mayakovsky in that role already?
Notes on the Cuffs were written in 1923. Writing about Mayakovsky,
Bulgakov discloses that the poet’s favorite opera was Eugene Onegin. This fact tells us a lot. About Tatiana’s love?
About faithfulness? About Mayakovsky’s love of Pushkin?
That’s
what drew Bulgakov as the author of Master
and Margarita to the Revolutionary Poet. The opera can already be heard in
the 4th chapter of the novel: The
Chase.
After
taking a swim in the Moskva River, Ivan decides to turn his feet toward the
Griboyedov Restaurant. Bulgakov writes:
“The city was already living the nightlife. All windows were open...
Blasting from all windows, from all doors, from all gateways, from the roofs
and the attics, from the basements and the courtyards was the hoarse roar of
the Polonaise from the opera Eugene
Onegin.”
I
already wrote before that the “Beardo
with a rolly” was none other than Woland. [See chapter Woland in Disguise, Posting #LVI.] I also wrote that the Polonaise
from the opera Eugene Onegin confirms
that Woland’s prototype in Bulgakov’s novel must be V. V. Mayakovsky. Thus,
already in 1923 Bulgakov made it official that, portraying Mayakovsky so
differently from the real man, what he had in mind was his future novel about
Satan, where Mayakovsky would be assigned a dual role: both of the poet Ryukhin
(which shocked the reading public which immediately realized who Ryukhin’s
prototype was) and of the devil Woland (which no one was able to figure out).
The duality underscored by the “half-mask worn by the arriving celebrity.”
[That is Woland arriving for the séance of black magic.]
I
do not understand why no one has figured out, or rather solved, the personage
of Ivan Bezdomny. Bulgakov after all wrote a work of fiction and was completely
in his rights to keep him alive at the end of his novel.
So,
what did Bulgakov take from Pushkin for his Woland?
I
already answered this question earlier: the black color. Although in Chapter 18
The Hapless Visitors Bulgakov, while
describing the semi-dark anteroom of the no-good apartment #50, cites a cloak
hanging on the back of a chair, which is of funereal color with flaming-red
lining, which Woland apparently never wears throughout the course of the novel.
In
one of his unfinished poems, titled The
Monk, A. S. Pushkin writes:
“I’d
like to sing how the unclean spirit of Hell
Was mounted by a bearded old
man;
How he took possession of a
black capuche…
One gray-haired monk in his
old age
Had a cat [sic!], had a
Psalter, and a Rosary,
A capuche, an alb, and a
bottle of green vodka…”
There
is plenty of material here already, used by both Bulgakov and Mayakovsky. Hence
Bulgakov takes his “Beardo with a Rolly,” and also the black garb worn by
Woland and Azazello from. Plus, he gives Woland, as his other two companions, Koroviev
[Pushkin] and the black cat Kot Begemot, instead of a black poodle.
In
his 1915 poem The Monstrous Funeral,
Mayakovsky uses Pushkin’s poem for the opening lines of his:
“Grim
to blackness, people came out,
Heavily and orderly falling
in a formation in the city,
As though at this time there
was about to be formed
A black order of grim monks.”
Having
properly understood Pushkin’s humor, Mayakovsky calls all poets – monks.
At
the beginning of his poem The Monk Pushkin
addresses Voltaire:
“I do
not wish to saddle the horse of sadness;
I do not wish to make ladies
out of the muses...”
And
Bulgakov supplies the magnificent four with magic stallions, while the
prohibited word ‘lady’ occurs just
once in Chapter 31 On Vorobievy Hills,
when to Begemot’s question: “Will you allow me, Messire, to have one farewell whistle before we leave?”
– Woland responds with a cautionary note: “You can frighten the lady…”
To
be continued…
***
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