The Bard.
A Little Town.
Posting #2.
“In
our time by the word ‘novel’ we understand
a historical epoch developed in a magnificent
narrative,”
A. S. Pushkin. On Walter Scott.
“…My
friends are dead people,
Priests
of Parnassus…”
So, what did Pushkin have in mind, writing this?
“…Over
a plain shelf,
Covered
by thin taffeta,
They
are living with me.
Eloquent
bards,
Tongue-in-cheek
prosaics,
They
have filed in here in order…”
And who does the sixteen-year-old Pushkin start with?
“...Son
of Momus and Minerva,
The
wicked yeller of Ferney.
The
first poet among poets,
You
are here, gray-haired mischief-maker!
He
was raised by Phoebus,
Becoming
a poet since childhood,
The
one most read,
The
one least oppressive,
Rival
of Euripides,
A
tender friend of Eros,
Grandson
of Ariosto and Tasso,
And
shall I say, father of Candide?”
And so, in his youth, Pushkin considered Voltaire as
number one of his mentors, probably on account of his freethinking spirit,
because otherwise, Voltaire as a man disappointed Pushkin later in life.
“…On
the shelf behind Voltaire
Are
Virgil, Tasso, and Homer,
Then,
together with Derzhavin,
The
sensitive Horace comes…
Brought
up by Amur,
Vergier,
Parny with Grecourt
Are
hiding in a corner…
Here
are Ozerov and Racine.
Rousseau
and Karamzin,
And
with Moliere the giant,
Fonvizin
and Knyazhnin.
Behind
them, frowning pompously,
Their
frightful Aristarch
Appears
undauntedly
In
sixteen volumes…”
In Master and
Margarita, Bulgakov is also making a big emphasis on master’s library. –
“…And in the first room – a
huge room: fourteen square meters – books, books, and a furnace…”
And
then:
“Ivan imagined to himself already the two rooms in the basement of
a little mansion, where twilight always reigned, because of the lilac and the
fence, the red worn-out furniture, the bureau, with a mantelpiece clock
on it, which chimed every half-hour, and the books, books from the
painted floor up to the sooty ceiling, and the furnace.”
Master was taking good care of his books, as Bulgakov
describes it this way:
“…Sometimes she would squat by the lower shelves or climb up a
chair to reach the higher ones, and used a piece of cloth to wipe the dust off
hundreds of book spines…”
Although Margarita has a prototype in the Russian
poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, she was not romantically involved with any of the
poets whom Bulgakov uses for master’s prototype, namely, Blok, Gumilev, and
Bely. And indeed, such a woman could only exist in their imagination, as well
as in Marina Tsvetaeva’s own imagination.
But I think that these poets were looking for glamor
rather than mind in a woman, but Bulgakov’s Margarita is an intelligent woman.
That’s why Bulgakov took so much material from Tsvetaeva’s Reminiscences.
So, what are the books which master keeps in his
library?
“Ah, that was the Golden
Age!, whispered the storyteller [master], his eyes sparkling…”
The “Golden Age” of Russian literature is commonly
recognized as the 19th century, the age of Pushkin, Lermontov,
Turgenev, the Tolstoys, and Dostoyevsky. But in order to write his Pontius Pilate, master also needed
other, different books, particularly the Euangelion
of the New Testament Bible, as well as books on the history of the time of
Jesus Christ.
Out of the four Evangelists, Bulgakov picks one:
Matthew Levi, and following Pushkin’s advice on writing historical novels, he
inserts him into the sub-novel Pontius
Pilate.
Pushkin
was of a very high opinion of the “Scottish Sorcerer,” as he called Walter
Scott. “In our
time by the word ‘novel’ we understand a historical epoch developed in a
magnificent narrative,” he writes.
Pushkin
takes this idea from Mikhail Orlov who in a letter to Prince Vyazemsky laments
that N. M. Karamzin in his History of the
Russian State “did
not include some kind of brilliant hypothesis of his about the origin of the
Slavs, that is, he demanded a novel in history – new and brave!”
Bulgakov introduces a very peculiar earthly origin of
Jesus Christ, making Yeshua a son of a Syrian father, and mother unknown. This
is how Bulgakov’s Yeshua responds to Pilate’s question: “Who are you by blood?”
“I do
not know for sure, the arrestee responded in a lively manner. I do not remember my parents. I was told that
my father was a Syrian…”
Not long ago I was struck by the Pope Franciscus
referring to Syria as “My dear Syria.”
The point is that unlike in most Arab countries, Syria, like Egypt, has
preserved an ancient Christian community. Three centuries before the birth of
Christ, Syria and Egypt were conquered by Alexander of Macedon and from then on
both countries were ruled by the Greeks. At the time of Christ these
territories, including other Arab lands, were under the Roman rule, but their
military units were included in the Roman army. This is how it came about that
Syrian cavalry was prancing through the streets of Yershalaim in Bulgakov’s
sub-novel Pontius Pilate.
To be continued…
***
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