The Bard.
Berlioz Is
Dead.
Kuzmin Is In
Leeches.
Long Live
Bosoy!
Posting #17.
“…But to one who
carries a pauper’s bag,
Even cabbage tastes like a
pineapple…”
Alexander Blok. Into the Album of Chukovsky.
And
so, the red-haired bearded neighbor of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is none other
than Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, which is also supported by these words of M.
A. Bulgakov:
“In the women’s theater, some
damsel is ceding [her valuables].”
How
does he know that? The answer must be unequivocal. She is Kanavkin’s aunt. But
as she is a foreigner, Isadora Duncan, I am switching now to the Russian
poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, at least because of her poem about Stenka Razin,
considering that the first to write about him was Pushkin in the 1826 Songs About Stenka Razin.
If
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, the prototype of Nikolai Kanavkin, wrote a long
poem Pugachev using the historical
papers of A. S. Pushkin: History of the
Pugachev Rebellion, then Marina Tsvetaeva wrote, after Pushkin, her Stenka Razin, while leaving a note in
her memoirs: An Evening at the
Conservatory, which is written allegedly in the name of her seven-year-old
daughter Alya. This note by Marina Tsvetaeva is of great importance, as it is
here that she is writing about Yesenin’s return from exile. As always, whenever
Tsvetaeva wishes to veil something, she resorts to this method of attributing the
material to her little daughter who may not possibly have written such
sophisticated stuff even for a girl twice her age.
On
a curious note, the first name of Marina Tsvetaeva’s husband Sergei Efron
coincides with the first name of Sergei Yesenin. [See my chapter Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.]
And
so, I am using these memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva because they are
simultaneously connected to A. S. Pushkin, who was the first to write in 1826 Songs of Stenka Razin, as well as the
appearance in them of the Russian people’s poet Sergei Yesenin, who happens to
be the prototype of Nikolai Kanavkin in Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy’s Dream.
“It’s a dark night. We are walking up Nikitskaya Street toward the
Great Hall of the Conservatoire. Marina will be reciting poetry there together
with many other poets… At last, they called Mama. She gave me her seat and
walked to the reading table… She was reading her verses about Stenka Razin. She
was reading clearly, without any foreign words.”
This
is what led me to the thought that Bulgakov was not using any foreigners as
prototypes of his characters in any of his works, which is why he could no way
use Isadora Duncan as one of them. Practically all of his personages are Russian
poets. Thus I found the connection of Marina Tsvetaeva with both Pushkin and
Yesenin, who wrote in 1924-1925 (shortly before his death) a series of poems
under the general title: Persian Motifs.
Many Russian poets employed this theme, the first one after Pushkin being
Lermontov, who in 1831 wrote the poem Ataman.
In 1917 Marina Tsvetaeva presented her own contribution to this subject.
“… She [Marina Tsvetaeva] was reading not too loud… Three verses
about how he (Stenka Razin) loved a Persian woman. Afterwards how she came back
to him in a dream to claim back her shoe which she had dropped while on board
his boat.”
In
his Theatrical Novel, which I have
called A Dress Rehearsal For Master And
Margarita [see my eponymous chapter], Bulgakov introduces the play Stenka Razin being rehearsed on the
stage of the Independent Theater. I figured out that I had the right to this
connection: A. S. Pushkin (as the read-haired bearded neighbor of Nikanor
Ivanovich) and Marina Tsvetaeva (as the damsel in the women’s theater).
And
indeed, M. A. Bulgakov calls Margarita in the 24th chapter of Master And Margarita: The Extraction of
Master: “a damsel in a black cassock,” and also: “a strangely accoutered
damsel.” It is to none other than Margarita that Bulgakov gives the “diamond-studded
royal coronet” and also the “fairly small golden horseshoe studded with
diamonds,” indicating that she is a poetess too. The “damsel” also has
something to deliver.
The
“royal diamond coronet” points to the exquisite quality of Marina Tsvetaeva’s
poetry, while the “diamond-studded golden horseshoe” takes us to her memoirs,
so successfully used by Bulgakov in Master
And Margarita.
All
the five poets (including Bryusov who is the prototype of Nikanor Ivanovich) and
Lermontov with his Ataman, happen to
be not only Russian poets, but also prototypes of the characters of M. A. Bulgakov’s
novel Master And Margarita.
***
But
where has the other neighbor of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy disappeared to? That
“pale and profusely hairy citizen”? Here Bulgakov uses some smoke and mirrors,
having written in the very beginning of this page: “And a happy Kanavkin left.”
But
it isn’t so! Bulgakov points to yet another Russian poet, albeit indirectly,
with the words:
“From afar one could hear a nervous tenor who was singing...”
Here
is a double ruse. To begin with, in the words of the Russian poetess Anna
Akhmatova –
“And
Blok, the tragic tenor of the epoch,
Will contemptuously smirk at
you…”
But
Bulgakov himself gives the tenor voice to Pushkin in Master and Margarita.
And
secondly, Bulgakov points to it with the following words:
“A fat with a raspberry-colored neck cook held out to [Nikanor
Ivanovich] a bowl in which a lonely cabbage leaf was swimming in some liquid.”
In
an 1919 jocular satirical poem Into the
Album of Chukovsky, Alexander Blok wrote the following lines in particular:
“...Where
can you go...
Looking for the blue flower?
In this world, which is so
empty,
You keep looking for it, and
find it!
And having found it, call it
cabbage,
Putting it every day into
your cabbage soup.
Don’t complain that the soup
is not thick,
There will be thinner soups
ahead...
The names of the flower
aren’t loud,
They will be confiscated
anyway,
But to one who carries a
pauper’s bag,
Even cabbage tastes like a
pineapple…”
I do not know if Nikanor
Ivanovich Bosoy ever thought about a pineapple, but Marina Tsvetaeva clearly
thought about “geese,” when she wrote about love, comparing love to a well:
“Love is... a sudden vision of a maiden – pulling up a pail of
water, she fell into the well – and everything is new, a new country with different
trees, different flowers, different geese, etc. This is how I see
love in which she has indeed fallen, and having got out of the well... at first
she does not recognize anything that is from here... Afterwards I know – it
wasn’t. Neither the well, nor those geese, nor those flowers, nor that
me...”
This
is how Marina Tsvetaeva follows Pushkin’s advice to read fairytales.
Et
voilà, she keeps going:
“...Love is without a face. It is a country. The beloved is one of
its denizens, a native, strange and special – like a negro! – only here...”
[In
other words, she writes about Russia and the great Russian poet Pushkin!]
“...I’ll say it deeper. This well is not outside. It is in me. I am
falling inside me, falling into some kind of me...”
And indeed, it is quite
possible that Marina Tsvetaeva loved Pushkin ever since early childhood, when
she didn’t even know the word “poet.” And she remained true to the end of her
life.
As
for Alexander Blok, as a poet he was the closest to A. S. Pushkin, and I’ve
always wondered what “My Puskin”
would have said about Blok’s poetry had he read it.
[The
name ‘Puskin’ was jokingly used by Pushkin himself in a letter to his wife.
Considering that the moniker “My Pushkin”
has already been appropriated by Marina Tsvetaeva, what is there for me left to
do if not to take Pushkin at his “word,” and to appropriate the moniker “My Puskin”?]
***
Summarizing
what I have written, I’d like to reiterate most emphatically that Russian
poetry started with A. S. Pushkin and that all subsequent Russian poets
of any style and stature were students of his poetry. This must have been and
remains a must.
As
for A. A. Blok, he in particular wrote a multitude of poems about Pushkin, by
doing which he has deserved gratitude of the posterity.
And
with regard to The Dream of Nikanor
Ivanovich, it does include a number of great Russian poets:
1. V. V. Mayakovsky. – The Artiste. The Compere.
2. Andrei Bely. – Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil.
3. S. A. Yesenin. – Nikolai Kanavkin.
4. A. S. Pushkin. – The red-haired bearded neighbor of
Nikanor Ivanovich.
5. M. I. Tsvetaeva. – The Damsel.
With
regard to A. S. Pushkin, throughout the whole book (Master and Margarita) he is just playing the role of the Real Vyzhigin, exposing who and how had
treated him in this shameful manner. A very interesting method “from the
opposite” is being used here by Bulgakov.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment