Alpha And Omega.
Posting #46.
“All doors are locked,
and the keys are given over
By the jailer to the
merciless Queen.”
Petrarca.
The
bundle of keys which master steals from the head nurse of the psychiatric
clinic has no connection to Paradise. Master’s tale about this event has no
sense in it. I already wrote before that in such a case, had it been true, had
the head nurse really lost her bundle of keys, the locks would have been
changed immediately.
The
real meaning of the keys, and also of the verbal exchange between master and
Ivan (“So, we
sit? –We sit!”) can be found in the Russian idiom, where “sitting”
means being in prison. And this is exactly what Bulgakov has in mind.
Gumilev
was “sitting” before his execution, but, unfortunately, he had no “bundle of
keys.”
There is yet another
indication of prison in Bulgakov, which is in the 11th chapter: The Splitting of Ivan.
“Sleep was crouching toward
Ivan when suddenly the barred [balcony door] started soundlessly sliding
sideways…”
In Chapter 13: The Appearance of the Hero, Bulgakov
continues:
“So, how did you get here? – asked
Ivan. – But the balcony bars have locks!”
Using
a single word “bars” Bulgakov implies
a prison. Chapter 13 closes with the bars as well. –
“And before Ivan could regain
his composure, the bars shut with a quiet ring, and the guest vanished.”
Thus,
“a bundle of keys” is linked to prison. Having looked through all my notes in
the notebook related to “keys,” I unexpectedly found an answer in three Blokian
poems.
The
first of them is clearly influenced by the poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov. The
epigraph comes from Petrarch:
“All
doors are locked, and the keys are given over
By the jailer to the
merciless Queen.”
Blok
opens his poem from the 3rd cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady with the words:
“A
battle gladdens my heart,
I sense the freshness of the
battle bliss,
But in my belated rush
forward
I am brought down by the heat
of enemy cheeks...”
In
this poem I see M. Yu. Lermontov, his Prisoner
of the Caucasus, his poem about prisoners, his Tamara, his Demon, and him himself. Blok continues.
–
“...But
my new captivity is the dearest to me.
I am looking into wakeless
darkness,
But into the long coldness of
these walls
A wondrous guard descends at
times…”
Blok
will return to this Lermontovian theme in his later poetry collection Faina, in which the poetic cycle A Spell of Fire and Darkness will be
marked by an epigraph from Lermontov. [See my chapter Strangers in the Night.]
“...He
will give me wings and carry me away
And will illuminate and cloud
my mind.
And his speech flows sweetly,
But with every sound it
wounds the heart…”
The
last Blokian stanza reveals Lermontov to me:
“...The
secret of youth lies in it,
And with a slow and sweet
poison
He gradually feeds the
prisoner,
Having enchanted him with his
bottomless glance.”
Thus,
Blok’s epigraph taken from Petrarca clearly points to a prison, rather than to
a psychiatric clinic. Ivan Bezdomny’s prototype was also arrested and sent
“farther than Solovki.” S. Yesenin, however, was lucky, he quickly returned
from his exile to Moscow, being helped by friends, even though in the lists of
some he was counted as an anti-Semite.
And
so, the “bundle of keys” is Bulgakov’s indication of the fact that both master
[Gumilev] and the poet Bezdomny [Yesenin] had been arrested.
The
next Blokian poem explains who the “Queen” is:
“There,
where a mound of stones rises,
The blue queen of the earth
is.
And the queen – pleading and
alarmed,
Betrothed to the cold of winters…
He – stands lifeless on the
road,
I – toward him, tormented by
immortality [sic!]…”
This
is pure Lermontov! –
“I am
a madman! You are right, you’re right!
Ridiculous is immortality on
earth.
How could I wish for loud
glory,
When you are happy in the
dust.”
And
here is Blok again:
“...But
the immortal forces are in vain –
And the queen has no pity for
freedom…
Celebrating the victory of
the grave,
The White One gazes into the
frosty beyond.”
We
could have stopped with this poem, as the queen who appears in this poem is in
fact the grave who “has no pity for freedom,” that is, for human life.
However,
the next two poems are also relevant to master:
“I am
not expecting early secrets, believe me,
They will not ascend to me.
Shut is the door [sic!]
before me
To the mysterious haven.”
Blok
himself has no keys to open this door. Here we also find the proof that
Bulgakov takes this thought from Blok’s poetry, as he is using the word
“mysterious”:
“Yes, Ivan Nikolayevich got himself a grateful listener in the
person of the mysterious stealer of the keys!”
Also pointing to prison is
the following:
“Are you a writer? – the
poet [Ivanushka] asked interestedly.
[For
some reason, researchers aren’t paying attention to the fact that a page
earlier Ivan confesses that his verses are monstrous, and promises not to write
them anymore. This ought to demonstrate that hiding within the character of
Ivan Bezdomny is a real Russian poet. Still, before my present work, the
Russian people’s poet S. A. Yesenin was not even considered as Ivan’s
prototype.]
“The guest’s face darkened, and he shook his fist at Ivan, saying
after that: I am master. He became
stern and produced out of the pocket of his hospital robe a totally soiled
little black cap with the letter “M” embroidered on it in yellow silk. He
put the cap on and showed himself to Ivan in profile and en face
[sic!], in order to prove that he was master.
In a nutshell, the “bars on
the windows,” the “bundle of keys,” and finally, the unmistakable allusion to
prisoner mug shots “in profile and en face” prove that the poet Ivan Bezdomny
and master are “sitting” in prison.
To
be continued…
***
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