Alpha And Omega.
Posting #4.
“…It is a door in a
wall long abandoned,
Rocks and moss, and nothing
else…”
N. S. Gumilev. Gates
of Paradise.
From
A. S. Pushkin, Bulgakov reaches to Andrei Bely. Having brought cognac to Alexei
Turbin, “the woman,” as Bulgakov keeps calling her, also brings him “a long, smelling of sweet old scent Japanese robe with
peculiar bouquets upon it.”
But
about this later.
Having
found himself “in an ancient room, [Alexei Turbin]
discerned the patterns in the velvet, the edge of the double-breasted coat on
the wall in a frame, and the yellow-gold epaulette… My God, what antiquity!.. He was drawn to the epaulettes... There
was a world, and now the world has been killed. Those years are not coming
back…”
Bulgakov
writes about the “unreturnable years,” but he “returns” them nevertheless with
the word “Reithosen, breeches,” when “she” is undressing the wounded Alexei
Turbin. This word is loaded as it seems to point to the famous Repin portrait
of the lyceist Pushkin reciting his poetry in front of G. R. Derzhavin at
Tsarskoye Selo.
In
his Reminiscences, Pushkin writes:
“Derzhavin was very old. He was dressed in a tunic, wearing cable
boots. He was dozing off until the examination in Russian literature started…”
[He
woke up for a very good reason! Being of Tatar descent, Derzhavin became the
leading Russian poet of his time, following M. V. Lomonosov, the consummate
Russian genius in sciences and literature, who is also considered the first
Russian poet.]
“...Then he got back to life, his eyes were glistening... They were
reciting his poems... At last, I was called. I read my Reminiscences in Tsarskoye Selo standing two paces away from
Derzhavin. I am unable to describe the state of my soul. I do not remember how
I finished my recital, I don’t remember how I ran away. Derzhavin was
delighted; he was asking for me, wished to embrace me... They were looking for
me but did not find me.”
This
memoir was written in 1825. Pushkin’s recital took place in 1815 during the
public examination at the Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo. This is how one great
Russian poet of Tatar descent passed his magic wand to a young Russian poet of
African descent. Such a thing could happen only in Russia! [More about it in my
chapter The Dark-Violet Knight. See
also Bulgakov’s Notes on the Cuffs.]
Because
of this Repin painting, to use Marina Tsvetaeva’s language, the “poetic vermin”
attacked Pushkin’s poetry and Pushkin himself because of their envy of his
genius and their own inability to write poetry.
This
is what Bulgakov is pointing to in White
Guard through his use of the word “reithosen.”
Yet
again, like in Master and Margarita,
Bulgakov offers us a very sketchy portrait of the “lady-stranger.” (Reader, look for Blok in White Guard!) –
“...Completely undeterminable
hair, either ashen and pierced with fire [from the stove] or golden, and charcoal
eyebrows and black eyes. It’s hard to figure out whether that irregular profile
can be called beautiful with its aquiline nose and whatever that is in her
eyes. It may be fear or alarm or maybe vice... Yes, vice.”
From
this description it would be impossible to recognize Yulia Alexandrovna Reise,
mistress of Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, an enterprising Jew who is helping
the Bolsheviks, being categorically opposed to the virulent pogromnik Petlura
in Ukraine.
Here
Bulgakov gives an extremely vague description of Yulia: “a woman with a pale opaque face.” What follows is a very neat
literary trick. The reader will be able to recognize this woman not from her
personal description, but only from the description of a “large room with a low ceiling and an old portrait [sic!] from
which wanly looking were touched by age epaulettes of the 1840’s and also the
name Yulia.”
So,
why would Yulia Alexandrovna Reise tell Alexei Turbin: “My husband is not here now. He is out of
town. And mother too. I am alone…”
And
why does Bulgakov close the 13th chapter with the following:
“In the morning, around nine o’clock, a chance cabby picked up two
passengers – a man in black civilian clothes, very pale, and a woman. The woman
was carefully supporting the man, who was clutching her sleeve. She was taking
him to Alexeevsky Descent...”
And
in Master and Margarita I find the
answer in chapter 24: The Extraction of
Master, where Bulgakov offers descriptions of master and Margarita twice,
in order to draw the attention of the reader and especially of the researcher:
“…Margarita in the black cloak and master in his hospital robe
[sic!] went out into the corridor of the jeweler’s widow’s apartment where a
candle was burning, and where Woland’s retinue were waiting for them. When they
were leaving the corridor, Gella was carrying the suitcases containing master’s
novel and Margarita Nikolayevna’s few belongings, and the cat was helping Gella.”
And
a second time, one page later in the same chapter, Bulgakov presents the same
scene but now through the eyes of Annushka-the-Plague, peeping through a crack
in the door:
“Her frenzied from curiosity eye was twinkling… Some kind of sick
or not sick fellow, strange, pale, with overgrown beard, in a black little cap
and some kind of robe, was descending the stairs… he was carefully led, arm in
arm, by some dame in a black cassock, as it appeared to Annushka in the
semidarkness… Hell what! The dame was naked! Yes, that’s what she was, all naked
under the cassock thrown over her body!..”
Considering
that Bulgakov’s White Guard was
written in 1923, while N. S. Gumilev was shot in August 1921, Bulgakov
introduces a “wall” in the 13th chapter of White Guard, which I am dwelling on here. –
“...And here he saw her [the woman-stranger] at the very moment of
miracle in the black mossy wall completely fencing off the snowy pattern of the
trees in the garden.”
Bulgakov’s
“mossy wall” clearly points to the death [sic!] of N. S. Gumilev, who in his
1907-16 poetry collection Pearls has
this wonderful poem Gates of Paradise:
“Not
under seven diamond seals is locked
The entrance to God’s
Paradise.
It does not attract with
glitter and lures,
And it is unknown to people.
It is a door in a wall long
abandoned,
Rocks and moss, and nothing
else,
Nearby a pauper, like an
uninvited guest,
And there are keys hanging at
his waist…”
Not
only do we have “a door in the wall” and “moss” of White Guard here, but we also have master’s keys from Master and Margarita, which he allegedly
steals from the head nurse of the psychiatric clinic Praskovia Fedorovna. [See
my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of
Luminaries: Mr. Lastochkin.]
To
be continued…
***
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