Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Posting #1.
“No,
Don’t write them at all,
Those
books…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. The Poem of the End.
While working on Gumilev, I remembered that somewhere
in Marina Tsvetaeva I had read about a group of condemned men awaiting
execution. Rereading her poetry and having no table of contents in my book,
finally, I reached her Poem of the End.
Not only did I find “the condemned” there, but that material had answers to
many of my questions related to the works of M. A. Bulgakov.
As they say, repetition is the mother of learning.
Suddenly, unexpectedly for myself, I made a big discovery. Reading Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs, I always thought that she was writing them as a literary work. Having
reread the Poem of the End, I
understood that as a poet she was far more honest than she was as a woman who
wrote her memoirs. This led me to the discovery of a plenitude of new material.
This is how my new chapter was born: Varia. Three Plays! Three Plays! Three
Plays!
***
If Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov closes the first
chapter of his Master and Margarita and
opens the second chapter with the very same words –
“In a white cloak with a blood-red lining, sporting the shuffling
cavalryman’s gait, early in the morning of the 14th day of the
Spring month Nissan, the Procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate came out into the
roofed colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great…”
–then why at the beginning of the twenty-third chapter
Bulgakov puts Margarita on the bottom of the pool where she is about to be
washed? –
“…When Margarita stepped down onto the bottom of the pool, Gella
and Natasha, who was helping her, doused Margarita with some hot, thick and red
liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste on her lips and realized that she was
being showered with blood…”
And here it comes:
“The blood mantle gave way to another, which was thick,
transparent, kind of rosy in color, and Margarita became dizzy from the rose
oil…”
In Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1924 Poem of the End I find many answers to my questions:
“Love
is flesh and blood.
A flower watered with own
blood…
Love – it means a stretched
bow –
The bow – a separation.”
Bulgakov’s Margarita is separated from master. She
does not know whether her beloved is dead or alive.
When in the Poem
of the End Marina Tsvetaeva’s lover suggests that they leave, she replies:
“…And
I was hoping we would die.
That
is simpler! – So are we leaving?
–
Your route? Poison, rails, lead –
Take
a pick!”
That’s why in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, he first poisons Margarita with poison in Azazello’s Cream.
That’s why Margarita in the chapter Margarita’s Flight has such a strange
reaction to the train.
“Somewhere in the distance, for some reason greatly perturbing her
heart, a train was puffing along. Margarita soon saw it. It was crawling
slowly, like a caterpillar, scattering sparks into the air.”
In the same poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, she uses the word
“Lovelass”: “Revenge
worthy of Lovelass.” In the same poem she also compares her lover to
a Crucifix:
“In
the sky, rustier than tin.
The
finger of a pole
Rose
on the predestined spot,
Like
Fate [Sic!].”
The word “Fate” tells us that Marina Tsvetaeva was
having an affair with Andrei Bely. It was for a reason that in her memoirs she
rejects her publisher’s suggestion that Andrei Bely has a crush on her, calling
his behavior toward her “un coup de foudre.”
In her memoir of Andrei Bely, Tsvetaeva writes that “un coup de foudre
does not happen that way.” Still, she gives herself away with the
following words concluding that passage:
“And
the minute was heavy,
A
completely fractured spine…”
Marina Tsvetaeva was writing her memoirs in 1934 after
Andrei Bely’s death, that is 12 whole years after their affair. She stated that
in November 1923 Bely returned to Russia, rather than going to Prague, where
she was living at the time. Thus in her poem Tsvetaeva was more honest, and as
a poet she had to be more honest. But her reminiscences erased the pain after
many years had passed, but, most importantly, Andrei Bely, her lover, was dead,
and in his book of poetry After Parting there
was only one dedication of one of the last poems in the collection, and that
dedication was to Marina Tsvetaeva.
Andrei Bely must have known woman’s nature pretty
well, as this “sole dedication” did the
trick. Marina Tsvetaeva wrote a good memoir of Andrei Bely and herself. In
Marina Tsvetaeva, the woman triumphed over the poet.
Pointing to Andrei Bely’s affair with Marina Tsvetaeva
is also the title of her poem which she had started writing in Prague
immediately after Andrei Bely’s departure on February 1, 1924, until June 8,
1924 – The Poem of the End.
Considering that in 1921, before his departure to Europe, Andrei Bely had
written the poem The First Date.
Thus, Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End serves as her response to Andrei Bely’s poem The First Date. [In title only.] M. A.
Bulgakov used both these poems.
The following words in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End provide evidence of that
affair:
“The
very last of all requests.
I
am asking you. – Never a word
About
us… To any of … well…
The
latter ones…”
[These are apparently Bely’s words. Marina Tsvetaeva
responds likewise:]
“…I’d
ask the same of you..”
And then the words which prove beyond any doubt that
the reader is dealing with Andrei Bely here:
“The
gaze wide-gaping
Absent…
[Trademark of Andrei Bely.]
Smarmier and
softer:
But
a book for you?
[This is Andrei Bely’s question. Marina Tsvetaeva:]
Like
for everybody? No, Don’t write them at all,
Those
books…”
Andrei Bely had a habit of depicting himself, his
friends, his mistresses, and even his wife (Asya Turgeneva) in his novels. We
find the proof of that again in Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoirs. A. Bely complains
to her about his wife:
“Oh,
you don’t know how evil she is! She has to (in whisper) wound me in the heart
itself. She had to kill the past, kill herself, that one, to make it so
that that one never was. This is revenge!”
Marina Tsvetaeva asks: “Revenge? But for what?”
Andrei Bely replies: “For Sicily. For Ofeira. Don’t you know that
I am no longer married?”
Apparently, in this book Ofeira Asya Turgeneva had recognized herself. This is not
surprising. In Bely’s famous novel Peterburg
everyone had recognized the triangle of Andrei Bely and the wife of
Alexander Blok, who was his friend.
“Still,
read my book!”
These words of Andrei Bely quoted in the memoirs of
Marina Tsvetaeva explain her words in The
Poem of the End. –
“No,
Don’t write them at all,
Those
books…”
To be continued…
***
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