Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Posting #3.
“(Silently: listen!
To desire – is the business
of the bodies.
And we are souls for each
other
From now on…)
(No
desires. Desire is the business of those.
And
we are each other’s shadows
From
now on…)”
Marina Tsvetaeva. The Poem of the End.
Marina Tsvetaeva didn’t conceal the dead connection with
Andrei Bely in her poem. It was the other way: she revealed it. There are other
confirmations of it as well – that in her Poem
of the End Marina Tsvetaeva describes her breakup with her lover who
happens to be none other than Andrei Bely. It is true that he went back to
Russia and apparently suggested that she should come along with him.
It’s highly likely that M. Bulgakov includes a chess
game in Master and Margarita also
because of Marina Tsvetaeva. In her Poem
of the End she turns to the theme of chess twice. Here is the first time:
“So,
I’m the first one? The first move?
It’s
like in chess? However,
Even
to the scaffold
We
are being asked first…”
This is how Marina Tsvetaeva reacts to Andrei Bely’s
insincere suggestion, who is shamelessly flattering her.
“You
are the Caesar of this battle.
(Oh
shameless lunge…)
Kneeling
twice to you:
For
the first time outstripped.
In
the gap. –You tell this to all?
He
goes on. (Ringing in my ears.)”
The reader must remember well that famous “ringing in the
ears” after Margarita drinks Baron Meigel’s blood from the cup fashioned by
Woland from the skull of Berlioz. Marina Tsvetaeva continues:
“Do
not try to refute!
Revenge
worthy of Lovelass.
A
gesture doing you honor…
(No
desires. Desire is the business of those.
And
we are each other’s shadows
From
now on…)”
Bulgakov uses the word “Lovelass” in the scene under
the Kremlin Wall when Margarita is sitting on the same bench on which she had
been sitting with master exactly a year before, and a man sits down on her
bench “attracted by her beauty and loneliness.” However, “Margarita gave him
such a somber look that he got up and left.”
It is in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End that going over the bridge with her lover (Andrei
Bely) she is contemplating suicide: “I am not going to plunge down!”
“The
last bridge.
(Won’t
let go of the hand, won’t take it out!)
The
last bridge, the last firmament.
Bridge,
you are not a husband:
A
lover: a complete miss!
To
take a dive – I would have to
Let
go of the hand.
And
I hesitate, I hesitate,
And
I am inseparable. Bridge, you are for us!..
Say,
is this a dream?
It’s
nighttime, and after the night comes the morning…
Say,
is this delirium?”
And soon after the scene with the bridge, and it is
very important, because Marina Tsvetaeva was indeed afraid of drowning herself.
How is it in Bulgakov?
In the 22nd chapter of Master and Margarita: With Candles, telling Margarita about the
Ball of the Full Moon, also known as the Ball of a Hundred Kings, Koroviev
casually drops the word that Margarita has royal blood in her.
“Why
of royal blood? – whispered a frightened Margarita, clinging to Koroviev.”
And Koroviev/Pushkin, using Blok’s language, starts
“weaving lacework” around Margarita. It was Blok himself who called poets “kings,
royalty.” But Margarita is clinging to Koroviev because of this Poem of the End, where Marina Tsvetaeva
wrote that she is clinging to her lover (Andrei Bely), doesn’t want to let him
go: “action,” as Tsvetaeva would call it. And she is always putting her own
words in brackets, which means that even if she says these words at all, then
silently to herself. In other words, Marina Tsvetaeva keeps her silence,
guarding all her emotions, in order to write this Poem of the End.
Just like in Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End, Bulgakov erects his own firewall around Margarita
in the 24th chapter The
Extraction of Master. After supper, following Woland’s Ball, Margarita
feels deceived:
“Thank you, Messire, –
barely audibly said Margarita and looked at Woland inquisitively. The other in
his turn smiled at her politely and indifferently. Margarita’s heart was
attacked by dark anguish. She felt betrayed. No reward for all her services at
the Ball could be expected from anybody, as nobody had any intention of keeping
her there... Should I be asking for it
myself? – as Azazello had been so temptingly suggesting at the
Alexandrovsky Garden. No, by no means! – she
said to herself. All the best to you,
Messire, she said out loud, while thinking to herself: Just let me get out of here, and then I will get myself to a river and
drown in it.”
How skillfully does Bulgakov substitute Marina
Tsvetaeva’s “bridge” with “a river”! But this belongs to another chapter of
mine.
Generally speaking, this whole conversation is
masterfully shaped by Bulgakov, as he makes superb use of Marina Tsvetaeva’s
poetry.
The whole idea of transformation comes to Bulgakov
from Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End.
As the reader remembers, “I didn’t want this. Not this.” – says Marina Tsvetaeva’s lover Andrei Bely to her.
Her response is silent, to herself:
“(Silently:
listen!
To desire – is the business
of the bodies.
And we are souls for each
other
From now on…)”
And then Marina Tsvetaeva returns to this theme,
closely, but differently:
“(No
desires. Desire is the business of those.
[Meaning of the lovers they had been before that.]
And
we are each other’s shadows
From
now on…)
The
last nail is driven in,
A
screw, because the coffin is leaden…
[And again, pleading –]
We
are dragging ourselves on,
The
two co-criminals (we have killed love)…
The
[electric] current
(As
though lay down with its soul on my arm…
Arm
on arm.)
The
current strikes,
Tears
with feverish wires –
Lay
down with its arm on my soul!..”
To be continued…
***
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