Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Posting #4.
“Au Dieu — mоn amе,
Mоn corps — au Roi,
Mon coeur — aux Dames,
L’honneur — pour moi.”
Marina Tsvetaeva.
Epigraph to the play Fortuna.
Even before knowing all that I know now, I correctly
figured out the transformation of souls and bodies, and explained why Bulgakov
has two pairs of master and Margarita. (See my chapter Transformation.)
Also in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End, the reader finds the answer to the question why
master and Margarita do not merit Paradise, but merit Rest.
Tsvetaeva:
“I am
no more than an animal
Wounded
in the abdomen by someone.
It’s
burning
As
though my soul has been flayed
Together
with the skin!
Like
vapor, escaped into a hole
The
notorious foolish heresy
Referred
to as soul.
Pale
Christian infirmity!
Steam!
Get steam compresses!
But
it was never there!
There
was a body that wanted to live,
Doesn’t
want to live anymore.”
But in Bulgakov, Margarita’s shadow wants to live, and
when Azazello poisons her and master with wine, she calls him a murderer.
Master wants to kill Azazello with a knife, but being too weak, fails to grab
the knife from the table and falls down on the floor.
This scene confirms that in this instance master’s
prototype is Andrei Bely who had written many poems on this subject. It is
precisely because of Andrei Bely that Bulgakov includes into the subnovel Pontius Pilate Matthew Levi’s plan to
kill Yeshua with a knife (to save him from the horrible execution), and then to
kill himself.
As for chess, Marina Tsvetaeva returns to this game a
second time (see the first time above) in her Poem of the End:
“Forgive
me! I didn’t want to [cry]!
The
scream of ripped entrails!
[And suddenly the unexpected:]
Thus
the condemned are waiting for the execution
After
three o’clock in the morning
Playing
chess [sic!]…”
This is why Bulgakov introduces a chess game in Master and Margarita right when
Margarita comes into the no-good Apartment #50. As the reader remembers, the
players are Woland (V. Mayakovsky) and Kot Begemot (M. Lermontov). Mayakovsky
shot himself in 1930, and Lermontov allowed himself to be shot on a duel by
making his own shot up into the air.
This is why Bulgakov writes:
“Margarita was extremely interested and
stunned by the fact that the chess pieces were all live figurines.”
And also Margarita’s following words:
“I
beseech you not to interrupt the game. I believe that chess magazines would
have paid good money for the opportunity to publish it.”
It also becomes clear that Marina Tsvetaeva is
describing the death of another Russian poet, namely N. S. Gumilev who wrote in
his last letter to his wife before his execution that he is reading the
Euangelion and Homer (I am sure from memory) and playing chess, so that his
wife would not worry.
More of Tsvetaeva:
“...Thus
the condemned are waiting for the execution
After
three o’clock in the morning
Playing
chess and teasing
The
corridor eye with a sneer.
For
pawns are part of chess,
And
somebody is playing us…
Who?
Good gods? Thieves?
Covering
the whole peephole –
The
eye. The clang of the red corridor.
The
pushed up chessboard.
The last makhorka drag.
Spit.
So, we’ve lived our measure. Spit.
These
checkered walkways
Lead
straight to the pit and blood.
The
secret eyehole, the moon’s peephole.
And
giving it a sideways glance:
How
faraway are you already!”
Why is the love affair of Marina Tsvetaeva and Andrei
Bely so important? Because Bulgakov inserts this pair into his own works.
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment