GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXX

The Bard:

Window Into Russian Literature.

Posting #3.

“I would have died of happiness now,

Had I been privileged of such a destiny…"

Sergei Yesenin. To Pushkin.

Bulgakov has exposed Ryukhin’s prototype as Mayakovsky, but has concealed the fact that Mayakovsky is also present in Woland, as well as in a few other characters of Master and Margarita.

But if the researcher could easily figure out Ryukhin, other characters were by no means easy. At the end of chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, Ryukhin is talking to the famous monument of A. S. Pushkin in Moscow:

“That whiteguarder was shooting and shooting at him and shattered his hip and ensured his immortality.”

Bulgakov through Ryukhin’s rant is writing about the lethal duel between A. S. Pushkin and D’Anthes, in which the Frenchman hit Pushkin in the abdomen, causing severe bleeding and death.

However, V. V. Mayakovsky appears in the novel Master and Margarita also in the 5^th chapter The Affair at Griboyedov. –

“Then the words were heard: “Call the doctor!” and someone’s gentle fleshy face, clean-shaven and well-fed, in horn glasses, appeared before Ivan. “Comrade Bezdomny,” the face started speaking in the Jubilee voice, “Calm down! You are upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich, no, simply Mischa Berlioz…”

I am analyzing this scene and Ivan’s furious reaction in it in my chapter Woland Identity. Here, however, I will only say that by using the expression “Jubilee voice,” Bulgakov unmistakably points to Mayakovsky who in 1924, celebrating the 125^th Anniversary of Pushkin’s birth wrote his famous poem Jubilee.

Also worth noting is the fact that the Russian poet S. A. Yesenin, on his wife’s advice, committed himself to a psychiatric clinic in Moscow, on account of his alcoholism, and fled from it in order to end his life (in 1925) in then-Leningrad (now back to St. Petersburg), to be as close to Pushkin as possible.)

Researchers have not paid attention to the phenomenon of splitting, as they did not know how to explain it, but in fact, explaining it is all-too-easy. The word is mysticism.

For instance, I already wrote that while telling Margarita about the guests at Satan’s Great Ball, Koroviev was seeing himself as a young man. –

“Begemot’s example was followed only by the ingenious dressmaker and her escort, unidentified young mulatto…”

I already wrote that whenever Bulgakov is using the word “neizvestnyi” (unknown, unidentified), what he has in mind is a very well-known person. This is how Bulgakov identifies the “young mulatto”:

“...Both of them plunged into the cognac, but at this point Koroviev caught Margarita’s arm, and they left the bathers to their own devices...”

Bulgakov also leads researchers off the right track by such words as “poisoned by an explosion of neurasthenia,” so that they might think that Mayakovsky has become Maksudov’s prototype in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel. But the researchers have paid no attention to the “restaurant towels dropped off by the departing policeman and Pantelei… Ryukhin attempted to pick them up, but instead, hissed for some reason with malice: Let them go to hell! Why am I hustling like a fool here? – He pushed them away with his foot and stopped looking at them.”

In order to explain why Ryukhin “hissed for some reason with malice: Let them go to hell!” – we need to jump from chapter 6 of Master and Margarita into chapter 23: The Extraction of Master. The researcher here is dealing with Woland responding to Margarita’s desire to pardon Frieda and saying this sarcastically:

“I don’t even know what to do! One thing only is left to me now: get myself a bunch of rags and stuff them into every crack in my bedroom.”

Woland’s words surprise Margarita, to which Woland explains:

“I am talking about compassion, – explained his words Woland, never taking his fiery eye off Margarita. – Sometimes totally unexpectedly, it penetrates through the narrowest little cracks. That’s why I am talking about rags.”

Now it becomes understandable why Ryukhin got so angry. He had a feeling of compassion toward Ivan, even though Ivan was hardly in a welcoming mood, under the circumstances. Ryukhin was angry toward himself.

I also remembered that in the 16^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Execution, which comes to Ivan in a dream, while he is a patient in Professor Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic, there is a place which directly touches upon the theme of compassion:

“Ratkiller disdainfully looked askance at the dirty rags lying on the ground under the poles, which recently had been the criminals’ clothes discarded by the executioners, and called up two of the latter, ordering them: Follow me!”

And so three characters of the novel Master and Margarita show different reactions on the subject, but all three of them are connected to the theme of compassion.

Woland is thus testing Margarita. Ryukhin is angry with himself over the feeling of compassion. Ratkiller is a centurion and he has no compassion whatsoever.

Mind you, all three of them have a connection to rags. (In Ryukhin’s case, to towels.)

But the most interesting thing is that all three have the same prototype: V. V. Mayakovsky, and their connection to “rags” is clearly established, which proves that I am right in my choice of the prototype.

Only in the 13^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero, Bulgakov’s attachment to the theme of the window becomes quite clear. Bulgakov writes:

“I lay down on the sofa [an allusion to Blok] and fell asleep without turning on the light... I woke up with the sensation that the squid was there… [another allusion to Blok: see my chapter Who is Who in Master]. Feeling around with my hand, I was barely able to turn on the lamp. My pocket watch showed 2 AM. .I had gone to bed like a man falling sick and woke up sick. I suddenly imagined that darkness was about to push in the glass and pour in, and I would be drowned in it, like in ink.”

Amazing storytelling! Bulgakov’s mastery is shining through again, as he doesn’t use the word “window” because the word “glass” does not only suffice, but is also more poetic in this context.

As Margarita returns to master’s basement apartment, Bulgakov writes that “someone started scratching the window softly.” Why scratching?

I already wrote that Marina Tsvetaeva saw all poets as cats who walk by themselves. She took this idea from Kipling.

Promising to return to the basement in the morning, Margarita left master alone.

“A quarter of an hour after she left me, there was a knock on my door…”

Having returned to the basement three months later, master “was shivering from cold in the little yard…” In front of master and below, were weakly illuminated little windows draped with curtains.

Windows again!

To be continued…

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