Monday, August 20, 2018

GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DCCLXIX



The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #2.


“Head forward, he tore into the curtain of the
window. The crash was fairly loud, but the
glass behind the curtain wouldn’t give a crack.
 So this is the kind of glass knickknacks you’ve
 got yourselves here! Let go of me! Let go!

M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.


Next time the theme of the window reappears in chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said:

“The woman pressed a button in the small table, and onto its glass surface popped up a glittering little box and a sealed ampule.
Ah, so that’s how it is?! – said Ivan, with a hunted-down expression, gazing around. – Well, all right then! Farewell!!! – And, head forward, he tore into the curtain of the window.
The crash was fairly loud, but the glass behind the curtain wouldn’t give a crack, and a moment later, Ivan Nikolayevich was struggling in the hands of the orderlies. He wheezed, tried to bite, screamed:
So this is the kind of glass knick-knacks you’ve got yourselves here! Let go of me! Let go!

It’s amazing, but in the process of my work on the theme of the window, I for the first time took notice of the fact that having come to the Griboyedov House to look for the professor there, Ivan was “redirected” to the psychiatric clinic. Bulgakov writes:

“The flabbergasted public not only at the restaurant, but on the boulevard itself, and in the windows of the buildings facing the restaurant’s garden, watched how a young man, swaddled like a doll, was carried out, drowning in tears, spitting with the intent of hitting Ryukhin, of all others…”

And all this despite being carried out by five burly men. And also, already later at the psychiatric clinic, a doctor asks Ivan:

And why the little icon?
Well, yes, the little icon… – Ivan blushed. – It was this little icon that scared them the most. –Once again he pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin.”

Naturally, one can explain this by virtue of a certain animosity exhibited by Yesenin toward Mayakovsky, but a far more interesting way of explaining it would be by imagining Ivan’s intuitive perception in Ryukhin of the spirit of Professor Woland whom he desperately tried to catch, but never could.
Bulgakov hints at this suggestion through the words of the physician on duty:

Schizophrenia, one must assume. He saw someone, perhaps, who affected his dysfunctional imagination, Or perhaps he was hallucinating…

…How can we now miss the connection between the poet Sashka Ryukhin and the professor-consultant? After all, the two of them have the same prototype: the Russian revolutionary poet, a contemporary of S. A. Yesenin, namely, V. V. Mayakovsky. This is precisely what Bulgakov is pointing to:

“…It was this little icon that scared them the most. –Once again he pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin. – But the point is that he is the consultant, and let us be candid about it – he is in cahoots with the demonic force – and you cannot catch him just like that.

There is a double meaning here. The point is that V. V. Mayakovsky in his long poem Flute-Spine did not mince any words:

There I blasphemed,
Yelled that there is no God,
And God brought up such one from the depths of hell
That before her a mountain will get excited and tremble,
And He brought her up and commanded:
Love!
God is content. Under the heavens, in a wringer,
The exhausted man has become wild and extinct.
God is rubbing the palms of his hands.
Thinks God: ‘Just you wait, Vladimir!’
It’s to his, his [that is, God’s] mind came the idea,
So that someone would not figure it out,
To give you [witch] a real husband…

Calling Margarita a “witch” in the 19th chapter of Master and Margarita: Margarita, Bulgakov also gives Margarita “a real husband.” As for Mayakovsky’s words: “So that someone would not figure it out,” no one has really figured out the truth in the earlier passage from chapter 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, that when Ivan “once again pointed his finger in the direction of Ryukhin: He is in cahoots with the demonic force,” I have deliberately omitted the word “consultant,” to make it clear what I have in mind. The poem Flute-Spine was written by Mayakovsky in 1915, and Sergei Yesenin must surely have read it. –

If we were to sneak to the door of the bedroom
And make a sign of the cross over your quilt,
I know, there will be a smell of burnt wool,
And sulphurous smoke will come from the flesh of the devil.

And indeed, Bulgakov’s devil (Woland) spends much of his time in the bedroom. It is in the bedroom that Woland meets Margarita. His bedroom smells of sulphur because Gella is rubbing sulphurous ointment into his knee.
Thus, in his poem Flute-Spine V. V. Mayakovsky confesses that he is dealing with the “demonic force.” Turning to God in desperation, Mayakovsky is pleading with him:

Do what you want, quarter me, if you like,
I will be the one to wash your hands, Righteous,
Only listen! Take away from me that accursed one
Whom you have made my lover!

Introducing into the poem the words: “I will be the one to wash your hands, Righteous,” Mayakovsky is alluding to the action of Pontius Pilate in the New Testament of the Bible, who was refused by the Jewish Synhedrion to set Jesus free and washed his hands symbolically, to show his refusal to accept responsibility for his death.

Pressing the miles of streets under the sway of my steps,
Where shall I go, hiding this hell?..

To be continued…

***



No comments:

Post a Comment