The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #7.
“…Ah! How strange! As
for me,
I can’t pull my feet away
from the emptiness!
Like this!.. Or better still…like
this…”
Marina Tsvetaeva. Memoir
of Andrei Bely.
When
the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov was eating the “flavorful
juicy meat, he nearly choked on it [when] out of an adjacent room a large dark
bird flew in and slightly touched the bald head of the buffet vendor. Having
settled on the stone shelf next to the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl.”
The
same thing happened to Margarita in the 22nd chapter With Candles, when Koroviev was bringing
her to Woland. –
“They walked among columns where they could hear rustlings and
where something brushed Margarita’s head. She was startled.
Do not be afraid! – sweetly comforted her Koroviev. – Ballroom shenanigans of Begemot, nothing
worse than that. And, generally speaking, I take it upon myself to suggest to
you, Margarita Nikolayevna, never to be afraid of anything.”
But
it wasn’t quite the way Koroviev explained it. Bulgakov writes in the same 22nd
chapter:
“Ai!, exclaimed Begemot. The parrots have scattered around, just as I
predicted!
And indeed, somewhere far off they could hear the noise of many
wings.”
But
this was not “the noise of many wings” when “something brushed Margarita’s head.” These were some
kind of “rustlings.” The behavior of the
parrots in the tropical forest also contradicts what happened to Margarita. At
the ball, “red-breasted, green-tailed parrots were
clinging to lianas, leaped from one to another with deafening screeches: I am entranced!”
It
turns out that parrots are indeed very noisy birds. But an owl – a loner – may
produce only rustlings. So it must have been an owl that brushed Margarita’s
head with its wing. And it must have been the same owl that “slightly touched the bald head of the buffet vendor.”
The
theme of the owl is closely connected with Margarita, but there is no Margarita
as such in chapter 18. She appears in the next 19th chapter
appropriately titled Margarita, where
the novel’s heroine compares herself to an owl, sitting under the Kremlin Wall.
Bulgakov writes:
“Why
am I sitting like an owl by myself under the wall? Why am I shut out of life?”
Here Bulgakov uses the word
“wall” in order to point to the execution of the Russian poet Gumilev who was
“put to the wall,” and shot by a firing squad. Gumilev is of course one of
master’s three prototypes.
Bulgakov
takes the idea of the “owl” from Marina Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Andrei Bely,
titled A Captive Spirit. At the time
when, following the death of Blok and Gumilev, Andrei Bely arrived in Berlin,
Asya Turgeneva, Bely’s former wife divorced from him, appears at a Berlin café
with a lover. This is how Marina Tsvetaeva describes the two of them:
“He must be madly in love
with her!.. And see this mad love sitting in the [café] Pragerdiele, sulking
like an owl and swallowing a yawn: How boring it is with her! Always silent,
never talks, never smiles. Like some owl indeed… ”
Bulgakov
introduces “clues” from the works of Russian poets, that is, he is leaving
traces pointing to the prototypes of his characters. Sometimes he uses whole
situations, like for instance in those same memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva:
“We are standing together, he and I, on the top of some kind of
tower, I don’t remember where, only that it was very-very high. And he [Andrei
Bely] in a swinging motion takes my hand, as though about to take me to a
mazurka dance: Are you drawn to make a
leap down there? Like this… (an infant-like smile) – Somersault-style! I honestly tell him that not only am I not drawn, but even the mere thought of
it makes me sick. – Ah! How strange! As
for me, I can’t pull my feet away from the emptiness! Like this! (He bends
his body at the right angle stretching out his arms.) – Or better still… (bends backwards, his hair flowing back) – like this…”
This
is where Bulgakov takes the idea of Margarita’s “flight” from. But is it really
so? In chapter 21: The Flight,
Margarita meets the Backenbarter. [See my chapter Backenbarter.]
I
had to look through the works of A. S. Pushkin. Many of his poems were already
marked with a small dot. I remembered something about a Cossack, there was a Hussar, an 1833 poem. The initial point
of departure for Bulgakov.
Having
been stationed in a new place, the hussar remembers the city of Kiev:
“So
listen, near the river Dnieper
Our regiment was stationed,
my hostess
Was pretty and kind,
And mark you, her husband had
died.
And so I befriended her;
Well, no, I became jealous.
What could I do? The fiend
must have tempted me.
I started thinking: why would
she
Rise before the roosters? Who
asks her to?
My Marusenka must be fooling
around;
Where is the evil one taking
her?
And I started keeping an eye
on her…”
Feigning
sleep, the hussar was secretly watching her, and this is what he found out
about his Marusenka:
“…Holding
a candle, she went into a corner
Where she took a phial from a
shelf,
And mounting a broom near the
stove,
She stripped stark naked,
then
She took three sips from the
phial,
And suddenly, riding upon the
broom,
She whirled up the chimney
and vanished…”
Apparently under the influence of this 1833 Pushkin
poem, N. S. Gumilev wrote his own 1911 poem From
the Serpent’s Lair, From the City of Kiev, in the poetry collection Alien Sky.
Meanwhile, Pushkin’s poem Hussar continues. The hussar has realized that his Kievan “lady” is
an un-Christian alien and started sprinkling all corners with Holy water. –
“…And
all pots, benches, tables,
March! March! – all leaped
into the oven.
What the hell! – I thought,
for now
It is my turn! And in a
single gulp
I emptied the whole phial;
believe it or not,
I suddenly whirled upward,
like a feather.
Rapidly I fly, I fly, I fly,
I don’t remember and don’t
know where;
I only yell to passing stars:
Hold to the right! – And I
fall down to the ground.
I look: a mountain and on
that mountain
Cauldrons are boiling,
singing, playing…
And suddenly I see my Marusya
running:
Go home! Who called you,
busybody?
You will be eaten, here’s a
poker,
Mount it and get lost, you
cursed one!
I need a horse! – Here,
stupid, here’s a horse!
And indeed: a horse is before
me….
He leaped upwards, carrying
me,
And we found ourselves in
front of the stove…”
How
simple everything is in Pushkin! –
“…I
look: all is the same, as for me,
I am mounted, and under me,
It’s not the horse, but an
old bench:
This is what happens
sometimes.”
So
how does this poem translate into Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita?
To
be continued…
***
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