The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #8.
“…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…”
A. S. Pushkin. The
Hussar.
Bulgakov
used Pushkin’s poem Hussar in his
novel Master and Margarita. If in
Pushkin we have:
“…And
all pots, benches, tables,
March! March! – all leaped
into the oven…”
–
then in Bulgakov the idea of the fireplace springs up just in time for Satan’s
Great Ball, with the guests of the ball dropping out of it in order to attend.
If
in Pushkin, Marusenka “suddenly, riding upon the broom, whirled up the chimney and
vanished,” Bulgakov’s Margarita departs from her mansion upon a
floorbrush through the window.
If
in Pushkin, Marusya “took a phial from a shelf and, mounting a broom near the
stove, undressed stark naked,” then in Bulgakov, Margarita follows
Azazello’s instructions:
“Tonight at precisely
half-past-nine, do take the trouble, having stripped naked, of rubbing this
ointment into your face and the whole body…”
Strange
as it may seem, Bulgakov took this idea from the prose of the Russian poet
Sergei Yesenin, who happens to be the prototype of both Azazello and the poet
Ivan Bezdomny, alias the historian Ivan Ponyrev. But this belongs to another
chapter…
Bulgakov
writes:
“…At last, the long hand fell upon the twenty-ninth minute after
nine o’clock… Overcoming her anxiety, Margarita opened [the box], and saw
inside it some fatty yellowish cream. It seemed to her that it smelled of marsh detritus. With the tip
of her finger, Margarita put a small smudge of the cream on her palm, which at
the same time increased the smell of marsh herbs and of the forest. And then
with her palm she started rubbing the cream into her forehead and cheeks. All
wrinkles vanished on her face. Looking
at the 30-year-old Margarita from the mirror was a woman of about 20, laughing
unstoppably and baring her teeth…”
Here
is yet another Bulgakovian puzzle for the researcher. Namely, to find the young
Margarita who had just come to Moscow shortly before her marriage. (See my chapter
Who is Professor Persikov in Reality?)
“…Having laughed to her heart’s content,
Margarita jumped out of her robe in a single leap, took a broad scoop of the
light fatty cream, and in strong smears started rubbing the cream into the skin
of her body. Her body instantly attained a rosy color and caught fire. Next,
Margarita’s body lost weight. She jumped and hung in the air not too high over
the carpet, then she was slowly pulled down, and she came down. The rubbings
changed not only her physical appearance. Now, in all of her, in every particle
of her body, a joy boiled up, which she felt as bubbles pricking the whole of
her body. Margarita felt free, free from everything... And as she was, naked,
all the time popping into the air, she ran from the bedroom into her husband’s
study. There, on a piece of paper torn out of a notebook, she scribbled a note
without any corrections…”
Here
again, in his own way, as he is a prosaic, Bulgakov is using the advice of A.
S. Pushkin, given in the poem The Prosaic and the Poet. The excerpt from
the 20th chapter of Master and
Margarita: Azazello’s Cream, quoted above, corresponds to the following
passage in Pushkin’s poem:
“What
are you, prosaic, fussing about?
Give
me a thought whatever you like:
I’ll
sharpen it at the end,
I’ll
feather it with a flying rhyme,
I’ll
put it on a tight bowstring,
I’ll
make an arc of my supple bow,
And
then I’ll send it wherever it flies,
To
the detriment of our foe!”
In
my opinion, Bulgakov deserves the greatest praise for the manner in which he
handled his task, considering the following lines in Pushkin’s poem The Hussar:
“…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…”
This
is how Bulgakov explains Pushkin’s words:
“…Now, in all of her, in every particle
of her body, a joy boiled up, which she felt as bubbles pricking the whole of
her body. Margarita felt free, free from everything...”
And
right away, on the second page of the 20th chapter of Master and Margarita: Azazello’s Cream,
there appears my long-awaited “window”:
“At that time from
somewhere on the other side of the side street, out of an open window, there
tore away and flew a thunderous virtuosic waltz, and then there was the sound
of an approaching car, the wicket was slammed and steps could be heard on the
plates of the walkway… Margarita tore the curtain aside, and sat on the
windowsill sideways, wrapping her arms around her knee...”
After
Azazello’s telephone call, “Margarita hung up the
receiver and at once something started a wooden hobble in the next room and
began beating on the door. Margarita thrust open the door and a floorbrush with
its bristles up, dancing flew into the bedroom. The end of the stick was drum-beating
on the floor, kicking and aiming for the window. Margarita squealed with
delight and mounted the floorbrush and next flew out the window.”
And
so, Bulgakov uses the following characteristics of Marusenka’s flight:
-
Naked;
-
In order to fly she needs a broom.
Margarita
is also naked, and in order to fly she
uses a floorbrush.
Also
of interest is the experience of the hussar:
“...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,..”
The
hussar needed neither a broom nor a brush to fly to the mountain. In other
words, both the hussar and Margarita were experiencing the state of
weightlessness.
To
be continued…
***
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