The Bard:
Window Into Russian Literature.
Posting #11.
“The window hadn’t
trembled for a whole year,
The heavy door hadn’t been
ringing;
All had been forgotten, long
forgotten,
And now it opened…”
A. Blok. From the poetry cycle Crossroads.
Alexander
Blok’s contemporary the Russian poet Nikolai Gumilev correctly wrote this about
Blok:
“Usually, a poet gives the people his works. Blok gives himself.
What I want to say by this is that in his poetry there is no resolution of
general problems, as in Pushkin, nor philosophical, as in Tyutchev. He simply
portrays his own life, which, fortunately for him, is so wondrously rich in
internal struggle, catastrophes, and enlightenments. At the same time, he
possesses a purely Pushkinian ability to make one feel the eternal in the
transitory, behind each accidental character to show the shadow of genius,
guarding his destiny.”
Doesn’t
M. A. Bulgakov do the same thing? Behind each character of his stands the
prototype of a dead writer or poet, or of two Russian composers of music: N.A.
Rimsky-Korsakov and M. P. Mussorgsky; These two composers are also tied to A.
S. Pushkin through their operas: The
Golden Cockerel; Mozart and Saglieri; Tsar Saltan, written by
Rimsky-Korsakov, and, of course, Mussorgsky’s masterpiece Boris Godunov, made a world sensation by the great Fedor Chaliapin.
Bulgakov
uses Blok’s theme of the window already in the 13th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Appearance of the
Hero. Bulgakov writes:
“But suddenly spring arrived, and through the dull window glass I
saw at first bare, then gradually dressing in green bushes of lilac.”
And
in Blok’s poetry cycle Crossroads, I
am reading in a 1902 titleless poem:
“Opening
the window, I saw lilacs.
It was in spring, on a
flying-away day.”
Just
like in chapter 13 of Master and
Margarita: The Appearance of the Hero, in chapter 24, The Extraction of Master, the theme of the window is directly
connected both to Bulgakov’s master and to master’s prototype the Russian poet
A. A. Blok. Bulgakov writes:
“…Here a burst of wind entered the room, bringing the flame
of the candles in the chandeliers down. The heavy curtain on the window was
pushed aside, and in the distant height there opened a full moon, not a morning
moon, but a midnight moon. From the windowsill down across the floor there
spread out a greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s
night guest calling himself master…
Margarita recognized him immediately. She was kissing him on the forehead, on
the lips, and pressing herself to his unshaven cheek…”
Here,
in Bulgakov, the theme of the window is connected to the theme of love, like it
is in Blok. [See my chapter Strangers in
the Night.]
As
for Alexander Blok’s poetry, already in his Verses
About a Fair Lady the theme of the window is used alongside the theme of
the door. In another titleless poem Blok writes:
“The
heavy gates opened wide,
The smell of wind entered the
window!”
Also
in the same 3rd Cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady, Blok writes:
“Slowly
toward the door of the church
Was I walking unfree in my
soul…”
And
in Bulgakov’s 29th chapter of the novel Master and Margarita, I am reading:
“Frieda! – shrilly
screamed Margarita. The door swung open, and a disheveled, naked, but with no
more signs of intoxication, woman with frenzied eyes burst into the room, and
stretched her arms out to Margarita, the latter telling her majestically: You are forgiven. No more handkerchief. [For
thirty years now, every night Frieda is being served with the same cursed
handkerchief with a blue border that Frieda had used to smother her baby, after
which she had buried the baby in the forest.]
What came next was Frieda’s scream. She fell face-down before Margarita,
spreading her arms cross-like. Woland waved his hand, and Frieda vanished from
sight.”
And
in Blok’s 1902-1904 Crossroads:
“The
window hadn’t trembled for a whole year,
The heavy door hadn’t been
ringing;
All had been forgotten, long
forgotten,
And now it opened…”
Before
this, Blok had already written in the 3rd Cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady (1901:)
“The
door is closed to me
To the mysterious abode…”
A
very interesting place in the novel Master
and Margarita where Bulgakov uses the word “abode” is in chapter 10, News From Yalta. Having telephoned the
apartment of Stepa Likhodeev, –
“...Varenukha was for a long time listening to the thick buzzing in
the receiver. Amidst these buzzes, from somewhere in the distance, came the
sound of a heavy dark voice, singing: …cliffs
are my refuge… [from Schubert’s song Aufenthalt].
Varenukha then decided that the telephone network had been somehow penetrated
by a voice from the radio theater…”
The
voice was most likely Woland’s. As for Woland himself, he never uses the word
“refuge.” In chapter 25: The Fate of
Master is Determined, Bulgakov writes:
[Levi Matthew to Woland:] He has read master’s composition and asks
you to take master with you and grant him Rest.
[Woland to Levi Matthew:] Why
don’t you take him to your place, to Light?
He hasn’t deserved Light; he
has deserved Rest, said
Levi Matthew in a sad voice.
For
some reason, Bulgakov changes the word “refuge” to the word “rest.” This word
first appears in the 7th chapter The
No-Good Apartment:
“Stepa Likhodeev, Director of the Variety Theater, came to in the
morning at his place, which was that same apartment which he had been sharing
with the late Berlioz in the large six-story building situated in the shape of
the letter П [the Russian word Покой/Rest, used by Bulgakov here, stands in the
Russian phonetic alphabet as the verbal symbol of the letter П] on Sadovaya
Street.”
Bulgakov uses the same word
Покой/Rest in the 26th chapter The
Burial:
“...It was precisely at this shop [selling carpets] that the guest
[Afranius] stopped his mule, dismounted, and tied the mule to the hoop by the
gate. The shop was already closed. The guest entered through the wicket at the
side of the shop’s entrance, and found himself inside a small square inner
yard, surrounded by sheds in the form of the letter П [Покой/Rest]...”
To be continued…
***
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