GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXVIII.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns.

 “—And how did you find out it was me?

Where did you see me before?

What is this, indeed, as though I’ve seen you somewhere?

--I too as though have seen you somewhere?

--Where? – Where?

--I have surely seen your eyes somewhere… But this cannot be!

I just said it like that… I haven’t even been here before.

Perhaps in a dream…”

F. M. Dostoyevsky. The Idiot.

Used as the second epigraph to A. Blok’s play The Unknown.

I am now turning in this chapter Strangers in the Night to the very interesting theme of Blok’s Unknowns, which V. V. Mayakovsky good-naturedly mentions in his long poem It is Good! with his unique brand of humor, paying tribute to the Spartan self-control of Alexander Blok.

Let us not forget that the year was 1927, – six years after Blok’s death, two years after Yesenin’s suicide, and three years before Mayakovsky himself would take his own life. Mayakovsky honored Blok for being a fellow avant-garde poet, as in Mayakovsky’s own poetry we can find traces of Blok’s influence.

Mayakovsky was obviously familiar with Blok’s play The Unknown [Woman], written back in 1906.The author had supplied this play with two epigraphs from the great Russian writer F. M. Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot.

Bulgakov managed to assimilate all these unknowns of Dostoyevsky, Blok, and Mayakovsky in his novel, which allowed Bulgakov to introduce Dostoyevsky’s name in the 28^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Begemot. (See my chapter master… for more of Dostoyevsky and other writers mentioned in the same context.)

In their travels in Moscow, Koroviev and Begemot decide to have dinner at the restaurant of the “Writers’ House.” While trying to get inside, they are asked for their ID’s proving that they are indeed writers and are entitled to dine at the Writers’ restaurant.

Koroviev shows his outrage:

“Do you need to ask Dostoyevsky for an ID to establish that he is a writer? Take any five pages from any work of his, and without any ID you will find out that you are dealing with a writer. Besides, I don’t think he ever had an ID!”

In this hilarious manner Bulgakov is paying his tribute to Dostoyevsky who was the first one, in his 1868-69 novel The Idiot, to introduce an “unknown woman,” followed by the Russian painter Ivan Kramskoy in 1883 with his celebrated Portrait of an Unknown [Woman], which is in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. (Incidentally, the current director-general of the Tretyakov Gallery is by no means an unknown. She is Zelfira Ismailovna Tregulova, a highly respected Russian art scholar of Tatar descent.)

In his 1906 play The Unknown, Blok pays tribute to them both, providing two epigraphs from Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, and making explicit references to Kramskoy’s painting through the hero of his play, a poet sitting in a pub.

And so, I am proceeding now directly with Blok’s gallery of the Unknowns.

***

Already in the last cycle of his Verses About a Fair Lady, in 1902, Alexander Blok raises the theme of the Unknown [Woman]. –

“She is shapely and tall,

Always haughty and stern.

Every day from a distance

I was watching her, ready for anything…”

This untitled poem is different from his subsequent poems on the same theme. It reads more like a detective story than a love story:

“I knew the hours when she would descend,

And together with her, a wobbly glimmer,

And like a villain, behind the street turn,

I was running after her, playing hide-and-seek…”

Let us keep in mind that it was a 22-year-old Blok writing.

“…Yellow lights were flashing by,

And electric candles.

And he [sic!] was meeting her in the shadows,

And I was watching, and singing their meetings…”

What a torture!

“When suddenly feeling awkward

They would sense something,

I was hidden deep inside

A blind dark gateway…”

In this first poem about the unknown [woman], Blok is having a lot of fun, playing an experienced sleuth:

“…And I, unseen by all,

Was watching the man’s coarse profile,

Her silvery-black furs,

And the lips whispering something…”

This theme of tailing must have been amusing Blok, as in the poetry collection A Frightful World (1909-1916), he pursued this theme already past reaching adulthood:

“There is this game: walking in cautiously,

So that people’s attention would be lulled;

And, finding the prey with your eyes,

To watch that prey inconspicuously…”

Blok probably engaged in such experiments, considering that his description of people’s reaction is right on:

“…That’s what is frightful about a glance unseen,

That it is impossible to catch;

You can sense it, but you can’t figure out

Whose eyes are watching you…”

This is the reason:

“…No matter how impassive and coarse

Is the person who is being watched,

He will sense the scrutinizing glance,

At least in the corners of barely quivering lips.

And another, he will get it right away:

His shoulders and his hand will tremble;

He will turn around – and there is nothing there,

Meanwhile, his uneasiness keeps growing…”

Blok must have been enjoying these psychological experiments, because being a poet, he needed to study human nature.

“…It’s not profit, not love, not revenge;

Just a game, like the games children play:

[It really must be fun!..]

And in each gathering of people

There are such secret sleuths.

And you’ll never figure it out,

Why such a thing happens sometimes:

You are coming to people as yourself,

But you’re leaving them as somebody else…

It is impossible here not to recall master watching Azazello in the 30^th chapter of Master and Margarita: It’s Time! It’s Time! –

“…Margarita poured Azazello some brandy and he drank it with eagerness. Master wasn’t taking his eyes off him, and from time to time was surreptitiously slightly pinching the wrist of his left hand under the table. But these pinches were not helping him. Azazello was not dissolving in the air… There was nothing scary in this reddish-haired small-stature man, except maybe that he was wall-eyed... and his dress was rather unusual too: some kind of robe or cloak… again, if one thinks about it, that should not be uncommon either. He was a skillful drinker of cognac also, like all good people, he drank it by full glasses without taking a bite of food with it… He started looking at Azazello with much greater attention, and became convinced that he found in his eyes something forced, a certain thought [sic!], which he was not eager to share for the time being. He is not here for a mere visit. He’s come here on some kind of errand! – master thought. His power of observation did not fail him.”

Master’s prototype in the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita is Blok, and Bulgakov used this particular “detective” poem by Blok to point the reader implicitly toward that extraordinary poet. It must be noted, however, that in Bulgakov’s case, it is not the visitor Azazello who changes as a result, but master and Margarita who do. Having been poisoned by Azazello’s wine of Pontius Pilate and dying, they are revived different.

“…In front of his eyes, the face of the poisoned woman was changing. Her temporary witch’s squint was disappearing in the eyes, as well as the former cruelty and wildness of her features was leaving them. The face of the deceased lightened up and at last softened, while her scowl stopped being a predatory scowl, but merely a suffering woman’s grimace.”

In master’s case:

“Here master got up, looked around with a lively and radiant gaze, and asked: So, what is the significance of all this newness?”

In other words, master is no longer gloomy and suspicious, and sees his future with hope.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXVII.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

“…I wished we had been enemies,

Then why did you bring me as gifts

A flowery dale and a starry heaven –

All the curse of your beauty?

And more treacherous than northern night,

More intoxicating than the golden Ai,

And shorter than gypsy love

Were your terrifying caresses…”

Alexander Blok. To the Muse.

What remains for us now in the work on this passage is to consider the key word “kerchief,” as in Bulgakov’s “kerchief of greenish color.”

Bulgakov has everything simple and clear for the reader. – Master appears before Margarita only because the childless Margarita shows compassion and mercy toward the baby-killer Frieda, who had smothered her newborn baby, the product of rape, by means of a handkerchief. [See my chapter The Fantastic Love Story of Master and Margarita, Posting XXIX.]

Blok’s use of the word “kerchief” very closely touches upon Bulgakov’s story of Frieda, which replaces the sugary tearjerker of Goethe’s Gretchen. What Blok’s kerchief symbolizes is, above all, woman’s chastity. A nun’s head covering. Blok uses the kerchief allegory in many of his poems. Such as, for instance, his 1907 long poem The Spell of Fire and Darkness with an epigraph from Lermontov, from Blok’s poetic cycle Faina. –

“I met the unfaithful at the entrance,

She dropped her kerchief and was alone.

No one there, just the night and freedom,

And the chilling presence of silence.”

Curiously, this poem is dated 23^rd October, 1907, and listed third in the poetic cycle The Spell of Fire and Darkness, which puts it before another poem dated 21^st October, 1907, but listed fifth there. This is by no means an anomaly, but a frequent occurrence in Blok’s accounting. –

“…And the wind sings and prophesizes

A blue dream for me in the future.

It wishes to laugh, it wishes

That you make merry with me!..

The wind won’t tell about the future…

That my beloved will quietly untie

Her silken black kerchief…”

And although Blok “spoke to her incoherent words, revealed to her all secrets with people, told no one of their meeting, so that she would whisper: take it…” – it is precisely in this later poem, written on 23^rd October, 1907, that Blok confesses:

“The impossible was possible,

But the possible was a dream.”

And it is only from the last poem of this cycle, written on 8^th November, 1907, that we learn that all of his passion was in fact addressed to his next Muse, whom he calls “Snow Maiden.”

And again Blok changes the sequence of his mystical poems. In a different place of this chapter [see ***], where I am studying his poem The Novice, written on 6^th November, 1907, that is, two days before Snow Maiden, Blok practically admits that all these poems have been creations of his imagination. –

“…And who will know, and who will get it

That you have told me: Do not speak…

That the wax of the blissful soul is melting

In the bright flame of the candle.”

Blok stresses that his beloved has never taken off her kerchief:

“No prayers are necessary

When you walk upon the river [sic!]

Behind the monastery fence

In your monastic kerchief.”

And so we are left to repeat that all of this is Blok’s poetic imagination, quoting these words of Blok himself:

“Fantasy! The life’s deaf dream?

Poison after another poison…

I’ll cheat on you like I cheated on that other one,

Without being unfaithful, without dissimulating…

And it’s nobody’s business

That I’ll give the people what you have given me,

And the people will inscribe on my tombstone

This one moniker: Poet.”

It is for this reason that Blok’s poetry must be seen as a single entity. Thus, in the 1907 poem The Novice, he returns to the theme he raised in the 5^th cycle of the poetic collection Verses About a Fair Lady (1902). This allows me to look at a whole range of poems and cycles, written at different times, under a different angle.

It is quite possible that having noticed this trend in Blok’s poetry, Bulgakov then came up with the idea of interweaving several novels simultaneously in one. The work of his life: Master and Margarita.

I will return to this subject again in my next chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil, when I’ll be writing about Blokian women and about Blok’s dream woman, whom he had been fantasizing about throughout his whole life.

My preoccupation with explaining Blok’s love poems through his various Muses also comes from Blok’s poetry. His collection of poems Frightful World (1909-1916) opens with the 1912 poem To the Muse. In it lives his unaffected pain of a poet:

“There is in your innermost tunes

A message of fateful demise;

There’s a curse of sacred testaments,

A defilement of happiness, too.”

But still, his Muse, whether in the form of a woman or a snake or a “snow maiden,” has a complete power over the poet:

“…And such a drawing force,

That I am ready to insist, after the rumor,

That you [Muse] used to bring down angels,

Seducing them by your beauty.”

Blok writes about the Muse:

“…Whether evil or good, you are all not from here,

They speak convolutedly about you.

For some you are a Muse and a Wonder,

For me you are torment and Hell.”

Yet again Blok supports my thought that like many other poets, he likes to write his verses at night:

“…I don’t know why at sunrise,

At the hour when there was no more strength left,

I didn’t perish, but noticed your visage,

And asked for consolations from you?..”

Blok cannot be Blok without controversial thoughts:

“…I wished we had been enemies,

Then why did you bring me as gifts

A flowery dale and a starry heaven –

All the curse of your beauty?

And more treacherous than northern night,

More intoxicating than the golden Ai,

And shorter than gypsy love

Were your terrifying caresses…”

And the last four lines – another blasphemy:

“…And there was a fateful satisfaction

In the trampling of sacred shrines,

And an insane pleasure for the heart –

This passion, bitter as sagebrush!”

The End.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXVI.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

 

“And the eyes are exuding warmth,

Like night candles, and I’m avidly listening ---

The scary fairytale is stirring,

And breathing is the starry dream…

And true to the dark paradise,

You will be my bright star!

But they will never know from the dark cloak

That you were feasting with me!..”

Alexander Blok. Autumn Love.

The second time comes when master and Margarita are leaving the no-good apartment #50. –

“…Margarita in the black cloak and master in his hospital robe went out into the corridor of the jeweler’s widow’s apartment where Woland’s retinue were waiting for them.”

And a third time occurs as the reader gets another account of the events through the eyes of the all-seeing Annushka, that selfsame Annushka who had spilled sunflower oil on the spot where the late Berlioz had met his doom.

Peeping through a crack in the door, “her frenzied from curiosity eye was twinkling… some kind of sick or not sick fellow, strange, pale, with overgrown beard, in a black little cap and some kind of robe, was descending the stairs… he was carefully led, arm in arm, by some dame in a black cassock, as it appeared to Annushka in the semidarkness… Hell what! The dame was naked! Yes, that’s what she was, all naked under the cassock thrown over her body!..”

There is of course a small discrepancy between the first two mentions of the cloak and Annushka’s recollection. And the point isn’t about the difference between a cloak and a cassock. We know that the two can be easily mistaken one for the other. In the 30^th chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! – Bulgakov explains through the example of Azazello coming to visit master and Margarita in their basement that such is the case. As master keeps his eyes on Azazello, he notices that there is nothing really bizarre about Azazello’s appearance except that his garb is rather uncommon: What is it he is wearing? “Some kind of cassock or cloak?”

The only one of these three mentions of the cloak that I can analyze here is the third. And I’ll start with it for sure.

Annushka’s description concerns the procession down the stairs of Margarita and the company which included the utterly naked Gella, a black cat (Begemot) and a wall-eyed foreigner without a jacket but wearing a white tuxedo vest and a necktie.

The significance of this procession comes clear from Blok’s 1907 poem Autumn Love from his 1906-1908 collection Faina. –

“And the eyes are exuding warmth,

Like night candles, and I’m avidly listening ---

The scary fairytale is stirring,

And breathing is the starry dream…

And true to the dark paradise,

You will be my bright star!

But they will never know from the dark cloak

That you were feasting with me!..”

And indeed, this whole procession down the stairs from the no-good apartment #50, in Annushka’s description, looks very much like a departure of guests from some long and wild orgy.

As I already wrote before, the origin of the cloaks in Bulgakov, as well as in Blok, comes from Pushkin’s poem Field Marshal. –

“The Russian Tsar has a chamber in his quarters,

It is not rich in gold and velvet,

There are no diamond coronets there, kept under glass…

It has been painted all over by a quick-eyed artist.

There are no rural nymphs, no virginal Madonnas,

No fawns with wine-cups, no full-breasted matrons,

No dances and no hunts, --- just cloaks and swords…”

Blok’s words “And the eyes are exuding warmth, Like night candles…” remind us of Bulgakov’s: “Here a gust of wind burst into the room, laying the flame of the candles in the chandeliers down.”

…Candles are very prominent in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. They are even included in the title of chapter 22 With Candles. And in the 32^nd chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! – when Woland starts describing to master the eternal house awaiting him, one of his questions to master is: “Wouldn’t it be pleasant for you to write with a goose quill under the light of candles [sic!]?”

Bulgakov here draws attention to Blok’s special attachment to candles in his poems.

And indeed, already in his Verses About a Fair Lady Blok writes:

“…He’s luring me with a white mermaid,

From a distance he warms up a candle…”

And also this:

“I am entering dark temples,

There I wait for the Fair Lady…

My Saint, how tender are the candles,

How soothing are your features!..”

And yet again:

“…I was alone here keeping and warming the candles.

Alone – a prophet – trembling in the smoke of incense…”

Thus in Bulgakov the candles of Blok’s mysticism are transformed into the supernatural event of master’s appearance. Just like Blok himself writes in the 1904-1905 poetic collection Bubbles in the Earth:

“…The one who was recently reading the Psalms,

That nun, she will probably die.

She approached and covered the Psalter,

And her soul stayed among the pages.

Like a candle was she burning down,

Sadness was smiling around the face…”

And a more complex image in the poem dated January 1905, clearly about the tragic events of the Bloody Sunday:

“…Somebody is in agony under the feet,

Who? – it’s not the time to remember…

Only somewhere inside the merry memory

A candle was lit.

And they passed with a heavy step

Trampling the warm body…

Death flies from mouth to mouth…

High is the flame of outrage,

Empty is the bloody distance…”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXV.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

 

“Please understand: I’ve mixed up, I’ve mixed up

The pages and lines of the verses.

I’ve wrapped your shoulders in a cloak

And stayed with you without words…”

Alexander Blok.

 

And so, it is Blok’s poem Cold Day, where Bulgakov takes the idea of master’s little cap from. He needs it to replace it near the end of Master and Margarita by a “fool’s cap” from A. S. Pushkin’s poem, hoping that the researcher familiar with Russian poetry will start thinking in the right direction, which Bulgakov drew in 32^nd chapter Forgiveness and Final Refuge. Bulgakov’s direction is clear at least with the “youth-demon,” who is for some reason closely connected with the Dark-Violet Knight, rather than with the devil Woland himself.

The Youth-Demon ought to point us in the direction of M. Yu. Lermontov, who in turn should send us in the direction of A. S. Pushkin, since these two personages of Master and Margarita are inseparable. The scene of drinking master back to life should also be sending us toward Pushkin. Note the following passage from Pushkin’s 1833 letter to his wife Natalia Goncharova:

“Do you know what they are saying about me in the neighboring villages?.. This is how they describe my work: How Pushkin writes his poems.– Before him is a carafe of the most glorious cordial. -- He downs a glass, another glass, a third one. --- And then he starts writing! --- That’s glory!”

(The reader will be well served to find more about this letter in my posted chapter Triangle, posting CLVI.)

And, as for master’s conversation with Kot-Begemot, it also ought to arouse the researcher’s interest in connection with the great respect master gives the cat, who at the end of the book is transformed into the “youth-demon.” The circle closes on M. Yu. Lermontov.)

Like many other famous Russian poets, A. Blok was under tremendous influence of both Lermontov and Pushkin. Here is just one example of Lermontov’s treatment of the theme of a fool’s cap. –

“I write verses with coal

All around the wall,

I scold whoever comes my way,

And praise whomever I like,

I frequently burst out laughing,

Which I am so successful at!

Or else a rat during the night

Gnaws up my nightly cap,

But I’m not chasing it away,

I am amused

By its vain labor;

But then I turn, and here,

Heeding the voice of the alarm,

It rushes off in haste…”

(For more on Lermontov’s poem Merry Hour see my chapter master…, posting CXXXVII.)

***

In the 1813 poem To Natalia, a fourteen-year-old adolescent (Alexander Pushkin) confesses his love to a certain Natalia, “but Natalia is silent all the time.” In order to catch her interest, Pushkin exclaims:

“But, Natalia, you don’t know

Who’s your faithful Celadon…”

He starts explaining who he is by enumerating who he is not:

“I am not a seraglio owner,

Not a blackamoor, not a Turk,

You cannot count me

For a polite Chinese

Or a crude American.

Do not think of me as a Deutscher

With a fool’s cap in his hair,

With a tankard filled with beer

And a cigarette in his teeth…

So, who are you, infatuated blabbermouth?..

Learn it, Natalia: I’m a monk.”

Of utmost interest for our purpose is not only the fact that at the ripe age of 30, Pushkin would be marrying a youthful Natalia Goncharova, but also the particular epigraph the young poet has chosen for this poem:

“Pourquoi craindrais-je de le dire?

C’est Margot qui fixe mon goȗt.”

Yes: Margot!

Bulgakov must have known this Pushkin poem, hence master calls his Margarita “Margot,” according to the French manner. I will be writing about the origin of this name both in this chapter and the next. Pushkin’s poem To Natalia suits this chapter quite a bit, as Alexander Blok was German on his father’s side, but preferred to be a Russian and to live in Russia.

***

Returning to Blok’s poem Cold Day, we continue:

“…Sit and sew, and look out of the window…

I will be working close by you…”

And that’s how it was. Margarita was sitting and sewing master’s little cap, while master was writing his novel Pontius Pilate.

***

The matter remains now of explaining where the previously naked Margarita’s ‘silken black cloak’ comes from, in the 24^th chapter The Extraction of Master. Bulgakov draws our attention to this out-of-nowhere appearing cloak three times in the 24^th chapter alone.

The first time this happens when master appears in the no-good apartment #50 “in a greenish kerchief of nightly light.”

“...In her anxiety, she [Margarita] did not seem to notice that her nakedness had somehow come to an end. She now had on a black silken cloak…”

Margarita’s nakedness disappears as soon as master appears, and is explained by the following lines from a Blokian poem from the 1906-1908 poetic collection Faina:

“Please understand: I’ve mixed up, I’ve mixed up

The pages and lines of the verses.

I’ve wrapped your shoulders in a cloak

And stayed with you without words…”

By cloaking Margarita in a black silken cloak, Bulgakov shows to those readers who love and know the poetry of Blok that master is a poet, and that his prototype is Alexander Blok.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXIV.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

 

“Just for a moment in the airy world

I’ll look back to see

How the earth in a green feast

Celebrates spring.

And then I’ll keep going my way,

A burdensome way,

To live with my wretched soul

As a paltry pauper.”

Alexander Blok. (1905)

 

We are left with the “greenish kerchief of nightly light” in which master appears in the no-good apartment #50. The green color in Blok is associated with spring, with the earth, with the world, in other words, with life. Already in the 5^th cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady Blok compares himself to a greening maple tree (1902):

“I am young, and I’m fresh, and in love,

I’m alarmed, in angst, and pleading,

I am greening, the mysterious maple,

Always bending toward you.

A warm wind will rustle the leaves…

You will come under the broad marquee

To dream in the green shade.

You’re alone [sic!], in love, and with me,

I will whisper to you a mysterious dream…

I am with you, my greening maple.”

In a 1905 poem, Blok continues:

“…And it’s the same garden looking into the windows,

Green like the world, high like the night…”

And also in another 1905 poem:

“Just for a moment in the airy world

I’ll look back to see

How the earth in a green feast

Celebrates spring.

And then I’ll keep going my way,

A burdensome way,

To live with my wretched soul

As a paltry pauper.”

Bulgakov changes that “burdensome way” of Blok to his final place of rest by providing him with a mistress fashioned after his personal specifications. Also awaiting him at the end of his journey is a house with an old manservant.

Although later, in the 1908-1916 collection of poetry Harps and Violins, Blok compares “the fresh smell of wild mint” to “the lifeless, bluish light of night,” which, as a matter of fact, it is, -- in an earlier 1905 poem Echo from the 1904-1905 poetic collection Bubbles of Earth, we finally get a straight answer from Blok himself. –

“Appealing and listening to the green dale,

I am walking upon the rustling leaves.

And the cold crescent stands never burning out,

Like a green sickle in the blue.”

Which leads the reader to yet another proof that Bulgakov knew Blok’s poetry pretty well, as of course he was also well versed in the poetry of other Russian poets.

Having said farewell to Woland, master [Blok] walks not with his soul, like it says in one of just quoted Blokian poems, but with his female soul mate.

“Listen to the soundlessness, Margarita was saying to master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet…”

…Just like leaves were rustling under Blok’s feet in his last-quoted poem.

But if that in itself is not convincing enough, there is an even more compelling version of it in Blok’s poem dedicated to his mother, the only woman he apparently ever loved. The poem written in 1913 or 1914, is part of Blok’s poetic collection Motherland (1907-1916). In this poem Blok writes:

“Let me take a breath, do tarry, for the love of God,

Do not rustle, sand!

From a distance, the monastery cross

Is made golden by the glow of glory.

Shouldn’t I make a turn to eternal rest?

What kind of life is there without a monk’s hood?..”

Bulgakov’s master does not get into a monastery, therefore, he has no capuche. His “last refuge” is indeed the last refuge, as Blok died in 1921. But for some reason, master does not get to keep the little cap that Margarita had sewn for him. He gets to wear a kolpak [fool’s cap] instead. But this “tale,” as Blok would call it, belongs in another chapter.

As for master’s little cap, it comes out of Blok’s 1906 poem Cold Day from the poetry collection The City (1904-1908). In this poem, Blok writes:

“You and I met in a temple,

And lived in a joyful garden…”

Bulgakov unveils this Blokian allegory in the chapter The Appearance of the Hero, where master relates to Ivanushka his meeting with Margarita. But already there come out what Blok would call “dark” undertones.

Master does not have a formal job, but he is writing his novel Pontius Pilate, while living in the basement where Margarita has to come in order to spend some time with her lover, reading and rereading the pages of his novel, claiming that in this novel she had found her life, empty until then.

In the 24^th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Extraction of Master, Margarita decides for them both to return to the basement, “so that everything becomes like it was before.”

In his farewell words to Woland, master confesses that he has “no fantasies and no inspirations.” He has been broken and all he wants is to be back in his basement. And it is right here that Blok’s poem Cold Day comes into effect.

Woland asks:

“And what are you going to live on? You’ll have to endure poverty, you know. –

Readily, readily! – replied master.”

All of this reflects Bulgakov’s inspiration, if I can say so, derived from Blok’s Cold Day. –

“We passed all gates

And in each window we saw

How hard is work’s burden

On each bent back.

And now we went where we shall

Be living under a low ceiling [sic!] …”

(This is where master’s basement apartment comes from…)

“No! Happiness is a vain worry,

As our young years are long passed.

Work will help us to while away the time.

A hammer for me, and a needle for you!”

So that’s where Bulgakov takes the idea of master’s little cap from. Margarita uses a needle to sew it…

To be continued…