GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLXI.

Triangle Continues.

““God do not let me lose my mind.

No, --- better a beggar’s staff and bag…”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

The most interesting “sequel” to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is Lermontov’s play Masquerade, where he depicts Onegin as middle-aged and married to a young woman. The play in verse itself strikes one with its depth, so uncommon in such a young author. The portraits Lermontov paints are so refined and spot-on, that one can only marvel at Lermontov’s profound knowledge of human nature. But here we are interested in just one aspect of it, namely, the personage of Eugene Arbenin. Mark how his name is similar to that of Eugene Onegin, Not to mention the fact that the heroine of the play Masquerade, Nina, comes from the celebrated Ball of the poet Eugene Abramovich Baratynsky, of whose poetic talent A. S. Pushkin had the highest opinion, praising his “faithfulness of the mind, the feeling, precision of expression, taste, clarity, and harmoniousness.” Pushkin called Ball “a brilliant creation, possessing original beauties and an uncommon charm.”

Baratynsky’s Nina, whom Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin calls “a fallen, but charming creature,” is openly flaunting her marital infidelity to her gambler husband. On the contrary, Nina of Lermontov’s Masquerade is morally pure and faithful to her husband Arbenin, whose character becomes the centerpiece of Lermontov’s play in verse. Out of jealousy for the falsely perceived infidelity of his young wife, Arbenin poisons her, and after her death, realizing her innocence, loses his mind.

Why does Lermontov allot such a fate to poor “Eugene Onegin,” not to mention Pushkin’s own upside down take on Onegin in his Bronze Horseman? It comes from Pushkin’s own poem of 1833:

“God do not let me lose my mind.

No, --- better a beggar’s staff and bag,

No, --- better toil and hunger.

It’s not that I value my mind so much,

It’s not that I wouldn’t be happy to part with it…

But here’s the problem: once you lose your mind

You become hideous like plague,

You get yourself locked up

And chained, like a fool,

And through the bars, people coming

To look at you like at some animal

Will be mocking you…”

Precisely noticing how M. Yu. Lermontov plays with Pushkin’s creations in his own [even the name of the main character of Hero of our Time, Pechorin, is akin to Eugene Onegin, as the Pechora and the Onega are two Northwestern Russian rivers in relatively close proximity to each other], Bulgakov picks up this idea from Lermontov, and uses it to the fullest. That is, he takes a Lermontov work and shows his interpretation of it, frequently under a different angle, upside down, so to speak, as though playfully arguing with the great poet.

(At this point we are by no means saying adieu to Lermontov’s Masquerade. We shall come back to it in the chapter Two Bears.)

***

From A. S. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin we are moving on to his Demon. This poem must have produced such a strong impression on M. Yu. Lermontov that he wrote a number of poems on this subject, and also his celebrated long poem Demon.

In his Articles and Sketches, A. S. Pushkin argues with a critic of his poem Demon, writing that the critic is wrong…---

“In the best time of life, the heart, not yet cooled down by experience, is open to the beautiful. It is credulous and gentle. Little by little, the eternal contradictions of being give birth inside him to doubt, a painful feeling, but not long-lasting. It vanishes, having forever destroyed the best hopes and poetic prejudices of the soul. It is for a reason that the great Goethe calls the eternal enemy of mankind ‘the denying spirit.’ And Pushkin [in this article Pushkin writes about himself in the third person!], didn’t he wish to personify in his demon this spirit of negation or doubt, and in a compressed picture painted its identifying features and its unfortunate influence on the morality of our age.”

A. S. Pushkin. On the Poem Demon.

“…This spirit of negation or doubt…”

Bulgakov introduces this “negation” into Master and Margarita in a very interesting fashion. It is no longer the devil who denies, but the human beings. Whereas in Pushkin the devil is a negative spirit, Bulgakov deliberately makes Woland use the word “positive.” ---

“No, there isn’t any devil! --- having completely lost his composure from all this crap, cried out Ivan Nikolayevich, which was something that he should not have said. --- What a torture! Stop all this raving!

At this point, the lunatic burst into such thunderous laughter that a sparrow flew out of the linden tree above the heads of the seated.

Now, this is positively interesting, --- uttered the professor, shaking with laughter, --- so what is it with you, whatever I talk about, it just isn’t there! --- He stopped laughing all of a sudden, and, as can be fully expected in a case of mental illness, went from laughter into the other extreme --- he became irritated and yelled sternly: So, as it turns out, there’s nothing of the kind?”

***

…In his response to the critic, A. S. Pushkin writes about the loss of innocence. And here is the pertinent excerpt from the 1823 poem Demon:

“The hours of hopes and pleasures

Having been overshadowed by a sudden anguish,

Some hateful genius then started

To visit me in secret.

Sad were our meetings,

They poured cold poison into my soul…

He tempted Providence

By endless slander…

He did not trust in love and freedom…”

But in his sketch on the same subject, and also in 1823, A. S. Pushkin is more adamant about his feelings. ---

“My carefree ignorance

Was disturbed by the sly demon,

And he merged for all time

My existence with his.

I started looking [at everything] with his eyes.

I was given life’s poor treasure.

And my soul sounded in tune

With his vague words.”

Note Pushkin’s own confession here. It does not mean of course that he, Pushkin, was possessed by the devil. A great poet, he was just expressing how he felt at the moment. Why then should M. Yu. Lermontov be accused by his detractors of demonic possession merely for writing poems, in which he poured out his soul to the reader?

M. Yu. Lermontov in his two poems titled My Demon continues the theme of the loss of human innocence with an even greater forcefulness:

“…And he suppresses the sound of higher perceptions

By the voice of the passions…”

M. Yu. Lermontov. My Demon.

Lermontov is profoundly pessimistic. He understands that “the sum of evils is [the devil’s] element,” and also that---

“…The proud demon won’t let me go

For as long as I live…”

---and he writes that his demon “won’t ever give me happiness.”

In his works Diaboliada, and especially Tarakan [Cockroach], Bulgakov gives his reader a glimpse of pure evil in the image of Azazel, the goat-demon. The first description of “Azazel” appears in Diaboliada in the person of Kalsoner, who next travels to Fateful Eggs as Alexander Semyonovich Rokk, whom the village woman Dunya tells with a smile: “Men in [the village of] Kontsovka [meaning The End] say that you are the Antichrist. They say that your eggs are from the devil. They want to kill you.”

The image of Azazel also appears in the short story Tarakan in the person of Littleman…

It is extremely interesting to follow these first experiments of Bulgakov, as in Master and Margarita this personification of pure evil is introduced as Azazello, thus splitting the devil into two persons, the other obviously being Woland (Lucifer). The point is that in M. Yu. Lermontov, in addition to his two short poems both titled My Demon and the long poem Demon, there are many other hidden demons scattered throughout his works. From one of such poems: The Plague: A Fragment (see my posted segment #LXI, where Lermontov reveals an enigmatic relationship between Jesus Christ and the devil), Bulgakov gets his inspiration for the character of Woland. In creating this character Bulgakov goes against Goethe and Pushkin, and even farther than M. Yu. Lermontov himself. In Bulgakov the devil is a subsidiary of God because of his great interest in the person of Jesus Christ, that is, God’s manifestation on earth as a man born to an earthly woman and living among the people he created as a plain man. I am writing about this in the chapter Birds subchapter Swallow (my posted segments # LIII and # LIV) and also in my chapter Yeshua and Woland (my posted segments # LIX through # LXII). The idea itself was so interesting to Bulgakov that this is the only thing that can explain why his Woland in Master and Margarita is so benign and we can even say just.

Bulgakov shows his atheistic reader, who is not afraid of God’s wrath because he does not believe in Him, what the Devil’s justice would look like (“But I do implore you, before saying farewell, please believe at the very least that the devil exists!”), considering the examples of M. A. Berlioz, N. I. Bosoy, Baron Meigel, and especially A. F. Sokov, to name just these few.

We are by no means parting with this fascinating idea of Bulgakov, to show the devil as a subsidiary to Jesus Christ. We will return to it in my chapter The Bard.

In the second poem My Demon, Lermontov writes:

“And when someone descends

Into the grave, with an anxious soul,

He [the demon] spends with him the last hour,

But gives no solace to the sick.”

Bulgakov masterfully plays out these lines in the scene of Master’s Extraction. Following Woland’s order, Koroviev administers the “medicine” to master, after which “the sick man’s glance became not so wild and restless.” However, as soon as Woland showed master the manuscript which he had previously burned, here is what happened:

“Woland took the copy handed to him, turned it around, put it aside, and silently, without a smile stared at master.” (As M. Yu. Lermontov writes in My Demon--- “He likes to savage and torment.”)

In so far as the fact is concerned that, having been handed the manuscript, Woland did not even bother to open it, M. Yu. Lermontov has a striking poem linked to it:

“Oh, if the world could ever learn

That life with all its hopes and dreams

Is but a notebook

With long-familiar verses.”

Why would the devil need to read what he had witnessed, and what master had “guessed right”?

(To be continued…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLX.

Triangle Continues.

“I loved you, that love perhaps

Is not completely extinguished in my soul.

But let it not trouble you anymore:

I do not wish to cause you sadness.

I loved you silently and hopelessly,

Tormented now by timidity, now by jealousy.

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

As may God grant you to be loved by another.”

 

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

I Loved You.

 

Soul-searching... There is no other way to describe the life of the Russian officer M. Yu. Lermontov in the Caucasus, and it is precisely this effort of soul-searching that Lermontov reveals in his poem Valerik.---

“…We’re coming closer,

We’ve sent out a few grenades;

Moved up again--- silence.

That was a stormy silence…

And then the salvos of the shots…

We see: they are lying in rows…

‘Charge bayonets! Together!’--- We heard behind us.

And blood caught fire inside our breasts!

All officers in front… ‘Hurrah!’

‘There’re the daggers, Charge rifle butts!’---

And the slaughter started,

And for two hours in the river’s streams

The battle lasted, the butchery was cruel,

Like animals, silently, breast to breast.

The stream was clogged with corpses.

I wanted to scoop some water…

But the muddled wave

Was warm, 'twas red…”

So, what is the conclusion Lermontov the hero comes to, after the battle?---

“…In the distance, in a ridge, uneven

But ever-proud and serene,

There stretched the mountains, and Kazbek,

Was sparkling with its sharp-edged head.

And with a sadness, secret and heartfelt,

I thought: ‘Oh miserable man,

What does he want?.. The sky is clear;

Plenty of room under the sky;

Yet unceasingly and in vain,

He alone is at war--- Why?’”

Ending his gory story, Lermontov switches back to the sarcastic tone:

“But I’m afraid of boring you.

In the amusements of the world you find laughable

The savage quandaries of war.

…And you have hardly witnessed at close range

How people die…

And now, farewell;

If my artless tale amuses you,

Engages you a bit,

I will be happy, and if not?

Forgive me this as waggery,

And softly say: ‘A droll!’”

From Valerik, Bulgakov also takes the theme of fear. There are two scenes in Fateful Eggs, both connected with the scientist zoologist V. I. Persikov. To my astonishment, Bulgakov calls Persikov (who is one of very few personages whom he depicts with great affection) a “droll zoologist” [the key word in Russian is the same as in Lermontov: ‘chudak’], the title which he bestows in Master and Margarita only on Woland, calling him “a foreign droll.” And having a very good reason for it. (Compare this to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: “Is he the same, or settled down? Or is he still playing a droll?”)

The connection between Persikov and Woland is that both are wearing masks, to which Pushkin’s next line is clearly pointing: “Pray, what has he returned as? What is he going to present?.. A cosmopolitan or a patriot, Harold, a Quaker, a Tartuffe, or will he sport a different mask…?”

Using the character of the drollish Professor Persikov, Bulgakov first of all shows what real love is. According to Bulgakov, it is always one-sided. Hence, the epigraph to this posting.

Professor Persikov keeps loving his wife who abandoned him a long time ago, fleeing to the West from Russia. Fifteen years later, having received news of her death, he weeps. He spends his life unattached not for any lack of interest in the weaker sex. Propositions shower upon him from all sides, especially after he achieves the celebrity status in the press, and to make it clear that Professor Persikov does not have some secret kinky vice, Bulgakov introduces the following words:

“Not looking at anyone, noticing no one, not responding to pushes and soft and gentle calls of prostitutes, inspired and lonely, crowned by an unexpected fame, Persikov was struggling through [the crowd] toward the fiery clock near the Manezh. Here… absorbed in his thoughts, he stumbled upon a strange old-fashioned man, painfully sticking his fingers into the wooden case of a revolver, hanging from the man’s belt… and somehow they [Persikov and Rokk] disentangled themselves from each other in the human mêlée.”

This encounter, immediately forgotten by Persikov, leads him to really fateful consequences,-- his death, an indication of which is given by the “fiery clock” near the Manezh…

“Almost every night Persikov spent at the Institute. Once he left his zoological abode to make a report about his beam in the huge hall of the Tse-Ku-Bu on Prechistenka Street… In front of him in [the clouds of human] breath and fog were hundreds of yellow faces, and all of a sudden the yellow holster of a pistol flashed and disappeared… Persikov noticed it vaguely and immediately forgot about it.”

So, this was the same yellow holster, into which he had painfully stuck his fingers in the crowd near the Manezh. I was always struck by those “hundreds of yellow faces” in that audience hall in Moscow. In Lermontov’s poem Valerik we find that some Tatars and Chechens were fighting on the Russian side:

“A peaceful Tatar performs his namaz [Moslem prayer]

Without raising his eyes;

And here some others are sitting in a circle.

I love the color of their yellow faces,

Which matches the color of their nogovitsas [legwear, covering the shin and the knee].”

And so, if the word droll were not enough to find a common thread between Bulgakov and Lermontov, the presence of “yellow faces” in Fateful Eggs cannot be explained other than by Bulgakov’s borrowing from Valerik.

I would like to remind the reader that the “meeting” of Professor Persikov and A. S. Rokk in the crowd is the only place which at least remotely resembles the meeting of master and Margarita, thus making the character of Professor Persikov even more interesting, linking him not only to Woland, but to Margarita as well. Giving the other character the name Rokk/Fate, Bulgakov indicates that nothing good could come out of it. Moreover, he inserts into this scene with Rokk the symbolism of the “fiery clock,” plus the “wooden holster of a pistol,” which, as we know, transforms in Bulgakov into a “Finnish knife” of Master and Margarita.---

“…Love sprung on us like out of nowhere a killer appears in the back alley, and struck us both. So strikes a lightning; so strikes a Finnish knife.”

(The “fiery clock” always shows in Bulgakov that the time is up for the hero, which also means the hero’s immortality.)

And finally, the very idea of the letter which Professor Persikov receives shortly before his own death, informing him about the death of his wife, whom he could never chase away from his mind despite her betrayal and the elapsing stretch of fifteen years since, also links Fateful Eggs with Valerik to some extent. Neither character can forget “the woman.” (As Lermontov writes in Letter, “…But forgetting you is impossible for me.”)

It is not so much Bulgakov’s words: “That was a giant triumph of the zoologist-droll,” as the scene that follows, which ties Fateful Eggs to Valerik:

“And suddenly the yellow holster of a pistol flashed and disappeared somewhere behind a white column… Persikov noticed it vaguely and immediately forgot about it. But on leaving, he suddenly felt unwell. For a moment, the bright chandelier in the vestibule was screened off to him by blackness, and Persikov felt blurry, nauseous… He imagined as though something was burning, as though blood was flowing, sticky and hot, down his neck… With a trembling hand professor grasped the railing… asked for a glass of water…”

And here is Lermontov:

“The stream was clogged with corpses.

I wanted to scoop some water…

But the muddled wave

Was warm, 'twas red…”

And especially moments before his death, Professor Persikov “cried out in irritation: ‘This is regular lunacy. You are completely wild beasts!’” Mind you, he yells all that to a really wild mob, which is there to kill him. So, here again is Lermontov’s description of the battle in Valerik:

‘There’re the daggers, Charge rifle butts!’---

And the slaughter started,

And for two hours in the river’s streams

The battle lasted, the butchery was cruel,

Like wild animals, silently, breast to breast.

Like Lermontov at Valerik, Professor Persikov is an utterly fearless man, fearless to the point of recklessness. Perhaps, for this reason Bulgakov loves them both: as I already said, the two characters painted by him with the greatest affection are Kot Begemot (Lermontov) and Professor Persikov. An incredible working of thought in Bulgakov never ceases to amaze me no matter how many times I would read him. As I said before, the only thing I can say is that Bulgakov’s flight of thought is unthinkable.

(To be continued…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLIX.

Triangle Continues.

“…And all through the night, no matter where

The poor madman would set his feet,

The Bronze Horseman was chasing him

With heavy thumping.”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Bronze Horseman..

Judging by M. Yu. Lermontov’s satire Feast at Asmodeus, it is fairly clear that he did not hold Goethe’s Faust in great esteem, because of its teary Gretchen story, but he did not treat Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin much better and he wrote several Onegin variations which I would call downright sarcastic.

Curiously, A. S. Pushkin himself treats his Eugene Onegin with a large measure of sarcasm. In 1835 he wrote three jocular poems to the effect that he was receiving “advice” from all sides that it would be worthwhile for him “to continue our abandoned novel [Eugene Onegin]… that our hero [Eugene Onegin] ought to be married by all means, or at least be killed off… Whilst your Onegin is alive, the novel remains unfinished…”

Quite obviously, Pushkin himself had no intention of abandoning his Eugene Onegin. Already in 1833, he wrote the long poem Bronze Horseman, where he minced no words about the reason for his main character being called Eugene:

“We will be calling our hero

By this name, it sounds nice,

Besides, my quill

Has long been friends with him [Eugene]…”

Giving no last name to this Eugene, Pushkin shows his macabre sense of humor, presenting this tongue-in-cheek horror story as a proper ending for the sugary Eugene Onegin.

Pushkin offers us a different story here, we may even say that it is contrary to his original Eugene Onegin. Eugene of the Bronze Horseman is a military officer of modest means. He is in love, and he wants to marry. However, his beloved dies during the famous St. Petersburg Flood, and Eugene loses his mind. The most interesting scene in the poem is where Eugene is talking to the monument of Peter the Great. Bulgakov uses this in Master and Margarita, where the poet Ryukhin has a conversation with the monument of A. S. Pushkin. Also note that Bulgakov’s master loses his mind and dies, just like Eugene in Bronze Horseman.

M. Yu. Lermontov, with his unusual sense of humor, introduces the Eugene Onegin theme in several of his works. Not only does he show Eugene Onegin on his deathbed, but also writing letters, being married, and even losing his mind.

His 1830 poem To *** goes like this:

“Forgive me that I’ve dared to write to you.

My quill in hand --- a grave before me…”

The poem depicts a dying Onegin. “Around me a crowd of kin,” reminds of Eugene Onegin himself finding himself in the country on account of a dying uncle. “Your eyes will see That I could not restrain my soul to silence,” shows that he is once again asking forgiveness from Tatiana, as a last farewell. A naked mockery is contained in the following words: “I have experienced a lot, a lot in life. In friendship, was I mistaken…” But wasn’t it really Vladimir Lensky who was mistaken in his friendship, with the lethal consequence of paying with his life for his mistake?.. “Forgive me now, my friend, and signed ‘Eugene.’”

How did Bulgakov use this poem? Out of it, he chose the words: “Your eyes will see That I could not restrain my soul to silence.” What follows now is this exchange between master and Ivanushka. It starts with Ivanushka’s suggestion that master could send Margarita a word about himself. To which master replies that he could not possibly do that. “In front of her,-- the guest looked into the darkness of the night with reverence,-- would have been a letter from an insane asylum. Can anyone send out letters from such an address? A mentally sick patient? You must be kidding, my friend! To make her miserable?” Here Bulgakov has a double twist.

On Bulgakov’s part, this little speech of master is written tongue-in-cheek, as it shows that Bulgakov knew that Lermontov was depicting Eugene Onegin as a lunatic, in one of his poems (see more about this later in this chapter).

If we take Lermontov’s Dedication to his Tambov Treasurer’s Wife, this is what he writes there himself:

“Although I am esteemed an old-believer,

It’s all the same to me, I’m even glad.

I’m writing in Onegin stanzas,

I’m singing, friends, along old lines.

Be kind enough to listen to this fairytale!”

To begin with, it becomes clear right away how M. Yu. Lermontov treats such stories (Faust and Eugene Onegin included): as tall tales. Lermontov continues with:

“…Respecting an old custom…”

It means that the reading public has a liking for certain types of stories, especially love stories, where everything comes out clear all along: old man or hated husband vs. young lover, etc.

What Bulgakov takes out of this is the idea of turning Master and Margarita into a love story, which, I might say, is a cynical approach, considering that after master’s disappearance [arrest and incarceration in the mental clinic] Margarita is not in a hurry to take poison, as she had told master during their meeting, but quite the contrary, “she returned to her mansion [that is, to her husband] and resumed her old life at the old place.” On the anniversary of their first meeting we find Margarita on Red Square, mentally talking to her lover: “If you have been exiled, why don’t you let me hear about you?.. Dead?.. Then I beg you to release me, give me freedom to live, at last…”

A passer-by starts flirting with her, but she tells him off, and immediately regrets it:

“Why did I tell this man off? I’m bored… Why… am I… alone? Why am I shut out of life?”

I have treated this theme already in the chapter Who R U Margarita? but here we must note that the theme of Eugene Onegin is already present in Bulgakov’s White Guard, when he calls the dissipated corrupter of youth Shpolyansky a “Eugene Onegin.”

Also, in Fateful Eggs, Alexander Semyonovich Rokk, in order to “charm” the anaconda against attacking him, plays the Waltz from Eugene Onegin on his flute, sending the wretched thing off to attack his wife instead.

As I have already noted a number of times, Bulgakov never says goodbye to his creations, but he carries them on from one literary work to another. This is precisely how the waltz from Eugene Onegin moves on from Fateful Eggs to Master and Margarita. Even in this situation Bulgakov offers a twist, but this is something I will be talking about in my chapter Woland Identity.

When Margarita readies herself for a party at the foreigner’s place, she also hears a “thunderous virtuosic waltz which tore away and flew out of an open window in the side street, [and which] hits even stronger over the garden” when Margarita flies out of her window on a floor brush. And even “having flown over the gates and into the side street… the totally crazed waltz flew after her…”

The waltz from Eugene Onegin signifies death. Onegin quarrels with his friend Lensky to the sounds of this waltz, and as a result kills him in a duel. In Fateful Eggs the anaconda kills Manechka to the music of this waltz, played by her husband. Meanwhile, death awaits Margarita herself in all three novels of Master and Margarita: in the spy novel, in the fantastical novel, and in the psychological thriller about a split personality.

The main proof that we are dealing with the same waltz from Eugene Onegin is that it parallels the polonaise from Eugene Onegin.

What is the first to catch our attention at Satan’s Ball is that Johann Straus, whom Kot Begemot has invited and calls “the king of waltzes” opens the Ball not with a waltz but with a polonaise. Bulgakov does not identify the polonaise, because this music has already been heard before in Master and Margarita. In the 4^th chapter The Chase, where Ivanushka, arming himself with “an icon and a bridal candle… in striped underpants and a torn tolstovka… sneaks his way through the side streets [to Griboyedov, to a] hoarse roar of the polonaise from Eugene Onegin.”

In order to dispel any doubts that Bulgakov is following Lermontov here, he writes the following about master in Master and Margarita:

“One day the hero opened a newspaper and saw in it the critic Ahriman’s article Enemy Sortie, where [Ahriman] warned each and all that our hero wished to sneak into print “an apology of Jesus Christ.” … The next day, in another newspaper, under the signature of Mstislav Lavrovich, another article appeared, in which the author proposed to hit, and to hit hard against Pilatism [that is, against raising the question of who killed Jesus Christ], and against that God-painting hack who fancied to sneak it… into print… The article by Latunsky was titled Militant Old-Believer….”

That is, master was being accused of, using Lermontov’s language, “singing along old lines,” in other words, daring to discourse about the Christian religion.

The theme of Eugene Onegin continues in Lermontov’s famous poem Valerik [River of Death], where Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov writes about a factual historical event, the Battle of Valerik, in which Lermontov participated and was awarded the Gold Saber for bravery and courage:

“Lieutenant Lermontov, during the storming of the enemy positions on the river Valerik, had the assignment to watch the actions of the forward storm column, which entailed the greatest danger for him from the enemy hiding in the forest… The officer completed the assignment with outstanding courage and sangfroid, and together with the first ranks of the bravest stormed into the enemy fortifications…”

In Valerik, the roles of Tatiana and Onegin are reversed, and Lermontov, in the jocular frame of the beginning and the end of the rather sarcastic letter, describes to the woman he loves some real events taking place in his life:

“I’m writing to you by accident, really,

I don’t know how and why…

And what will I tell you!--- Nothing!

That I remember you?--- But, Righteous God,

You have long known it, haven’t you?

And also there is no need for you to know

Where I am, what I am, in what backwoods…

But I do remember you, and in truth,

I could never forget you!”

And indeed, how could Eugene Onegin ever forget the only woman who ever said no to him? The fact itself that a very serious tale of the “river of death” is framed by Lermontov inside a “letter to Tatiana,” so to speak, in such jocular and I must say mocking fashion, must have produced a very strong impression on Bulgakov, as it is impossible to perceive the opening of Part II of Master and Margarita as anything but mockery.

Like so many people having no true love in his life, but, as opposed to many, having a very high standard of what such a love must be, Bulgakov begins to tackle his love story in the second part of Master and Margarita.---

“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, loyal and eternal love in the world? Let them cut out the liar’s despicable tongue! Follow me, my reader, and only me, and I will show you such love!”

These words simply cannot be taken seriously. They are a challenge to the reading public to start thinking in earnest what this book is about. Here is the crowning achievement of the creative genius of the great, but like so many great people, profoundly unhappy writer. Here is the book in which he invested his whole life, the book because of which he wanted to become a writer, in the first place…

Like his early novella Diaboliada, Master and Margarita can be called a psychological thriller, but even this is not enough. I would call it soul-searching of the highest order…

(To be continued…)

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CLVIII.

Triangle Continues.

“…And in this stallion what fire!

Where are you galloping, proud steed,

And where will you bring down your hooves?”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Bronze Horseman.

Lermontov ends his poem I am Coming Alone onto the Road with the words: “Over me, green forever, A dark oak would bow and rustle.” This is a conspicuous allusion to Pushkin’s Lukomorye: “There is a green oak by the Lukomorye…” In his 1841 poem A Leaf, Lermontov writes:

“An oak leaf was torn off its native branch,

And rolled into the steppe, chased by a cruel storm;

It withered and dried up from cold, heat, and grief,

And now it has reached the Black Sea.

There by the Black Sea stands a young chinara tree…

And the wanderer pressed himself to the root of the tall chinara,

Asking for a temporary refuge in deep distress,

And thus he speaks: I am a poor little oak leaf,

Before my time have I ripened and grown in my home country.

Alone and purposeless, long have I been wandering in the world,

Dried up without shade, withered without sleep and rest.

So, do accept the newcomer among your emerald leaves,

I know so many stories, wise and wondrous…

---And why would I need you?--- responds the young chinara.

---You are dusty and yellow, and no company for my fresh sons.

You say you saw a lot, but why would I need your fables?

My ears have long tired of the birds of paradise.

So, keep going, wanderer, I do not know you!..”

From this charming and touching poem it is perfectly clear that Lermontov saw A. S. Pushkin as the oak, and himself merely as an oak leaf. The poem was written long after Pushkin’s death, and in it Lermontov pours out his loneliness.

As we know, Bulgakov depicts M. Yu. Lermontov in Master and Margarita as Kot Begemot, the cat, using the image of the green oak by the Lukomorye, as well as the image of the oak leaf of Lermontov himself, who wishes to sleep under this oak without losing his “life forces.”

Bulgakov also inserts the image of an oak tree uprooted by Koroviev’s whistle, thus alluding to the untimely death of A. S. Pushkin.

“Margarita did not hear [the whistle of Regent-Koroviev], but she saw it at the very same time that she and her hot horse were thrown [some seventy feet] sideways. An oak tree was uprooted nearby, and the ground was covered in cracks all the way down to the river.”

Bulgakov introduces both great Russian poets already in 1923 as friends in his Diaboliada, and in the immortal novel Master and Margarita he gives them both, friends once again, a place of great prominence.

Another Pushkin’s poem closely connected to the subsequent works of Lermontov and Bulgakov is Raven to Raven. I have given its analysis already in the chapter Tarakan [Cockroach], after the eponymous short story by Bulgakov. This is a poem about a murdered warrior:

“A raven to a raven flies,

The raven to the raven cries:

Raven, where shall we dine today?

How, say you, are we going to find out?

The other to the first replies:

A dinner awaits us, I know:

In yonder field under the broom

A warrior lies dead…”

This poem is written by Pushkin as a riddle:

“Who killed him and why,

Only his falcon knows that,

And his black mare,

And the young mistress of the house.

The falcon flew away into the grove,

The mare has been saddled by his enemy [his murderer],

And the mistress is waiting for her loved one,

Not the one who is dead, but the one who is alive.”

M. Yu. Lermontov completes Pushkin’s poem in his Prisoner, repeating the opening words of A Wish---

“…Give me the radiance of daylight,

A dark-eyed beauty,

A horse with a black mane.

First, I’ll kiss the young beauty

Ever so sweetly,

Then I’ll jump upon the horse,

And like wind into the steppe…”

In other words, Pushkin’s murderer of the warrior has been apprehended in Lermontov’s poem, and thrown in jail, from which he cannot escape:

“…But high is the window of the prison,

The door is heavy, and there is a lock on it.

The dark-eyed is far away

In her lavish chamber.

The good horse is by himself in the green field,

Without the bridle and free,

Prancing happily and playfully…

…And I can only hear behind the door

The resonant measured steps

In the silence of the night

Of the responseless sentry.”

Bulgakov had a field day with this one, using the ideas derived from it in several of his works, beginning with the image of the sentry in White Guard, [about whom I am writing in the segment Per Aspera ad Astra in my chapter Man and the People] as well as in the play Adam and Eve and in the novel Master and Margarita.---

“But the bars have locks,” [says Ivanushka to master].

“A month ago I stole [from Praskovia Fedorovna] a bunch of keys, and thus I got the opportunity to come out on the common balcony.”

“If you are able to come out onto the balcony, then you can escape. Or is it too high?” Ivan asked interestedly.

“No!” firmly replied master. “I cannot escape from here not because it is too high, but because I have nowhere to escape to.”

So, where does this bunch of keys come from? From M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem Neighbor!

“There’s no way to wait till freedom,

These prison days are as long as years.

And the window is too high above the ground,

And the door is guarded by a sentry…

…I would have been doomed to die in this cage,

But for my lovely neighbor…”

This lovely neighbor happens to be the warden’s daughter, whom the prisoner instructs how the two of them can escape together from the prison:

“You will steal the keys from your father;

You will get the prison guards to a feast,

But the one who is guarding my door,

This one I will take care of myself.

Only you pick a darker night,

And a more intoxicating wine for your father…

And like God’s little birds, together,

We shall fly away into the wide field.”

Thus we see that in response to A. S. Pushkin’s poem Raven to Raven, M. Yu. Lermontov wrote two more poems. Not only does the bunch of keys appear from here in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, but all, except Woland and Gella, personages of his retinue turn at ease if not into “God’s little birds” then at least into birds.

The most romantic place in Bulgakov, connected to this cycle, belongs in his play Adam and Eve:

“As I sleep, each night I see the same cherished dream: a black stallion, always with a black mane sweeps me away from these woods!”

Eve’s dream is realized in Master and Margarita:

“Three black horses were snorting by the shed, quivering, exploding the ground in fountains…”

“…The magical black horses,--- even they were tired…”

These horses were waiting for master, Margarita, and Azazello, to take the first two to their last refuge.

In Adam and Eve, Bulgakov also has horses, but he does not specify their color, but only says that there were also “some horses in a strange lighting,” obviously alluding to the horses of the Apocalypse, as he writes that the last thing which this group of people sees is how “Noiselessly, a whole city block goes down in the window, and a second colonnade appears, and some kind of horses, in a strange lighting.”

This is what Bulgakov himself would call non-surdity (in Russian, bezlepitsa, which is his newly coined word combining nonsense and absurdity), unless what is being described here is a vision of sorts, as it is not possible for a whole city block to go down noiselessly. And it is also equally clear that these horses were not taking anybody anywhere.

(To be continued…)