How did the image of Gella appear in Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”
The vampire woman Gella in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is a hero of the second or even third plan. Nevertheless, readers remember it well for two reasons. Firstly, this is the only lady in Woland’s retinue, and secondly, she constantly appears with a minimum of clothing or completely naked. At the end of the novel, Gella somehow gets lost and the author does not talk about her further fate. So who is this Gella, and was her image completely invented by Bulgakov?
The only thing more colorful than Gella in Woland’s retinue is the cat Behemoth. The woman with green eyes, red hair and a scar on her neck smelled like a cellar and was sometimes covered in corpse spots. She did not recognize clothes, and only sometimes tried on an apron. Many are sure that Gella is a witch. But not everything is so simple and to figure it out, you need to study her person in detail.
You can start with the name. In Greek mythology, Gella is the daughter of the cloud goddess Nemphela and the king of the city Orchomenus Aphimont. Fleeing with her brother Frix from her stepmother, who planned to sacrifice them, the girl drowned in the Dardanelles Strait. Therefore, the name Gella began to mean “drowned woman” or simply “fallen into the water.”
The author of the novel emphasizes that a woman has an ideal body, which is spoiled by one detail. This is a scar on the neck that ended up there for a reason. It becomes clear that Gella's death was violent. Also, the scar on the neck is a reference to Goethe’s poem “Faust”, where there are the following lines:
All this is an opaque hint at the chthonic nature of the heroine. And here we can remember that in German-Scandinavian mythology, the mistress of the underworld of Helheim is called Hella or Hel. According to legend, her body was half white and half blue. At the same time, the upper part of the body was beautiful, and below the waist it was covered with spots of decomposition. Doesn't remind you of anything?
But Hella is not just a dead woman with the name of a goddess. She has a number of magical abilities. She can fly, turns the variety show administrator Varenukha into a vampire and performs several other small but supernatural tricks. We learn from the book one more detail concerning this person. The crow of a rooster prevented Gelle, the findirector of the variety show Rimsky, from turning into a vampire.
Even children know that this sound, which heralds the sunrise, scares away evil spirits, in particular vampires. In the mythological hierarchy, vampires occupy the lowest rung. Therefore, Gella is just a servant. According to Woland, she is “quick, understanding, and there is no service that she cannot provide.”
What could have happened to Gella at the end of the novel, when moonlight began to return each hero to his real appearance? She would probably turn into the dead man she essentially was. But Bulgakov does not write about this. It is well known that Mikhail Afanasyevich did not complete the novel and his wife did this, using notes and notes. Perhaps, if I had lived a little longer to write, we would have learned the story of Gella.
Did you know that the girl with blue hair Malvina from Tolstoy’s fairy tale “The Golden Key” is also related to evil spirits? Moreover, this character, like Gella, is associated with Goethe’s poem “Faust”.