GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCII.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“I kept among young chords

A pensive and tender image of the day…”

 

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady. III.

 

Blok’s 3^rd poetic cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady, discussed above, reminds me of M. Yu. Lermontov’s long poem Demon. Blok wrote several of his own “Demons” to Lermontov’s Demon. But it is precisely in this cycle that he promotes Lermontov’s key note:

“She suffered and she loved,

And Paradise opened to love.”

The reader’s sympathy is on the woman’s side, as her story is a very human story.

The story of the masculine half is vague, weak, selfish, and utterly unsympathetic.

The poet wrote a very good cycle of poems, truthfully describing the feelings of both his feminine and his masculine sides.

But there can be a different interpretation of the last lines of this cycle. Specifically, Blok closes one cycle and already before him –

“…And again, sequences of otherworldly visions

 Have stirred up, are floating, have come close…”

In other words, Blok, inspired by his latest effort, is preparing to write another poetic cycle. As he says it himself:

“…As soon as I see a lamp in the darkness,

I get up and fly without looking where…”

At the same time, Blok writes about his feminine half:

“You, dear, are closer, even in darkness,

To the life’s immovable key.”

Yet again we witness the split into the earthly and the heavenly. Blok’s woman is grounded. She is of the earth, and he is a part of heaven.

(Of all poetic heroines, only Tamara in Lermontov’s Demon is not grounded. There is a good reason why her prototype is the “Black Rose of Tiflis” – the Georgian Princess Nina Chavchavadze, who had married A. S. Griboyedov. (See my chapter Woland Identity, posting CLXXXII.) Married at sixteen and becoming a widow that same year, as a result of her husband’s tragic death, she would never remarry, and her status in Georgia would ever since be close to sainthood.)

So, what about Bulgakov? I do not know if he ever made use of these particular Blokian poems. But, having introduced Blok into his novel Master and Margarita as master’s prototype, he had to know very well the poetry of this supremely mystical poet of the twentieth century.

There are certain similarities, of course. Thus, in chapter 19, Margarita, especially where she is complaining [sic!] in tears [sic!], just as in the poetic cycle we have just analyzed, “tears, songs, and complaints.”

“…But as soon as the dirty snow [sic!] disappeared from sidewalks and pavements, as soon as the draft of rotting restless breeze of spring came through the window’s transom, Margarita Nikolayevna started languishing even more than in winter. She often wept in secret with a long and bitter lament. She did not know whom she loved: one alive or dead? And the longer the desperate days were going, the more often, especially when it was getting dark, was she visited by the thought that she was tied to a dead one.

She needed to forget him or die herself. Is it possible to endure such a life? No! Forget him, whatever it costs. – Forget him! But he could not be forgotten, that’s what the trouble was.”

 

This Bulgakovian excerpt in prose is actually bursting with Blokian verses. Right away, I am reminded of Blok’s poem The Twelve, about which I will be writing in my chapter The Bard.

“Black evening. White snow.

Wind! Wind!

A man cannot stand on his feet.

Wind, wind in all whole world!”

Blok is describing wintertime, Bulgakov continues with the coming of spring. Don’t we know that Blok’s feminine side is yearning for spring?! –

Here breathed a hurricane, raising flying dust,

And there’s no sun, and darkness is around me,

But it is May in my cell, and I live invisibly,

Alone in flowers, and waiting for another spring.”

Margarita was “in flowers” the previous spring, when she went out into the streets of Moscow and found master. She is now waiting for the next spring, and instead of flowers, she has a “dried rose bloom,” with somewhat burnt pages of master’s novel Pontius Pilate, which she had managed to rescue from the fire.

“Waking up, Margarita did not weep [sic!], as had often been the case before, because she woke up with a premonition that something was about to happen on that day. Having experienced this premonition, she started heating it up and cultivating it in her soul, apprehensive lest this feeling might abandon her.”

What a brilliant interpretation of Blok’s lines:

“Depart from me! – I feel the Seraph,

And all your earthly dreams are alien to me!”

And here is Bulgakov:

“I believe! – Margarita was whispering solemnly. – I believe that something is going to happen today!.. Something must happen by all means, because it does not happen that something should be dragging on forever. And besides, mine was a prophetic dream, for which I vouchsafe.”

And here is Blok writing about his feminine side:

“I kept among young chords

A pensive and tender image of the day…”

But at night she is chasing away the uninvited guests. These extraordinary lines are definitely worth repeating again and again:

“Depart from me! – I feel the Seraph,

And all your earthly dreams are alien to me!”

In other words, we can imagine that Blok’s feminine side in this 3^rd cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady is being tormented by “earthly dreams.”

As for Margarita, even if she remembers master’s “pensive and tender image,” she is tormented by these reminiscences during daytime. She does not have any dreams during nighttime apparently because in the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita, master, like Blok, works at night and sleeps during the day. And Margarita is merely a figment of his imagination, his feminine half.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCI.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“Look, I am retreating into the shadows,

And you are still in doubt,

Still afraid to meet the day,

Not sensing the coming of the night…”

 

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady. III.

 

A. Blok’s feminine side gets off her high horse. We know that people are seeking God when they are in trouble, not when they are happy with their life. The woman in this Blok’s cycle is no exception.

“Slowly toward the door of the church

Was I walking unfree in my soul.

I was hearing love songs,

And crowds of people were praying…”

 

The following lines demonstrate that A. Blok is indeed writing from the person of a woman, helping the woman:

“…Or in a minute of losing faith,

He sent me relief?”

“He” in this case is not God, but the poet, the author of this cycle A. A. Blok.

“These days I enter the doors of the church

Without any doubt…”

The woman had fallen, it looks as though she is never to rise again.

“Evening roses are falling,

Falling softly, painfully,

But I am praying still with more devotion,

Weeping and confessing painfully…”

From this moment on, there starts a see-saw between the feminine and masculine sides of Blok himself. The next poem is the most interesting and telling in this struggle.

“I am trying to catch the thin dust of hope…” –

[Blok starts the poem from his masculine side…]

“…You are slowing down your fast pace,

But through the locked eyelids…”

[…of Blok’s feminine side…]

“…The words are burning: Not a friend but foe.”

The duel between Blok’s feminine and masculine sides is far from over. It is only flaring up.

“…Just to burn out – and the truth comes closer…”

In other words, Blok’s masculine side wants clarity, an end to this relationship. But doubt comes in right away:

“Or else, – oblivious dreams pass slowly

And I burn lower [sic!], and you are higher [sic!].

And then in a saving oblivion,

A smile is wandering over the face…”

In other words, not everything is lost. Hope awakens in the masculine half that things may be remedied.

“Tomorrow, in a new oppression,

A longing for a bridal crown.”

That is, Blok’s masculine half is in love with his state of being in love. As Blok writes in another poem of his:

“I want to own you alone,

But I cannot and don’t know how.”

The poet’s feminine half is not “in love.” She just loves. A stable feeling. It looks as though everything is lost.

“The door creaked. The hand trembled.

I walked out into the sleepy streets.

Up there under the heavens clouds are swimming,

Lit through the fog.

With them I hear after me the familiar:

Will the heart be now reawakened?

Whether the answer is from a new or former life,

Or perhaps they would be imagined together?”

Blok’s feminine side has her hope revived, as she believes in her love.

“…Had the clouds been carrying evil,

My heart would not have fluttered…”

And now, a very interesting ending to this remarkable poem:

“The door creaked. The hand trembled.

Tears. And songs. And complaints.”

From this moment on, Blok’s masculine side appears weaker and weaker still. When the feminine side is sincere in her love, the masculine side only reduces everything to her complaints and tears, while at the same time he has nothing to say in consolation except for empty meaningless words (“songs”).

The culmination of this poetic cycle is decided in a dramatic death of the woman. However, the poet’s masculine side is in denial.

“The glow is white, yellow, red,

Shouting and bells ringing in the distance.

You won’t deceive me, groundless anxiety,

I see the lights on the river.

With this bright glow and late-hour shouting

You are not going to destroy the dream,

The ghost can be seen with great eyes

Because of the human hubbub.”

 

The last stanza shows us that Blok’s feminine side has won:

“With your death I will only entertain the gazes…”

How cruel is the sound of that last line!

“…So, burn your ships!

There they are, soft, bright, fast,

Speeding toward me from afar.”

Yes, Blok’s feminine side dies here, but it is precisely she who gives birth to this poetic cycle!

To be continued…

DAY OF MOURNING

Today is a Day of Mourning in Russia.

Our heartfelt condolences to the Russian people and to the families of those who died in the tragic plane crash off the coast of Sochi. Each lost life is precious. Each great talent is irreplaceable. This is not just a Russian tragedy. It is a tragedy for every decent human being in the world, for all civilized humanity.

Today we are mourning all those who have died, each one of them. Slightly paraphrasing Stalin, 92 is just a number. Individually, their loss is a tragedy 92 times over.

I have a personal stake in this tragedy. My family’s connection to the Alexandrov Ensemble. My Godfather Alexander Petrovich Biryukov was its erstwhile member. I personally knew many of the Ensemble members. All of them have long been dead by now. I have not known any of the new cast, those who have perished over the Black Sea. But they are as dear to me as those whom I used to know, because the Alexandrov Ensemble is not just a list of exceptional names. It’s an all-time legend that will be kept alive as long as Russia endures.

There will be other members that will fill the ranks of those who died. The continuity of life is not only a biological phenomenon, but spiritual – if not first, then foremost.

There is no doubt that the great Ensemble will be reborn, and as triumphant as ever. The dead will forever be its part, as they enter history.

May God grant their souls eternal peace and their names among the living – eternal glory.

Alexander and Galina.

CHRISTMAS 2016.

Merry Christmas and best wishes

to the readers of our blog!

 

Galina and Alexander.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCC.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“…My dream is sacred chambers,

My love is a shadow falling mute.”

 

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady.

 

We do not get an answer to Blok’s question “Who are you, Feminine Name?” in his poem The Night. It is quite possible to imagine that Blok’s Muse is his own feminine side, as in the third cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady the poet has no inspiration during autumn (Pushkin’s favorite season) until he is visited by the Muse.

There is a reason why the legendary Russian poet-songwriter of recent times Vladimir Vysotsky jokingly complains in one of his songs:

“…I’m going to explode like three hundred tons of trotil,

I have inside me a charge of creative anger.

I was visited by the Muse today,

She stayed for a little while and then left.

People say that this Muse

Stayed at Blok’s place for days,

And, as for Pushkin, she stayed with him without ever leaving…”

As for Blok’s Muse, this is how Blok writes about her:

“I will get up on a foggy morning,

The sun will hit my face.

Is that you, my much-desired lady-friend,

Ascending my porch?”

Blok is exhilarated, inspired:

“Open the heavy gate wide!

The wind has blown in my face!

Such jolly songs

Haven’t been heard for a long time…”

In other words, Blok is sitting down to write.

“The hour is early, invisible on her way,

The dream is burning ever brighter,

Flapping are the wings of Seraphim,

Upward there is a transparency, in the distance it is clear…”

What strikes me the most in Blok’s creative work are his frequent invitations into his workshop. It is for a good reason that Bulgakov makes him master in Master and Margarita. Who else can invite strangers to his sanctum sanctorum?

“Beyond the azure line,

It’s time for the secret to descend…

I am waiting in captivated anticipation

For the secret of the weeping wife…”

As always Blok’s poetic cycles are difficult for comprehension and require a thorough study. One thing is clear, though, that Blok planned to write a poetic cycle about eternity rather than about the “vale of tears,” which is our life in this world. It comes straight out of the first poem of this cycle, which Blok ends with the following words:

“…And you are cloudlessly bright,

But only in immortality [sic!], not in the [earthly] vale.”

Blok promises:

“You are leaving the earthly vale,

The love of a better heart is brought to you.

Do not expect frightful dreams from your new freedom:

Choirs of angels, not mortals, will minister to you.”

Having created this female character, Blok is parting with it:

“…[The angels] will minister to you and remove the hair shirt,

The symbol of this life’s immeasurable woes,

And I will part in anguish on the boundary of

Your otherworldly, your heavenly track.”

Blok advises his feminine side never to return to the “vale”:

“…Leave the impotence of this world’s edifice

Your peace will now never be disturbed…”

In the absence of his departed feminine part, Blok experiences:

“…And again the evening shadows are getting closer…

And again sequences of otherworldly visions

 Have stirred up, are floating, have come close…”

Blok’s creative process keeps on going. At the heights of Blok’s consciousness, a duel is now shaping up between the woman and the man. Blok now regrets that he –

“…Stole the burden like a thief,

Broke misery into shattered fragments,

But Oh God! How hard it is to partake

Of an alien growing passion!”

An artist can only be believable if he can transform himself into the image that he has created. Blok’s feminine side enters in a dramatic fashion:

“I kept among young chords

A pensive and tender image of the day.

Here breathed a hurricane, raising flying dust,

And there’s no sun, and darkness is around me…”

Blok’s feminine half sees death, but the woman perseveres no matter what. She is assertive, aggressive, and in command.

“But it’s May in my cell [sic!], and I live invisibly,

Alone in flowers, and waiting for another spring.

Depart from me! – I feel the Seraph,

And all your earthly dreams are alien to me!

Just go away, you wanderers, children, gods!

For I shall bloom again on my last day.

My dream is sacred chambers,

My love is a shadow falling mute.”

 

In this poetic cycle, not only does Blok continue the theme of a person splitting into a feminine and masculine parts, but he goes even further insisting that a human being has an earthly side and a heavenly side. In other words, aside from everyday earthly life, a human being strives toward immortality.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXCIX.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“Oh silly heart,

My laughing boy,

When will you stop beating?”

Alexander Blok. Autumn Love.

 

“And a quiet anguish will squeeze my throat so softly:

Can’t gasp, can’t breathe.

As though the night had spread its curse on all,

And the devil sat upon my chest…”

Alexander Blok. Life of My Friend.

 

Alexander Blok’s masculine side dominates his feminine side. But the feminine side has a strong presence in itself, nevertheless. This fact is convincingly demonstrated by two of Blok’s poems in the 1901 cycle Verses About a Fair Lady, written by him from the first person of a woman.

An intriguing question to the reader in advance of an answer later on: Why Verses About a Fair Lady?..

From the remarkable poem In the Dunes, it becomes perfectly clear that A. A. Blok was writing not only about the splitting of the soul into the man and the poet, not only was he afraid of his “two-faced soul,” and “cautiously buried his image, devilish and wild,” but he also admitted the splitting of his soul into the masculine and feminine side, which he does in the III cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady.

In this particular cycle, not only does Blok continue the theme of splitting of a human soul into the masculine and feminine sides, but he goes even further, insisting that a human being contains both the earthly and the celestial sides. In other words, aside from the everyday life, the human soul strives toward immortality.

In order to delve into all these splits of the human soul, Blok needed to know psychology. This goes particularly for the split into the feminine and masculine sides, considering that Blok brilliantly assumes the feminine first person with a complete understanding of woman’s nature.

In a later poem The Night, Blok asks:

“Who are you who have bewitched me

With potions of the night?

Who are you, the Feminine Name [sic!]

In a nimbus of red fire?”

We have an answer here already – she is… Margarita! It is because prior to this Blok writes the following lines:

“The night is sailing along the way of the Tsarinas,

Buckles are glimmering under the moon

On the vestments fastened up to the face…”

…Hence, Margarita’s apparel, according to Bulgakov. Instead of a priestly garb, though, she is wearing a black spring coat. (Even though there are such garbs in the story. At the time of their departure from the roof of the Lenin Library, Woland is wearing a cassock, while Azazello, too, wears something like it.)

Incidentally, at Satan’s Ball “The night is sailing along the way of the Tsarinas,” for Margarita, as everybody keeps calling her “Queen.”

Mind you, Margarita’s shoes have buckles on them.

“She entered the gate just once, but prior to this I experienced no less than ten heart palpitations. And then when her hour would come and the hand of the clock showed midday, [the heart] would never stop pounding until without a noise, almost silently, the shoes with black suede bows, tied by steel buckles [sic!], would come level with the window.”

This fairly short paragraph contains enormous information, relating both to A. A. Blok himself, and to master, whose prototype Blok happens to be, in the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita.

Bulgakov employs a most interesting literary device, describing Alexander Blok’s heart disease by means of master’s agitated condition in anticipation of the arrival of the woman he loves.

I would say that Bulgakov describes this event poetically, even though he is not a poet himself.

It is safe to assume that master, like Blok, was working on his novel Pontius Pilate through the night, and went to bed at the break of dawn. [Just like Maksudov in the Theatrical Novel.] And while asleep, he always had the same vision of the beautiful unknown, who wasn’t ascending the steps to the porch, as it happens in Blok’s poem, but on the contrary, descended the steps leading to master’s apartment located in the basement of the building, as soon as, in Bulgakov’s words, “her hour would come and the hands of the clock pointed at midday.”

Has anybody ever thought about what this whole thing means?

Most likely, it was the time of the day when master experienced a spasm of the heart muscle and started choking. This usually happens to people with this medical condition during the night when they are sleeping. Apparently, master was sleeping during the day, and this discrepancy in his work schedule explains the discrepancy in the onset of these symptoms.

The world-renowned American homoeopath Dr. James Tyler Kent, MD, describes this condition the following way:

“The mental symptoms of [this remedy] show that it is a heart remedy. When a remedy produces the anxiety, fear, and dyspnea found in [this remedy], it will most likely turn out to be a cardiac remedy, unless these conditions are connected with irritation and inflammatory diseases of the brain. In this drug we find without any cerebral symptoms, marked anxiety, fear of death, and suffocation, associated with palpitation and uneasiness in the region of the heart. It is especially related to cases where there is pain and a sense of stuffiness and fullness in the cardiac region. Wakens at night in great fear, and it is some time before he can rationalize his surroundings… This remedy is closely related to ***, which also excites the heart, brings on anxiety, fear, and restlessness, fear of death, predicts the hour of death [sic!] …Its cardiac diseases tend to develop slowly, with actual tissue changes, enlargement of the heart, it takes on steady growth and the valves become changed, do not fit, hence, there are blowing and wheezing sounds, regurgitation with the mental symptoms. In cardiac troubles it resembles *** in the rousing up from sleep in suffocation [sic!].”

Another famous American homoeopath of the early 20^th century W. Boericke gives the following description:

“…Awakened suddenly after midnight [underlined by Boericke] with pain and suffocation, is flushed, hot and frightened to death. Valvular insufficiency. Angina pectoris [sic!]. Rapid and violent palpitations. Sleep: wakes up in a fright and feels suffocated. Generally worse after sleep. Modalities: Worse ascending, better descending.”

How sad it is that Blok had no knowledge of homoeopathy, and particularly, of the German doctor Grauvogl, who had developed his own homoeopathic doctrine by specifically practicing in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, considering that this city is situated on water [sic!]. In the course of his on-site practice, Dr. Grauvogl developed remedies for patients with what he called the hydrogenoid constitution: “worse in wet weather.” But what we know about A. Blok’s heart disease and from its description, granted, poetical, but accurate, by Bulgakov who depicts angina pectoris as a “squid,” these fit perfectly the pictures drawn both by Dr. Kent and by Dr. Boericke.

But who knows? Isn’t it possible that it was precisely due to his debilitating heart disease, with its mental symptoms, that we the readers are now and for all time rewarded by Blok’s mystical out-of-this-world poetry!

As a physician who knows that such attacks of the heart disease are frequently clocked at midnight, when normal people are fast asleep, merely changes the time to noon, when master is the one who is fast asleep.

It’s amazing that Dr. Kent, a no-nonsense practicing physician, writes about the patient’s prediction of his own exact time of death. Considering the fact that homoeopathy has been developed in many cases by provings on healthy people [to be fair, all great homoeopaths used themselves as their own guinea pigs for this purpose], the example of the famous doctor Constantin Herring ought not to be surprising. The good doctor went to Latin America to prove a certain snake poison there, and, subjecting himself to its effects, rdered his poor wife to record his symptoms as they were occurring.

Thus it is not surprising that there are specific hours of the day or night when people feel better or worse. Using the “time symptom,” it is possible to establish the proper remedy out of a number of others whose other symptoms agree.

There is no doubt that Bulgakov’s psychological novel of Master and Margarita uses A. Blok as master’s prototype. Blok’s numerous poems and larger works such as his play The Unknown, speak in favor of this suggestion. And so does his blockbuster long poem The Twelve, which I am analyzing in my chapter The Bard. As I already wrote before, it is this particular book that master burns in his apartment fire just before the departure to his last refuge. We obviously have no other candidate, aside from N. V. Gogol’s second volume of Dead Souls, which Gogol burned twice in both versions. The reader will learn more about the mystical quality of Dead Souls in my chapter The Magus, where I am going to show the interconnectedness between Bulgakov and Gogol. Considering that, despite the appearance of Blok on the scene of Master and Margarita, it was only through the influence of Gogol on subsequent Russian literature and even philosophy that many Russian poets, writers, and philosophers, would never have become as we know them.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXCVIII.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

 “She crossed her beastly gaze

With my beastly gaze, and laughed…”

 

Alexander Blok. In the Dunes.

 

How beautifully does Alexander Blok put his own splitting in a poem without a title in the second cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady. (1901) –

“I remember the hour of a deaf sleepless night…

Then suddenly reaching my prison

From the silence of the half-dreams to come,

An unclear sound of an incoherent supplication,

Unfathomable, wingless, terrible call.

Was that a moan of a godlessly wild soul,

And was it then that those hearts met?

You are familiar to me, my dual-faced companion,

My dear friend, hostile to the end.”

What we have here is a more complex split than in the 1904 poem The Violet West Oppresses. It is from this poem that Bulgakov takes his idea of the Magnificent Four: A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, V. V. Mayakovsky, and S. A. Yesenin.

Also, each member of Blok’s cavalcade in the Violet West, “flying unswervingly onward,” splits into the man and the poet. Hence, Blok has “dual laws,” because the man lives in the real world, whereas the poet lives in a world created by his imagination. This concludes the first split.

The second split is more complex, and it is explained by Blok himself in a later 1902 poem, in which he openly writes:

“I am scared of my two-faced soul,

And cautiously I bury

My image, devilish and wild…”

A good illustration of this is provided by Blok’s 1907 poem Over the Lake from the cycle Free Thoughts. While taking a walk, Blok sees a maiden all by herself on the steps of a cemetery grave.

“Oh slim one! Oh tender one! And quickly

I am inventing names for her in my mind:

Be Adeline! Be Mary! Thekla!

Yes, Thekla!..”

The appearance of an officer whom the maiden had been waiting for, in order to go to the country house with him, changes everything. Seeing them kissing, Blok drastically changes his tone. His behavior becomes bizarre. –

“I laugh! I run up, I throw

Pine cones and sand at them,

I squeal and dance amidst the graves,

Unseen and high up there…

I yell: Hey, Fyokla! Fyokla…

And they are frightened and confused,

They do not know where cones

Are coming from, and laughter. And the sand…”

How fast admiration turns into disdain is clear from the change in the invented name. The noble Greek name Thekla now changes to the common Russian peasant name Fyokla.

The rest is, naturally, impossible even to imagine, as Blok himself confesses that he “cautiously buries his image, devilish and wild,” allowing himself such a liberty only in his “free” verses.

This becomes clear from the following 1907 poem – In the Dunes – from the same poetic cycle Free Thoughts. In this poem Blok describes his trip to the dunes near the Finnish border. –

“My soul is simple. The salty wind of the seas

And the resinous smell of the pines were feeding it…”

And thus was he standing near his train and enjoyed.

“And lo, she came and stopped over the slope.

Her eyes were reddish from the sun and sand,

Her hair was resinous, like the pines…

She crossed her beastly gaze

With my beastly gaze and laughed

With high-pitched laughter, and she threw at me

A tuft of grass and a golden handful of sand.

Then she jumped up and leaping rushed down the slope…”

If we can perhaps imagine A. Blok indeed seeing a “slim, tender maiden” in a cemetery, then to imagine Blok standing near a train being approached by a woman with a “beastly gaze” is definitely impossible. It is obvious that here Blok gives free rein to his imagination. Take them or leave them, they are his “free thoughts,” and this is the only way we can understand them.

***

And now we have come to Blok’s third splitting into his masculine and feminine sides. It is not only the virtual sameness of their “beastly gazes” that points to this fact, but also the fact that he couldn’t possibly catch any woman. She vanished because there was no such woman in the first place.

“…I chased her far, scratching

My face against the firs, bloodied my arms

And tore my clothes…

“I yelled and chased her, like a beast…

Next, yelled again and called her to me,

The voice of passion was like sounds of horn…”

Here Blok reveals his “godless, wild soul,” but it no longer belongs to his “companion,” but to a woman whom Blok is hunting like a beast.

“…Having left her light footprints in the rolling dunes,

Among the pines she vanished

When they were braided by night’s blueness…”

Just like Blok had been alone before, he is now left alone again.

“…And I am lying, short of breath from running,

Alone among the sands, in the smoldering eyes

She is still running, and all of her is laughing –

Her hair is laughing,

And her feet are laughing,

And laughing is her dress,

Inflated by the run…”

But because his imagination is still painting for him pictures of a wild woman with a “beastly gaze,” Blok decides, at least within this poem, to stay on:

“…I’m lying there and thinking: It’s night today,

And tomorrow will be night. I am not leaving

Until I hunt her down like a beast,

And in a voice resounding like horns,

I block her way…”

So, what does Blok want from her? –

“…And I won’t say: Mine! Mine!

And let her cry out to me: Thine! Thine!”

In the 1907 poem In the Dunes, like nowhere else, the poet reveals his wild side. This wild side of his out-of-this-world imagination shows me that in his everyday life Blok was a reserved man, dry to the bone. It is precisely for this reason that only in his poetry Blok can find an outlet for his exceptional mystical imagination.

To be continued…