GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXII.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

 

“And we will no longer conjure

Over some mystical riddle,

And, furtively getting up late at night,

Fantasize under a pale crescent.”

Alexander Blok. (1901)

 

In the 1907 collection of poems titled Snow Mask, Blok raises the question of three baptisms, and in this he is following Gogol’s mystical way.

If Blok’s first baptism took place shortly after his birth, like with all Orthodox Russians, his second baptism was received during the revolutionary time in Russia, which actually started on the Bloody Sunday of 9^th January, 1905. [See my chapter Margarita’s Maiden Flight, posting XLV.]

That horrific event turned Blok’s heart to ice:

“My door was opened by the blizzards,

My chamber froze stiff.

And in a new snowy font

I was baptized in a second baptism.”

Also here the secret is revealed why Blok/master gets not into Paradise, but into Eternal Rest. –

“And entering the new world, I know

That there are persons and there are deeds,

That the road to Paradise may be open

To all who walk the paths of evil.”

What Blok is alluding to here (this poem was written two years after the tragedy of 1905) is the unsavory role of the priest Gapon, doubling as an Okhrana agent-provocateur, in the events of Bloody Sunday. It was Gapon who led out the workers with their families carrying icons and other religious symbols, only to be massacred by tsarist troops.

“And the pride of the new [second] baptism

Turned my heart to ice…”

As is often the case in Blok’s poetry, he writes the poem as though addressing a woman:

“You are promising me another moment?

Prophesying that spring would come?”

The poet writes his poem The Second Baptism on 3^rd January, 1907, clearly on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Bloody Sunday. At this juncture, Bulgakov’s mystical novel meets the political thriller of Master and Margarita. (Note master’s arrest, Margarita’s troubling dream, etc.)

Blok’s Second Baptism meets the definition of a political thriller. He writes it with the understanding that evil prevails:

“There will be no Spring, and who needs it?

The third baptism will be Death.”

How does Bulgakov use this in his Master and Margarita? The two meet in springtime. That’s their first baptism. Master is arrested in mid-October, that’s baptism number two, particularly for Margarita, testing her faithfulness to master, considering that purity and faithfulness were the two qualities praised by Blok the most in a woman. Bulgakov obviously cannot endow Margarita with purity, but at least he gives her the faithfulness of a mistress, if one can imagine such a peculiar form of coexistence. It must be noted that on the night when master burned his manuscripts of Pontius Pilate, Margarita had promised him to tell her husband that she loved another man and to leave him for master forever.

And, of course, their third (and final) baptism takes place on Easter, that is, in the spring of the following year, when they are both poisoned, and death comes as a result.

Depicting the real deaths of master and Margarita (he dies in the clinic, she – at home), Bulgakov detaches their souls, having taken the shape and form of their host bodies, Gogol-style. [See N. V. Gogol’s Horrific Vengeance in my chapter master... posting CXLIII.] In Bulgakov’s take, these souls first communicate with the dusts of deceased Russian poets, and then, on Margarita’s request, they are placed in master’s basement. And it is precisely those two souls acquiring the features of the real master and Margarita that Azazello poisons with the Falernian wine, the wine once drunk by Pontius Pilate.

And so this is the third baptism of master and Margarita, for, according to Bulgakov, Azazello revives the lovers following the homoeopathic principle of administering several drops of that same wine that had been used to kill them, in the first place. [See my subchapter Transformation in the already posted chapter Who R U, Margarita?]

The transformation actually starts in Bulgakov’s 20^th chapter Azazello’s Cream, and continues in chapter 24, The Extraction of Master, when, following Margarita’s demand, master appears in the no-good apartment #50.

“Here a gust of wind burst into the room, dropping the flame of the candles in the chandeliers down. The heavy curtain on the window was pushed aside, and in the distant loftiness there opened a full moon, not a morning moon, but a midnight moon…”

Bulgakov takes practically every word here from Blok’s poetry, where seemingly commonplace words acquire an uncommon significance. (But this will be my subject in another posting.)

“From the windowsill down across the floor there spread out a greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s guest calling himself master. He was wearing his hospital clothes, a gown, slippers, and a black cap, with which he never parted. His unshaven face was twitching in a grimace. He was throwing sideways glances at the flames of the candles in an insane-scared look, and the lunar stream was boiling around him…”

We must note here that this particular place is an intersection of several novels within Master and Margarita proper. We have the psychological thriller revealed by the sameness of behavior. Here is master: “His face was distorted by a grimace.” And here is Margarita, doing exactly the same thing: “I want right now, this very second, that my lover master be returned to me! – said Margarita, her face distorted by a spasm.”

Yes, master and Margarita are one and the same person in the psychological thriller.

There is also the fantastical novel here, where anything is possible, like master flying into the room with a gust of wind through the window.

And there is also the following Bulgakovian puzzle:

“[Margarita’s] nakedness had somehow come to an end. She now had on a silken black cloak…”

This puzzle will be solved in my next chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil. What this puzzle brings us to, is the presence of yet another, namely, mystical, novel within Master and Margarita. Although it is not my task to analyze Blok’s poetry, for, my primary goal is M. Bulgakov and everything connected with him, it would’ve been a crime on my part not to share with my reader at least a few specimens of the amazing, truly magical poetry of this truly mystical poet without whom there would have been no psychological thriller in Master and Margarita, nor a mystical novel per se, as Blok said it already in 1901:

“And we will no longer conjure

Over some mystical riddle,

And furtively getting up late at night,

Fantasize under a pale crescent.”

And so, everything starts in this passage with the words:

“Here a gust of wind burst into the room…”

The significance of the word “wind” is paramount in Blok’s poetry. We find it in countless poems of his. I am writing about its origin elsewhere. It will suffice to say here that in 1913 Blok titled his new collection of poetry What the Wind is Singing About, where among other things he proves my point that the best Russian writers and poets are following A. S. Pushkin’s advice to read and learn from folk fairytales.

To be continued…