GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXXIV.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns.

 

“You have traveled the blue ways,

Fog is swirling behind you.

The evening dusk over us

Has turned into a welcome deception.

A macabre darkness has stretched

Over your blue road..."

Alexander Blok. 1901.

In Blok’s third cycle of Verses About A Fair Lady (1901) –

“Persistently standing in the road,

White [sic!] – is looking into the frosty night…

The frosty wonder cannot be overcome,

Alongside it, in the distance, rises –

There, where a pile of rocks is looming –

The blue [sic!] queen of the earth…

He [White] lifelessly stands in the road,

I – toward him, yearning for immortality.”

 

The closing lines of this 1901 untitled poem are as mystical as everything else in it:

“...But the forces of immortality are in vain,

And the queen has no sorrow for freedom…

Celebrating the victory of the grave,

White is looking into the frosty distance.”

Or take another 1901 poem of the same third cycle of Verses About A Fair Lady, in which, as is often the case in his other poems, Blok splits himself. Accordingly, Bulgakov picks Blok for the role of master in his psychological thriller of Master and Margarita. This untitled poem immediately follows the poem To My Double, written two days before (December 27, 1901) the poem I am about to analyze. –

“We, two old men, are plodding on in loneliness,

A damp darkness has spread around.

In front of us – faraway windows,

The blue distance is radiant…”

 

And right away, the mysticism of the next stanzas. –

“But where from, into the mysterious twilight

Gazes, gazes the blue [sic!] light?

We are trembling with our sole wish,

Before you, Oh the Incoherent!..”

It becomes clear right away that the word “blue” has a mystical shade in Blok. And of course the vocative “Oh the Incoherent!” cannot fail to draw our attention. What Blok means by the word “The Incoherent” is in fact “The Incomprehensible.”

I am writing this in order to remind the reader that in his famous letter to Stalin, Mikhail Bulgakov called himself a “mystical writer.” For this reason, Blok’s poetry was very close to his heart. It appears that not only did Bulgakov admire Blok’s poetry, but he knew it “very well,” to quote Mayakovsky’s jocular allusion to his fellow revolutionary Blok in his long poem It Is Good!

Few also know that Stalin used to study to be a priest in an Orthodox Seminary in Tiflis. That was before he himself became a revolutionary, was arrested and sent to a prison colony, whence he escaped with the help of inmates, but then was rearrested and sent even farther in Siberia. It was about Stalin’s first arrest and escape that Bulgakov wrote his last play Batum, which was never staged, though, because of Russia’s war with Germany…

Blok asks his reader:

“Oh, wherefrom, wherefrom the burning

Of the reddening hazy clouds,

And golden threads are running,

And the dawn makes the darkness blush?”

He ends the poem mysteriously, like a puzzle:

“We, two old men, into a mysterious darkness

Are plodding on, and there is light in the windows,

And we are trembling with a sole wish,

Experienced in the wisdom of woes.”

The key word in this whole poem is directly connected to the word “blue.” I am talking about some mysterious “windows.” Apparently, this is how the “old men” are ending their life on earth, the land of haze. The fact that, at the end, light appears in the windows shows the reader that the wish of these two men is most likely to be fulfilled after death, regardless of the woes they had suffered in life.

In all these poems Blok emphasizes the mystery-filled, mystical source of human life.

In March 1902, already in his fourth cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok explains:

“The spring is breaking ice floes in the river,

And I do not pity the dear dead:

Having overcome my mountain peaks,

I have forgotten the winter’s confines,

And I see the blue beyond.”

 

The next poem reveals the mystery:

“Who’s weeping here? Treading the peaceful steps,

Ascend you all – into the open gates.

There in the depth [that is, in the blue beyond] Maria waits for prayers,

Revitalized by the birth of Christ…”

Being a consummate Christian, mysticism plays a big role both in the life and in the creative work of this amazing poet. Generally speaking, mysticism constitutes a pivotal part in Russian Christian Orthodoxy. Having figured out the most important component in the worldview of the poet himself, I am returning to the poem from the second cycle of Blok’s Verses About a Fair Lady, dated July 14, 1901, that is, one year before the previously discussed poem. It begins with the same words:

“Enter you all. Inside the inner chambers

There is no Testament, though a mystery rests here…”

And in the next poem he clearly talks of Maria, Mother of Christ:

“You have traveled the blue ways,

Fog is swirling behind you.

The evening dusk over us

Has turned into a welcome deception.

A macabre darkness has stretched

Over your blue road.

But with a deep faith in God,

Even a dark church is filled with light for me…”

In the 5^th cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok is by no means as optimistic as before, in a 1902 poem:

“At dawn, blue chimerae

Are looking in the mirror of the bright skies…

The sky firmament is already low over me,

A black [sic!] dream is oppressing my breast.”

The reader must pay attention to the insertion of adjectives denoting other, more somber colors.

In the 1902-1904 poetry collection Crossroads, Blok is already writing this:

“I have put on multi-colored feathers [sic!],

Have tempered my feathers, and wait,

Over me, under me –mistrust,

The haze is lifting, and I am waiting… ”

Blok explains what exactly he is waiting for:

“…Sitting there, being consumed by drowsiness,

Are birds, my companions of former years…”

Blok’s “companions of former years” are poets, which is why Bulgakov in Master and Margarita associates each poet with a bird. (See my posted chapter Birds.)

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXXIII.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns.

 

“Who are you who have bewitched me

With potions of the night?

Who are you, Feminine Name

In a nimbus of red fire?”

Alexander Blok. The Night.

 

If in the above-quoted poem The Unknown it is possible to imagine that Blok is really watching his own reflection in the wine glass:

“And every evening, my only friend

Is reflected in my glass,

Tamed and stunned, like myself,

By the pungent and mysterious liquid…”

– then in the poem opening his poetry cycle The Snow Mask it is absolutely impossible to suggest that he sees a non-existent woman in the wine cup.

And yet, Blok proceeds with his “forgotten dream”!

The two four-liners demonstrate that, just like in his other poems, Blok is sitting in the restaurant all by himself imagining a woman of uncommon beauty whom he would so much have liked to meet, yet has never met in reality!

How does that come through in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita? This is what the very last page of his novel says:

“...Then in the stream [of moonlight] a woman of incredible beauty takes shape, and she leads by the hand toward Ivan [in his dream] a man fearfully glancing around, with an overgrown beard…”

In order to compare these lines to Blok’s poetry, I am turning now to his untitled poem dated 1906:

“The train [of a dress] splattered with stars,

The blue, blue, blue gaze…

You are all in tight silks…

With your hand – narrow, white, strange,

You gave the flame-cup into my hands.

I will throw that flame-cup into the blue dome,

Splashing around the Milky Way.

You alone will ascend over the whole desert

To spread out the train of the comet.”

In Ivan’s dream, in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Ivan sees them both: the woman of incredible beauty and master, too. In writing those lines, Bulgakov was influenced by an untitled 1904 poem from Blok’s poetry cycle The City. –

“With a pitiful arm I am squeezing my crutch.

My friend – in love with the moon –

Lives by its deception.

A third one on the road –

And the three of us are dragging on…”

Probably because of this bizarre Blokian poem, Bulgakov, a physician, introduces the idea of lunar influence on human body, but he separates it into two characters of his novel Master and Margarita: master and Ivan [Blok and Yesenin, these characters’ prototypes] already in Chapter 13: The Appearance of the Hero:

“Let us look the truth in the face, – and the guest [in this case – master] turned his face toward the running through the clouds nightly luminary, – both you and I are insane…”

And also in the last 32^nd chapter Farewell and the Last Refuge, Bulgakov writes:

 “All is known to Ivan Nikolayevich [Bezdomny]. He knows and understands everything. In his youth, he had become a victim of criminal hypnotizers, undergone [psychiatric] treatment and eventually recovered. Still he knows that there are things which he cannot cope with. He cannot resist this spring full moon. As soon as it draws near, as soon as the luminary starts swelling and filling with gold, Ivan Nikolayevich becomes restless, gets nervous, loses appetite and sleep, just as he is waiting for the moon to ripen. And when the moon becomes full, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolayevich at home. In the evening hours, he goes out of his house, and walks to Patriarch Ponds. Sitting down on a bench, Ivan Nikolayevich candidly talks to himself, smokes, squints now at the moon, now at the all-too-familiar to him tourniquet…”

…Eventually, he is being drawn, like a criminal to a crime scene, to a certain Gothic mansion off Arbat, where Margarita used to live...

As for the effect of the moon on human body, I have discussed it elsewhere in some detail. (See my chapter Who R U, Margarita? posted segments C and CI, in particular.)

***

And returning to Blok’s 1906 poem Snowy Wine, particularly to its last two stanzas, what else is coming to mind but Blok’s play The Unknown, of the same year 1906?

“And you are laughing with a wondrous laugh,

Snaking [sic!] in the golden cup [of yellow wine],

And over your sable fur

A blue [sic!] wind is blowing…”

 

Here already we find elements from Blok’s play The Unknown.

“Drawing a slow arc in the sky, a bright and heavy star is rolling down. A moment later, a beautiful woman (underlined by Blok) walks over the bridge, wearing black and with a surprised expression in her widened eyes. Everything becomes fairytalish – the dark bridge and the dormant blue [sic!] ships. The Unknown stops by the bridge’s railing, still sustaining her pale falling-down glitter. The ever-youthful snow robes her shoulders and fluffs her figure. Like a statue, she waits…”

Such are Blok’s stage directions to the director of his play. And here it comes:

“…Another Blue, just like her, ascends onto the bridge from a dark alley. He is also covered in snow. He is also beautiful. He also fluctuates, like a soft blue flame.”

Here we are dealing with two mysterious personages, but only one of them is mystical, namely, Blue.

In his poetry, Blok uses different colors, such as green, red, white, black, dark blue, and also azure, that is, lighter blue. In Blok’s play The Unknown the adjective “blue” (in the sense of “lighter-blue”) turns into a noun, or rather, into a fictional masculine name “Blue.” I am writing about this mystical personage, and also about the “beautiful woman in black” in a separate subchapter later on.

What I’d like to show here is how from early-on Blok started using colors in a most unusual way, according to his novel associations.

Already in the Introduction to his second poetry collection (1901-1902), titled Verses About A Fair Lady (I will be writing about it at length later in this chapter) Blok writes:

“The tower is high and the dawn has frozen.

A red mystery has lain down at the entrance…

Who was setting fire to the towers at dawn

Which the Princess herself had erected?”

And also in this untitled poem from the first cycle of Blok’s Verses About A Fair Lady:

“On a white night, a red crescent

Sails out in the Blueness…

There appeared to me while dreaming

A fulfillment of secret [sic!] thoughts…”

And in the second cycle of Verses About A Fair Lady (1901) the color blue already appears:

“You have traveled the blue ways,

Fog is swirling behind you.

The evening dusk over us

Has turned into a welcome deception.

A macabre darkness has stretched

Over your blue road…”

Puzzling, mysterious, mystical lines, here already explaining Blok’s coming to his play The Unknown.

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXXII.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns. The Dwarf.

“…And you will see the world is beautiful.

Perceive where’s light – you’ll learn where darkness is…

What’s sacred in the world and what’s profane,

Through the soul’s ardor, through the coolness of the mind.

Thus Siegfried forges the sword over the furnace:

Now he turns it into red coal,

Now he quickly immerses it in water –

And then it hisses and becomes black,

The blade entrusted to the favorite…

A blow – it sparkles, the trusted Nothung,

And Mime, the hypocritical dwarf,

Falls down at [Siegfried’s] feet!”

Alexander Blok. Retribution. The Prologue

 

Blok’s Unknown –

“…Passes at a certain hour,

A dwarf behind her, carrying her train,

And I am looking after her, enamored,

Like a captive slave at his executioner.”

Here Blok plays upon the famous Derzhavin line:

“I’m Tsar, I’m slave, I’m God, I’m worm.”

In other words, the dwarf does not let Blok live as he wishes. The point here is not the beautiful woman, but Blok’s life itself.

Although the idea of the dwarf originates in Russia with Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, yet both Blok and Bulgakov were not just familiar with, but in love with, Wagner’s Ring, which has two dwarfs in it. Thus, the dwarf, like in Wagner and in Pushkin before him, personifies evil.

Already in Diaboliada, which is a sequel to Bulgakov’s White Guard, Bulgakov introduces two dwarfs running the hero Korotkov into the ground. (See my chapter Diaboliada.) Compare this to Littleman in Bulgakov’s Cockroach. (See my chapter Cockroach.)

Blok's dwarf personifies evil. He also symbolizes death:

“In a blue faraway bedroom

Your child fell asleep.

Quietly, a little dwarf climbed out

And stopped the clock.

All was as before, only

A stern silence ruled there…

The thread was untied,

That had tied together the years.”

In Master and Margarita in the 18^th chapter Hapless Visitors which closes Part I Bulgakov shows us a “tiny man.” He is Andrei Fokich Sokov, the buffet vendor (you will find his prototype in the forthcoming chapter The Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries).

There is also a “man of short height” appearing in the very first chapter of Master and Margarita. He is Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, “editor of a thick literary journal and chairman of one of the largest literary associations in Moscow.”

There is a reason why Bulgakov starts Master and Margarita with him, giving his own initials M. A. B. to this “man of short height.” Why so? Simple. The key is Pontius Pilate, a historical figure, involved, however, in an arguably historical event: the judgment of Jesus Christ. Was that judgment also a historical event? M. A. Bulgakov makes it the center point of his novel. M. A. Berlioz disputes it to the last minute of his life.

Also in that first chapter of the novel, Bulgakov shows what it takes to be published through the auspices of this man, based on the example of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, whose poem, commissioned by Berlioz, is not going to be published, because, albeit properly critical of Jesus Christ, it erroneously portrays him as having existed, rather than never existing at all.

In this manner, Bulgakov relates his personal experience with the publishers, who demanded that he eliminate the whole sub-novel Pontius Pilate, in order for the rest of Master and Margarita to get published. In his refusal to compromise, Bulgakov followed the lead of his idol A. S. Pushkin, who refused to write anything whatsoever on custom order.

***

Although Blok has an abundance of “unknown women,” I’d like to close with two of his poems from the 1907 poetry collection The Snowy Mask.

Already in the second poem of this cycle, titled The Snowy Lacework, Blok himself explains to the reader that the woman he is writing about is imaginary. To begin with, the word “lacework” itself speaks for it. And then, the second two-liner says it explicitly:

“Yes, you and I do not know each other,

You are the captive lacework of my verses…”

“…And secretly weaving the lacework,

I am spinning and interweaving the snowy threads.

You are not the first one to give yourself to me

On the dark bridge…”

A. Blok wrote this poem a year after his famous play The Unknown, which had produced so much pubic commotion in Russia.

In the poem The Snowy Lacework, Blok explicitly confesses that all his love adventures are fruit of his imagination.

“…I shall not open the doors to you.

No. Never…”

Instead, Blok suggests to the “unknown woman” to fly together:

“…And dragging the snowy spray behind us,

We fly into millions of chasms…

You are gazing with the same captive soul

Into the same starry dome…”

In other words, at the same time as Blok strives (flies) uninhibited into the Universe on the strength of his incredible imagination, his snowy Muse is grounded, her soul is in captivity. She is not flying with Blok, but only “gazes into the starry dome.”

“And dragging the snowy spray behind us,” Blok imagines the dark faraway and the glistening run of the sled:

“And when the inevitable eyes

Meet mine,

The snowy depths open up,

And the lips are drawing near…”

And so that the reader might appreciate the play of his imagination, Blok closes with the following words:

“Oh, verses of the silvery-snowy winter,

I am reciting you by heart!”

What a contrast this makes with the previous poem Snowy Wine, which opens this cycle! –

“And again, with a sparkle out of a wine cup,

You instilled fear in the heart

With your innocent smile

In heavy snakelike hair…”

From the very first stanza it becomes clear to the reader that the woman whom Blok depicts in this poem, does not exist:

“I am overturned in the dark streams,

And once again I am breathing in without loving

The forgotten dream about the kisses,

About snow blizzards around you.”

In other words, just like in the poem The Unknown of the same year 1906, where Blok writes:

“And every evening at a given hour

(Or am I only dreaming this?)

A maiden’s figure caught in silks

Is moving in the fogged up window…”

– Blok only imagines that he as though sees a woman in the wine cup from which he is drinking…

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXXI.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns.

 

“Glowing with fear-filled huge eyes…

the woman in black shouted: Officer!

This way! This way! The woman’s eyes

appeared right near the eyes of Turbin.

In them, he felt determination, action,

 and blackness…”
 

M. Bulgakov. White Guard.

 

“…I passed the scarlet sunset…

Stepping into fogs and deceptions…

The railway station sparkled to me with its lights…

I am squeezed by the human stampede,

Nearly pushed backwards…”

Here we have a scream of a human soul, fear, a desire to escape from his own weakness and helplessness. And it is right here that the Unknown appears. Alexander Blok. 1908. ---

“And here they are – her eyes and shoulders,

And a waterfall of black feathers…”

Alexander Blok was seeking beauty and portrayed this beauty in the image of a woman, thus escaping from the ugliness of his own life.

Yet again, like in innumerable other times, Blok stresses that he is in love with the “state of being in love,” his own state of exultation, considering that Blok does not even give a description of the woman herself.

Bulgakov borrows this manner from Blok, bringing it into his own creations, starting with White Guard, where all his portraits, both male and female, are sketchy. Although Bulgakov has two “Unknowns” in White Guard, only one of them is Blokian: Shpolyansky’s mistress, the “woman in black,” who saves the life of the main hero of the novel, the physician Alexei Turbin.

Bulgakov describes Alexei Turbin’s rescuer and lover very interestingly, in Blokian style, making an emphasis on her eyes and hand. Bulgakov’s “Unknown” appears only in Part Three of White Guard, in chapter 13, which can well be called The Chase, built up like in a good thriller, catching the reader’s breath, where the reader has a clear anticipation that this is the start of a love story. ---

“Glowing with fear-filled huge eyes… the woman in black shouted: Officer! This way! This way! The woman’s eyes appeared right near the eyes of Turbin. In them, he felt determination, action, and blackness… Now he saw light-colored curled hair and very black eyes… Turbin saw her head thrown backwards… and completely undeterminable hair, either ashy, fire-pierced, or golden, and her eyebrows like carbon and her eyes black. One could not understand whether there was beauty in that irregular profile and aquiline nose. One couldn’t figure out what was in those eyes. There seemed to be fright in them, alarm, and perhaps vice… Yes, vice. When she is sitting like this [on her knees by the furnace, near the fire] and a wave of heat inundates in her, she appears like something wonderful, attractive… Savior.”

And indeed, Yulia Alexandrovna Reise saved the wounded hero of White Guard with a danger to her life, perhaps because her husband was an officer of the Russian Army, whose portrait “in golden epaulettes” [that’s all, in so far as his description goes, nothing whatsoever about the man himself!] Alexei Turbin for some reason admired…

“…As long as one could come to this strange and quiet little house, where the portrait in golden epaulettes was…”

It is this Blokian woman, in her submissiveness to a man, who constitutes the antipode of Margarita in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

This becomes particularly clear when for her bravery bordering on “fear and curiosity” (fleeing the Petlurian pursuers, Alexei Turbin shoots down one of them) our hero, on his recovery, brings her a precious gift. ---

“…I’d like the one who saved my life to have something in memory of me… And he fastened a heavy wrought and dark bracelet on her pale wrist. Because of it, the arm and the whole of Reise became even more beautiful.”

Alexander Blok glorifies “a narrow arm” in many of his works. In his famous poem Unknown he writes:

“…And let people know for all time

How narrow is your arm…”

As for Alexei Turbin’s mother’s bracelet, Bulgakov thus describes his mother in the following manner, through his sister:

“Yelena could not take it and sobbed, but ever so softly, -- she was a strong woman, a true daughter to Anna Vladimirovna.”

In other words, she was a complete antipode to Yulia Alexandrovna Reise, whom Bulgakov describes as soft and non-resisting.

The beautiful “Unknown,” Poetry, is the only woman whom Blok ever loved. There was a good reason why Blok writes in his 1909-1916 cycle of poems under the title Frightful World:

“…Yes, I used to be a prophet while this heart was praying, --

Praying and singing you, but you are not a Queen.

I shan’t be a King: you did not share the dreams of power,

I shall not become a slave: you did not want the power of the earth.”

Who is Blok writing about here, if not about his own split self? One more reason why Bulgakov chooses none other than Blok for the role of master, which also fits Bulgakov himself. So, this was the reason why Blok was so dear and close to Bulgakov, as he recognized in Blok a kindred spirit, split into male and female halves, present to a certain extent in every person. [See my chapter Who R U, Margarita? ***.]

***

In his 1909-1916 cycle of poems Frightful World, namely, in the poem At the Restaurant… (Isn’t that the reason why Bulgakov’s master so much enjoyed putting on a new suit and going out to the Prague Restaurant on Arbat Street in Moscow?) …another Unknown turns up.

“I shall never forget (it was or it wasn’t,

That evening)…

I was sitting by the window in the overcrowded hall…

I sent you a black rose in a wineglass,

Filled with golden, like the sky, Ai.”

This time, it is Blok who is sitting by the window. When the Unknown looks at Blok ---

“…You glanced, I met embarrassedly and daringly,

The haughty glance, and bowed.

Addressing your companion deliberately sharply,

You said, this one is in love too…”

Once again, the Unknown passes by Blok’s table, as he describes this encounter:

“…You passed by, light-footed like my dream…

And the perfume sighed, and the eyelashes dozed off,

And the silks whispered, in alarm…”

It is perfectly clear that all of this once again comes to Blok as in a dream. He indicates this with the following words:

“It was or it wasn’t, That evening…

…A black rose in a wineglass…

…You passed by, light-footed like my dream…”

Once again, Alexander Blok is inviting us into his enchanting enchanted world…

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCLXXX.

Strangers in the Night Continues.

Blok’s Unknowns.

 

“And every evening at a given hour

(Or am I only dreaming this?)

A maiden’s figure caught in silks

Is moving in the fogged up window.

And slowly walking among the drunks,

Always unescorted, by herself,

Emanating perfume and the mists,

She sits down by the window…”

 

Alexander Blok. The Unknown. 1906.

 

When I say that Blok is master, what I have in mind is obviously Bulgakov’s psychological thriller within Master and Margarita. Blok being an introvert, all his love is for himself, inside him.

Like all introverts, Blok is a dreamer, and all his women are his fantasies, his dreams. None of his women exist in reality.

Blok is heavily influenced by M. Yu. Lermontov, but for Lermontov all his loves were real. Lermontov loved real women somehow reminding him of his mother, who died when he was a little boy. –

“…And I see myself as a child…

I’m thinking of her, I weep and love,

I love the creation of my dream…”

Meanwhile, for Blok, love was pure fantasy, born deep inside him.

Blok did not need a real woman, he did not need her love. He demonstrates this very well in his long poem Black Blood. Even this expression is taken by Blok from M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem On the Death of a Poet, the poet being A. S. Pushkin. ---

“…And you won’t wash away with all your black blood

The sacred blood of the poet.”

For Blok, the poet’s blood is sacred. As for “black blood,” in his own words, that is “low passion,” which Blok is trying to subdue in himself.

Although in his famous play The Unknown, he distinctly separates what belongs to earth and what belongs to heaven, he presents us with three realities there, all intertwined.

One reality is that of the pub, another reality comes from high society, and these two have little to be distinguished by, from one another. Introducing an “unearthly” woman as an “Unknown” (he is actually passing off “a daughter of nightly joys” as a “star fallen from heaven”), Blok creates a third reality.

We will return to Blok’s play The Unknown later on.

***

Considering that Bulgakov himself calls Margarita, in Master and Margarita, an “Unknown,” we are now turning to the Blokian “Unknowns,” as they are so adequately called by V. V. Mayakovsky in his long poem It Is Good.

“And every evening at a given hour

(Or am I only dreaming this?)

A maiden’s figure caught in silks

Is moving in the fogged up window.

And slowly walking among the drunks,

Always unescorted, by herself,

Emanating perfume and the mists,

She sits down by the window.

And her supple silks

Breathe out old legends,

And so does her hat with mourning feathers,

And so does her narrow arm, adorned with rings.”

This enchanting poem by Blok, titled The Unknown, comes from his poetic cycle The City (1904-1908). It clearly demonstrates that he is a dreamer, just as he calls himself in his other poems. There is no such woman-stranger inside the restaurant. Blok merely imagines her presence.

There is another interesting point in this poem, which relates to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita…

“And every evening, my only friend

Is reflected in my glass,

Tamed and stunned, like myself,

By the pungent and mysterious liquid…”

In other words, Alexander Blok sees his own reflection in the glass of wine. It is this reflection of himself that Blok calls “my only friend.”

It is impossible here not to remember Bulgakov:

“[Master] lived alone, having no relatives and almost no acquaintances in Moscow.”

Which is corroborated by Blok himself in his poem from the 1908-1916 cycle Harps and Violins:

“You lived alone, you sought no friends,

And sought no fellow minds…”

And also, the strong emphasis on wine in Master and Margarita can be explained by the closing words of Blok’s poem:

“…You are right, you drunken monster!

I know that truth is indeed in wine.”

In order to give the reader an appreciation of the heights of Blok’s poetic art, I am proceeding with the next after The Unknown, untitled poem, which Blok wrote four days after the other one in the same dacha community of Ozerki. As the reader must realize, this poem describes not an imaginary, but a real woman coming to the restaurant unescorted.

“There, where I’m languishing so painfully,

She comes occasionally to me,

She who is shamelessly exhilarating

And humiliatingly proud…”

So this is what is happening to Blok in reality. If in his imagination he is visited “every evening at a given hour… [by] a maiden’s figure caught in silks,” apparently at a time when he is sufficiently intoxicated by alcohol himself, – the real woman comes there only occasionally. Her presence transforms the restaurant into a pub:

“...Behind the thick beer tankards,

Behind the sleepiness of the customary din,

Shows through the veil covered with mooches,

The eyes and some smaller features… ”

Here already Blok, “peering through the dark veil,” no longer sees “an enchanted shore and an enchanted faraway” like he had seen in The Unknown. No longer does he feel that “deep secrets have been entrusted to me,” and that “someone’s sun has been handed over to me.” His tone becomes increasingly sarcastic:

“So, what am I waiting for, enchanted

By my lucky star,

Deafened and stirred

By wine, the dawn, and you?”

And he asks the solitary woman-newcomer:

 

“Breathing in ancient superstitions,

Loudly rustling with the silks,

Under the helmet [sic!] with mourning feathers,

Are you, too, befuddled by wine?”

In other words, the real woman comes into a pub to get drunk and oblivious and to pick up a john. And no longer concealing his disdain, Blok asks this woman “of nightly joys”:

“In the midst of this mysterious vulgarity,

Tell me what should I do with you,

Unapproachable and the only one,

Like the smoky-blue evening?”

In other words, the woman is by then “smoky-drunk,” the Russian word for “dead-drunk.”

***

Being done with these two poems for now, I am turning to Bulgakov again. In the scene between Margarita and Azazello taking place in the Kremlin’s Alexandrovsky Garden, this is what Margarita says:

“No, wait! I know what I am getting myself into. But I am doing it because of him, because I have no more hope for anything in the world. But let me tell you: If you ruin me, you will be ashamed of yourself. Yes, ashamed! I am perishing because of love! And thumping her chest, Margarita cast a glance at the sun.”

Without Blok’s words from his Unknown: “Deep secrets have been entrusted to me, Someone’s sun has been handed over to me,” it is impossible to understand the quoted passage from Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Although Azazello does not want to hear it, Margarita confesses to him the deep secret of her soul and of her life: “And besides, my husband. My drama is that I am living with a man I do not love…”

To be continued…