Strangers in the Night Continues.
“And the eyes are
exuding warmth,
Like night candles, and I’m
avidly listening ---
The scary fairytale is
stirring,
And breathing is the starry
dream…
And true to the dark
paradise,
You will be my bright star!
But they will never know from
the dark cloak
That you were feasting with
me!..”
Alexander Blok. Autumn
Love.
The
second time comes when master and
Margarita are leaving the no-good apartment #50. –
“…Margarita in the black cloak and master in his hospital robe went
out into the corridor of the jeweler’s widow’s apartment where Woland’s retinue
were waiting for them.”
And
a third time occurs as the reader gets another account of the events
through the eyes of the all-seeing Annushka, that selfsame Annushka who had
spilled sunflower oil on the spot where the late Berlioz had met his doom.
Peeping
through a crack in the door, “her frenzied from
curiosity eye was twinkling… some kind of sick or not sick fellow, strange,
pale, with overgrown beard, in a black little cap and some kind of robe, was
descending the stairs… he was carefully led, arm in arm, by some dame in a
black cassock, as it appeared to Annushka in the semidarkness… Hell what! The
dame was naked! Yes, that’s what she was, all naked under the cassock thrown
over her body!..”
There
is of course a small discrepancy between the first two mentions of the cloak
and Annushka’s recollection. And the point isn’t about the difference between a
cloak and a cassock. We know that the two can be easily mistaken one for the
other. In the 30th chapter It’s
Time! It’s Time! – Bulgakov explains through the example of Azazello coming
to visit master and Margarita in their basement that such is the case. As
master keeps his eyes on Azazello, he notices that there is nothing really
bizarre about Azazello’s appearance except that his garb is rather uncommon:
What is it he is wearing? “Some kind of cassock or cloak?”
The
only one of these three mentions of the cloak that I can analyze here is the
third. And I’ll start with it for sure.
Annushka’s
description concerns the procession down the stairs of Margarita and the
company which included the utterly naked Gella, a black cat (Begemot) and a
wall-eyed foreigner without a jacket but wearing a white tuxedo vest and a
necktie.
The
significance of this procession comes clear from Blok’s 1907 poem Autumn Love from his 1906-1908
collection Faina. –
“And
the eyes are exuding warmth,
Like night candles, and I’m
avidly listening ---
The scary fairytale is
stirring,
And breathing is the starry
dream…
And true to the dark
paradise,
You will be my bright star!
But they will never know from
the dark cloak
That you were feasting with
me!..”
And
indeed, this whole procession down the stairs from the no-good apartment #50,
in Annushka’s description, looks very much like a departure of guests from some
long and wild orgy.
As
I already wrote before, the origin of the cloaks in Bulgakov, as well as in
Blok, comes from Pushkin’s poem Field
Marshal. –
“The
Russian Tsar has a chamber in his quarters,
It is not rich in gold and
velvet,
There are no diamond
coronets there, kept under glass…
It has been painted all over
by a quick-eyed artist.
There are no rural nymphs, no
virginal Madonnas,
No fawns with wine-cups, no
full-breasted matrons,
No dances and no hunts, ---
just cloaks and swords…”
Blok’s
words “And the
eyes are exuding warmth, Like night candles…” remind us of
Bulgakov’s: “Here a gust of wind burst into the room, laying
the flame of the candles in the chandeliers down.”
…Candles
are very prominent in Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita. They are even included in the title of chapter 22 With Candles. And in the 32nd
chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! – when
Woland starts describing to master the eternal house awaiting him, one of his
questions to master is: “Wouldn’t it be pleasant for you to write with a goose quill under the
light of candles [sic!]?”
Bulgakov
here draws attention to Blok’s special attachment to candles in his poems.
And
indeed, already in his Verses About a
Fair Lady Blok writes:
“…He’s
luring me with a white mermaid,
From a distance he warms up a
candle…”
And
also this:
“I am
entering dark temples,
There I wait for the Fair
Lady…
My Saint, how tender are the
candles,
How soothing are your
features!..”
And
yet again:
“…I
was alone here keeping and warming the candles.
Alone – a prophet – trembling
in the smoke of incense…”
Thus
in Bulgakov the candles of Blok’s mysticism are transformed into the
supernatural event of master’s appearance. Just like Blok himself writes in the
1904-1905 poetic collection Bubbles in
the Earth:
“…The
one who was recently reading the Psalms,
That nun, she will probably
die.
She approached and covered
the Psalter,
And her soul stayed among the
pages.
Like a candle was she burning
down,
Sadness was smiling around
the face…”
And
a more complex image in the poem dated January 1905, clearly about the tragic
events of the Bloody Sunday:
“…Somebody
is in agony under the feet,
Who? – it’s not the time to
remember…
Only somewhere inside the
merry memory
A candle was lit.
And they passed with a heavy
step
Trampling the warm body…
Death flies from mouth to mouth…
High is the flame of outrage,
Empty is the bloody distance…”
To
be continued…
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