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…
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