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 5th 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…
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