Strangers in the Night.
Blok Unmasked. Who?
“…Ah, a cockerel’s
comb,
Has adorned your helmet,
Knight!
Ah, tell me, dear Knight,
Why have you come?..”
Alexander Blok. Shadows
on the Wall.
Blok
takes the idea of “sleep” from M. Yu. Lermontov, who frequently introduces this
device into his poetic works. Blok was heavily influenced by the mysticism of
Lermontov and Gogol.
That’s
why in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
one personage in particular, namely, the poet Ivan Bezdomny, has dreams, or
finds himself habitually in the state of dreaminess, or dozes off and sees pictures
of the completely unfamiliar to him city of Yershalaim.
By
means of this “weaving trail through the purple-green twilight,” Alexander Blok
escapes from the “depraved” urban reality into the “forgotten country which is
called Night Violet,” inviting the
reader “to see the purple-green, carefree and pure flower which is called Night Violet.
Sooner
or later, the Russian fairytale leads to the Russian hut. Blok starts his
fairytale with a Russian hut, beckoning the reader inside, where we encounter a
motley crowd. Blok calls the people who are in the hut “kings.”
But
it turns out that only two of them have royal coronets on their heads: an old
man and an old woman, “they had been sitting there for ages.”
Blok
“was walking
around… the hut… shook hands with former comrades, only they recognized [him]
not.”
The
picture gets clearer when Blok draws our attention to “the last bench in the darkest corner,
[where] a man was sitting motionless...”
“It was
obvious that he, without aging,
Without changing and always
thinking the same thought,
Pined away here for ages…
He is now sitting, condemned,
With the very same thought in
his mind…
This beggar was, like myself,
in times of yore,
Of noble descent…
I used to be a beggar and a
tramp myself…”
Now,
compare this to Bulgakov’s:
“…You would hardly recognize Koroviev-Fagot now, that
self-proclaimed interpreter to the mysterious foreigner who needed no
interpreter… In place of the one who had left Vorobievy Hills in tattered
circus clothing, under the name of Koroviev-Fagot, there was now galloping,
softly jingling the golden chain of the rein, a dark-violet knight with a most somber, never-smiling face. He stuck
his chin into his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not interested in
the earth, he was thinking of something of his own…”
No
need for further mystery. Blok’s “man in
the darkest corner, a beggar of noble descent” is A. S. Pushkin. Not
surprisingly, Bulgakov introduces Koroviev/Pushkin as a beggar and a tramp in
the first pages of Master and Margarita,
and only at the end of the novel is he being revealed as a knight of noble
descent.
To
make it easier to comprehend, let us go frame by frame here.
Blok:
“A man in the darkest corner…
a beggar and a tramp…”
Bulgakov:
“If I may ask you, for the
provided instruction, for [the money to buy] a quarter-liter [of vodka]… to allow
a former regent to come into better health…”
“…The pince-nez cracked,
himself in rags…”
“…in tattered circus
clothing…”
Blok:
“…of noble descent…”
Bulgakov:
“…now galloping, softly
jingling the golden chain of the rein, a dark-violet knight…”
Blok:
“…Putting
his elbows on his knees,
And propping his face with
his hands,
It was obvious that he,
without aging,
Without changing and always
thinking the same thought…
Bulgakov:
“…He stuck his chin into his
chest… he was thinking of something of his own…”
To
be continued…
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