Strangers in the Night.
Blok Unmasked. Who?
“I was looking for the
white maiden. –
Do you hear? Do you believe? Are
you asleep?
I was looking for the ancient
maiden,
And my horn was resounding
with reverberation…”
Alexander Blok. Delirium.
The
Night Violet Country… So, why does
Blok desire it so much? He just wants to belong there among the dead.
There
is a backdrop to the picture which I have just presented. This backdrop
represents Blok’s peculiar version of the Sleeping
Beauty, considering that “the old man and the old woman,” adorned with
royal coronets, have a princess daughter “in that forgotten country which is
called Night Violet.” This is the image
that Blok sees first as he enters the hut. –
“Silently
sitting at the spinning wheel,
Lowering her parted hair over
her handiwork,
Was a plain girl with a plain
face.
I don’t know whether she was
young or old,
Nor what color her hair was,
Nor her features and her
eyes…”
This
is an extremely strange description of the Princess by Blok!
“…I
only know that she was weaving quietly,
And then, taking her eyes off
her work,
She was sitting for a very
long time
Without looking, without
worries and without a purpose.”
And
now Blok reveals his secret to the reader:
“Furthermore,
I know for a fact
That I have seen her already some
time ago,
And she was perhaps prettier,
And she was perhaps shapelier
and younger…”
Perhaps
Blok remembers his search for the “White
Ancient Maiden” in 1905, in his poem Delirium,
written a year before Night Violet.
Blok writes this poem in a “deathly delirium.”
The
reader learns in that “deathbed Testament” that “ascending with a firm step,” Blok exclaims:
“I am
waking up the White Maiden!
Here she is, sleeping in a
cloud of haze
Upon the dark top of the
cliff…”
This
is a mystical poem brought about by Blok’s “dreams”:
“How
strange is my mourning delirium!
It’s the raving of an
impoverished soul…”
But
he is happy in his reminiscences:
“Black
dreams are cozy [sic!] to me.
My memory lightens up in
them:
In the visions of hoary
antiquity,
Of a once-upon-a-time
familiar country…”
In
both these poems Blok creates his own country, close to his heart particularly
during that period of his life.
If
in 1905 (already after the Bloody Sunday) Blok desires to be high up in the
mountains, at the height of the “eagles,” then in the Night Violet Country he extols the “marshes.”
But
in both these cases Blok writes about death, in fact, he himself is longing for
death:
“We
used to be [sic!] but we passed away,
And I remember the sounds of
the funeral,
How my heavy coffin was
carried,
How clumps of earth were pouring
[on it]…”
***
Following
in the footsteps of A. S. Pushkin, who had written his own Tale of a Dead Princess and the Seven Warriors, Blok creates his
own Tale of the Sleeping Beauty.
Enchanted inside her kingdom, she is waiting for the Prince to come to her
rescue and save her. Blok compares the Princess to “sprouting pale grass, doomed to a life without Spring and to
breathing-in non-breathing antiquity.”
There
is no one there to liberate the princess from the enchantment. Even A. A. Blok –
“…Hasn’t
come in a bridal dress
To the festive evening
occasion.
He was a pauper tramp,
Patron of nighttime
restaurants.”
In other words, he was
unworthy of the Princess; hence –
“…On
and on – the Princess is noiselessly spinning,
Lowering her parted hair over
her work.
Intoxicating us with sweet
sleep,
Making us drink the potion of
the marshes,
Enveloping us in a nighttime
fairytale,
While she herself is blooming
and blooming,
And the Violet breathes in
the marshes,
And the spinning wheel keeps
spinning noiselessly,
Spinning on and on and on…”
Blok
is positively giving away the princess by the presence of the spinning wheel.
In the Grimm fairytale, the spinning wheel is the cause of the princess’s
death.
***
So, how is Bulgakov using
this fairytale of Blok? One dominant theme comes out of it, and goes through
all of Master and Margarita. This
theme is death.
To
be continued…
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