GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCC.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“…My dream is sacred chambers,

My love is a shadow falling mute.”

 

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady.

 

We do not get an answer to Blok’s question “Who are you, Feminine Name?” in his poem The Night. It is quite possible to imagine that Blok’s Muse is his own feminine side, as in the third cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady the poet has no inspiration during autumn (Pushkin’s favorite season) until he is visited by the Muse.

There is a reason why the legendary Russian poet-songwriter of recent times Vladimir Vysotsky jokingly complains in one of his songs:

“…I’m going to explode like three hundred tons of trotil,

I have inside me a charge of creative anger.

I was visited by the Muse today,

She stayed for a little while and then left.

People say that this Muse

Stayed at Blok’s place for days,

And, as for Pushkin, she stayed with him without ever leaving…”

As for Blok’s Muse, this is how Blok writes about her:

“I will get up on a foggy morning,

The sun will hit my face.

Is that you, my much-desired lady-friend,

Ascending my porch?”

Blok is exhilarated, inspired:

“Open the heavy gate wide!

The wind has blown in my face!

Such jolly songs

Haven’t been heard for a long time…”

In other words, Blok is sitting down to write.

“The hour is early, invisible on her way,

The dream is burning ever brighter,

Flapping are the wings of Seraphim,

Upward there is a transparency, in the distance it is clear…”

What strikes me the most in Blok’s creative work are his frequent invitations into his workshop. It is for a good reason that Bulgakov makes him master in Master and Margarita. Who else can invite strangers to his sanctum sanctorum?

“Beyond the azure line,

It’s time for the secret to descend…

I am waiting in captivated anticipation

For the secret of the weeping wife…”

As always Blok’s poetic cycles are difficult for comprehension and require a thorough study. One thing is clear, though, that Blok planned to write a poetic cycle about eternity rather than about the “vale of tears,” which is our life in this world. It comes straight out of the first poem of this cycle, which Blok ends with the following words:

“…And you are cloudlessly bright,

But only in immortality [sic!], not in the [earthly] vale.”

Blok promises:

“You are leaving the earthly vale,

The love of a better heart is brought to you.

Do not expect frightful dreams from your new freedom:

Choirs of angels, not mortals, will minister to you.”

Having created this female character, Blok is parting with it:

“…[The angels] will minister to you and remove the hair shirt,

The symbol of this life’s immeasurable woes,

And I will part in anguish on the boundary of

Your otherworldly, your heavenly track.”

Blok advises his feminine side never to return to the “vale”:

“…Leave the impotence of this world’s edifice

Your peace will now never be disturbed…”

In the absence of his departed feminine part, Blok experiences:

“…And again the evening shadows are getting closer…

And again sequences of otherworldly visions

 Have stirred up, are floating, have come close…”

Blok’s creative process keeps on going. At the heights of Blok’s consciousness, a duel is now shaping up between the woman and the man. Blok now regrets that he –

“…Stole the burden like a thief,

Broke misery into shattered fragments,

But Oh God! How hard it is to partake

Of an alien growing passion!”

An artist can only be believable if he can transform himself into the image that he has created. Blok’s feminine side enters in a dramatic fashion:

“I kept among young chords

A pensive and tender image of the day.

Here breathed a hurricane, raising flying dust,

And there’s no sun, and darkness is around me…”

Blok’s feminine half sees death, but the woman perseveres no matter what. She is assertive, aggressive, and in command.

“But it’s May in my cell [sic!], and I live invisibly,

Alone in flowers, and waiting for another spring.

Depart from me! – I feel the Seraph,

And all your earthly dreams are alien to me!

Just go away, you wanderers, children, gods!

For I shall bloom again on my last day.

My dream is sacred chambers,

My love is a shadow falling mute.”

 

In this poetic cycle, not only does Blok continue the theme of a person splitting into a feminine and masculine parts, but he goes even further insisting that a human being has an earthly side and a heavenly side. In other words, aside from everyday earthly life, a human being strives toward immortality.

To be continued…