GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCXCVII.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split.

 

“I am afraid of my dual-faced soul,

And I cautiously bury

My image, devilish and wild…”

 

Alexander Blok. I Like to Visit Tall Cathedrals.

 

Alexander Blok has personality splits that are easy to understand, and those that are more difficult. I’ll be dealing with both of them.

In his 1904 poem Violet West Oppresses, Blok writes unequivocally:

“Each has split his soul in half,

And set up dual laws…”

As I already wrote about it earlier, in this poem Blok is talking about poets. Which makes the split easy to understand. Each member of Blok’s cavalcade “flying steadfastly onwards” is split into a man and a poet. Hence the dual laws, as the man lives in the real world, and the poet lives in a world built inside the poet’s imagination.

In the 1902 poem I Like to Visit Tall Cathedrals, Humbling My Soul, A. Blok again writes about his split, calling himself “dual-faced.”

“I am afraid of my dual-faced soul,

And I cautiously bury

My image, devilish and wild…”

The idea of splitting each poet into two, that is, into two personages in Master and Margarita, comes to Bulgakov also from the poetry of Blok.

“We are flying unswervingly onward…

There are few of us… Each has split his soul in half

And set up dual laws…”

In the 1904 poem The Violet West Oppresses A. A. Blok, like in no other of his works, explains what exactly he understands by “splitting.”

This theme is quintessential for the understanding of Bulgakov’s works, starting already with Diaboliada, where A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov become prototypes of several characters. It can be found all the more in Master and Margarita, where, as we know, several Russian poets have been split.

Bulgakov takes this idea from Blok’s poem:

“The violet west oppresses,

Like the handshake of a leaden hand.

We are flying unswervingly onward –

Enforcers of a stern will.”

 

Obeying Bulgakov’s will, Woland’s cavalcade is flying eastward, as master and Margarita arrive at their final destination – eternal rest – at dawn on Sunday.

“There are few of us, all in long cloaks;

Sparks are spurting and iron mails are shining,

We are raising dust in the north,

And leaving azure in the south.”

What kind of dust, or rather, whose dust could be raised by Woland’s cavalcade in the north, will become clear from my future chapter The Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.

“…Setting up thrones for other ages –

Who will sit on those dark thrones?..

Here Blok talks about the future. Bulgakov picks it up right after Blok’s death in 1921, engaging himself in many years of nonstop work on Master and Margarita. In Bulgakov’s crowning work, the “Magnificent Four,” that is, Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky and Yesenin are certainly sitting on “dark thrones,” as the word “dark” in Blok constitutes a special compliment, considering that this word relates to A. S. Pushkin (the dark-violet knight).

“…Each has split his soul in half

And set up dual laws…”

It becomes perfectly clear what Bulgakov is doing in Master and Margarita, where V. V. Mayakovsky has been split into the poet Sashka Ryukhin and Woland-Satan, and S. A. Yesenin is split into the poet Ivan Bezdomny and the demon Azazello.

“…No one knows the end,

And confusion replaces the mirth.

Revealed to us in divination: a dead man

Is splitting the crevice ahead.”

Bulgakov does not reveal “the end” for the “Magnificent Four.” We can be sure though that their future missions are going to be no less daring.

The idea of splitting had a tremendous interest for Blok, as this theme is already present in his early collection of poems Verses About a Fair Lady, Part I (1901-1902).

“The Soul is silent. In the cold sky

The same stars are burning for her,

Around her, of gold or of bread

The noisy nations are clamoring…

She’s silent – and responds to the clamor,

And gazes into faraway worlds,

But in her dual-faced [sic!] loneliness

She is preparing wondrous gifts.”

This is how Blok explains this “dual-facedness” –

“…She is preparing gifts for her gods,

And anointed, in quietude,

She catches with an untiring ear

The faraway call of another soul…”

After which comes an explanation:

“Thus the undisunited hearts

Of white birds over the ocean

Are sounding with a call across the fog,

Which is familiar to them only, to the end.”

This 1901 poem by Blok makes it clear that there is a deficiency in a single human being. Human soul needs a soul mate.

Blok correctly sees the basic difference of human beings from all other creation in the soul, rather than in the heart, which is nothing but a muscle. Although in his later poems, he compares human heart to a bird, I do not think this is a proper idea.

The only way we can explain Blok’s comparison of his heart to a bird is by Blok’s heart disease, which happened to be the official cause of his death. His heart must have been fluttering at each excitement, just like the fluttering of a bird’s wings.

As for the idea itself of comparing a human being to a bird, Blok takes it from M. Yu, Lermontov who compares all of himself to a bird. In an 1840 poem, Lermontov writes:

“How often, by a motley crowd surrounded,

When before me, as though through a dream,

Images of soulless people are flashing,

Masks strained by propriety.”

From this we can already see where Blok takes his magnificent poem about masks from, about which I have already written earlier in this chapter.

“And if on an occasion for a moment

I’m able to forget myself, then with my memory

I fly like a free-free bird,

And I see myself as a child…”

What naturally comes to mind here is the child in the chapter The Flight in Master and Margarita in which Margarita has to console a little boy left alone in his crib. I already wrote elsewhere that this scene has been written by Bulgakov with great humor, as the little boy had to be none other than Kot Begemot, whose prototype was M. Yu. Lermontov. Before this in his 1923 Diaboliada Bulgakov depicts Lermontov as a somewhat older elevator boy, who lifts Korotkov to the roof of the building and keeps giving him advice.

In Margarita’s case, the Woland team is testing her heart, her soul, knowing that she is a childless witch. To use Blok’s language, Margarita was dwelling in a dual-faced loneliness. Not loving or having stopped loving her husband, she was looking for a soul mate for her own soul.

To be continued…