GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCIII.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

 

“…You in white blizzard, snowy moaning,

Came up again as an enchantress,

And in eternal light and chime

The domes of churches became mixed…”

 

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady. III.

 

“The dream which Margarita had that night was indeed unusual. The point is that during her winter torments she had never seen master in her night dreams. At night he had been releasing her, and she had only been suffering during the hours of the day. And here he was, in her dream!”

Here is Blok, asking this question from his feminine person:

“…Or in a minute of losing faith,

He sent me relief?”

Margarita is also contemplating her prophetic dream:

“This dream can mean only one of two things – Margarita Nikolayevna was reasoning with herself. – If he is dead and has beckoned me, it means that he came for me, and I will die soon. This is very good, for it means that my suffering is coming to an end. Or else, he is alive, then the dream must be his reminder of himself to me! He wants to say that we are still going to see each other! Yes, we shall see each other very soon! Remaining in the same state of excitement, Margarita started persuading herself [sic!] that, in essence, everything was shaping up very propitiously, and also that the propitious moment needed to be caught and used.”

Not only does Margarita weep, like Blok’s feminine side, but she also penitently confesses that she had left master all by himself that fateful night. So, here is Blok:

“…But I am praying still with more devotion,

Weeping and confessing painfully…”

This is how we have it in Bulgakov:

“Yes, yes, yes, exactly the same mistake, Margarita was saying, sitting near the stove and looking into the fire, burning in remembrance of that fire that had been burning then, when he was writing Pontius Pilate. – Why then did I leave him there, at night? Why? But that was sheer insanity! And I returned the following day, honestly, just as I had promised, but it was already too late. Yes, I returned like the poor Matthew Levi, too late…”

What else is striking in this chapter Margarita is that she wakes up “near noon.” In other words, precisely around the time when master was expecting her arrival at his basement apartment. Which proves again that we are dealing here with the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita, where master, having as his prototype the great Russian mystical poet A. A. Blok, is also split into the feminine and masculine sides.

In this third cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok – just like in his Violet West and other poems – introduces “dusts,” “ghosts,” “dead people.”

“…The ghost can be seen with great eyes

Because of the human hubbub.”

The point here is the death of Blok’s feminine side. However, if we recall Blok’s Violet West Oppresses –

“…No one knows the end,

And confusion replaces the mirth.

Revealed to us in divination: a dead man

Is splitting the crevice ahead.”

And in Master and Margarita, Margarita, coming to sit on the same bench as she had been sitting on with master exactly one year before, is watching the funeral procession of M. A. Berlioz, passing through Manezh Square.

Even the first meeting of master and Margarita, in Bulgakov, strikes the same chords as Blok’s cycle:

“The door creaked. The hand trembled.

I walked out into the sleepy streets…”

And so did Margarita walk out into the streets of Moscow, to be found by “him.”

“She turned from Tverskaya into a side street, and here she looked back… I can assure you that she saw me alone, and she looked not so much troubled as even sort of pained. She said that she had gone out that day with the yellow flowers in hand in order to be found by me, and if that had not happened she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.”

So, here again is the suicide theme. It is equally present in the third cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady as in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. In this particular spot we have an intersection of two Bulgakovian novels of Master and Margarita. And we shall return to the second novel, the political thriller, already in my chapter The Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.

I have already written that, being a physician, Bulgakov had a pretty good knowledge of psychology. Rereading the pages of Master and Margarita under the Blokian angle, thanks to my discovery in Mayakovsky’s poem It Is Good!, I was struck by one extraordinary thing. –

“Returning into her bedroom with this treasure, Margarita Nikolayevna fixed [master’s] photograph on the triple mirror and sat there for about an hour…”

Bulgakov must have known women’s psychology pretty well, considering my own experience. My very first acquaintance with Blok occurred in my student years in the bedroom of a very good female friend in Moscow. Right across from her bed there was that antique console with a large mirror. In front of the mirror was an elaborately framed photograph of a man. Knowing that my friend was a married woman, I was interested, out of politeness, perhaps, who this man was. “Alexander Blok!” was the answer.

To be continued…

 

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