GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCVI.

Strangers in the Night.

Blok Split Continues.

“…‘He’ drew Sacred Letters,

With a wooden sword.

Admiring the strangeness,

‘She’ shyly lowered her eyes.

Disbelieving the admiration,

Alone with the darkness,

By the pensive door,

Harlequin was bursting with laughter.”

Alexander Blok. Verses About a Fair Lady. V.

Come to think of it, hasn’t Alexander Blok already written about a ghost?

“Let them run after me…

My marsh will suck them in,

The murky circle will then close,

And tumbling over, my ghost

Will peer into their face…”

And in the present poem from the 5^th cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady:

He will rise up, the lawless ghost,

Reflected in the water’s mirror…”

In other words, this is one and the same person. The drowned novice. As the following lines also indicate:

“And at that hour into the empty anteroom

Will enter a semblance of a face,

And the mirror reflection of the comer

Will show no shadow…”

And here it becomes clear why in the previous 4^th cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok writes:

“I am afraid of my dual-faced soul,

And I cautiously bury

My image, devilish and wild…”

And also why the novice says in the same poem:

“In my superstitious prayer

I am seeking protection from Christ,

But from under the hypocritical mask

The lying lips are laughing…”

There is no doubt that the lethal marsh had sucked in not the pursuers of the novice, but the novice himself. And also that the image in the mirror that does not cast a shadow is also the novice’s. Just as A. Blok writes:

“I was walking ahead;

But behind me – he himself,

One like me, but closer to the destination…”

In other words, once again we witness the dual split of Blok himself. The split that he writes so frequently about in his poems. Doesn’t he have a poem where he calls himself Harlequin?!

***

In the poetic collection Crossroads, which follows the Verses About a Fair Lady, in the poem The Double (1903), Blok writes:

“Here is my song to you, Colombina,

It is the seal of sulky constellations:

Only in the attire of the buffoon Harlequin

Can I make such songs…”

Blok’s “Double,” as it is often the case in Blok’s poems, is a “decrepit old man.” –

“The two of us we were dragging ourselves through the bazaar.

Both in the jingling attire of buffoons.

Hey, take a look at the silly pair,

Listen to the jingle of the dauntless bells!”

Blok confesses:

“I’m Harlequin…

Oh if they only notice, notice,

Look into my eyes, because of my motley attire! –

Perhaps, at close range they just might meet

My sly, laughing glance…”

In the same poem there is also Colombina. Like in the fifth cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady. And it is only from the poem The Double that it becomes clear that Blok does not see himself as Pierrot, but that he sees himself as a “sly” one. Which stresses the point that Blok himself did indeed see himself as split, that he indeed believed that he had a dual soul.

This point is excellently explained by his untitled 1902 poem from the fourth cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady:

“I know the day of my damnation

And run into my pre-timely tomb.

I free myself from the embraces,

But he is keeping guard at the crossroads.

His annoying screams –

Now close by, now from afar,

Fear, shame, and wild horror,

And naked anguish,

And at the crossroads, a pitiful captive,

I stumble and I scream...”

Amazingly, Blok’s very next poetic cycle gets the title Crossroads (1902-1904).

To be continued…