Strangers in the Night.
Blok Split Continues.
“I’ve descended, I’ll
be with you until morning,
I will leave your sleep at
dawn.
I will vanish without a
trace, forgetting it all, –
You’ll wake up, liberated
once more.”
Alexander Blok. Verses
About a Fair Lady.
The
ending of the 5th cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady is incomprehensible without the ending of the 4th
cycle:
“Now
the evening will roll in soon,
And the night – toward
destiny:
Then my path will tumble over
And I will return to you.”
Who
else but his Muse is Blok about to return to? He is bringing one poetic cycle
to the end, and about to embark on the next. The proof is hiding in the lines
of the 5th cycle of his Verses
About a Fair Lady:
And I didn’t know when and
where
He had come from and
disappeared into,
And how the blue dream of the
heavens
Turned upside down in the
water.”
It
is about his Muse, the Fair Lady, that Blok writes several poems in the same 4th
cycle:
“Fatigued,
I was losing hope,
Dark angst was approaching…
You came down, touched me and
sighed, –
Is tomorrow my day of
freedom?”
And
Blok’s Muse responds:
“I’ve
descended, I’ll be with you until morning,
I will leave your sleep at
dawn.
I will vanish without a
trace, forgetting it all, –
You’ll wake up, liberated
once more.”
He
will be liberated from all that he had written, and inspired [liberated] to
write other things.
Blok
continues:
“Me
and the world – snows, streams,
The sun, songs, stars, birds,
Trains of vague thoughts –
All are in your power, all
are yours!”
And
his wish is to ascend to where his Muse dwells:
“To
fall in love with and to hate
The secret meaning of
Creation,
Odds and evens of dead
numbers,
And up above there – to see
you!”
And
although in closing the 5th cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady Blok writes –
“…Without
keeping away any of its light,
The sun is vainly hitting the
blind windows
Of the abandoned dwelling…”
–
the Muse, however, does not abandon him. –
“…Without
me, your dreams would have been flying away…
Knock at the quiet house,
child [that is, Blok].
I live over the dented
ground,
Rolling toward evening in my
house.
Come, I will give you peace.
Dear, dear, I will embrace
you,
On the edge of the fiery
sunset
I have inscribed the Name,
child…”
Thus
already in the beginning of his installment as a poet Blok realized the
greatness of his gift and saw his immortality in Russian literature.
***
In
the 6th cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady Blok confirms the validity of my thought that inside that
house dwells his Muse, the Fair Lady. –
“I am
entering dark temples,
There I wait for the Fair Lady.
But looking into my face is
only
The glowing icon, only a
dream of her…
Running high up the cornices
Are smiles, fairytales, and
dreams…”
The
reader certainly remembers what the Muse told Blok:
“…Without
me, your dreams would have been flying away…”
And
as the Muse calls Blok:
“…Dear,
dear, I will embrace you,
On the edge of the fiery
sunset
I have inscribed the Name,
child…”
–so
does Blok reciprocate:
“…My
Saint, how tender are the candles,
How soothing are your
features!
I can’t hear either sighs or
speeches,
But I believe: Beloved – You!”
There
can be no doubt. These lines are not addressed to a woman. Just like in the
next poem Blok writes:
“…I
will be appealing to You: Hosanna!
Madman prostrated face-down.”
Being
extremely controversial and, as I already wrote on many occasions, remaining an
avant-garde poet even in our 21st century, Blok fully realized his
unique place in poetry, as the closing lines of Blok’s last 5th
cycle indicate that all along Block had known how he would be judged by
history:
“I’ll
meet you somewhere in the world
Beyond the distance of the
stony roads.
At the frightful Last Feast
God is preparing our
encounter.”
I
am not saying farewell to Blok’s Verses
About a Fair Lady, as these verses together with the author will be later
moving on into my other chapters.
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