Strangers in the Night.
A. A. Blok. Madness.
“…A bloody orb will
melt my brain to naught,
And I will lose my mind,
calmer and braver
Than here, where flesh and
blood have been exhausted…”
Alexander Blok. Ante
Lucem.
Reading
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and
rereading certain scenes in the novel, I realized that, on some occasions,
master and Margarita were one and the same person, while on other occasions
they were two different people. Not willing to consider this priceless
multifaceted novel as pure fantasy, especially having discovered that master’s
prototype is the great Russian mystical poet Alexander Blok, I came to the
conclusion that it is in the mystical novel of Master and Margarita that Margarita can have a separate and
legitimate existence – on her own. However, for a while, the prototype of her
character had been escaping me, as it is supposed to be the case in a mystical
work.
This
is why, using Blok’s language, I am inviting the reader to a “Crossroads,” through which we enter the
mystical novel “Blok. Madness.”
***
The
idea of making master insane also comes to Bulgakov from A. Blok’s poetry. Blok
raises the question of insanity already in his first poetic cycle Ante Lucem (1898-1900). –
“My
monastery, where I languish godlessly…
I’m suffocating, it’s too
dark under this false heat.
I’m leaving for another
sweltering skete…
There will be heat there, but
of perennial earth.
A bloody orb will melt my
brain to naught,
And I will lose my mind
[sic!], calmer and braver
Than here, where flesh and
blood have been exhausted…”
The
following lines provide even more confirmation that Bulgakov is building
master’s character on Blok’s poetry:
“…But
where is that new skete? Where’s my new monastery?
It’s not in heavens, where
there’s coffin darkness…”
Thus
already in one of his first poems Blok announces to all that he is a deeply
controversial poet.
“…But
here on earth, both commonplace and healthy,
Where I shall find all when I
lose my mind!”
It
is on account of this early poem that Bulgakov sends master to “rest,”
considering that his prototype Blok rejects paradise.
In
a later 1902 poem from the poetic cycle Verses
About a Fair Lady Blok continues the theme of madness:
“They
will be frightening, untold,
The unearthly masks of faces:
I will be calling you:
Hosanna!
Madman, prostrated face-down…”
...And
in the 1906-1908 cycle Faina, in the
poem The Novice, which, just like the
first poem from Ante Lucem, has a
connection to a monastery, Blok’s opening line says: “No one will say that I’m mad…” and the poem closes with: “…You have insanely doused me in floral hops…”
Which
leads us to the following lines of a 1907 poem from the same cycle Faina:
“I
see her raising her arms
And
going into a wide dance,
She
showered all with flowers,
While
singing her heart out…
Unfaithful,
sly, and treacherous,
Go
dance!..
And
be forever poison
For
my wasted soul!..”
And
here it comes:
“…I’ll
lose my mind, my mind I’ll lose,
I love in madness.
That all of you – night, and
all of you – darkness,
And all of you are in hops
[intoxicated]…”
Three
days prior to writing this poem, on November 6th, 1907, Blok returns
to the theme which he raised in the 5th cycle of the Verses About a Fair Lady, namely, to his
hero: the “Novice.” For this reason,
I felt it necessary to quote the last lines of this poem, dated November 9th,
1907, which Blok himself placed ahead of his poem properly titled The Novice, probably, in order to draw
the reader’s attention to the Novice’s “tale” (to use Blok’s own word), from
the Verses About a Fair Lady.
What
I have just said supports my thought that Blok’s poetry ought to be analyzed
not in isolation of one poem from the rest but in its entirety, considering
that he often returns to one and the same theme, or else provides, in his
earlier poems, answers to questions puzzling the reader in his later poems. (Like
it is, for instance, with his out-of-this-world play The Unknown, to be discussed in a later posting.)
So,
here are the last four lines of this untitled poem, which definitely uncover
the Novice’s secret:
“…That
you have taken away my soul,
Wasted it away by poison;
That I am singing about you
to you,
And there is no number to
these songs!”
Now
turning to the poem The Novice, an
even more “noir” (if you can imagine!) version becomes clear, as to why the
poem’s hero kills the bride. The Novice tells us in his own words:
“A
model brother to my sad brethren,
I wear a black cassock
When since the morning with a
steady step
I brush the dew off the pale
grasses.
And approaching all icons,
Like a stern and humble
brother,
I make one bow after another,
And perform one rite after
another.”
And
the following words of the poem’s hero are particularly strange. These words
precisely were the ones that made me return to the 4th and 5th
cycles of the Verses About a Fair Lady,
written by Blok in 1902:
“…And
who will know, and who will get it
That you have told me: Keep
silent!..
That the wax of the blissful
soul is melting
In the bright flame of the
candle.”
Indeed,
without the 1907 poem The Novice it’s
impossible to form a complete picture of what had really happened to the Novice
in the 5th cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady. This full picture is also confirming my thought that the
character of master in Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita has much of N. V. Gogol. Without that great mystical writer
of the first half of the 19th century, there would have been no
great mystical poet of the early 20th century A. A. Blok.
To
be continued…
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