GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXXIII

Strangers In The Night.

Alexander Blok. Falling In Love.

“I’m nailed to a bar counter,

I’m long drunk, it’s all the same to me,

There goes my happiness, in a three-horse cart,

Carried away into the silvery smoke…”

A. Blok. Falling in Love.

In the 1905 poem Falling in Love, Alexander Blok extols the state of falling in love. This state can be best compared to the state of intoxication. It does not last, but as long as it does, it makes one feel good.

Blok badly needed and loved this state of falling in love. By the same measure as the state of intoxication with wine, this state was helping his creativity.

In many of his works Blok describes either his falling in love or his state of intoxication.

I love Blok’s poetry, as I never confuse the talent of poets and writers, and generally speaking, all outstanding people, with their private life.

Nevertheless, I must note here that I do not consider Blok ever capable of a deep feeling of love.

“So what if I lived without love,

So what if I broke solemn vows?..”

And also in his poetic cycle Carmen Blok writes:

“…But I love you, I am like you, Carmen…”

It means that, like Carmen, he was only capable of falling in love, but never loving anybody for a long time. –

“Mine, you [Carmen] will never be, nor anybody’s.

That’s why I’m your admirer and a poet!”

In his long poem Retribution, written shortly before death and left unfinished, Blok, at the end of the poem, pronounces maternal love unsurpassable and compares it to the love of Mary Mother of God for the infant Jesus. It may be safely assumed that the only love Blok himself had in his life was his love for his mother, to whom he dedicated a large number of his poems.

Other than a strong filial love for his mother, Blok was incapable of the other kind of love. This is what he writes in a poem to a woman:

“I want to love you, only you,

But I cannot, and don’t know how.”

Despite this dire deficiency, his inability to love, or maybe because of it, Blok was able to create most interesting poems about love. Still, he did not need a Margarita, because no matter what kind of woman might ensnare him in her charms, he would soon get tired of her. Blok was terribly quick in being disappointed.

Studying Blok’s poetry, I became convinced that the love story of master and Margarita was an artificial story, in other words, pure fiction. So, what was Bulgakov’s basis for writing such a story?

How about the following lines from an untitled poem from Blok’s 1908-1916 poetry cycle Harps and Violins:

“And I’m afraid to call you by your name,

Why do I need a name?”

And here is Bulgakov:

“...They knew, of course, they saw that some woman was coming to see me, but they did not know her name.

And who is she? – asked Ivan, interested to the highest degree in this love story.

The guest made a gesture [probably, symbolically cutting his throat with his hand] meaning that he would never reveal it to anyone.”

And also in another poem from Blok’s Harps and Violins cycle. –

“Your glance, I wish I could catch it,

But you are turning away your glances…”

And here is Bulgakov:

“…She turned from Tverskaya into a side street, and here she looked back… Thousands of people were walking up and down Tverskaya Street, but I can assure you that she saw me alone, and she looked not so much alarmed as sort of pained. And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by that singular, non-visible to anyone, loneliness in her eyes.”

In this remarkable passage we find the glance, the beauty, and death.

In the 1906-1908 poetry cycle Faina, Blok writes:

“When you are standing in my way,

So much alive, so beautiful,

But so worn out,

Talking only about sad things,

Thinking about death,

Loving no one,

And despising your own beauty…

What? Would I ever offend you?”

And here is Bulgakov:

“She was saying that she went 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.”

In an earlier 1901 poem from the cycle Verses About a Fair Lady, Blok has very interesting lines, which I will also be writing about elsewhere.

“You have performed a difficult feat over her,

But my poor friend, have you discerned

Her garment, festive and wondrous,

And those strange spring flowers? [sic!]”

It is obvious that examples of this are more than abundant, sufficient to cover all other postings. It goes uncontested now that Bulgakov draws the first meeting of master and Margarita from Blok’s poetry.

Also in favor of Blok speaks the word Neznakomka (Woman-Stranger, Unknown), which Bulgakov uses in his 13^th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Appearance of the Hero.

Alexander Blok wrote many poems about women-strangers, and also a very interesting mystical play of the same title. As the reader is going to find out soon enough, all these women-strangers exist exclusively in the imagination of this amazing poet.

But I am as always carried away by my surge of enthusiasm. The time has come for something else…

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXXII

Strangers in the Night.

A. A. Blok. Madness.

“Heart, soar up like a light bird,

Fly and wake up love,

Overwhelm the eyelashes with languor,

Attach yourself to the pale-dark-skinned shoulders…”

Alexander Blok. The Spell of Fire and Darkness.

“I go from execution to execution

In a broad band of fire.

You are only teasing me with the impossible,

Tormenting me with the unthinkable…”

This is how Bulgakov’s Margarita is being created, the feminine side of Alexander Blok.

“He was exclaiming in whisper that he did not blame her who had been pushing him into a fight, for anything, oh, no, he did not blame her…”

…I wonder why?..

This can be explained by the following lines of Blok:

“What is it worth to be passionless, or to be a winged one?

Scourge me and scold me a hundred times!

Just to be cursed for a single moment

With you – in the fire of the night’s dawn!”

Bulgakov was drawing the image of Margarita along Blokian lines. I have not stopped insisting that Margarita’s character is just as much artificial as are Blok’s women, invented by his unique imagination. –

“Do understand that in this darkness

I stand over you like a magus, and wait…

On guard, in the wind, in delirium…”

“…And the wind sings and prophesizes

A blue dream for me in the future.”

In other words, the dream cannot become a reality under any circumstances.

“…That the beloved will quietly untie

Her silken black scarf…”

Blok’s scarf represents chastity. The black color symbolizes monasticism.

By the same token, the “blue dream” points to unrealistic fantasies. The three dots after the word “scarf” likewise indicate the same.

And yet, Blok writes a whole poem full of passion about this manifestly non-existent woman.

Calling a woman a “heart” already from the third segment of his poem The Spell of Fire and Darkness, Blok carries on this theme of the heart being a flying bird to the sixth segment.

Blok fantasizes: “Isn’t that she who dances over there in the distance?” Calling the heart “ a light bird of oblivion,” Blok is musing:

“…She needs none of the modest ones,

What she needs isn’t wit or stupidity…”

In Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, this translates into a clever Margarita and a modest master. Margarita loves master’s mind and modesty, finding her life in master’s novel Pontius Pilate.

“He who called himself master was feverishly working on the novel, and this novel consumed the Unknown as well.”

The word “Unknown” here already points to Blok.

“She was rereading the manuscript no end… She promised fame, she spurred him on, and it was then that she started calling him master… and said that in this novel was her life.”

To begin with, master was “feverishly” working on his novel on his own and did not require to be spurred on. The answer is easy: he was spurring on himself. Margarita was merely a part of his psyche.

Secondly, Bulgakov initially writes: “he who called himself master,” and only later on: “it was then that she started calling him master.”

So what we have here is the splitting of Blok himself into master and Margarita in Bulgakov’s psychological thriller, and also in the fantastical novel of Master and Margarita.

It is precisely from Blok’s poem The Spell of Fire and Darkness that Bulgakov takes the very odd scene inside the psychiatric clinic when master visits Ivanushka right before flying away to eternal rest.

“I’ve come to say farewell to you.”

And of course Bulgakov sells the whole store to the reader with regard to making Ivanushka the author of the novel Master and Margarita.

Ivan responds to master:

“It’s good that you’ve flown in here.”

Bulgakov also sells the whole store regarding Blok, who considers himself a “heart – flying bird.”

Until the moment of Azazello’s whistle, master is alone talking to Ivan. –

“Wait! One more word, asked Ivan. – And have you found her? Has she remained faithful to you?”

“Here she is,” replied master, and pointed to the wall. A dark Margarita separated from the white wall and approached the bed.”

Let us remember, however, that Margarita does not exist. We are inside the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita, where Margarita is merely a fruit of master’s inflamed imagination. Curiously, this idea of the wall comes to Bulgakov out of Blok’s poetry cycle Faina, where the woman is also imaginary.

“…And she probably doesn’t like the dark ones,

Leaning like myself against the wall…”

Blok continues the sixth segment with the words:

“Heart, soar up like a light bird,

Fly and wake up love,

Overwhelm the eyelashes with languor,

Attach yourself to the pale-dark-skinned shoulders…”

“How beautiful she is! – said Ivan in some kind of quiet reverence, without envy but with sadness.”

Margarita obviously “awakened love in him.” For, as we meet Ivan the next time, he is married to an unknown without a name.

Blok closes the 6^th segment with the words:

“The heart is beating, languishing like a bird –

There she is, spinning in the distance –

A flying bird in a light dance,

Faithful to no one and to nothing…”

And also in Bulgakov, Margarita remains faithful to master to the death, for, only in dead form could she and master both visit Ivan.

“Wait! One more word, asked Ivan. – And have you found her? Has she remained faithful to you?”

“Here she is,” replied master, and pointed to the wall. A dark Margarita separated from the white wall and approached the bed.”

…At this point, enough of Blok’s madness already. It’s time for falling in love…

I am returning next with Strangers in the Night: Falling in Love.

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXXI.

Strangers in the Night.

A. A. Blok. Madness.

As a mad and obedient slave

I hide and wait until my time,

Under this gaze, too dark,

In my flaming delirium.”

Alexander Blok. The Spell of Fire and Darkness.

The other side of Blok, Odi et Amo, has sheer enmity for spring, because spring is the time for love.

Master and Margarita meet in spring and fall in love with each other.

The only way I can understand this with Blok as master’s prototype is that Blok was in love with the state of being in love, which is why he dreams of his meetings with extraordinary women-Unknowns, conceived in his wild imagination.

In spring, everything is burning in Blok, and these are not “snaky curls” anymore, which he paints in the second segment of his poem, but “burning eyes.”

“I look: there grows and roars a fire –

Your eyes are burning…

The whole city is a bright stack of fire…

I’m here, in the corner, there, crucified,

Nailed to the wall – look!

Your eyes are burning, burning,

Like two black dawns!..

We shall all burn out:

All my city, the river [sic!] and I…”

Here is where Bulgakov takes his fires from. In the notes to my edition of Master and Margarita, I read that his intention had been to burn the city. I haven’t read Bulgakov’s drafts, but if it is so, it only proves that Bulgakov wished to be solved with regard to master’s prototype being Alexander Blok in the psychological thriller of Master and Margarita. Apparently there is a close association established between Blok and the fires… We say Blok, meaning fire, and we say fire meaning Blok…

But in the final author’s version, Bulgakov limits himself to master saying farewell to the city. –

“…Countless suns were melting glass behind the river, and above those suns were fog, smoke, and steam of the sizzling hot, at the end of the day, city.”

In his long poem It’s Good!, V. V. Mayakovsky describes his meeting with Blok (which is how I came to realize that Bulgakov may have chosen A. Blok as master’s prototype, and started reading a volume of his verses), writing precisely about fire and fires.

Holding his palms near the tongues of fire,

A soldier is warming up.

The fire fell upon the soldier’s eyes,

Lying down on the tuft of his hair.

I recognized him, was surprised, and said:

Hello, Alexander Blok…

Blok looked – the fires are burning –

‘Very good!’”

Returning to Blok’s poem The Spell of Fire and Darkness, the ending of its second section is quite remarkable:

“Baptize with a fiery baptism,

Oh, my darling!”

Considering that spring is the time of Russian Easter, the time of Christ’s Crucifixion, the time of His Resurrection, I find Blok’s celebration of spring in these two sections simply marvelous!

The third section of the poem moves us from fire into darkness. In this section, the woman turns into an elusive bird.

“…But elusively,

She flew into mire and darkness…”

Darkness pervades through the fourth section. Reading it, we realize that we find ourselves in autumn.

“…And like a dark slave I dare not

Drown in fire and darkness…”

Hence, in Mayakovsky’s It Is Good! we find:

“All around, Blok’s Russia was drowning…”

And hence, in Bulgakov’s 24^th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Extraction of Master –

“[Margarita] felt betrayed… Should I be asking for it myself? No, by no means! – she said to herself. All the best to you, Messire, she said out loud, while thinking to herself: Just let me get out of here, and then I will get myself to a river and drown in it.”

In what concerns Blok’s darkness, Bulgakov, being a physician and having studied psychology, shows us real horror in Master and Margarita. –

“...And then the stage of fear set in… I had to sleep with the light on…” But then: “I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep without turning on the light... I woke up... Feeling around with my hand, I was able to turn on the lamp… It suddenly seemed to me that autumn darkness [Blok’s darkness of autumn] would push in the window glass and pour in, [and I would] drown in it, like in ink… I got up like a man who has no control of himself, and I had a desire to run away to somebody... I was fighting myself like a madman. I had enough strength to reach the furnace and light up the logs in it…”

“…A fire was roaring in the furnace. The ash was at times overwhelming me, smothering the fire…”

“…I stomped the fire out with my feet…”

Bulgakov brilliantly described these scenes, and even though I realized that one person only participated in these scenes, it would not have entered my head without reading Blok’s poetry who could be the prototype of master.

And naturally, Bulgakov, having thrown around quite a few false clues in his Theatrical Novel, led me off the right path. I have no regrets whatsoever in this regard, as without N. V. Gogol and M. Yu. Lermontov, there would have been no Alexander Blok.

From Blok, Bulgakov takes that great passion for fire and brilliantly plays upon it on the pages of Master and Margarita in the thirteenth chapter The Appearance of the Hero. And it was Blok who took the mystical torch from the two Russian greats: Gogol and Lermontov.

The following Blokian lines had affected Bulgakov so beneficently in his portrayal of master:

“…And like a dark slave I dare not

Drown in fire and darkness…

As a mad and obedient slave

I hide and wait until my time,

Under this gaze, too dark,

In my flaming delirium.”

And here is Bulgakov:

“What do I remember after that? – mumbled master, rubbing his temple. – Yes, the red petals on the title page, and also the eyes of my beloved. Yes, I remember those eyes!”

“…Her eyes exuded fire…”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXX.

Strangers in the Night.

A. A. Blok. Madness.

“And I look, and I measure the enmity,

Hating, cursing, and loving.

For torments, for death, – I know it –

Yet it’s no matter: I do accept you!”

Alexander Blok.

Sergei A. Yesenin knew Blok’s poetry very well and used his ideas and motifs in his own creative work.

Some of these “Blokian” poems were published, such as, for instance, Letter to a Woman, where Yesenin writes about himself standing at the wall, which he takes from Blok’s Spell of Fire and Darkness, in the poetic cycle Frightful World. Blok writes:

“The heart is a quiet bird of oblivions,

And it probably doesn’t like the dark ones,

Leaning like myself against the wall…”

But Yesenin also had other poems, in which Blok’s ideas can be very clearly traced, which he chose not to have published.

Thus I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular poem also influenced Yesenin’s decision to commit suicide, in order to remain forever young, but most importantly, in order to get into that exclusive group of poets who died before him, in the footsteps of Pushkin and Lermontov killed in duels.

In 1921, Alexander Blok died of a heart failure, and just a few days later, in Revolutionary Petrograd, another outstanding Russian poet was shot by a firing squad. His name was N. S. Gumilev.

Blok’s influence on the work and suicide in 1930 of V. V. Mayakovsky is also unquestionable. I am writing about it in my next chapter Margarita Beyond Good And Evil.

The idea of the Heart as a Bird also comes to Blok from the poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov. In his 1840 poem How Often, by a Motley Crowd Surrounded, Lermontov writes:

“…And if I somehow can forget myself for a moment…

I’m flying as a free, free bird;

And I see myself as a child…”

And Blok has it in his poem, influenced by Lermontov’s poetry:

“The heart is a quiet bird of oblivions…

Heart, soar up like a light bird,

Fly, and awaken love…

The heart is beating, languishing like a bird –

There she is, spinning in the distance –

A flying bird in a light dance,

Faithful to no one and to nothing…”

Bulgakov borrows a lot from this poem for his own work.

1.      His emphasis on the heart with Margarita, knowing that Blok had a heart ailment, which killed him eventually.

2.      The idea of the bird, although it is present not only in Lermontov, but in Gogol before him.

3.      The idea of suicide. Bulgakov uses it twice. First in the sub-novel Pontius Pilate in the second chapter of Master and Margarita, told by Woland. It was the devil who implanted the idea of suicide in Pilate’s head, several times offering him a cup of poison in his visions… And it is the devil again who offers the buffet vendor Andrei Fokich Sokov: “Wouldn’t it be better for you to throw a feast, and having taken poison, transmigrate, surrounded by intoxicated beauties?..”

Incidentally, the word “intoxication” can be found in Blok quite frequently, and it is also present in this poem:

“And only in the morning am I throwing to the crows

My intoxication, my sleep, my dream…”

And also there:

“But over us hangs an intoxicated dream!”

Or this utter madness:

“I’ll lose my mind, I’ll lose my mind,

I love in madness,

That all you, night, and all you, darkness,

And all you are intoxicated!”

And even this:

“In a snowy cup, full of foam,

Intoxication is ringing…”

So, who is Blok writing about? –

“It is only in the morning that I dare to leave

Your high porch,

And during the night drowns in the folds of the dress

My insane face.”

In the poem’s tenth section Blok reveals his secret:

“Work, work, work!..

Ah, it’s sweet, so sweet, how sweet,

To work till the break of day,

And to know that the rambunctious soldier’s wife

Has gone out of the village to a group dance!”

This part reveals the reality of Blok’s life. He writes his poetry during the night. Blok is a dreamer by his own admission. And the very first line of the poem tells us about his dreams:

“Oh, spring, without end and without borders –

A dream without end and without borders!”

However, Blok is a realistic dreamer. He understands that “the impossible was possible, but the possible was a dream.”

In the first section of Blok’s poem, the poet’s beloved is Spring herself. –

“And I’m meeting you on the threshold,

The wild wind in your snaky curls,

With the undeciphered name of God

On your cold and tight-pressed lips.”

It is perfectly clear from this that the poet is not talking here about a woman. Blok loves spring, he sees Easter in spring, hence the curls are snaky.

M. Bulgakov uses this in Master and Margarita in a very interesting fashion. Before applying Azazello’s cream to her body, Margarita’s hair had a hairdresser’s permanent curl, which then got uncurled. –

“Looking from the mirror at the thirty-year-old Margarita was a naturally curly black-haired woman…”

It is hard even to imagine that Blok can call his meeting with his beloved or with a woman he has fallen in love with, an “adversarial meeting.”

And then:

“And I look, and I measure the enmity,

Hating, cursing, and loving.

For torments, for death, – I know it –

Yet it’s no matter: I do accept you!”

To be continued…

GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXIX.

Strangers in the Night.

A. A. Blok. Madness.

“…We are young, and we believe in Paradise –

And chase afar after a dimly dawning vision.

But wait! It isn’t there! It is extinguished!

We are deceived, and we are tired.

And what since then? We have become so wise.

We’ve measured five feet with our foot,

And we have built a somber coffin

And have entombed us in it, still alive.

Alexander Griboyedov. Forgive Us, Fatherland!

Returning yet again to Alexander Blok’s powerful words of madness and split personality in his 1904 poem Violet West Oppresses:

“Each has split his soul in half,

And set up dual laws…”

How else can we understand Blok’s words in a later poem Life of a Friend of Mine (perhaps the same one as in Night Violet?) –

“Having left the city, I slowly walked down the slope…

And it seemed that my friend was with me,

But even if he was, he was silent all the way.

Was it I who asked him to keep silent?..

Only, strangers to each other, we saw different things…”

Soon thereafter, it becomes clear that Blok had no company.

He was by himself, as, having described his friend to us, he mercilessly describes himself, having come to a hut where dead Russian poets had gathered:

“I was a pauper tramp,

Patron of nighttime restaurants.”

To which he immediately adds:

“…I had not come in a bridal dress

To the festive evening occasion.

Indeed, he had been leading a dissipated life, just like his imaginary friend.

In the same poem, included in the 1909-1916 poetic cycle Frightful World, that is, of a later time than his poem Night Violet, where Blok enumerates all sins of his imaginary friend:

“The heart was striving toward truth; but it was overwhelmed by the lie…”

He also calls the heart “a painted corpse.”

“When accidentally on a Sunday

He lost his soul,

He did not go to an investigative department,

He was not looking for witnesses…”

It is only in the 5^th section that it becomes clear that Blok is writing about himself. –

“A pauper fool accosted me,

He had been stalking me like an acquaintance, --

Where’s your money? – I’ve taken it to a pub.

Where’s your heart? – Thrown in a swamp.”

And this is how Blok ends this conversation:

“My dear, you think there are two of us?

Think again, see, look around…”

So, what does Blok expect? –

“…And true! (what a task he has ordered!)

I look, there is no one nearby,

I looked in my pocket, -- there’s nothing there!

I looked in my heart, -- and I am crying…”

Blok describes his split duality amazingly in his 1907 long poem Spell of Fire and Darkness, in 11 parts:

“A blizzard’s blowing down the street,

It weaves and shakes,

Someone gives his hand to me,

And someone is smiling…”

Blok frequently has this “someone” in his poems. Bulgakov liked this turn so much that he considerably expanded it in his own works.

“…It’s leading, and I see the depth

Enclosed by heavy granite,

It flows, it sings,

It calls, the cursed one.

I approach and I back off,

And I freeze in a vague fluttering…”

And here “somebody” turns in Blok’s poem into “him,” that is, there is a “he,” other than Blok, even though it is perfectly clear that Blok is alone.

“…And he whispers – he can’t be chased away

(and the will has been destroyed):

Just understand that the skill of how to die

Ennobles the soul.

Do understand that you are alone,

How sweet are the mysteries of the cold,

Do peer into the cold current,

Where everything is forever young…”

And again Blok returns to himself. “Somebody” does not exist. “Somebody” is Blok himself.

“I flee! Away from me, let me go, you cursed one!

Don’t torment me, don’t test me!

I’ll go into the field…

There’s freedom there freer than all freedoms,

It will never enslave a free one!”

There is a good reason why this long poem Spell of Fire and Darkness has an epigraph taken from my favorite poet M. Yu. Lermontov, who frequently escapes in his poems into the Russian field.

Lermontov’s influence on A. A. Blok, as well as on his contemporaries V. V. Mayakovsky and S. A. Yesenin, is unquestionable. Even though Mayakovsky and Yesenin can hardly be considered “mystical” poets, Lermontov’s mysticism breathes from the pages of their poetry.

Blok’s poem Spell of Fire and Darkness shows us that Lermontov’s creative work, and most significantly Lermontov’s heroic life itself, had profoundly affected the lives of all three Russian poets. Blok’s Spell of Fire and Darkness is a continuation of sorts, or perhaps better to say an echo of the poetic cycle Verses About a Fair Lady. Here Blok reveals that he had been entertaining the idea of suicide. The main words which point to Lermontov’s influence and reveal Blok’s desire to follow Lermontov to the other world are: “Where everything is forever young…”

Lermontov was killed in a duel at the age of 26, having deliberately made his shot in the air. Curiously, he is the one who first described in a literary work, Hero of Our Times, the game of “Russian Roulette.” In 1925 Yesenin committed suicide at the age of 30 by opening his veins. Yesenin had been preparing himself for this kind of suicide by stressing that “All poets are of one blood,” thus pointing to the deaths of Griboyedov, Pushkin, and Lermontov.

To be continued…