Strangers in the Night.
A. A. Blok.
Madness.
The Mystical
Novel.
“…There was an Omen
and a Miracle:
In the undisturbed silence,
Judas rose among the crowd,
In a cold mask, upon a horse…”
Alexander Blok. Verses
About a Fair Lady. II.
On
the same day in September 1902, Blok writes another untitled poem:
“Within
my soul, secret letters were revealed…
Each day brings me new changes.
Oh, how alive I am, how
vibrant is my blood!
I am at home with underground
springs!
Moments of mysteries! – I’ve
understood you!
I am with you! I am behind
you! –
I have revealed you, sacred
letters…”
How
harmonious this is with Bulgakov’s lines in Chapter 13 Appearance of the Hero:
“Ach, that was the Golden
Age! – whispered the storyteller [master], his eyes sparkling… Having won
100,000 rubles, Ivan’s mysterious guest did the following: He bought books,
dropped his room on Myasniskaya Street and rented from a developer in a side
street off Arbat two rooms in the basement of a small house in a little garden…
tiny windows right over the walkway leading from the gate…”
Master
is happy just like Blok is happy in his poem, because not only is master
writing his novel Pontius Pilate,
but, as the reader knows, he has made a correct guess about his character. Blok
expresses it in the following way: “Within my soul, secret letters were
revealed…” and also: “Moments of mysteries! – I’ve understood you!”
It
also becomes clear from the following poem why Bulgakov makes master’s
residence a basement:
“I
would wake up and I’d ascend
The dark steps toward the
window…”
And
here is Bulgakov in Master and Margarita:
“In winter, I very seldom saw
in the little window somebody’s black feet, and heard the crunching of snow
under them…”
The
same poem also explains Margarita’s visits to master:
“And
every day I was expecting guests,
And listened to rustlings and
knocks.
And was often startled through
the night,
And awakened by footsteps,
Ascended toward the window
[sic!]…”
Bulgakov’s
Margarita comes to see master not at midnight, but at noon, after master has
had a good sleep. Just like Blok in the quoted poem, master also apprehensively
listens to each “rustle and knock:”
“…Ten
minutes before [noon], I would sit down by the little window and start
listening [sic!], whether the decrepit gate would make noise… The gate would
knock, the heart would knock. She would enter the gate just once, but I would
experience no less than ten poundings of the heart before that. And then, when
her time would come, and the minute hand would point to noon, [the heart] would
never stop pounding until without a noise, almost silently, the shoes with
black suede bows, tied by steel buckles [sic!], would come level with the
window. Sometimes she played for fun
and taking her time by the second small window, she would knock on the window
glass with her toe. That very second I would find myself at that window, but
the shoe and the black silk would vanish – then I would go to open the door.”
In
Blok’s poem, the word “knocks” is
repeated twice, whereas in Bulgakov, it is repeated six times so that it may
catch better attention to itself. Bulgakov also writes:
“…And just imagine: at the
level of my face, outside my little window, someone’s dirty boots…”
Also
pointing in the direction of Blok are the words “black silk.” Blok’s signature in many of his poems. Thus in the
poetry collection Faina (1906-1908),
there are quite a few examples of that:
n
“…you are smothering with black silks…”;
n
“…your dark silk is teasing me…”;
n
“…and I spent a year of madness at the black
dress train…”;
n
“…she tightly ties her black silken kerchief…”;
etc.
In
the 2nd cycle of the Verses
About a Fair Lady Blok keeps following the mystical theme:
“It
was a late and crimson evening,
The herald star rose in the
sky.
A new voice was crying over
the abyss –
A Virgin has given birth to
an infant…”
In
this poem, Blok produces a legend:
“…There
was an Omen and a Miracle:
In the undisturbed silence,
Judas rose among the crowd,
In a cold mask, upon a horse…”
This
omen is echoed by Bulgakov in his sub-novel Pontius
Pilate already in the 2nd chapter of Master and Margarita:
“Abhorrent city! – suddenly
and for some reason mumbled the procurator, and he shrugged his shoulders, as
though feeling a chill, and he rubbed his hands as though washing them. – Had you been slaughtered before your
meeting with Judas from Kyriath, you would surely have fared better...”
I
was always struck by this phrase, which now finds its explanation in Blok’s
poetry. But the phrase right before it struck me even more. Pilate “shrugged his shoulders, as though feeling a chill, and he
rubbed his hands as though washing them.” Obviously, Bulgakov wanted to
convey something important here, but that would be discussed in a different
chapter: The Garden.
***
Blok
closes his poem with the following words, alluding to the Adoration of the
Kings at Christ’s birth:
“The kings,
filled with concern,
Sent the news to all corners,
And the messengers saw a
smile
On the lips of [Judas]
Iscariot.”
It
is quite possible that the whole unusual story of Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate is
based on this Blokian poem. So far, this remains a puzzle to me.
To
be continued…
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