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 5th 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…
No comments:
Post a Comment