Strangers in the Night.
A. A. Blok.
Madness.
“…Unworthy slave, I
could not keep
The treasures entrusted to
me…
Hosts of fierce monsters
Then attacked me.
I tamed with charm and
flattery
Those who were the first to
come…”
Alexander Blok. Retribution.
Among
Blok’s poems in the poetry cycle Retribution
(1908-1913), I was struck by an unexpected finding. The poem in question is
untitled, and it opens with these intriguing words:
“My
poor, my faraway friend,
Please understand, at least
in an hour of sleepless anguish,
The ailment that is eating me
up,
Mysteriously and irrevocably…”
Blok
asks:
“…Why
is there in my hard-pressed breast
So much pain and anguish?..”
And
Blok’s following lines inspired Bulgakov to write a most interesting dialog in
the basement apartment between master and Margarita, returning there, but actually
dead already (their “second baptism”) and then killed a second time by Azazello
(their “third baptism”), Blok’s own idea, – in
order to be revived and to embark on their last journey to eternal rest.
So,
here are Blok’s continuing lines:
“…And
for a long time I’ve had enough of the people
Gloomily waiting for Christ…
It’s only the devil whom they
discover…
They are only driven to
despair
By the eternally lying lips…”
And now in Bulgakov’s 30th
chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! these 5
Blokian lines become:
“Are you seriously convinced
that yesterday we were at Satan’s?”
Having
received an affirmative answer, master continues:
“…So now it has become
evident that instead of one madman we have two! Both husband and wife! – He
raised his arms to the heavens and yelled: No,
this is devil knows what, devil, devil, devil!”
Margarita
responds in kind:
“Just now you have
unwittingly told the truth…”
(Remember
Blok’s: “They
are only driven to despair By the eternally lying lips…”)
“…Devil knows what… And believe
me, the devil will arrange everything!
Her eyes suddenly lit up, she jumped up, started dancing on the
spot and crying out:
How happy I am, how happy I
am that I’ve made a deal with him! Oh, devil, devil! You’ll have to, my love,
live with a witch! – After
that she rushed toward master, grabbed him around his neck, and started kissing
him on the lips, on the nose, on the cheeks. Clumps of master’s unkempt black
hair were jumping on his head, while his cheeks and forehead reddened under her
kisses.
And indeed, you now do look
like a witch.
And I don’t deny it, replied Margarita. – I am indeed a witch, and I am very happy about it.”
And
this is what the conversation boils down to:
“All right, all right, responded
master, and added, laughing: – Surely, when
people have been completely robbed, like the two of us are, they are naturally
seeking help from a supernatural power. Well, I agree to seek help from there.”
…Without
the Blokian poem quoted earlier, it’s difficult to figure out the source of
Bulgakov’s dialog. The most interesting thing here is that we can in no way
consider this as plagiarizing, as Bulgakov takes this idea from a poet, in this
case A. Blok, and passes this idea on to the hero of his novel Master and Margarita, namely, to master,
whose prototype is none other than that selfsame Blok.
In
the next closing poem without a title of the 1913 cycle Retribution, we also find very interesting Blokian ideas,
fruitfully used by Bulgakov in creating the character of master.
“How
did it come to pass, how did it happen?
I was poor and weak and
small.
But the secret of certain
great things
Was revealed to me before the
time,
I perceived the High…”
In
master’s case in Bulgakov’s Master and
Margarita, the same thing was expressed as:
“Oh,
how I guessed it! Oh, how I guessed it all!” Master is talking about the story of Pontius Pilate.
“…Unworthy
slave, I could not keep
The treasures entrusted to
me…
Hosts of fierce monsters [sic!]
Then attacked me.
I tamed with charm and
flattery
Those who were the first to
come…”
Bulgakov
uses these lines in chapter 24 The
Extraction of Master, when Margarita utters the right words:
“I want right now, this very
second, that my lover master be returned to me! – said Margarita, and her
face was disfigured by a grimace.
Here a burst of wind entered the room, bringing the flame of the
candles in the chandeliers down. The heavy curtain on the window was pushed
aside, and in the distant height there opened a full moon, not a morning moon,
but a midnight moon. From the windowsill down across the floor there spread out
a greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s guest
calling himself master.” He was
wearing his hospital clothes, a gown, shoes, and a black cap, with which he
never parted. His unshaven face was twitching in a grimace. He was throwing
sideways glances at the flames of the candles in an insane-scared look, and the
lunar stream was boiling around him. He clutched the windowsill with one hand,
as if going to jump on it and run, and snarled, peering into those seated in
the room. And then he screamed: I am
frightened, Margo, my hallucinations have started again!” The sick man
lowered down his head, and went on peering into the ground with his sulky sick
eyes.”
The
hallucinations that master is talking about are none other than those Blokian “hosts of fierce monsters.” Aren’t they
all people long dead? Two of them, Koroviev’s prototype A. S. Pushkin and Kot
Begemot’s prototype M. Yu. Lermontov, date back to early 19th
century!
Bulgakov
turns corpses into a friendly, sympathetic crowd, as they are all fellow poets
coming to Moscow from the netherworld to help master, that is, the early
twentieth-century poet A. A. Blok, who died of a heart disease in 1921.
It
is not master who “tames” the corpses, but the dead man Koroviev who tames
master by giving him several drinks, on Woland’s order.
To
be continued…
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