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 6th 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.
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