Strangers In
The Night.
Alexander
Blok. Falling In Love.
“Bright
and incomprehensible like the day,
All
real, but like a fragment of a dream,
She
comes with coherent speech,
And
after her always comes the spring…”
A. Blok. Harps and Violins.
It’s time for the reader to get acquainted with Blok’s
1905 poem Falling in Love, from the
collection of Various (1904-1908).
“The
princess lived on a high mountain,
And
smoking over the tower were the transparent dreams of the clouds.
A
dark knight in a heavy mail armor was whispering of love at dawn…
And
Falling in Love was calling, keeping her at the window,
Keeping
her looking into the fateful features,
Not
allowing her to get detached from the bright dream…
Pick
up this rose, she whispered, and the wind carried
The
silence of the flying away armor, the breathless answer.
In
the blue morning sky you will find the burning bush of opening rosebuds. –
He
whispered and glistened, and flew up, and she flew after him…
And
Falling in Love left behind, left behind her shield,
And,
gaining wings, she flew out of her father’s prison…
And
the fateful darkness spread out the cloaks and crossed the swords…
And
the fight of the sovereigns keeps ringing in the distance,
But
different are destinies: here there is a dream of the slave,
There
is an intoxication of the air-filled Falling in Love…”
In other words, already here in Alexander Blok,
falling in love is akin to intoxication.
“…And
into the air cover forever she flew in response to the call…
Oh,
Falling in Love! You are stricter than Fate,
More
imperious than the ancient laws of the forefathers!
Sweeter
than the sound of a military trumpet…”
In this poem too, I see similarities with Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Margarita doesn’t
live on a mountain, but on the upper floor of a two-storey mansion. This apartment
of her husband has become her virtual prison, which she is yearning to escape
from. Having met master on the streets of Moscow, and having lost him when he
is arrested, Margarita, like Blok’s princess “flies out” of the mansion, in
order to find out what happened to her lover.
Margarita has fallen in love, and she finds herself in
that same state of intoxication which Blok is so frequently writing about. With
Margarita’s help, we can also understand Blok’s following words:
“…But
different are destinies:
Here
is the dreaming of a slave…”
In other words, here is the story of the poet Ivan
Bezdomny, aka the historian Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, now married to a woman
who has “sympathy” for her husband, paraphrasing Yesenin’s words:
“You
don’t love me, you have no sympathy for me…”
His wife also has no name, that is, she is a
“woman-stranger” to the reader, appearing out of nowhere, waiting for him to
come home, putting him to bed, then sitting and waiting for his nightmares to
begin, so that she would give him an injection to calm him down.
Meanwhile, the story of Margarita and master, written
by Ivan in his “dreaming of a slave,”
is not such for Margarita, for whom it is certainly “an intoxication of an air-filled Falling in Love.”
And we get even more reassurance from Blok’s last
words: “sweeter than the sounds of a military
trumpet.”
And here is Bulgakov’s Margarita:
“Without opening her eyes Margarita took a gulp and a sweet [sic!]
current ran through her veins, a ringing started in her ears. It seemed to her
that ear-splitting roosters were crowing, that somewhere someone was playing a
march…”
In other words, she heard the sounds of a “military
trumpet.”
***
Blok has numerous poems where he glorifies wine, in vino veritas, and also writes about
his own states of intoxication. About which later. But here I would like to
quote just one passage from one of such poems. The poem is Under Masks, from the 1907 poetry cycle Snow Mask… Isn’t it true that all Bulgakov’s literary characters
are “Under Masks”?
Blok shows that, indeed, his “state of being in love”
goes hand in hand with the state of alcoholic intoxication, in the writing of
his best poems.
“It
was starry under the mask.
Someone’s
tale [that is, tale of love] was smiling,
The
night was softly shortening…”
And in the hands at one time
strict,
Was a goblet of glass
moistures…
And the moisture rang in the
heart [like in Margarita’s heart],
And the green rabbit [flicker]
was teasing
In the no longer burning
crystal.”
The fact that Blok is writing a poem about “falling in
love” is proven by the last stanza, where Cupid appears:
“…And
the books were dreaming in the bookcase.
There,
attached to the antique carved door,
Was
a naked boy on a single wing.”
Bulgakov borrowed a lot from this in his 24th
chapter of Master and Margarita, The
Extraction of Master. Instead of Blok’s “green rabbit-flicker,” we read:
“...Here a burst of wind rushed into the room. [A common occurrence
in Blok’s poetry.] 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…”
What now follows is of course master’s famous
“drinking back to consciousness.” –
The sick man [master] lowered his head and stared at the ground
with brooding sick eyes.
“Yes, spoke Woland after
a pause of silence, that was quite a job
they did on him. He ordered Koroviev:
Won’t you, Knight, offer this man a drink!”
Margarita was begging master in a trembling voice:
“Drink it, drink it! Are you
afraid? No, no, trust me that they will help you!”
The sick man took the glass and drank what was in it, but his hand
shook and the empty glass fell and shattered at his feet.
“It’s for good luck! For good
luck!” whispered Koroviev to Margarita. “See, he is already coming to.”
This whole scene must have been taken out of “hands once strict,” that is, from
Alexander Blok.
I would like to close the theme of Falling in Love in Alexander Blok with
his first poem from the 1907 poetry cycle Snow
Mask, appropriately titled Snow Wine.
–
“And
again, glistening from the wine cup,
You
instilled fear in my heart,
With
your smile of innocence
In
heavy-snaked hair [sic!].”
Thus changes Blok’s Muse, from a “fair lady” to a
“mysterious woman stranger” to the incredibly mysterious “snake woman.”
“I am
overturned in the dark streams,
And
once again I am breathing in without loving [sic!]
The
forgotten dream about the kisses,
About
snow blizzards around you…”
Again, as on countless occasions, Blok declares
falling in love without actually loving.
“And
you are laughing with a wondrous laugh,
Snaking
in the golden cup [of yellow wine],
And
over your sable fur
A
blue wind is blowing…”
It is precisely in this poem that Blok merges his
being in love with infatuation.
“And
how is it possible, looking into the living streams,
Not
to see you in a coronet?
Not
to remember your kisses
On
the upturned face?”
To be continued…
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