GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXXV

Strangers In The Night.

Alexander Blok. Falling In Love.

“…She sits down right here and chats,

She enjoys teasing me

And hinting that everyone knows

About the secret whirlwind of her fire…”

Alexander Blok. Harps and Violins.

The theme of snakes continues in the most interesting 1906-1908 poetic cycle Faina. It is a collection of poems about theater.

I was extremely intrigued by this poetry cycle because in his Theatrical Novel Bulgakov gives us a hint that his Margarita in Master and Margarita may be an actress.

“I was embarrassed and merry,

Your dark silk was teasing me.

When your heavy curtain opened,

The theater went silent.”

Considering that in his Theatrical Novel Bulgakov introduces a certain Margarita Petrovna Tavricheskaya, I just cannot discard such a possibility, namely, that Margarita Nikolayevna No-Last-Name in Master and Margarita does have a prototype.

The actress from the cycle Faina must have indeed interested Blok a lot, as his poems about this dark image of a woman are breathtaking. But once again Blok is writing only about an intoxication, but not about love as such. –

“In slanting rays of evening dust [sic!],

I know that you will come again

To enthrall me and to intoxicate [sic!] me

By the fragrance of the lilies of the Nile…”

The “fragrance” of these lines notwithstanding, I am sensing sarcasm on Blok’s part, as he uses the word “dust” in the first line above:

“In slanting rays of evening dust…”

Lermontov, under whose mystical influence Blok is writing, has the following line:

“…When you are happy in the dust…”

In other words, no matter how enchanting is the magic of the theater, Blok puts poetry above theater. For, how can we render theatrically the following lines:

“…And the reddish darkness of your eyes

Hides snakish unfaithfulness…”

And also this:

“And always measuring by his strict heart,

He did not know how and could not love!

She only loved the beast in him,

To tease and to tame…”

In order to comprehend this verse, and also its variation –

“…I want to love you, only you,

But I cannot, and don’t know how…”

– we need to return to the poem Servus – Reginae! – dated 1899 from Blok’s first collection of poems, the 1898-1900 Ante Lucem. In this poem we can probably find the answer to Blok’s inability to love:

“Do not call me. Even without your call

I’ll come to the temple.

Silently, I will bow my head

To your feet.

And I will listen to your orders

And timidly wait.

Catching momentary meetings,

And yearning for them again.”

Remember that this is a nineteen-year-old writing! And here comes the explanation:

“Vanquished by the power of your passions,

Weak under the yoke,

Sometimes the servant, sometimes the lover,

And always the slave.”

The key words here, which are rather hard to explain, are: “Vanquished by the power of your passions, Weak under the yoke.” That is, rather hard to explain until we start taking them at their face value. In other words, the young Blok has indeed been vanquished by the power of that woman’s passion. It is also most probable that, having had that intimidating experience, he was never going to trust a woman again, would never love… As the most important thing in love is not its physical side, but the mental, spiritual side. Hence, soul-mates.

However, Blok could very well have been writing about Poetry. At least, I tend to think that way, as I hate the word “slave,” and it’s one thing to be a slave of Poetry but quite another to be a slave of a woman.

I am now moving on to my favorite poem in the Faina cycle. The poem has no title. It opens with the following words:

“…And I spent an insane year

By a black train [of a woman’s dress]…”

This 1907 poem makes it perfectly clear that Blok virtually merges two realities, or rather, that he elevates the physical reality of his existence into the spiritual sphere of Poetry.

Thus Blok’s verse-making becomes akin to a sexual act and occurs under the influence of his poetic inspiration, culminating in childbirth, that is, in the birth of another one of his mystical poems.

“She calls me a sad friend,

She tells me her dreams…”

Who is she? The actress with whom Blok had an affair? Or is this the poet’s reminiscence of his meeting with the actress through his idiosyncratic prism of mystical feelings? In other words, his ESP?

And then, out of the blue comes his next line:

“…And then she stops her spinning

And softly puts away her yarn…”

These lines are impossible to understand without a deeper knowledge of Blok’s poetry. He has a poem about an Eternal Spinner, which can be of help to us. Yet again we are led to the allegory of the Eternal Spinner being Poetry, and poets being monks.

“Here – from the cell of the Eternal Spinner

The threads are showing the way to the Sun.

Monks are gathering in the morning,

Covering their chests with their cassocks.

Have you prayed all night in the niches?

Have your labors flowed all night?

Father, no! On the light-filled roofs

We were waiting for the Morning Star…”

This poem is a mystical allegory.

“…We were silent, doing magic,

The lily of the valley was singing, she was blooming,

We were pining over the yarn

On the night when the Star was spinning.”

We will return to this poem in another chapter, but isn’t it true that it clarifies for us what is ‘lace’ and what is ‘yarn’ in Blok? Those are his creative works.

To be continued…