Strangers In
The Night.
Alexander
Blok. Falling In Love.
“...And
when her words reach my heart,
And
when her perfume intoxicates me,
And
I fall in love with the eyes and the shoulders,
Like
with the wind of spring, like with verses…”
Alexander Blok. Harps And Violins.
It is precisely from the Blok poem quoted and analyzed
in the preceding posting that Bulgakov, in his own works, makes such a powerful
emphasis on the night, even though there is no sexuality whatsoever in
Bulgakov.
How about the ending of the 6th chapter of Master and Margarita alone?
“…The poet [Ryukhin] had spoiled his night, while the others
were having a feast. And this could never be restored... He only had to raise
his head from the lamp toward the sky to realize that the night had vanished
irretrievably… The poet was uninhibitedly attacked by the day.”
Also in the same vein are the “tipsy beauties” in the
18th chapter, The Hapless
Visitors, that closes Part I of Master
and Margarita. The “artist,” that is, Woland, whose prototype same as
Ryukhin’s is V. V. Mayakovsky, suggests to Andrei Fokich Sokov:
“…And
I wouldn’t recommend going into the clinic. Instead, wouldn’t it be much better
to throw a big feast in the company of tipsy beauties [here’s Blok for you:
beauties in hops!] and reckless buddies…”
In the last stanza, Blok extols the night, when poets’
inspiration is at its peak. –
“…Yes,
the night is with us! And with a new power
The
night of day envelops us…”
In other words, as Bulgakov shows us in both Master and Margarita and the Theatrical Novel, master and Maksudov
do indeed turn day into night, as they sleep from early morning into the day.
“…So
that, exhausted by painful passion,
The
day would die down…
And
long hours, over us,
She
would jingle and beat her wings…
And
it’s evening again…”
***
And so, no matter what “name” Blok’s Muse might have,
starting with the “Fair Lady,” from the eponymous 1901-1902 poetry
cycle, or the “Incomparable Lady”
from the next 1902-1904 cycle Crossroads,
or a multitude of “Unknown Women
Strangers” [“Neznakomka”] – from
numerous poems, not to mention the “Snow
Maiden, the Sorceress” from the 1907 cycle Snow Mask with its “snowy
darkness of the eyes” plus also the “Snakelike”
Muse from the very interesting 1906-1908 cycle Faina, -- the reader ought to understand that in all these cases
Blok is writing not about a woman, or some women, but about the Muse of Poetry
Herself.
An example of this can be found in an enigmatic poem
from the cycle Crossroads, in which
Blok depicts the Muse of a well-known poet, calling her an “Incomparable Lady.” Blok inserts himself
into the poem as one “crying, gripping a ring,” and also as one “weeping, in a
blue cloak.” Blok shows the poet of the “Incomparable
Lady” as though echoing his own sobbing:
“…There,
at the end of the distant gallery,
Someone
is echoing, covering his face…”
The poem’s last stanza is very important:
“…At
the door of the Incomparable Lady
I
was weeping, in a blue cloak,
And
staggering, echoed me that same one,
The
stranger [sic!] with a pale face.”
It was from a very famous poem of a very famous poet that
Alexander Blok has taken the idea of his own Muse the “Fair Lady.” I will be writing about this poet, about his poem and
about Blok’s “Incomparable Lady” in
another chapter, as Blok doesn’t fit into a single chapter in my book, and I
will be returning to him again and again in my subsequent chapters. In the
meantime, I am offering this little mystery to the reader. It is not too hard
to solve at all. Who is that very famous poet that Blok is alluding to in his
poem about the “Incomparable Lady”?
If Part I of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita ends with the “tipsy beauties” of Alexander
Blok, and also with his words: “Follow
me, Reader!” – then Part II (Chapter 19: Margarita) begins with exactly the same words repeated: “Follow me, Reader! Follow me, my Reader, and
only me!”
Considering that Blok was ever doubting the existence
of a “real, faithful, and eternal love”
(each of his poems is a testimony to such doubt), according to Bulgakov, he
decided to show his reader such a love, and invented Margarita.
In one of his poems, Blok wrote the following damning
line:
“…Your
wife will be unfaithful, and your friend will abandon you…”
In another poem, Passerby,
from the 1908-1916 poetry cycle Harps and
Violins, Blok challenges the real feelings of a “faithful wife”:
“Tell
me, faithful wife,
Have
you ever trembled with the precious trembling?
Have
you ever been secretly in love?”
This is a rhetorical question, though, because before
that, he explicitly exposes her:
“You
are dressed like in garments,
In
treachery, flattery, and lies…”
He also clarifies:
“And
wasn’t your languid glance
Lying
after the ball,
When,
having tasted the light poison of the dance,
You
were lowering your airy dress
From
the slanting shoulders?..”
This poem is also written in reference to a very
famous poet. Another puzzle, courtesy of Alexander Blok.
Bulgakov obviously does not present Margarita as a
faithful wife. Quite the contrary. Who knows how many times before she met
master had she been looking for “love” in the streets of Moscow?
But it is only for Blok’s sake that Bulgakov makes
master and Margarita “faithful lovers” to each other.
Describing their road to the eternal place of rest,
allotted to them on Yeshua’s request, Bulgakov writes:
“…The brook was left behind the faithful
lovers [sic!]…”
There is another interesting scene in Master and Margarita, when the two
lovers, on their way to eternity, fly into the psychiatric clinic to say
farewell to Ivan Bezdomny:
“Wait! Just one more
word,”– asked Ivan. “And have you
found her? Has she remained faithful to you?” [sic!]
“Here she is,”– replied
master and pointed to the wall. A dark Margarita separated from the white wall
and approached the bed.
This last passage not only points to master’s
prototype being A. A. Blok, but also to the fact that a real Margarita simply
does not exist in his life.
To be continued…
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