GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCIL

Margarita
Beyond Good And Evil.

Blok’s Women. Carmen.

“Roses – the color of these roses is dread to me.

This – is the reddish night of your braids?

This – is the music of secret betrayals?

This – is the heart held captive by Carmen?..”

Alexander Blok. Carmen. 1914.

This – is the style of many verses of Marina Tsvetaeva.

These – words directly connect Alexander Blok with Marina Tsvetaeva.

This – poetry cycle Carmen, written by Blok in 1914, understandably drew Marina Tsvetaeva’s attention with her own 1917 version of Carmen.

These – two Russian poets – are both “free birds.”

In the Blokian poetry collection Harps and Violins, there is already a hint of Blok’s Carmen, in the poem To a Woman of Spain. –

“So, do not be disingenuous, admitting to yourself

That for a moment you were consumed by the one and only…”

And indeed, in 1914 Blok writes a full-blown poetry collection titled Carmen.

If in the poem To a Woman of Spain Blok writes, describing a dance:

“…The shout ‘Handa!’ and the language of castanets

Could be understood only by a Spaniard in love,

Or by a poet who had seen God…”

– then in the poetry collection Carmen Blok compares himself to Carmen. And yet again, in what happens all too often, Blok is inspired by a book, in this case, Prosper Merimee’s Carmen:

“A snowy spring is raising havoc,

I’m taking my eyes off the book [sic!]…”

Which underscores yet again that a beginning writer and a poet must absorb within himself all the classic literature written before him or her. A tall order, but what a reward!

Reading the story of Carmen, Blok writes about himself:

“And I forgot all days, all nights,

And my heart was flooded by blood,

Washing away the memory of my fatherland,

As the voice sang: At the price of your life

Shall you pay me for my love…” [highlighted by Blok…]

Already in this very first poem about Carmen it becomes clear what kind of love Blok is fantasizing about. As is often the case in his poetry, Blok inserts himself also into the second poem of the cycle.

“Among the admirers of Carmen,

Calling her to follow them,

One, like a shadow by the gray walls,

Keeps silence, and his gaze is dark…

Among the tumultuous harmonies,

He gazes at her sonorous body,

And dreams creative dreams.”

And indeed, Blok has created a very interesting poetry cycle.

Don’t forget that this kind of passionate love is embodied in Bulgakov’s Margarita, master’s mistress, and master’s prototype is Blok. Margarita pays with her life for her love for master.

In Blok’s third poem of the Carmen cycle, we find some very interesting lines relating directly to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

“Let us depart, depart from life,

Depart from this sad life,

Cries the perished man…” [highlighted by Blok].

But isn’t this master’s theme in the 24^th chapter of Master and Margarita: The Extraction of Master?

“No, it’s too late, I don’t want anything more in life. Except seeing you. But my advice to you is to leave me. You’ll perish with me.”

And also in his conversation with Woland:

“I have no more dreams and no more inspiration. I’ve been broken, I am bored, and I want to go back to my basement.”

The theme of the “perished man” continues in the second part of Master and Margarita, as it was very important to Bulgakov. Beginning with the 13^th chapter of Part I, The Appearance of the Hero, it runs throughout the novel, and it is linked to the political thriller aspect of Master and Margarita. But this will be one of the subjects in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.

Blok was an ardent admirer of the opera, just like Bulgakov. Without Blok’s mysticism, there’d hardly have been a Master and Margarita the way the novel had turned out. It was this particular poet, A. A. Blok, himself influenced by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol, who would exert such a great influence upon the subsequent generations of Russian poets, and would also profoundly stir the imagination of M. A. Bulgakov.

In the poetry cycle Carmen Blok introduces a real woman, probably an opera singer, whom Blok treats with reverence, addressing her with a capital-letter You.

“The angry gaze of colorless eyes,

Their proud challenge, their contempt,

The melting and the singing of all lines.

That’s how I met You for the first time.

It’s night in the stalls. One must not breathe…

And the pale face… and a strand of hair falling low…

Oh, it wasn’t for the first time that I experienced

The mute dread of strange encounters!

But the almost frightening attentiveness

Of those nervous arms and shoulders…

The movements of the proud head reveal

Direct signs of frustration…”

What a contrast between this depiction of an opera singer and that of a pop starlet, whom Blok depicts in – of all places – his previous poetry collection Harps and Violins, namely, in the poem A Gray Morning. Spending a night with her, probably, just in order to write down his poem, Blok comes up with this:

“You are coldly pressing to my lips

Your silver rings…

In your shoulder, turned backwards,

There is a daring of freedom and parting,

But barely visible behind the dimness –

Rainy and bothersome,

And the gaze like a coal under ashes,

And the voice of the morning, dull…

Farewell, you take another ringlet

And clothe your little hand in it,

And also your dark-skinned heart…”

Being a man of high culture, Blok frequently elevates mundane life to his own level, but he is not always generous doing that, as we can see in this poem.

Bizet’s opera Carmen consumed Blok:

“…Oh it’s impossible not to gaze and to keep silent,

But to tell I should not and must not…

And You already (a star in the night),

Gliding with a gliding step,

You’re walking and there is languor in Your step,

And the song of Your tender shoulders

Is already frighteningly familiar,

And the heart is destined to keep,

Like a memory of another homeland,

Your image, forever dear…”

To be continued…