GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. CCCXLVIII

Margarita Beyond Good And Evil

Continued. Don Juan.

“And kindling in a passerby glance

Sadness and lust,

You walk through the city, black as a beast,

Divinely thin…”

Marina Tsvetaeva. Don Juan. 1917.

Aside from her poems dedicated to Blok, Tsvetaeva has a later cycle of poems under the playfully jocular title Don Juan (1917). In it, Tsvetaeva introduces herself as a Carmen contra the character of Don Juan.

“At that very hour, Don Juan of Castile

Met Carmen.”

Reading this cycle, I was surprised how much these poems are loaded with Blok’s idiomatic expressions.

Here we find Blok’s distinctive “Ach.” –

“Ach, in a bearskin overcoat

It’s hard to recognize you,

But for these lips of yours,

Don Juan!”

“Ach, isn’t it a bother

For you to love me?”

And here we meet again Blok’s “Shadow.” –

“You are almost a frame,

And I am almost a shadow…”

Here also is Blok’s famously beloved “Snow.” –

“Don Juan was laid

Into a snowy bed…”

There is also an echo here of Blok’s symbol of a woman’s loss of chastity, metaphorically rendered by the untying of a “silken sash.” In Marina Tsvetaeva we have:

“…The silken sash falls down

To his feet, like the serpent of Paradise…”

Here are also Blok’s favorites “rose” and “someone.” –

“Someone threw a rose...”

“After so many roses’’’”

And Blok’s obsession with “masks.” Here is Marina Tsvetaeva. –

“A monk under a mask

Was carrying a lantern…”

“And someone hiding under a mask: Recognize who!”

Everything becomes more or less comprehensible when Marina Tsvetaeva puts an “Orthodox cross” on Don Juan, and also inserts herself into the poem, as Carmen... Yes, she, Marina Tsvetaeva, is Carmen: she has a “red skirt” and the “devil in her blood.” As for Don Juan, he is Alexander Blok, who just adores roses:

“There is a rose in your buttonhole,

In every pocket – words of love!”

And also the question of what induced Marina Tsvetaeva to write these jocular-somber poems on this subject, if it was not Alexander Blok’s poem The Steps of the Commander (1910-1912)? In Tsvetaeva, they are both dead, as Don Juan is “almost a frame,” and she (Carmen) is “almost a shadow.” She insists that Don Juan’s “list has been filled,” and it ends with Carmen as its final entry.

Thus Tsvetaeva completes the dark prophesy of Alexander Blok, who writes this about Donna Anna:

“Anna, Anna, is it sweet to sleep in the grave?

Is it sweet to see unearthly dreams?”

This is how she reveals that Donna Anna’s death has been caused by Don Juan:

“…Whose are the cruel features, frozen,

Reflected in the mirrors?..”

Along with this, Blok is asking a very strange question:

“How much is your hated freedom worth now,

You, Don Juan, who has known fear?”

Marina Tsvetaeva also sees herself dead:

“I see, haughty and old,

My profile on white brocade…”

By far the most intriguing four-liner in Tsvetaeva follows after that:

“And someone hiding under a mask:

--Recognize! –I can’t! –Recognize!

And the silken sash falls down

On the square – round, like Paradise…”

These lines remind me of a poem by H. Heine about two people in love, yet too proud to take the first step in declaring their love to the other. And then after they are both dead, they meet on the other side, but they fail to recognize one another.

In Tsvetaeva’s poem, it is Don Juan who first recognizes Carmen, and she recognizes him only by his kiss (“…But for your lips, Don Juan!”).

In order to understand the complex structure of Tsvetaeva’s Don Juan cycle, which consists of six poems, we will need Alexander Blok’s poem The Woman-Stranger. But first this:

Out of her “fairytale,” as Tsvetaeva calls her third poem of the Don Juan cycle, she is apparently transported into a dream, in which, at last, she as Carmen copulates with Blok as Don Juan. But it is her last, sixth poem of the cycle, where we cannot do without the said Blok poem:

“And every evening at a given hour

(Or am I only dreaming of this?)

A maiden’s figure caught in silks

Is moving in the fogged up window.

And slowly walking among the drunks,

She sits down by the window.”

In Blok’s poem, he is sitting in a restaurant and has a vision of a beautiful woman-stranger.

In her sixth poem of the Don Juan cycle, Tsvetaeva also depicts an urban atmosphere:

“Yes, yes, to the howling of the restaurant fiddle,

I am hearing your call…”

Here, in Tsvetaeva, she as Carmen is sitting in a restaurant and meets the glance of Blok as Don Juan.

“Languor overcasts

Your eyes, like fog.

There is a rose in your buttonhole,

In every pocket – words of love!”

Marina Tsvetaeva (Carmen) recognizes –

“…That same glance

With which was looking at me in Castile

Your elder brother…”

That is, Don Juan of Castile. A minor trifle remains for Carmen:

“I’m sending you a smile,

King of thieves!”

While Blok’s vision does remain a vision:

“And the bowing-down ostrich feathers

Are swaying in my brain,

And the blue bottomless eyes

Are blooming on a faraway shore…”

Alexander Blok is not only and not so much “tamed and deafened by moisture strong and mysterious,” as by the famous painting by Kramskoy, titled An Unknown, which haunts him. Just like Marina Tsvetaeva is haunting Blok with his Orthodox cross, singing of his love for Carmen, that is, for Marina Tsvetaeva.

To be continued…