Blok’s Women. Francesca.
Posting 4.
We
are continuing with the titleless poem by Blok in his poetry collection Harps and Violins:
“And
I loved too… There were many of them…
And performing the rite of
passion,
I saw how another one was
coming
To the bed of fateful
passion.
And the same caresses, the
same speeches,
The exasperating quivering of
greedy mouths,
And the all too familiar
parade of shoulders…”
In
other words, Blok is fed up with his numerous sexual engagements. What does he
want?
“No!
The world is passionless, pure, and empty!”
Thus
the circle closes. With these words Blok wishes to show that his ideal is
eternal passion, the kind of passion that can only be born out of real one and
only love.
Which
eventually leads us to the love story of Paolo and Francesca, which, probably,
in his own estimation, is the most suitable to his life situation.
Francesca’s
father decided to give her in marriage to the elder son of his neighbor, with
whom he had been in a state of hostility for quite some time. This was supposed
to be a political marriage, but there was a snag there. Giovanni’s younger
brother Paolo came for Francesca on behalf of the family. Instead of performing
his go-between function, Paolo and Francesca fell in love with each other at
first sight. Their love relationship would last for ten years, despite the fact
that Paolo himself had been married to another woman, while Francesca was now
the official wife of Giovanni.
An
always complicated but always predictable triangle: two men and a woman. It
happens all the time. but in this case the storyteller was the great Dante
himself, which makes all the difference in the world. And surely that made all
the difference in the world for Alexander Blok.
Having
caught them in the act of adultery, Francesca’s enraged husband killed them
both. In La Divina Commedia Dante
meets the hapless lovers in the Second Circle of Hell, assigned to the sin of
lust, where they tell him their sad story.
So,
what was A. Blok thinking about when he was writing that rhymeless poem? Was he
thinking about his uneventful life? Did he regret never encountering a single
jealous husband on his trail of illicit love? Did he ever want this to happen?
Did he have any rivals in that field? Did he ever wish that a rival would
challenge him to a duel? Remember:
“…But
my breast in a duel
Will not be meeting the
bridegroom’s sword…
But her mother is not waiting
for her by the door
With an old worry and a
candle in hand…
But the poor husband will not
become jealous over her
Behind a thick window
shutter…”
Had
Blok ever wanted to love a woman under the threat of losing his life over her?
And
then, had he ever really wanted a jealous husband madly in love with his wife
to kill them both in a triangle a la Giovanni with Paolo and Francesca?
In
other words, did Blok want this kind of love for himself in real life or was he
only fantasizing about it in his poetry?
Having
studied Blok’s poetry, in which the poet
pours his soul out about his personal life, M. A. Bulgakov builds the character
of Margarita precisely according to Blok’s wishes, to the point of the death of
both lovers at the same time, albeit in different places.
Even
the name Margarita comes to Bulgakov from Blok.
***
Already
in the second, titleless poem from the poetry collection Harps and Violins the poet laments:
“My
soul! When will you tire of believing?
Spring, spring! It is
languishing,
Like the secret of a slightly
open door
Into the shrine of a golden
dream…
Having barely left my [lady]
friend,
I had departed into quietude
and shadow,
And now again another [woman]
is calling,
Another one is summoning the
day.”
And
this is exactly how Bulgakov describes the first meeting of master and
Margarita. The two of them are meeting in springtime. Master’s wife had left
him (just like it happened in the life of the poet himself), or was it master
abandoning his wife? Which way it was remains a mystery, but while walking
along the streets of Moscow, perhaps returning home already, “another one is calling him,” calling him
with her glance to follow her into a side street.
***
And
so it was because of Alexander Blok, because of my discovery of master’s most
compelling prototype, and having discovered among the novel-components of Master and Margarita yet another
novel-component, the mystical novel, directly connected to Blok, that I was
struck and then haunted by the thought that Margarita must also have a
prototype of her own.
And
thus my chapter was born, Margarita
Beyond Good And Evil, in which Margarita is no longer a figment of master’s
tormented imagination. Here she actually exists and has her own rightful prototype.
And
all of this just because of the last lines of Blok’s poem:
It
is precisely in this poem that Blok states that he is not after the innocent,
that he is not some Lovelass.
“...But
everything that was boiling here in my breast
Is now crept all over by
autumn darkness…
Do not sing, do not make
demands, Margarita,
Do not try to look into my
heart…”
The End of Blok’s Women.
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