Blok’s Women. Lenore.
Posting 5.
The
idea of writing an enchanting poem about the “Incomparable Lady” also comes to Blok from Poe, who called Virginia
Clemm, his wife, “incomparable,” the “queenliest dead that ever died so young.”
The
lines in Blok’s poem about the ailing Queen come from Poe as well. As I already
wrote, Blok inserts himself into the poem as one “in a blue cloak” while the
“stranger with a pale face” can be none other than Edgar Allan Poe himself.
The
“Ring” that Blok is pressing on in his hand while weeping, is the “Ring of
Existence” coming from his untitled poem in the 1908-1913 cycle Retribution.
“The
ring of existence is tight:
Like all roads lead to Rome,
Thus we know beforehand,
What all of us will slavishly
repeat.”
And
the second stanza of this poem, which I have already quoted before, relates to
Poe’s Lenore:
“And
to me, like to all, the same old lot
Appears as a mirage in the
coming dimness:
Again – to love Her in Heaven
And to be unfaithful to her
on Earth.”
Which
proves that although Lenore interested Blok tremendously, she was not an ideal
woman of the dreams of Blok the poet.
In
1913, Blok continues the Lenore theme, but no longer entirely from Poe, but
from the original Burger ballad, with just some traces of Poe
“Oh
no! You won’t un-spell the heart…
I will be alien and new for
you,
Always a phantom, always a
dead man in the rays of dream.
And you will leave, and in
your dreams
You will be pressing to your
lips
A certain white shroud…”
This
is why Bulgakov gives Margarita a prophetic dream in which she cannot figure
out whether master is alive or dead:
“It
will be all a dream: whether you bury the body
Or stand by the corpse’s head
for three nights.
Having imbued beautiful
fantasies,
You will be sending your
recriminations to fate.”
This
is a thoroughly mystical poem, as the reader will see. And the manner in which
M. Bulgakov used it in Master and
Margarita is also thoroughly mystical:
“You
will adorn with most delicate flowers
The grave mound you have
dreamed up.”
Naturally,
Bulgakov makes changes in Margarita’s dream, depicting master in a penal settlement.
“And
my shadow will pass before you
On the ninth day and the
fortieth day. –
Unrecognized, beautiful,
lifeless, --
That’s what you were looking
for? – Yes, just like that.”
Margarita,
indeed, dreams of master, but never learns from her dream whether he is alive
or dead, and like Blok, using the language of the Russian Orthodox tradition in
referring to the “ninth” and “fortieth” day of the wake for the dead, she
resorts to the language of Russian Orthodoxy with the religiously loaded word “Veruyu,” “Credo,” instead of the simple “veryu,”
“I believe.”
Margarita
wasn’t trying to somehow conjure up master’s shadow. She merely sought
information about where he was and how he was.
There
is nothing “beautiful,” as Blok puts it, that is, embellished and artificial,
in Bulgakov’s depiction of the somber surroundings in which she “finds” master,
nor in his own appearance. And here again Bulgakov puts an emphasis on the way
master is dressed.
“And then, imagine this, the door of this
log structure swings open and he appears. Rather far-off, but she could see him
distinctly. Dressed in rags, you cannot tell what it is he is wearing. Ruffled
hair, unshaven. Eyes sick, alarmed. He is waving his hand, calling her.
Drowning in the lifeless air, Margarita ran toward him over the bumps, and then
she woke up.”
Yet
another amazing example of Bulgakov’s mastery! Having picked A. Blok for the
role of master in his novel, Bulgakov had to know Blok’s poetry by heart.
“And
when Time extinguishes your grief,
You’ll want to live, timidly
at first,
In other dreams and different
fairytales…
And you will seek simple
beauty…”
In
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, these Blokian lines find expression in
different parts of the novel. Already on the second page of chapter 19, Margarita, in which the author makes a
direct introduction of his heroine to the reader, he exposes doubt in her soul:
“…But as soon as the dirty snow [sic!] disappeared from sidewalks
and pavements, as soon as the draft of rotting restless breeze of spring came through
the window’s transom, Margarita Nikolayevna started languishing even more than
in winter. She often wept in secret with a long and bitter lament. She did not
know whom she loved: one alive or dead? And the longer the desperate days were
going, the more often, especially when it was getting dark, was she visited by
the thought that she was tied to a dead one.
She needed to forget him or die herself. Is it possible to endure
such a life? No! Forget him, whatever it costs. – Forget him! But he could not
be forgotten, that’s what the trouble was.”
And
here is Blok:
“And
he will come, familiar, long-awaited,
To wake you up from an
otherworldly sleep,
And to another world,
momentarily fragrant,
You will be carried off by
the last spring.”
Until
this moment, Blok had been under the influence of Burger’s Lenore. In Bulgakov it receives the following expression in the
same 19th chapter Margarita:
“People were passing by Margarita. Some man
glanced at the well-dressed woman, attracted by her beauty and loneliness
[sic!]. He coughed and sat down on the tip of the same bench on which Margarita
was sitting. Having gathered some courage, he attempted to start a
conversation. – We are definitely having
a good weather today! – But Margarita gave him such a gloomy look that he
stood up from the bench and left. – Here
is an example for you – mentally spoke Margarita to the one who possessed
her. – Why exactly did I send away that
man? I am bored, and there was nothing bad about that Lovelass, except maybe
that stupid word ‘definitely’… Why am I sitting like an owl by myself under the
wall? Why am I shut out of life? – She became even more upset and hung her
head down…”
We
need to note here that it is a second time that an owl comes up in Master and Margarita. [See my earlier
chapter Birds.] What is striking here
is that the first time an owl appears in chapter 18, Hapless Visitors, which concludes Part I of Master and Margarita, and the second time occurs in the next 19th
chapter, Margarita, where Margarita
compares herself to one.
We
have already dealt with this theme in the chapter Margarita Beyond Good and Evil, where she compares herself to the
first wife of Adam, Lilith, but, as a matter of record the reader may have remembered
that it was Blok himself who compared himself to an owl in the second cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady.
To
be continued…
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