Alexander
Blok’s Women.
Donna Anna.
“You were by the
window,
Both pure and tender,
You reigned over the noisy
crowd.
I was standing, forgotten,
And hidden by the crowd
In the adoration of love before
you… ”
Alexander Blok. 12 October, 1900.
The
image of faithfulness and anguish goes along with another famous woman from
world literature, in Alexander Blok’s poetry. In his poem written over three
years (1910-1912), an unusually long stretch of time for Blok, titled Steps of the Commander, from the 1908-13
poetry collection Retribution, Blok
raises the question of rape and violence against women.
From
this poem Blok’s reader learns what really happened to Donna Anna after the
Commander’s ill-starred duel with Don Juan over Donna Anna’s honor. Blok’s
storyline here follows Pushkin’s “Little Tragedy” The Stone Guest, where Donna Anna happens to be the Commander’s
wife, rather than daughter. Certain words point to that:
“It’s
cold and empty in the resplendent bedroom…”
A
girl’s bedroom can never be called “resplendent.” The word clearly denotes a
marital bedroom.
Blok
also gives himself away – in terms of following Pushkin’s Russian take on the
old legend of Don Juan – by titling his poem Steps of the Commander, echoing Pushkin’s title The Stone Guest, and also by the words:
“…The
night is deep.
From a blessed and unfamiliar
country [that is, Russia]
One can hear a rooster’s
crow…”
Despite
the following words –
“…The
servants are asleep…
Donna Anna is sleeping with
her arms crossed on her heart,
Donna Anna has dreams…”
–we
find out that she is dead:
“Anna,
Anna, is it sweet to sleep in the grave?
Is it sweet to dream
unearthly dreams?”
The
indication of rape is found in these words:
“…Whose
cruel features are frozen,
Reflected in the mirrors?..”
Donna
Anna takes her own life, unable to endure the violence perpetrated on her, and
the death of her husband:
“Life
is empty, mindless, and bottomless!
Come to fight me, you old
fate!
And in response, triumphantly
and lovingly,
Through the snowy blizzard
sings the horn…”
It’s
not so much his own death in the duel with Don Juan that the Commander wants to
avenge, as Don Juan’s violation of the Commander’s wife and her subsequent
suicide.
But
Don Juan is not there:
“What
is now your cursed freedom,
Don Juan, who has known fear?”
And
when –
“…with
soft and heavy steps,
The Commander steps into the
house, –
The door is wide open, from
the unbearable freezing cold,
As though the clock strikes
hoarsely –
You invited me to supper.
I have come, but are you
ready?
The cruel question brings no
answer,
There’s no answer, just the
silence.
It is scary in the dark
bedroom at dawn,
The servants are asleep, and
the night is pale…”
Neither
Don Juan nor Donna Anna are there. –
“Maiden
of light! Where are you, Donna Anna?
Anna! Anna! – Silence.”
And
a very powerful ending:
“…Only
in the stormy morning fog
The clock strikes for the
last time:
Donna Anna will rise at
the hour of your death,
Anna will rise at the hour
of death.”
(The
last two lines have been singled out by Blok himself.)
Bulgakov
had to be shaken by this poem. He takes a great number of ideas from it.
First,
he introduces the baby-killer Frieda, a victim of rape by her employer. And the
most important thing concerning Frieda is the following passage, now becoming
clear:
“Frieda! – shrilly
screamed Margarita. The door swung open, and a disheveled, naked, but with no
more signs of intoxication, woman with frenzied eyes burst into the room, and
stretched her arms out to Margarita, the latter telling her majestically: You are forgiven. No more handkerchief. [For
thirty years now, every night Frieda is being served with the same cursed
handkerchief with a blue border that Frieda had used to smother her baby, after
which she had buried the baby in the forest.]
What came next was Frieda’s scream. She fell face-down before Margarita,
spreading her arms cross-like…”
I
thought I would never have sold this puzzle. And it was only thanks to Blok’s
poem Steps of the Commander that I
realized that this was a sign of proclaiming her innocence.
“…Donna
Anna is sleeping with her arms crossed on her heart…
Donna
Anna had been raped by Don Juan, and her crossed arms were her solemn
testimony, like Lucretia’s suicide after being raped by Tarquinius. And so is
Frieda’s, who thus spreads her arms in a cross-like fashion.
And
so, it becomes clear why master appears before Margarita in a “kerchief of
greenish nightly light.” Bulgakov chose Frieda because of her handkerchief,
and, as I wrote before, such a woman historically existed, and her name was
Frieda. [See my chapter Margarita and the
Wolf, posting # CCVII.]
It’s
on account of Margarita’s mercy toward Frieda that Woland grants her a
second-chance wish. Bulgakov shows it in a consummately mystical fashion,
moreover, master’s prototype Blok had been dead by then, since 1921, which
circumstance is indicated by Bulgakovian “greenish” color, signifying decay and
death.
From
this Blokian poem, dealing with the subject of violence and rape, Bulgakov also
takes the idea of the rooster, whose midnight intervention saves Rimsky from
the vampire Gella, but this is another subject which will be properly discussed
in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of
Luminaries.
To
be continued…
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