Blok’s Women.
Magdalena. Mary. Valentina.
Posting #2.
…Returning
to Harps and Violins and Blok’s poem
about “rivulets of verses,” now,
after a very interesting excursion into the Masks,
from Blok’s 1907 poetry cycle Snowy Mask,
it will be much easier for the reader to understand the following lines of
Blok:
“You
are as distant from me as before…
How can I recreate your features,
So that you might come to me
From the enchanted distance?”
I
will be trying to recreate the features of women whom Blok mentions in this poetry
collection. And yes, there are quite a few of them.
I’ve
just been talking about Magdalena from Blok’s cycle Harps and Violins. There are two more women in the cycle Frightful World who are connected to the
Christian religion.
The
first woman, from the poem Three Epistles
gets the name Valentina. Blok addresses her as:
“Valentina,
Star, Dream,
How sweetly do your
nightingales sing!..
Frightful world! It is too
constricted for the heart!
It contains the delirium of
your kisses!”
And
only in the third “epistle” the reader finds out that as always nothing is too
simple in Blok’s poetry, as he writes:
“But behind
your shoulders stands
What is sometimes unknown to
me,
And a stubborn anger lays its
track
On my brow, between the
eyebrows.
It burns me that black envy
For your unfamiliar land.”
All
that I could find out about Valentina was that there was a Christian martyr by
that name. She is also known under the variant name of Alevtina of Caesarea and
also as the Virgin of Palestine. We get an indication of that from Blok’s last
stanza of the poem Three Epistles:
“…And,
ready for new torments,
I remember the blizzards, the
snows,
Your wild weak arms,
And the pearls of your
mumblings…”
The
poem To the Muse, opening the poetry
cycle Frightful World, explains what
a frightful world means. It is the “curse
of sacred testaments” and the “trampling
of sacred shrines.”
Blok
also writes about his Muse:
“You
are all not from here…”
He
is attracted to her by her beauty. And if he compares the “frightful caresses”
of the Muse with “gypsy love,” then he compares Valentina’s singing to “gypsy
songs.”
And
now he writes a poem about Mary. This poem is profoundly mystical, like the one
before it, but it is easier to understand.
“About
Mary we are reciting by heart
In golden verses…
About Mary we grieve and
sing.
And up there in your water
pool,
A quiet Lord…”
And
then the reader realizes who Mary is that Blok is writing about.
“Seeing
off the bridegroom to the last door,
Having grieved about the
unexpected loss,
Mary has stepped upon the
threshold,
Early stars have lit up,
Mary is gazing upwards.”
...At
this point we need to explain to the reader that already in the 5th
cycle of Verses About a Fair Lady Blok
takes his epigraph from John 3:29: “He
that hath the bride is the bridegroom.”
The
bride in this case is the Christian Church, and the bridegroom is Jesus Christ.
And likewise starts Blok’s 3rd
poetry collection Crossroads (1902-1904)
which follows the Verses About A Fair
Lady
“I
kept them in John’s domain,
Immovable guard kept the fire
of oil lamps,
And lo – she’s here, and to
her goes my Hosanna –
The crown of labors – above
all prizes…”
At
first sight, it seems that these poems have nothing in common, but this is a
false impression. Both of them are about the Mother of Christ. Pointing to it
are the following words in the poem Mary.
–
“Mary,
sing about the yonder distant star,
Sing about what He has not
accomplished,
Why He was in such a haste to
leave us
For the unknown quiet land,
Remember that, Mary, in your
songs…”
I
don’t know if anything has ever been written about mother and son more touching
than this, especially considering that Blok is writing about Virgin Mary and
Jesus Christ.
Blok
laments about Christ’s lonely life, the great deeds He had no time to perform
in the 33 years of His life on earth. And the most important question: why was
He in such a hurry to leave the earth and the human race?
I
was genuinely puzzled why Blok calls the Mother of Christ by the foreign name Mary. Surely, he starts the poem with a
depiction of a Russian icon portraying the Mother of God. How else can we
understand the following words? –
“And
the profile of former Mary
Is burning at the end of day.
Please light the candles,
Beautify my dwelling abode…”
For
Blok, religion was a liberating force, and not an enslaving power.
“…Let
there be the same speeches
About free living,
Your high shoulders,
My insanity!.. ”
And
still, the foreign-sounding name (Mary) notwithstanding, a distinct impression
arises, crawling out of an eerie feeling, that we are reading about a Russian
woman.
“…Mary’s
braids are let loose,
The arms are down,
Tears are shed,
Dreams are buried…”
And
before that:
“…Sing
softly in front of the old door,
We shall believe the tender
song,
We shall commiserate with
you, Mary…”
And
again these iconic lines:
“…And
the sorrow broke apart like pearls…
We are reciting about Mary by
heart
In golden verses…”
Russian
icons of the Mother of God are often studded with pearls, and also during
Russian church services, prayers to Virgin Mary are sung.
It
is amazing that the Three Epistles are
thus connected through two women: Valentina (Alevtina of Caesarea, or the
Virgin of Palestine) which sounds like a distinctly Russian name, and a certain
Mary, which is not a Russian name, whom Blok deliberately refuses to call her
by her Russian name Maria.
I
will return to this theme in Blok’s most enigmatic and confusing work, his play
The Unknown.
To
be continued…
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