Who is Who in Master?
Posting #15.
“Like a wolf under a
waning moon,
I don’t know what to do with
myself,
Where to fly after you!
Overcome by a mighty anguish,
I am prowling on a white
horse…”
Alexander Blok. On the
Kulikovo Field.
The
idea of “anguish” belongs to the Russian poet of the Silver Age Alexander Blok
who uses this word several times in the course of two pages of his long poem Retribution.
“...And
the heart is squeezed in a hurry
By
an inexpressible anguish,
As
though a heavy hand
Has
pushed him to the ground and pressed him down…
And he is no longer walking
alone,
But as though together with
someone new…”
Here
you have the celebrated Russian mysticism in all its glory. So, who is this
“someone new” who joins the hero of the poem? Blok explains:
“...(And
by his side – a friend or rival –
Walks anguish)...”
The
word “anguish” belongs to Blok, as even before his long poem Retribution he made an extensive use of
this word in his poetry. Already in the poetry collection Frightful World (1909-1916), in the poem The Life of My Friend, Blok writes:
“...And
you’d have liked to fall asleep,
But – O, dreadful minute! –
And quiet anguish will
squeeze your throat so tenderly:
No way to gasp, no way to
breathe,
As though the night has
spread its curse over everything,
The devil himself sat down
upon your chest!”
This
is how Blok himself explains it:
“...Among
all other thoughts –
The senselessness of all
deeds,
The joylessness of comfort
Will come to your mind.”
It
is at that point that anguish comes to man, when he realizes the hopelessness
of his position, when he loses hope and stops believing in his Destiny. A
dreadful time sets in. That’s why it is so important to believe in yourself.
In
the same Blokian poetry collection I find the following lines in one of his
titleless poems:
“Oh anguish!
In a thousand years from now
We shan’t be able to measure
the soul.”
[See
my chapter Strangers in the Night.]
In
the poetry collection Motherland (1907-1916)
in the poem On the Kulikovo Field Blok
writes:
“Our
way is of the steppe,
Our way is in boundless anguish
–
In your anguish, O
Rus!”
In
the same poem Blok keeps pursuing the theme of anguish:
“...Again
with an age-long anguish
The grasses have leaned to
the ground.
Again beyond the foggy river
You are calling for me from
afar…
And I with an age-long
anguish,
Like a wolf under a waning
moon,
I don’t know what to do with
myself,
Where to fly after you!
Overcome by a mighty anguish,
I am prowling on a white
horse…”
Blok’s
anguish is in his encounter with his motherland, with everything Russian. His
heart is torn apart by this love for his country.
In
this connection, how can we fail to wonder at Bulgakov’s own mastery? It is
impossible not to envy his ingenuity, with a wholesome honest envy! Bulgakov
may well be used as a good textbook. Why indeed can’t we get ideas for books
from poetry?
As
I already wrote before, Bulgakov very successfully turned upside down the words
of A. S. Pushkin:
“What
are you, prosaic, fussing about?
Give
me a thought whatever you like:
I’ll
sharpen it at the end,
I’ll
feather it with a flying rhyme,
I’ll
put it on a tight bowstring,
I’ll
make an arc of my supple bow,
And
then I’ll send it wherever it flies,
To
the detriment of our foe!”
In
other words, following Pushkin’s “advice,” Bulgakov took his ideas from poetry,
while endowing his literary characters with various traits of the poets
themselves. Genius!
As
for “immortality” – here again is the earlier quoted passage from
Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate:
“...The same inexplicable anguish that had already visited him on
the balcony had now pierced all his being. It seemed to the procurator that he
had left something unsaid with the condemned man, and, perhaps, even something
unlistened to. Pilate chased this thought away and it flew away instantly, like
it had flown in to him. It flew away, but the anguish remained
unexplained, for it could not be explained by some kind of another short
thought that flashed like lightning and went out right away: ‘Immortality, Immortality has come,
immortality…’ Whose immortality has come? This is what the procurator
didn’t understand, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him
freeze under the hot sun.”
The
word “immortality” comes up
five times in this fairly short passage. Bulgakov bestows immortality on all
three poets here: A. A. Blok, N. S. Gumilev, and also V. Ya. Bryusov. Three
years after the deaths of Blok and Gumilev, the “poetry vermin,” as Marina
Tsvetaeva called the scum of the Russian literary and paraliterary world,
brought Bryusov into his grave as well (1924).
Bulgakov shows this in a very
interesting fashion: “This mysterious immortality made
him [Pontius Pilate – Bryusov] freeze under the hot sun.” This is
Bryusov’s own immortality.
The
researcher will understand this “immortality” of Bryusov when the time comes
for it.
Bulgakov
also bestows immortality on himself, which makes it a fourth “immortality.” He
clearly shows here that he was hoping to be solved. It’s a pity that the wait
was too long.
What
remains to be done with the passage above is to address the words “flashed like lightning and went out right away.”
This
is a very interesting literary device, which Bulgakov has actually taken from
N. S. Gumilev’s article about the Russian poet Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont
and the “flashing images.” (See my chapter The
Garden: Aphranius.)
To
be continued…
***
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