GALINA SEDOVA. A CHAPTER ON BULGAKOV. DVII

Who is Who in Master?

Posting #13.

“…And the louder it argues with everyday darkness,

That idle bell-ringing,

The more iron-like and wakeless

Is my sleep of death.”

Alexander Blok. Paradise.

Here I’d like to dwell on the earlier quoted line from Blok’s Guardian Angel:

“...Shall we be resurrected? Or perish? Or die?”

Had Blok been more optimistic, he might have ended his poem on a more positive note, like on “resurrection,” rather than “death.” But already in the titleless poem written in May 1907, and opening the 1907-16 poetry cycle Motherland, he writes:

“Yes, you are native Galilee

To me, unresurrected Christ…”

In the same cycle Motherland Blok has a poem titled The Last Parting Words:

“Can you hear through the pain of torments

As though your friend, an old friend,

Has touched the heart with a gentle violin?

As though a fast flurry of light dreams

Has reached you all of a sudden?..”

This is a slight image of Paradise,

This is your beloved…

Lie down on your deathbed with a smile,

To have quiet reveries while closing

The last circle of being.”

There is nothing to explain here. Blok has no resurrection. Unlike Gumilev, nor does he have a Paradise, but only “the sleep of the dead.” In the cycle Harps and Violins (1908-1916) there is a poem with the title Paradise, where Blok writes:

“Through gray smoke from edge to edge

A scarlet light

Is calling, calling to an unheard-of Paradise,

But there’s no Paradise…”

[What a difference with Gumilev’s poems!]

“…What are they about, in this insane red-gray darkness –

The bells?

What are they sounding with an unrealizable faith?

Darkness is still darkness!”

Here Blok explains why he believes that there is no Paradise. It is because the belief in Paradise is “unrealizable faith.” For in order to be admitted to Paradise one has to be crucified, and very few are capable of that.

“…And the louder it argues with everyday darkness,

That idle bell-ringing,

The more iron-like and wakeless

Is my sleep of death.”

What must harrow the reader by its depth of despair are Blok’s words: “unheard-of Paradise,” “unrealizable faith,” “my wakeless sleep of death.”

Blok’s “sleep of death” moves on into another Blokian poem titled A Dream, dedicated to his mother:

“I had a dream: in an ancient crypt

We are entombed, but life goes on up there –

More and more loud and nonsensical;

And the last day arrives.

Barely breaking is the dawn of Resurrection,

One can hear a distant trumpet.

Over us are red stones

And a Mausoleum made of cast iron...”

A complete disappointment in being creeps out of these lines. Here we come face to face with utter hopelessness. New life is no longer of interest to the poet. He calls life “nonsensical.” And “Resurrection” has no hope for one who lies under the stones in a “cast-iron Mausoleum.”

“…Under an arch of the same crypt

My quiet wife is lying;

But she does not value freedom,

She has no desire to be resurrected…

And I hear Mother whispering nearby:

My son, you were strong in life:

Press the crypt with your hand more forcefully,

And the stone will fall away!

No, mother, I suffocated in the coffin,

And my former strength is no longer with me.

The two of you [mother and wife] pray and ask

That an Angel pull away the stone.”

If N. S. Gumilev says that he is “worthy of Paradise,” Blok has no such self-assurance. To begin with, he is burdened by these two women who did not get along with each other. Secondly, he must have his own reason why he cannot pray to God to help his family. Blok wants his wife and mother to pray for them all.

But here is the part of the poem, which I temporarily left out, where everything is explained and falls into place:

“…And he is coming out of a smoky faraway,

And angels with swords are with Him;

Like the one we have read about in books,

Bored and not believing them…”

Here is all the difference! N. S. Gumilev had childlike faith in God and Paradise, created by Him. Even though Blok had written Let Us Be Like Children! in one of his poems, he was far more sophisticated, corrupted by life.

The lines above show us that when Blok writes about Christ as a man, he writes “he” in lowercase. But after Christ’s Crucifixion, he writes about Him as God and uses “He” with the capital letter, as well as surrounds Christ by “angels with swords.”

It is amazing that Blok does not dare to ask Christ as God for help, but tells his mother that she and his wife “pray and ask that an angel pull away the stone.”

All of this shows that Blok did not consider himself “worthy of Paradise.”

To be continued…

***