The Bard.
Blok’s The Twelve.
Posting #2.
“Who
forges the sword? He who knows no fear…”
Alexander Blok. Retribution.
As a result of Blok’s publication of The Twelve, everyone seemed to turn away
from him or against him. In order to understand what was happening to the poet
at the time, we need to turn now to his long poem Retribution, where in the Prologue
the poet appears to be engaged in self-immolation.
Although in his Preface
Blok writes that the poem Retribution
was “conceived [by him] in 1910 and in its main features [sic!] drafted in
1911,” I assert that both the Prologue and
the Preface were written in 1919,
that is, right after the poem The Twelve,
published in 1918.
Pity that Blok did not complete the whole poem, but
what he had written in the Prologue is
quite enough to understand how he really felt about the fiasco of The Twelve.
Although Blok never suggested that in the image of
Jesus Christ he showed himself, the poet-eyewitness of the 1917 Revolution, the
opinion that this is exactly the case is widespread. By the same token, in his
early poem The Shadow of Fonvizin, A.
S. Pushkin does not explicitly reveal himself as “the bard in the hut,” the heir-apparent
of the First-Called Russian poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, but at the
tender age of 16, Pushkin managed in that poem to annihilate all his
competition, so that by the simple method of elimination we can figure out that
he is the one in the hut with Lila.
In the Prologue to
the poem Retribution, Blok
mercilessly dealt with his accusers on both sides, namely, those who felt that
he had desecrated “the Holy Name,” that is, Jesus Christ, and those who were
openly mocking the poet, showing himself in the image of Jesus Christ.
Hidden in Blok’s self-deprecating lines is actually
Lermontov’s accusation:
“Who
forges the sword? He who knows no fear,
And
I am helpless and weak.”
And here it comes:
“…Like
all, like you, I’m just a clever slave,
Made
out of clay and dust, --
And
the world – it’s frightening to me…”
In other words, Blok insults his detractors: “Like all, like you,
I’m just a clever slave…” In reality, Blok is laughing at the
ignorance of his critics, failing to understand his poetry and that of A. S.
Pushkin.
Thus nobody understood that “the white coronet of
roses” in Blok’s The Twelve
correlates with Pushkin’s “head crowned with roses” of the bard in the hut in
the poem The Shadow of Fonvizin.
Flying back to his home of the dead, Fonvizin takes
notice of an unusual welcome sight:
“…All
of a sudden, near a clattering mill…
On
the bank of a raucous river,
There
appears a simple hut…
But
surely here lives a bard, –
Said
the rejoicing stiff (sic!)…”
Although Alexander Blok never calls himself a “bard”
in his poem Retribution, but in
stating all his accusations, he touches upon this subject.
“No
longer does the hero freely strike –
His
hand is in the people’s hand…”
In other words, in the poem The Twelve Blok identifies himself with Jesus Christ, while in Retribution he sees the bard and himself
as the hero. And then this:
“But
the song – everything will happen through the song,
Somebody
is singing in the crowd no matter what…”
And that “somebody” must be the “hero,” the “singer,”
that is, the poet, who in this case is Blok himself.
Thus, first denying that he, Blok, is Siegfried, he
still demonstrates that there is a connection between them. They are both
singers, and as a singer, Blok is fearless.
Everything falls into place in the poem Retribution. Blok explains this to his
accusers:
“Here
is his head on a platter
Served
by a dancer to the tsar,
There,
on a black scaffold
He
lays down his head.”
In the latter case, Blok clearly writes about the
French poet Andre Chenier, guillotined during the French cursed Revolution. As
for the first case, in a seeming allusion to John the Baptist, Blok in fact
writes about another dead poet, A. S. Pushkin. The “dancer” in the passage is
Pushkin’s beautiful wife and socialite Natalia Goncharova, who was the cause of
Pushkin’s fatal duel. On the insistence of the Tsar (Emperor Nicholas I), she
was participating at the state balls in the capital, which led to the spreading
of all sorts of disgusting gossip and innuendo about her, and eventually to the
tragedy of Pushkin’s death.
Then, next, Blok moves on to his own time, having
himself in mind.
“…Here
are his verses branded
With
a shameful name…”
What Blok has in mind here are his lines at the end of
The Twelve, which had aroused so much
controversy and consternation:
“…With
a gentle step over the blizzard,
As
a scattering of snowy pearls,
Crowned
with a white coronet of roses –
Ahead
there, is – Jesus Christ.”
The “shameful
name” that Blok was writing about was “androgyn.”
The poet was accused of presenting himself as both male and female.
There is a reason why in the opening lines of his Prologue to Retribution Blok calls himself an “artist.” –
“Life
without beginning and end,
We
are all ambushed by chance,
Over
us is the inescapable darkness
Or
the clarity of God’s face…
But
you, artist, (sic!) have a firm belief
In
the beginnings and the ends. You must know
Where
Hell or Paradise are waiting for us.
You
are given an impartial measure
To
measure everything you see.
May
your gaze be firm and clear.
Wipe
off what is inconsequential,
And
you will see that the world is beautiful.
Learn
where light is, and you will know where darkness is.”
It is no less for a reason that A. Blok writes also
about “the clarity of God’s face.”
Both by using the key word “artist”
and the expression “the clarity of God’s
face,” Blok is pointing to Andrei Rublev’s icon The Trinity, painted in
1410, when the artist was fifty years old (1360-1428). This icon is well known
and admired by the connoisseurs of art all over the world. [As a reminder to
the reader, The Holy Trinity consists
of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.]
No one would dare say anything about the “effeminate”
character of Andrei Rublev’s images. No one will ever denigrate the artist on
that account, calling him an “androgyn.”
Only degenerates will.
As for Blok, he was a deeply religious man, as much so
as N. S. Gumilev. And both these great Russian poets were mystics. So let those
who have no understanding of poetry poke their snout into such higher matters.
To be continued…
***
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