Alexander Blok’s
Mystical Play The Unknown.
Posting #9.
“And someone’s lips
were moving toward
Another one’s lips in the
darkness,
And someone’s lips came so
close,
Or were we just dreaming
this?”
Valery Bryusov.
Another
personage is offering his assistance. He is the “drunken old man” whom Blok
calls “veritable Verlaine.” The old man is mumbling:
“To each his own! To each his
own!”
By
using the real names of famous people: Verlaine and Hauptmann, in his play The Unknown, A. Blok shows that there are real people in his play,
most likely poets, writers, playwrights, who are thus masked by the author. In
order to unmask them, one needs to be well familiar with literary figures of
Blok’s time. It is also likely that A. Blok was writing about them in his
articles and diaries. However, I do not have an edition of Blok’s complete
works, for which reason I am offering all Blok devotees to become detectives
and to discover the prototypes of both “Verlaine” and “Hauptmann.”
Thinking
over these two personages, I for some reason remembered Marina Tsvetaeva’s
memoirs both about Bryusov and about Balmont.
It
is a well-known fact that the French poet Verlaine was a drug addict. But here
is what Tsvetaeva writes about Bryusov:
“It seems to me that Bryusov had never had his own dreams, but
realizing that all poets must have dreams, he substituted the absent dreams by
invented ones.
Wasn’t it from this inability to see dreams as such that
[Bryusov’s] sad addiction to narcotics had come from?”
In
early 20th century in Russia, probably same as in Europe, cocaine was in vogue. M. Tsvetaeva does
not tell us what specific narcotics Valery Bryusov was taking, but then, for
instance, within her memoir of Bryusov, she writes about the young Russian
poetess Natalia Poplavskaya. [See my chapter The Guests at Satan’s Great Ball: The Green Lady.]
Describing
Poplavskaya’s appearance, Tsvetaeva writes the following:
“…I see one tall, feverish, the whole of
her dancing – with her slipper, fingers, rings, sable tails, pearls, teeth,
cocaine in the pupils of her eyes. She was frightful and charming with that
tenth-rate sort of charm which can’t but charm, feeling guilty of being
charmed, and by which I am shamelessly, publicly – charmed.”
Considering
that Bryusov brought Symbolism to Russia, and Verlaine was a preeminent French
Symbolist, I am getting additional evidence here that in the character of
“Verlaine” in Blok’s play The Unknown the
author depicts none other than V. Ya. Bryusov.
It
has always appeared to me that Bryusov is likewise depicted in one of Blok’s
poems where his “old man” is also Verlaine. This 1901 poem To My Double from the poetry cycle Verses About A Fair Lady goes like this:
“You
have performed a difficult feat over her,
But,
my poor friend, have you discerned
Her
garment, festive and wondrous,
And
those strange spring flowers?”
The
allusion here is unmistakably to Blok’s Muse:
the “Fair Lady.” Such a conclusion is
convincingly supported by Blok’s following words:
“And
did you know that I would triumph?
And that you would vanish,
having accomplished, but without love?
That I would find an insanely
young dream
Without you, in bloody
flowers?”
Although
Blok dedicates his poem to Valery Bryusov, I think that Blok realized that his
own poems are a better representation of Symbolism than Bryusov’s.
“I do
not need you, and I don’t need your doings,
You are laughable and
worthless to me, old man!
Your feat is mine, and mine
is your reward:
Mad laughter and an insane
scream!”
And
indeed, in his play The Unknown, Blok
portrays “Verlaine” as a miserable old man who says nothing of his own, but
repeats again and again other people’s lines.
***
...As
for the character presented as “Hauptmann,” it is my belief that in this
personage, Blok gives us the Russian poet Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont.
Blok
is masking the personage of “Hauptmann” because Hauptmann is German, while
Balmont is of French descent. Blok makes Hauptmann mustacheless because Balmont
did not write plays. Blok shows Hauptmann as a “blue gentleman.” Stargazer
remembers:
“I remember through my sleep
how a lady ascended the bridge and a blue gentleman came up to her. Then they
probably left together…”
Before
this, Blok reveals to the reader a conversation between Unknown and the
gentleman in a bowler hat, who asks her: “Who was your unseen friend?” Unknown
replies: “He was
handsome. Wearing a blue cloak. He called himself: poet.”
The
gentleman in a bowler hat: “I am also a poet! I am also a poet!”
The
gentleman in a bowler hat [from the Third
Vision] comes in the evening to
the drawing room where Poet is to recite his verses. Guests are gathering. Blok
writes:
“Young Man runs in, and happily rushes to another one. In the
second one, we can easily recognize the one who had taken away Unknown. Young
Man:
Kostya, friend, she is at the
door, waiting!..”
In
the First Vision the same Young Man
tells “Hauptmann”:
“Enough of this. Why should
she be waiting for so long in the frost? She’ll freeze out there. Let’s go,
Brother Kostya!
Hauptmann: Leave her alone…
Let her wander around, and we’ll sit here longer for a while.”
Why
do I think that Hauptmann’s prototype can well be the Russian poet Konstantin
Dmitrievich Balmont? To begin with, Blok gives “Hauptmann” Balmont’s first name
“Konstantin.” Its short form in Russian is “Kostya.”
And
then, Balmont’s attitude toward women left much to be desired. Here is Marina
Tsvetaeva on Balmont, whom she calls “a cat.” Mind you, she uses the loaded
word “besputny,” which has the customary meaning: “mindless,” but is used by
Tsvetaeva in its literal meaning: “wayless.”
“You are wayless, Balmont, and wayless am I. You are such a cat,
Balmont, and I am such a cat. All poets are wayless.”
Marina
Tsvetaeva remembers a children’s book written by “some Englishman” [Kipling]: The Cat That Walked By Himself.
But
cats are not just wayless [besputny]. They are also promiscuous [rasputny].
Closing her article about Balmont, Marina Tsvetaeva writes:
“At last everything is finished. I am walking with Balmont, Varya
on his other side.
Balmont with a sudden surge of feline gentleness: Marina! Put your arm in mine.
I jokingly: You are already
arm-in-arm with Varya. I don’t want a
threesome.
Balmont lightningly: There is
no threesome. There are two twosomes:
mine with Varya and mine with you.
Half for each? However, when
the whole – Balmont.”
“…Her
eyes are the color of the sea,
She has a treacherous soul…”
Was
it about Marina Tsvetaeva that Balmont wrote these lines?..
The End.
***
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