Alexander Blok’s
Mystical Play The Unknown.
Posting #4.
“…Here alive is the
holy mystery of God,
And these antiquities know no
decay…”
A. Blok. To Sergei
Solovyev.
…The
beautiful woman, the Unknown, goes away from the bridge with a gentleman
passing by, who promises her: “All that you wish I will do.”
Stargazer
and Poet appear on the bridge, and as it turns out, both are in angst.
Stargazer
is the most enigmatic character in the play. He, Stargazer, is real, as after
the disappearance of Unknown, the two of them, he and Poet, both lament their
fate. Stargazer weeps:
“The
beautiful Star is no more!
Today in my tower
With my grieving hand I shall
write down
Into my long rolls
The news of the fall of the
brightest Star…”
Calling
the fallen star Maria, Blok shows that Stargazer is a Christian.
Poet
laments:
“Like
yourself, I am alone.
You are probably like myself
a poet…”
And
he asks Stargazer:
“Have
you by chance
Seen Unknown in the blue
snows?”
Stargazer
is not interested in women. He mourns his star. And to Poet’s words: “Oh, had you seen
Unknown, You would have forgotten your Star!” – Stargazer angrily
retorts: “Who
are you to talk about Stars? You are too light-minded for that. And may I ask
you not to poke your nose into my professional business.”
The
character of Stargazer is all the more mysterious considering that V. V.
Mayakovsky wrote:
“Had
I not been a poet, I would have become a stargazer.”
And,
as we know, Bulgakov makes Pontius Pilate a stargazer’s son.
Poet
is prepared to suffer all Stargazer’s insults only to be able to meet Unknown,
for “such meetings happen only once in
life.”
Hence,
in Bulgakov, the meeting of master (himself a stranger with no name) with the
woman stranger whose name he never reveals.
***
Although
Blok in his 1901 Verses About a Fair Lady
writes about his optimistic assurance:
“The maiden in snowy
hoarfrost – I’ll meet her when I am awake…” no matter that “the blizzard is effacing the tracks,” – in Blok’s play The Unknown, Poet, having learned from
Stargazer that the Unknown, having been approached by a Blue gentleman… “and then they must
have left…” – laments: “…Oh no!.. Blue gentleman… and snow effaced
their tracks…” And then he exclaims: “Nevermore shall I meet her again!”
Both
Stargazer and Poet “weep under the blue snow.”
Both agree about one thing: to call the Unknown “Maria.”
Stargazer
plays a large role in the play The
Unknown. But for the phrase:
“I understand your grief. I
am alone, like you are. You must be a poet, like myself?” – we might easily have imagined that Blok here splits
himself into two characters. One is drawn toward the stars, the other is
interested in earthly things.
As
I already noted elsewhere, Blok frequently splits himself in his poems, like,
for instance, in an early 1901 poem from the cycle Verses About a Fair Lady. –
“The
Soul is silent. In the cold sky
The same stars are burning
for it…
She’s silent – and responds
to the cries,
And gazes into faraway
worlds…”
It
is the soul of Poet that creates Blue, leaving the body of the sleeping Poet
and incarnating in a mystical being. From his conversation with the “beautiful
woman” on the bridge, it becomes clear that she, who has just arrived, in
asking her questions, is overly knowledgeable in earthly things, whereas he,
who has been on earth for several centuries, is interested only in “mysteries.”
“The fallen maiden is a star. She wants earthly talk.”
And
Blue responds to her:
“The
only words I know are about mysteries.
Only solemn is my talk.”
What
“mysteries” is Blok writing about here?
He
often uses this word in his works, but as is often the case with me, I found
the answer in his early poem from the 1901 cycle Verses About a Fair Lady. This poem is dedicated to the Russian poet
and a friend of Blok Sergei Solovyev. –
“Enter
all. Inside the inner chambers
There’s no Command, even
though a mystery rests here,
You are discomfited by the
frozen appearance
Of ancient books on the
lecterns…”
Being
a Christian, Blok believed that ancient books contain wisdom which needs to be
studied. Being a Russian, Blok was interested in ancient cultures of other nations.
Blok writes further:
“…Here
[in these books] alive is the holy mystery of God,
And these antiquities know no
decay…”
In
other words, Blok is interested in the course of human thought throughout the
centuries, as for him, a religious man, this thought is sacred. Otherwise, he
would not have closed this poem with the following words:
“It
is in vain that you have blasphemously spurted out
Loud-voiced calumnies against
the Creator.
You are all slaves of an
impossible freedom,
So, be humbled here before an
endless mystery.”
What
comes to mind again here is the personage of Berlioz in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Berlioz cites
several ancient religions, denying them together with Christianity and offering
no replacement.
As
for the Unknown, the “fallen maiden-star” who wants to hear “earthly talk,”
Blok explains her knowledge of earthly words in the very first “vision,” as
soon as Poet appears in the pub.
Ordering
beer for himself, Poet explains to the barman:
“You just listen to this.
Walking along the streets, catching fragments of unfamiliar words. Then coming
right here and spilling your soul to a substitute person…”
This
is how Blok himself explains the inexplicable in his play The Unknown.
And
indeed, how could a fallen star, having turned herself into a beautiful woman
in black with a surprised gaze of her widened eyes, know so many earthly words?
To
put it in other words, here we have the extremely interesting and mysterious
poet Blok inviting the reader into his workshop.
Bulgakov
visited this workshop too and was so impressed that not only did he pick Blok
for the role of master, but he also used his poetry to construct his other
characters, as Blok had a large influence on other poets of his time, including
V. V. Mayakovsky and S. A. Yesenin.
To
be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment