Guests At
Satan’s Great Ball.
The
20-Year-Old Lad.
Posting #3.
“…But
do not curse the strange tales
About
how the incomprehensible dream went on…”
Alexander Blok. Song of Hell.
In the poem Song
of Hell, Blok writes about his deception, as even here he splits himself in
two:
“…Here
only is our earthly deception powerless,
And
I am looking, troubled by a presentiment,
Into
a mirror’s depth, through morning fog…”
Once again we have mirrors with deception in them. Oh,
the great fairytale master Hans Christian Andersen!
“…And
toward me, from the web of darkness,
Comes
out a youth, in a tight-fitting garb…”
This youth is Blok himself, as in the preceding poem
of the same cycle, Doppelganger, Blok
confesses:
“…Perhaps
I met myself on that mirror plane?..”
The same variation comes up in the poem Song of Hell:
“…A
wilted rose bloom in the tuxedo’s lapel,
Paler
than the lips on the face of a corpse;
On
the finger – a symbol of a mysterious marriage –
Shines
the sharp amethyst of the ring…”
And here Blok gives himself away:
“…And
I am looking with an incomprehensible anxiety
Into
the features of his wilted face.”
In other words, Blok finds his own self in Hell.
That’s why Bulgakov places his “twenty-year-old lad” in Hell, where he is
observed by Margarita, the feminine side of Blok in the psychological thriller
of Master and Margarita.
Blok begins his conversation with the youth emerging
from the “web of darkness”:
“…Tell
me, why are you condemned to suffer,
And
wonder around the circles of no return?..”
What follows here is an out-of-this-world depiction of
this dust:
“…The
slender features came into a disarray.
The
burnt mouth avidly gulps the air,
And
the voice speaks out of the void…”
And here is what we read in Bulgakov:
“…But then something crashed downstairs in
the colossal fireplace, and out of it jumped a gibbet with a semi-crumbled dust
hanging from it. This dust got loose from the rope and hit the floor, and out
of it emerged a black-haired handsome man in a tuxedo and lacquered shoes… At
the same time, downstairs, out of the fireplace, there emerged a headless
skeleton with a torn-off arm, hit the ground, and turned into a man in a
tuxedo…”
Here Bulgakov follows 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!”
As I already wrote, Bulgakov learned how to write his
prose from the great Russian poets, which allows us to say that Bulgakov’s
prose, in his depiction of Satan’s Great Ball, can make any poet envious, and
this is just one example of his prosaic genius.
Blok probably depicts his own life. –
“Learn:
I am subjected to a merciless torment
For
having been on this sorrowful earth
Under
the heavy burden of a relentless passion.
As
soon as our city hides in darkness,
Tormented
by a wave of soulless tune,
With
a seal of crime upon my brow,
Like
a fallen, disgraced maiden,
I’m
seeking happy oblivions in wine…”
Blok extols wine in many of his poems. In vino veritas!
“The
hour has struck of the punishing ire:
From
the depth of an unseen dream,
There
splashed, blinding and shining
Before
me – a wondrous wife!”
That is, not a woman, but a witch.
This is why in the 19th chapter of Master and Margarita, titled Margarita, Bulgakov calls her “a witch”
without ever explaining how that happened.
And, as is often the case, the next part of Blok’s
poem takes a totally unexpected turn:
“In
the evening jingle of the fragile wineglass,
In
the intoxicated fog, having met momentarily,
With
the only one who detested caresses,
I
reached my first exultation!
I
drowned my glances in her eyes!
And
for the first time I issued a cry of passion!”
Blok is describing how his hero is becoming a vampire:
“…Thus
had the moment come, unexpectedly soon,
And
this here amethyst was covered in blood.
And
I drank blood from the fragrant shoulders,
And
the beverage was suffocating and resinous…”
Having used the word “resinous,” Blok reminds the reader of the woman he had a vision of
in his poem In the Dunes from the
1907 poetic cycle Free Thoughts,
which I am analyzing in my chapter Strangers
in the Night. It is with this wild woman that Blok is ready to join, in
order to get into Hell.
“…But
do not curse the strange tales
About
how the incomprehensible dream went on…
A
tongue of fire whistling shot above us…
And,
chained together by immeasurable chains,
A
certain whirlwind carried us into the underground world!..”
Blok writes:
“…She’s
given to sense pain and remember the feast,
When
every night to her silken shoulders
A
languishing vampire bends down!”
To be continued…
***
No comments:
Post a Comment