Guests at
Satan’s Great Ball.
(The
20-Year-Old Lad Matures.)
Posting #22.
“In
the fire and chill of anxieties
Our
life will pass and we shall both remember
That
God judged that we meet
At
the hour of redemption – by the coffin.”
Alexander Blok. Titleless.
In the chapter The
Red Buffoon of his novel Peterburg,
Andrei Bely writes that –
“Sofia Petrovna behaved herself with utmost
provocativeness, raising her silk-rustling skirt practically up to her knees.
But when once, while defending Ancient Greek art, she suggested forming a
circle for chaste nudity, Nikolai
Apollonovich [read Andrei Bely] couldn’t hold it anymore. All his unreleased
passion of many days jumped into his head and in a struggle he dropped her on
the sofa. Sofia Petrovna painfully bit the lips searching for her lips, drawing
blood…”
I think that Blok was reading this passage in his
friend’s novel without being able to contain himself, and this is the reason
why he wrote the poem Humiliation,
which has a striking similarity with Andrei Bely’s description of that
sexually-charged scene in the novel Peterburg.
It is especially clear in the last two stanzas of the
Blokian poem:
“…It’s
not happy, your whistle from the grave.
Hark!
Again the mumbling of the spurs,
Like
a snake, heavy, sated, and dusty,
Your
train slithers from the chairs onto the carpet
You
are bold! So be also intrepid!
I’m
not your husband, your bridegroom, your friend!
So,
go ahead, my yesterday’s Angel.
Pierce
my heart with your sharp French heel!”
Not only does a “French heel” replace the “Fields of
Elysium” (from the poem The Last Parting
Words) here, but we have the word “Angel” appearing here from Blok’s poem Guardian Angel. Both these poems were
written at earlier dates. Knowing this poem, Andrei Bely calls Sofia Petrovna
Likhutina “Angel Peri” in his novel Peterburg.
There can be no doubt that Blok had read this novel.
Too many coincidences between A. Bely’s Peterburg
and Blok’s poem Humiliation!
Practically at the same time (1908-1916), writes yet
another poem on this subject: Before the
Trial (1915). Its very first stanza contains the by now familiar keyword Humiliation. Blok writes:
“Why
are you downcast in discomfiture?
Look
at me like you did before!
This
is what has become of you – in humiliation –
In
the sharp incorruptible light of the day….”
Doesn’t this read like another take on the same theme?
“…I
myself am not the same, my former self,
Unapproachable,
proud, pure, malicious.
I
am looking with more kindness and hopelessness
Upon
the simple and dull way of the earth…”
They were both changed by the passage of time. Their
youth had gone by, and they were not the same as they had been before. Life had
corrupted them.
“…Not
only do I have no right,
But
I have no resolve to reproach you
For
your agonizing and sly way
Destined
for many women…
But
I know your life
Somewhat
differently than the others.
I
know better than the judges
How
you found yourself on the edge…”
Apparently here Blok reminds his wife Mendeleeva about
her affair with his friend Andrei Bely, which must have started the whole
downward slope.
“…But
there was a time – don’t you remember? –
When
we were led on the edge by our ruinous passion;
We
wanted together to unload the burden
And
to fly, and fall down after that.
You
were always dreaming that as we burn out,
We’d
burn out together – you and I,
That
it is fated, dying embracing each other,
That
we would see the blessed regions…”
This last line confirms that Blok is writing here
about his wife L. D. Mendeleeva, as in The
Last Parting Words (1914) he is writing about the “Fields of Elysium.”
From these stanzas it becomes clear that not only the
poet’s wife but he himself were unfaithful to each other. –
“…What
can be done when that dream
Has
deceived us like any other dream?
And
when life has cruelly lashed us
With
the coarse rope of its whip?..”
The dream of a lifelong love and of dying together had
existed of course, but it had been crushed on the reefs of life.
“…The
hurrying life had no time for us,
And
the dream was right that lied to us. –
But
hadn’t you ever been happy,
Hadn’t
you ever been happy with me?
This
strand of hair – so golden! –
Doesn’t
it come from the old fire? –
Passionate,
carefree, empty,
Unforgettable,
do forgive me!”
Blok wrote this poem in 1915 under the heading Various Verses.
In the last titleless poem of the 1907-1914 poetry
cycle Iambs, Blok writes the
following already in the first stanza:
“In
the fire and chill of anxieties
Our
life will pass and we shall both remember
That
God judged that we meet
At
the hour of redemption – by the coffin.”
But apparently Bulgakov judged Blok guilty in his
relationship with his wife, representing him as the “twenty-year-old lad” in Master
and Margarita.
To be continued…
***
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