The Dark
Muse of Blok.
Posting #1.
“…Where
is my companion? Oh, where is Beatrice?
I
walk alone, having lost the right path…”
Alexander Blok. Song of Hell.
This passage had never left my mind until I opened a
book of Blok’s poems and found there one of his strangest poems Black Blood. In order to make clear what
I am talking about, I must run ahead of myself and explain to the reader what
exactly Blok calls “black blood.”
In his own words from the same poem, it is “base passion.” That’s why we find the
following lines in his poem:
“Even
your name is detestable to me,
My
thin fingers are searching for the throat…
Come,
crawl up, and I’ll hit you,
And
you’ll bristle like a cat…”
So why does Bulgakov use these lines in Master and Margarita? Even though they
are somewhat changed, they directly point to Blok’s poem Black Blood in the 1909-1916 poetic cycle Frightful World.
And then, in the poem Song of Hell of the same cycle, Blok writes:
“An
endless hall is in front of me…”
It’s because he was:
“…on
earth [sic!] was thrown into a colorful ball.
And
in a wild dance of masks and guises,
Forgot
love and lost friendship.”
In Master and
Margarita master is not present at Satan’s Great Ball, and in response to
Blok’s lament –
“…Where
is my companion? Oh where is Beatrice?
I
walk alone, having lost the right path…”
-- Bulgakov inserts Margarita into the ball, thus
calling the feminine half of master himself, or to make it more explicit, the
feminine half of Alexander Blok, who is, of course, master’s prototype in Master and Margarita’s psychological
thriller and the mystical novel.
Thus master, that is, A. Blok, need not look for
Beatrice. Continuing with the Song of
Hell, in concert with Blok’s own wishes –
“…From
the depth of an unseen dream,
There
splashed, and blinded me, and shone
Before
me – a wondrous wife!..”
In other words, Margarita, in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita this “endless hall”
is divided into a series of ballrooms, one after another, and they are all
decorated with various flowers, according to an explicit Blokian wish to breathe in “the aroma of
roses,” as he walks “from hall to hall” in his Song of Hell. That’s why his hall is “endless.”
Although Blok introduces “a youth from the web of
darkness,” he is writing it all about himself. He gives himself away by virtue
of the following words:
“…And
I am looking with an incomprehensible anxiety
Into
the features of his wilted face.
On
the finger [of the youth] – a symbol of a mysterious marriage –
Shines
the sharp amethyst [sic!] of the ring…”
In Master and
Margarita master calls Margarita his “secret wife.” Meanwhile, Blok
continues:
“…And
this here amethyst was covered in blood.
And
I drank blood from the fragrant shoulders…”
Needless to say, it would be shocking to imagine Blok biting
his teeth into a woman’s shoulders and drinking her blood in this fashion. The
meaning here is entirely figurative. Blok is imbibing the lifeblood of world,
in this case European, literature. It is this metaphor, this convoluted association
that must be kept in mind in order to understand the meaning of this passage
properly.
In Master and
Margarita it is the feminine part of Blok, Margarita, who is drinking the
blood of the traitor Meigel, whose story is told in my chapter A Swallow’s Nest of Luminaries.
Meanwhile, Blok goes on:
“…We
were hearing a funereal knell…”
So, this is the kind of ringing in Margarita’s ears
which she is hearing when the Ball’s guests start crumbling back to dust.
There can be no doubt that Bulgakov wrote his Satan’s Great Ball, at least partly,
under the influence of Blok’s Song of
Hell.
***
The Blokian theme of death travels from the Song of Hell into Black Blood.
“Clanging
and trumpets and the sound of horses’ hooves,
And
the heavy coffin is swaying back and forth…”
Blok is
ecstatic:
The
candles die out, so do eyes and words,
You
are dead at last, dead!
I
know that I have drunk all your blood,
I
am putting you in the coffin and singing
In
the darkness of night about tender spring,
And
your blood will be singing in me.”
…Blok is singing “wild songs” of “how [he has] become
free, of how [he has] traded low passion for a better lot.”
If Blok’s candles are extinguished, Bulgakov’s candles
actually flare up after Satan’s Great Ball. Margarita feels deceived. Bulgakov
writes: “Black angst [words frequently found in Blok] somehow rolled into
Margarita’s heart.”
But if Blok’s woman from Black Heart leaves indeed –
“She
got dressed in a hurry, she’s leaving, she’s left.
She
glanced back furtively at my windows…”
--then in Bulgakov Woland (Satan) stops Margarita, and
after several tests of Margarita’s love for master, Margarita’s lover appears
in a rather unusual manner:
“…Here a blast of wind entered the room, bringing the flame of the
candles in the chandeliers down. The heavy curtain on the window was pushed
aside, and in the distant height there opened a full moon, not a morning moon,
but a midnight moon. From the windowsill down across the floor there spread out
a greenish kerchief of nightly light, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s guest
calling himself master.” He was
wearing his hospital clothes, a gown, shoes, and a black cap, with which he
never parted. His unshaven face was twitching in a grimace. He was throwing
sideways glances at the flames of the candles in an insane-scared look, and the
lunar stream was boiling around him. He clutched the windowsill with one hand,
as if going to jump on it and run, and snarled, peering into those seated in
the room. And then he screamed: I am
frightened, Margo, my hallucinations have started again. The sick man
lowered down his head, and went on peering into the ground with his sulky sick
eyes.”
See my chapter Strangers
in the Night.
Wind is a very frequent occurrence in Blok’s poetry. I
am writing about this in my chapter The
Bard.
***
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