The Dark
Muse of Blok.
Posting #4.
“…And
one was trembling with her weak body,
And
the other was laughing, running into the night…”
Alexander Blok. A Legend.
Although A. Blok frequently and freely uses the
expressions “secret love” and “secret freedom” in his poems, the expression
“secret wife” has been coined by Bulgakov, not by Blok, but it is in full
consonance with Blok’s expressions.
“…And
soon, soon this woman became my secret wife…”
“…Ivan learned that the guest and his secret wife [sic!] had come
to the conclusion already in the first days of their affair that Fate herself
had brought them together on that corner of Tverskaya and a side street, and
that they had been created for each other for all time.”
Likewise, Bulgakov uses Blok’s favorite word “neznakomka” [Woman Stranger],” with regard to Margarita:
“…He who was calling himself “master” was
feverishly working on his novel, and this novel also consumed the
woman-stranger [neznakomka].”
The penchant for repeating the same words several
times in a row is characteristic of Blok in his poems, even aside from his all-too-frequent
“Ah, Ah!” This is what Bulgakov is
using in the 13th chapter of Master
and Margarita. I’d like to give an example from Blok’s 1904-1908 poetry cycle
The City. Blok’s title of this 1905
poem is A Legend.
“Lord,
can you hear? Lord, will you forgive?..
Into
a dead-end street at midnight
Came
out cheerful girls. There were two of them.
But
someone Third was behind them, right behind them…
He
was unknown to one of them, unknown to one of them…
And
one said: Can you hear? – she said,
Oh,
how scary, my friend, is to be with you!
And
this girl was in white… in white…
And
the other in black… Was she your daughter?
And
one was trembling with her weak body,
And
the other was laughing, running into the night.
Lord,
can you hear? Mercy! Oh Mercy!
The
other was laughing, running away,
And
in the dead street there remained
The
Third, she [the girl in white], and the night.
But
it seemed so close… it seemed so close,
Glimmering,
walks, barely nascent dawn…
She
was left all alone…
And
the Heaven responded…
And
the crowd was thundering.
And
the storm was bursting with laughter.
An
Angel took the girl in white to His House.”
As I said before, Blok’s peculiar manner of repeating
words and phrases in his poems was noticed by Bulgakov, and he introduces such
repetitions wherever master is present, starting with chapter 13, Appearance of the Hero. These
repetitions start with the simple Blokian “Ah,
Ah!” – which Blok has been so famous for. Next, they evolve into more
complex repetitions, which prove that master and Margarita are one and the same
person.
Thus, in the course of a single paragraph, we
encounter four (!) Ah’s:
“Ah, that was the Golden
Age!, whispered the storyteller [master], his eyes sparkling. Facing [the window], some four steps away
under the fence grew lilacs, linden and a maple tree. Ah, ah, ah!”
And then, practically in the same place of the novel:
“Ah, ah! How upset am I that
it was you who met him, and not I.”
“Ah,
what furniture I had!”
I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the following
repetitions, no longer by master alone, but now joined by Margarita, that
immediately prove that master and Margarita are one and the same person. Master
appeals to the presumably absent Margarita:
“Please guess that I am in
trouble... Come, come, come!.. But nobody came...”
The reader must note that Bulgakov here doesn’t use
the name “Margarita,” or calls her “she,” or “secret wife,” or “beloved.” He
says: “Nobody came [the Russian
word Nikto].” Bulgakov is following Blok here:
“And
I’m afraid to call you by your name,
Why
do I need a name?”
But when “she” comes, Bulgakov writes:
“…I could only utter one
word: ‘You, you?..’ – and my voice stopped…”
It is now Margarita’s turn to engage in repetitions:
“Oh God, how ill you are. But
I will save you, I will save you, I will cure you, cure you. Why, why haven’t I
kept at least one copy with me?”
And indeed, that last question is a good one. Master’s
novel was admittedly Margarita’s life. And in the 19th chapter Margarita, opening the second part of Master and Margarita, we learn that she
had a special room where she was hiding charred pages of the novel and master’s
photograph. Why then hadn’t she saved and hidden a complete copy of the
manuscript? The only possible answer would be that Margarita as such exists
only in master’s fantasy.
I’ll return to master’s character in my subsequent
chapters, but I want to finish this segment with Blokian words which become
Bulgakov’s master’s words with which he closes the 13th chapter of Master and Margarita, The Appearance of the Hero:
“Ah,
no, no, replied the guest with a painful twitch. – I cannot even think about my novel without shuddering…”
To be continued…
***
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