Alexander Blok’s
Mystical Play The Unknown.
Posting #6.
“There is one answer
to my question:
Look for your star!”
A. Blok. Verses About
a Fair Lady.
Even
though Stargazer weeps about the fallen star, still he finds in himself enough
consideration for propriety to appear in the salon’s drawing room dressed in a
blue military parade uniform.
“Forgive me, I am in uniform,
and I am late. I am coming straight from an official meeting. Had to deliver a
report…”
This
is a perfect illustration of Pushkin’s what not to do:
For power and livery Never to
bend your conscience or your neck…
This
is the opposite of what Stargazer is doing. His uniform is what Pushkin
considers a servant’s livery. In other words, Stargazer does not qualify as a
poet in Pushkin’s estimation, and therefore not at all.
Blok
has a good reason to dress Stargazer in a blue uniform. In such a manner
he compares Stargazer with pure poetry, personified in the play The Unknown by Blue, who is not
interested in the Unknown at all, but only interested in singing her praises.
Although
“Verlaine” does not report to anyone, he reacts to the words spoken in the pub,
and he comments on them, mumbling to himself.
In
other words, “Verlaine” is not a creator of anything in The Unknown.
On
the other hand, Poet, on a whim, wanders around the town, listening to
“fragments of unfamiliar words.”
Thus,
Poet [that is, Blok himself] created his play The Unknown, spilling his soul to a substitute person. It is
perhaps reasonable to correct the singular number to the plural. Indeed, Poet
spills his soul not only and not so much to the barman, talking about the
multitude of women’s faces, but also discoursing on Kramskoy’s Unknown to the substitute “Verlaine,”
who listens to him and comments by “mumbling to himself.”
And
then, scrutinizing the cameo he had just bought, and discoursing about the
“pleasant lady” sitting upon the globe to the substitute Seminarist, who
catches and echoes Poet’s words, but Poet’s words: “There she is, spinning me, and I am spinning
with her…” are changed in Seminarist’s version into: “She is dancing…
Dancing… (makes a drunken gesture as though trying to catch something).”
But
if Poet in his imagination is spinning with a “pleasant lady,” portrayed on the
cameo, then Seminarist is unable to catch the dancer whom he had seen at a
show: “There, I
didn’t catch her, and again didn’t catch her…”
And
to Poet’s words, as Blok writes, “Slowly, slowly, the
walls of the pub start spinning.”
Blue
is another “substitute character” for Poet. Unable to approach the “woman in
black,” Poet “weaves his lacework” (as Blok writes in his poetic cycle Snow Mask), with Unknown, with the help
of the evening snow falling on Unknown.
And
then, seeing Stargazer on the bridge, Poet spills his soul to him, thus making
Stargazer another “substitute character.”
As
for the personage of Unknown herself, it entirely rests on “fragments of words
unknown [to her.]” Otherwise, it cannot be explained how a fallen star could
have known these words, in the first place.
Thus,
Poet turns out to be the only real character, who wanders around the city on
his own whim, as A. S. Pushkin writes, and also “marvels before creations of arts and inspiration.” To be specific,
remembering Kramskoy’s painting of Unknown,
and enjoying the cameo representing the goddess Astarte, which he had bought a
short time ago.
Likewise,
Poet “marvels before nature’s divine
beauties” describing blue evening snow as a cloak with stars on it.
And
in the third “vision” Poet does not merely “melt
in silence in the joys of emotion,” but “sits in the far corner.” Comparing
himself again with the hero of the long poem Night Violet, written in the same year 1906.
“Pensively looks at Unknown... slowly gets up from his seat...
passes his hand over his forehead... Takes a few steps back and forward... With
a painful effort he is recalling something... for a moment it seems as though
he may have remembered all… He takes several quick steps toward Unknown, but
Stargazer blocks his way…”
In
order to realize what is happening to Poet in the third vision, we need another
Blok poem from the cycle Verses About a
Fair Lady, written in 1902. –
“…Tired,
I was losing hope,
Dark anguish was approaching…”
This
is precisely how Blok portrays Poet in the third “vision” of the play The Unknown.
As
for Unknown herself, this is what Blok writes:
“I
have descended…”
In
the play, the bright star, which Stargazer has been watching, falls to earth,
and a “woman in black” appears on the bridge.
If
Blok calls the third act of his play “vision,” then she who has descended in
the 1902 poem, tells the “tired” [apparently poet] –
“I
have descended, and will stay with you till morning,
Then at dawn I will leave
your dream…”
This
is what happens to Poet in the play The
Unknown, as the “woman in black who calls herself Maria, disappears from
the room.”
“There is no one anymore at the dark curtain. A bright star is
burning behind the window.”
Poet
cannot remember anything because, as Blok explains it in the 1902 poem –
“I’ll
disappear without a trace, everything forgotten, –
You will awaken, free again…”
When
Stargazer asks Poet about his search for the “woman in black, Poet replies:”
“My search has been
fruitless.”
Blok
explains what happened next. –
“He turns back into the depth of the room. Hopelessly looks with
angst on his face, emptiness and darkness in his eyes. He trembles from a
terrible tension. But he has forgotten it all.”
To
the hostess’s question about “Mary” no one responds, as neither the woman in
black calling herself Maria, nor Stargazer, are there anymore.
One
explanation, as I already wrote before, is that while Poet was standing in his
stupor, the two of them vanished together, considering that Stargazer, having
made his report about the fallen star is once again interested in women.
A
second explanation comes courtesy of the 1902 poem. The poet was exceptionally
lucky that day:
“I
have descended, and will stay with you till morning,
Then at dawn I will leave
your dream,
I’ll disappear without a
trace, everything forgotten. –
You will awaken, free again…”
When
at last inspiration [Poet’s Muse] leaves him, he feels drained. This results in
a “terrible tension” of all senses of the poet. No longer on his mind are
Stargazer and the hostess. The bright star burning behind the window is his
star, only he does not know it yet.
Poet
is now free from his Quest, because he has created an exceptional play. As Blok
writes in a 1901 poem in the poetic cycle Verses
About a Fair Lady, –
“There
is one answer to my question:
Look for your star!”
Considering
that “Poet” in the play The Unknown is
Blok himself, he clearly realized that he had created a masterpiece. In 1906,
he caught the ascent of his star.
To
be continued…
***
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