Varia.
Three Plays
– Three Plays – Three Plays!
Black Snow.
Posting #2.
“You
remember that officer, Katya?
He
did not escape the knife!..”
Alexander Blok. The Twelve.
Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Monument-Pushkin” …So, this is why in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, in the 6th
chapter: Schizophrenia, As Was Told,
the poet Ryukhin [V. V. Mayakovsky] passing by Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Monument-Pushkin” and getting stuck in
traffic near the exit to the Boulevard, saw that near him was, standing on a
pedestal, a metallic man slightly tilting his head and indifferently looking
down upon the Boulevard. Some strange thoughts about immortality entered
Ryukhin’s head.
As we know, Mayakovsky was obsessed with Pushkin. Even
Marina Tsvetaeva responding to the death of Mayakovsky, acknowledging
Mayakovsky’s great importance to Russian poetry, coined the phrase: “from Pushkin to Mayakovsky,” confirming
that Mayakovsky was indeed “the last
poet,” as he called himself.
Bulgakov explicitly reveals Mayakovsky in the
character of Ryukhin as though hinting that the prototypes of his personages
are Russian poets. Failing to realize that Mayakovsky was larger than life,
literary researchers never thought of looking for him in other Bulgakovian
characters. But Bulgakov does not stop with Woland and Ryukhin.
Bulgakov opens his novel Master and Margarita with a scene on Patriarch Ponds where the
little Marina did not want to go for
a walk with her nanny.
As for Maksudov’s play Black Snow (see Bulgakov’s Theatrical
Novel and my chapter A Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita), which he writes as an adaptation of
his novel which he had failed to get published, I have established that aside
from Sergei Yesenin and M. Yu. Lermontov, a third poet is present there,
namely, Alexander Blok. (I am writing about this in another chapter not yet
posted.)
Alexander Blok started his poem The Twelve with the following words:
“Black
evening. White snow.
Wind! Wind!”
Bulgakov combines “black evening” with “white snow”
and gets “black snow.”
The theme also coincides both with Blok’s personal
life and with the poets of The Twelve.
Specifically the reader is dealing with a triangle. And there is also a
triangle present in Bulgakov’s Black Snow.
The main character of the play, whose name is Bakhtin, has a fiancée whose name
is Anna. A certain Yermakov has also fallen in love with her. The bridegroom
does not appreciate Yermakov singing serenades to his bride, accompanying
himself on a guitar. Bulgakov writes:
“Yermakov throws his guitar down on the
floor and runs away onto the balcony. Anna goes after him.
Anna. He
will shoot himself.
Bakhtin. No, he won’t.”
Even in this short excerpt we find material for the
researcher. Let us begin with the last name Bakhtin. I can clearly hear Blokian
“Ah!” here. In Blok’s poem The Twelve we read:
“…The
snow is twirling, the fast driver is yelling,
Van’ka
and Kat’ka are flying…
Ah,
ah, keep going!..
Ah
you Katya my Katya,
The
plump-faced one…”
Kat’ka has a suitor – Petrukha. And a beau – Van’ka.
Petrukha reminds Kat’ka:
“You
remember that officer, Katya?
He
did not escape the knife!
Haven’t
you remembered, you plague?
Isn’t
your memory fresh anymore?..”
Petrukha persists:
“…On
your neck, Katya,
The
scar from a knife is still there,
Under
your breast, Katya,
That
scratch is still fresh…”
On those occasions Katya had managed to get away with
her life. This time, however, she is not so lucky:
“…The
daredevil – and with Van’ka – run away…
One
more time! Cock the trigger!
And
where is Kat’ka? – Dead, dead!
Her
head has been shot through!
What,
Kat’ka, are you happy? Not a word…
Lying
like dead meat on the snow!”
It is amazing how Alexander Blok has progressed! In
his 1906 poem The Guardian Angel the
poet writes:
“…And
the soul has been killed by the poison of tenderness,
And this hand shall not raise
a knife…”
But in his poem The
Twelve Blok is openly mocking Kat’ka, in whose character he also portrays
his wife L. D. Mendeleeva. But his is already the Revolutionary 1918. Blok was
for the Revolution. He was for his people. Unhappily for them, both friends –
Blok and Bely – had Revolutionary sentiments. Unfortunately, in the heat of
revolutionary turmoil, the scum of the opportunistic scoundrels rises, even if
for a brief time only, to the surface. And if those are not dealt with properly
and fast, such hangers-on become capable of causing great harm to the society
itself. And sometimes, in certain situations, the scum coming to the top, stays
on top, because there is no one there to use the skimmer to remove it.
Blok found himself in a tragic situation. His very
presence loomed large, casting a shadow on the ability of the vermin of poetry
to write their own verses. That’s how society becomes short of poets and
writers of genius. That’s how the world sheds its inherited artistic talent and
rolls down into mediocrity.
Sad!
To be continued…
***
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