The Dark
Muse of Blok.
Posting #2.
“There was only one
thing still alive in him:
His broken wing.”
Marina Tsvetaeva. Verses to Blok.
It is about himself that Blok writes in his untitled
1907 poem from the poetry cycle Faina:
“…She
needs none of the modest ones,
She
needs neither intelligence nor stupidity.
And
she probably doesn’t like the dark ones,
Leaning
like myself against the wall [sic!]…”
Doesn’t this prove yet again what I have written about
on a number of occasions – that master and Margarita are one and the same
person? There are indications to this effect in several places in Master and Margarita, and they all point
in the same direction.
To begin with, the scene, in chapter 13, The Appearance of the Hero, where master
is burning his manuscripts of Pontius
Pilate and Margarita suddenly returns to him at night for the reason that –
what a coincidence! – her husband has been called to the plant where a fire has
started…
Here Bulgakov poses a very interesting puzzle to the
reader. This “Tale of Two Fires” I am
solving in my chapter Margarita Beyond
Good And Evil.
The fact that master and Margarita are one and the
same person is further proved in the 30th chapter It’s Time! It’s Time! where Woland
returns the hapless couple to master’s basement apartment, while their “fate is
being determined.”
Here there can be no doubt that the reader is plunged
into the waters of the psychological thriller, which I have delineated in my
chapter Who R U, Margarita?
As I already wrote, there are several dimensions
present in the novel Master and Margarita,
that is, several separate novels can be identified within the same text. For
this reason, there are particular places in the body of Bulgakov’s novel where
one of these dimensions becomes especially visible, as I demonstrate by these
two examples.
***
I was always struck by one particular passage in the
30th chapter (It’s Time! It’s
Time!) of Master and Margarita:
“Margarita fell on the sofa and was rolling
with laughter to the extent that tears started pouring from her eyes. But when
she quieted down, her face contorted violently, and she started talking in a
serious manner. As she was talking, she slipped off the sofa, crawled up to
master’s knees, and, looking into his eyes, started caressing his head.
How you suffered, how you
suffered! [Observe the by now familiar repetition!] My poor one. I
alone know about it. Look, you have white threads in your hair and this
permanent line near your lips...” And
then:
“Yes, threads, threads, the
head being covered with snow in front of my eyes… Ah my head, my so
much-suffering head... Look at your
eyes! There is a desert in them… and your shoulders, shoulders under a burden…
Margarita was shaking as she was crying.”
Can a person be recognized from this description? No
way! But a poet can be recognized here! Especially when the poet is
unmistakably Blok.
Describing his women he is all too frequently fixated
on their shoulders. And also their hair, flowing onto those shoulders like
feathers.
Having discovered that Bulgakov has master’s prototype
in the person of the great Russian mystical poet A. Blok, I am making an effort
in my chapter Strangers in the Night to
prove this thought through the poetry of Blok himself. And also to demonstrate
once again the genius of M. A. Bulgakov, who has included one more
extraordinary Russian poet into his work.
I think that the reader must be interested to follow
my progress, as my discoveries do not end, but are only beginning with the
subsequent chapters.
As I already wrote, I am by no means saying farewell
to this remarkable poet. He will reappear – alongside other outstanding representatives
of the great Russian culture – in my future chapters.
Regarding A. Blok, we can well say in Sergei Yesenin’s
words, said by him about A S. Pushkin: “he
who became Russia’s destiny.” Being German on his father’s side, Blok
preferred to see himself as a Russian, just like it was with N. V. Gogol, with
his Polish paternal roots.
To be continued…
***
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