Composition. Alexander Blok - singer of a beautiful lady

On the birthday of Alexander Blok, Channel One will show the premiere documentary film"I was slowly losing my mind"

Text: Natalia Sokolova/RG
Photo: ladunya

Viewers will see handwritten originals of the most famous poems and learn how they were created, how Blok was looking for his Muse, his Beautiful Lady.

The authors also visited small homeland Blok - in the estate near Moscow, which did not survive the revolution, but was carefully restored by those who are not indifferent to the poet's work. There, the future poet composed his first poems, met the sunrises with the Beautiful Lady, and looked for inspiration. He came there every year for 36 years of the incomplete forty-one years lived. Almost 300 poems were written there. Andrei Bely wrote: “Here, in the vicinity of Shakhmatov, there is something of Blok's poetry; and even: perhaps this poetry is truly chess, taken from the surroundings; humpbacks stood up, jagged with forest; the soils tensed and the dawns crashed.

The poet welcomed the revolution, he also participated in the preparation of documents related to the abdication of the throne of Tsar Nicholas II. Drafts of these documents, written by his hand, will be shown in the film for the first time. Participating in the film are: Vladimir Enisherlov, Blok's second-cousin researcher, Blok's second cousin, Ilya Perevozchikov, an expert on Blok from the Institute of World Literature, Dina Magomedova, artist Valery Rozo, Svetlana Misochnik, director of Blok's Estate Museum in Shakhmatovo, and Marina Ivanova, Blok's Museum-Apartment employee and others.

SINGER OF THE BEAUTIFUL LADY

Dozens of literary studies have been written about Alexander Blok. But his biography, broken by personal dramas and social upheavals, contains many unknown pages. The authors of the film, producers Lyudmila Snegireva and Oleg Volnov, are interested not only in creativity, but also in the personal life of the poet. Blok gave his wife - Lyubov Dmitrievna - immortality, dedicating his best poems to her. But there was no marital fidelity between them. Both had novels that they did not even hide. Even during the life of the poet, there were rumors that he had illegitimate children. The authors of the film met with the alleged descendants of the poet and asked which of these rumors was true. For the first time, they interviewed the likely direct descendant of Alexander Blok - Andrey Lyush.
Viewers will see handwritten originals of the most famous poems and learn how they were created, how Blok was looking for his Muse, his Beautiful Lady.
The authors also visited Blok's small homeland - the Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow, which did not survive the revolution, but was carefully restored by those who were not indifferent to the poet's work. There, the future poet composed his first poems, met the sunrises with the Beautiful Lady, and looked for inspiration. He came there every year for 36 years of the incomplete forty-one years lived. Almost 300 poems were written there. Andrei Bely wrote: “Here, in the vicinity of Shakhmatov, there is something of Blok's poetry; and even: perhaps this poetry is truly chess, taken from the surroundings; humpbacks stood up, jagged with forest; the soils tensed and the dawns crashed.
The poet welcomed the revolution, he also participated in the preparation of documents related to the abdication of the throne of Tsar Nicholas II. Drafts of these documents, written by his hand, will be shown in the film for the first time. Participating in the film are: Vladimir Enisherlov, Blok's second-cousin researcher, Blok's second cousin, Ilya Perevozchikov, an expert on Blok from the Institute of World Literature, Dina Magomedova, artist Valery Rozo, Svetlana Misochnik, director of Blok's Estate Museum in Shakhmatovo, and Marina Ivanova, Blok's Museum-Apartment employee and others.
The film "I was slowly going crazy" will be shown on Channel One on November 16 at 00:30.

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1. The evolution of the female image in the lyrics of A. Blok.

Short version(for those who do not want to delve deeply; taken from correspondence with a block specialist from the daytime department):

The topic is very broad, but there are monographs by Vl. Orlova, Anat Gorelova .. the main thing 1) the images do not mix (the Beautiful Lady did not turn into Russia) 2) the movement from the ideal of the spiritual to the worldly (from the lady to Carmen), 3) the main woman is Russia.
Well, look, the women are divided into volumes of lyrics, there are only 3 of them: the 1st volume is the Beautiful Lady, in the 2nd volume there is disappointment in the wife and later in the Beautiful Lady, in the 2nd volume there will be the Snow Maiden / Comet (Natalia Volokhov's muse) and Faina (there are traits in her from the future image of Russia and Carmen), but then in this female image, disappointment (“when your debunked shadow passed in front of me ...”), and the 3rd volume is the image of Russia and the image of Carmen (the prototype is Lyubov Delmas, a cool old woman, but in it, Blok found the embodiment of both ideal love and physical love). then they usually talk about "12" and the image of Katya. Merezhkovsky: "Blok wanted to shoot at Katka, but ended up in Russia." Here's something like this in a nutshell.

Long variant(according to Keldysh's textbook "Russian literature at the turn of the century (1890s - early 1920s), book 2). Everything is complicated, but interesting. Block is here. But there is little analysis of poems, therefore be sure to read a few poems from each cycle yourself. to at least remember the epithets. In this tutorial not the image of Carmen is analyzed, and it is important. Also see this series.

Blok's poems, like perhaps few of the Symbolists, find their true life only in the large context of a cycle or a book of poems. Each poem is connected by motive roll-calls not only with those nearby, but also far away from it. The poems respond to each other, refute one another, blasphemously parody the recently sacred themes and again return to the former high comprehension of what seemed to have long been rejected and meaningful. A certain plot is built inside the cycle, the mutual arrangement of cycles in the book of poems creates an even more complex plot and compositional whole of the book of poems. All this, in relation to the poetic culture of the Silver Age, is quite obvious truth.

From 1904 to 1911, Blok published 5 poetry collections - "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (1905), "Unexpected Joy" (1907), "Snow Mask" (1907), "Earth in the Snow" (1908) and "Night Hours "(1911). But in 1911-1912. Blok published his first collection of poems in 3 books (“Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, “Unexpected Joy”, “Snowy Night”), which he then revised and modified in 1916 and in 1918-1921. Blok himself gave the three-volume structure of his collection of poems an extremely important, non-formal meaning. His autocharacteristic is widely known in a letter to Andrei Bely dated June 6, 1911: “... such is my way<…> now that it has been passed, I am firmly convinced that this is due and all the verses together - "trilogy of incarnation"(from a moment of too bright light - through the necessary swampy forest - to despair, curses, "retribution" and ... - to the birth of a "public" person, an artist who courageously looks into the face of the world, who has received the right to study forms, restrainedly test suitable and unsuitable material, peer into the contours of "good and evil" - at the cost of losing a part of the soul.

A kind of "prehistory" of Blok's lyrics ends in 1900.

Blok's first poetry collection - "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (1904, on the title sheet - 1905) - seems to be nothing like the future "spontaneous" or "gypsy" cycles "Snow Mask", "Faina", " Scary World" or "Harps and Violins". It is difficult to find the motifs of poems about Russia, "Retribution" in them. It was impossible to imagine that the same poet would write in a few years "Born in deaf years ...", "On the railway" or "The Petrograd sky was cloudy with rain ...". Not only critics, but the author himself readily admitted that "technically the book is very weak." But how, then, to explain that it was the title of this book that became a kind of second “periphrastic” name of the poet (“singer of the Beautiful Lady”), and Blok himself repeatedly, in different editions, reprinted this “weak” book. Why, according to V. Piast, he said shortly before his death: “I wrote one first volume". Is it because the first book of Blok's poems contained, on top of "technical imperfection", such spiritual and creative potentialities, which, as the most sensitive readers understood, "determined his entire creative path."

The theme of love as a mystical service, embodied in world literature in the sonnets of Dante and Petrarch, arose for Russian poetry only at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, first in the work of Vl. recognition, the deepest and most consistent adherent of this direction. “In the first period of A. Blok's poetry, each poem is likened not to a mosaic, but to a dewdrop, fully reflecting the whole face of his Muse,” wrote Andrei Bely. - Pronounced her "name-rivers"; she is the Virgin, Sophia, the Mistress of the world, Dawn-Kupina; her life embodies in love the highest tasks of Vl. Solovyov and the Gnostics; turns abstraction into life, and Sophia into love; and brings down to our souls the strange concepts of Basilides and Valentine, connects the most vague searches of antiquity with the religious and philosophical search of our days.

The motive of the earthly incarnation of Sophia, perceived through Vl. Solovyov, is combined in Blok with the conviction of his own calling for her liberation from the captivity of earthly evil. Here is the starting point for the formation of Blok's plot of the lyrical trilogy and, at the same time, his autobiographical myth. L.D. Blok recalls how, at her request, the poet first showed her 4 poems, in two of which she did not see herself: “I'm not here. In any case, I didn’t recognize myself in such and similar verses, I didn’t find myself, and the evil jealousy of “a woman for art2, which is customary to blame, creeped into my soul.”

This evidence alone is enough to make clear the limitations of attempts to read "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" as love-landscape lyrics, with "unfortunate" mystified complications in the spirit of Solovyov. One of the first such readings of Blok's early lyrics was suggested by N.S. But if you believe that this is just a girl with whom the poet was in love for the first time, then it seems to me that not a single poem in the book will refute this opinion, and the image itself, having become closer, will become even more wonderful and will endlessly benefit from this artistically. Among the later literary works, this point of view is most consistently present in the articles of V.N. She is both in poems shaped to her beloved “pink girl” (her image is “idealized” in the Solovievian sense, but “earthly features” are visible in this image), and in a subtle sense of native nature, in the visible signs of the Russian landscape, in national character images and motifs originating from Russian fairy tale and song folklore. All this allowed Blok even then to create excellent poems that enriched the Russian classical lyrics of love and nature, which live and will always live like true poetry, beyond any mystical understanding and interpretation.

The meaning of the “vertical” composition of the cycle: the heroine is usually located above, and the hero is below, what appears (“pops up”, “rises”), she invariably in the evening twilight, at the evening dawn, she is a “lamp”, “source of light”, "White", "Sunset, mysterious Maiden".

So, the connection of the central female image of Blok's early lyrics with the lunar myth does not at all cancel the possibility of reading this cycle through the myth of Sophia: Sophia herself is also associated with the symbol of the Moon. The most complex figurative structure of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" lies precisely in this unique for the Russian position of the multi-layered meanings and readings, where not a single layer destroys, but only contributes to its further deepening and branching. This is the symbol as the principle of the poetic reconstruction of the world.

TO early work Blok, the characteristic given by the poet himself is applicable: “one-string”. The work of the Blok of subsequent periods will never again be "one-string".

The events of the external world are increasingly influencing the previously closed life of the poet, focused on internal spiritual events. He is more and more actively involved in the current literary everyday life, becomes an employee of the emerging symbolist magazines (“New Way”, “Questions of Life”, etc.), is published in newspapers (“Slovo”, “Speech”), takes part in almanacs and collections, ties all new contacts in the literary environment. The theater actress V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Natalya Nikolaevna Volkhova becomes the subject of his stormy passion, the books of poems "Snow Mask", the cycle "Faina" are dedicated to her, her features - "tall beauty" in "elastic black silks" with "shining eyes" - determine the appearance of "natural" heroines in the poems of this period and in the plays "The Stranger" (1906) and "Song of Fate" (1908).

The revolution exposed for Blok the disharmonious, catastrophic nature of being, active formation in his creative consciousness of the symbol-category "elements", the emergence of a new type of hero and, in particular, a sharp change in the heroine of his lyrics.

In the first programmatic article of this period, “Timelessness” (1906), Blok writes about the irretrievable death of the old way of life, about the destruction of the House, about the spontaneous, blizzard image of the world that has opened up, about “wandering” as a special state of the soul of modern Russian man.

"Multi-world" - "multi-stringed" becomes the work of Blok. "Multi-world" in creativity does not at all mean the isolation of each of the worlds in Blok. This must be borne in mind when studying his poetic, dramatic and prose heritage. In a conversation with N.A. Pavlovich Blok once dropped: “I wrote poetry on the same topic, first poetry, then a play, then an article.” We are talking about a special solidarity, integrity in the diversity of all aspects of his artistic work.

Numerous overlaps between Blok's articles, plays and poems have been repeatedly noted in the research literature. Thus, blasphemous ridicule and parody of the most important motifs of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" occurs both in the verses of "Unexpected Joy" and in the drama "Balaganchik". The "Virgin of a Far Country" expected by the mystics turns out to be first a columbine, Pierrot's fiancee, and then a dead cardboard doll. The world of "distant", "spring", floating in the sky, about which Harlequin sings, is simply drawn on paper; the clown's blood turns out to be cranberry juice, the knight's helmet is made of cardboard, the sword is wooden. All the attributes of the Knight and the Lady from Blok's early poems become dead before our eyes, revealing their transparency, "puppetry", artificiality. Only the sad song of Pierrot, grieving over the death of ghosts, turns out to be genuine:

She lay prone and white.

ah, our dance was merry!

And she couldn't get up.

She was a cardboard bride.

And here I stand, pale face,

But it's wrong for you to laugh at me.

What to do! She fell flat...

I'm very sad. Are you funny?

The lyrical hero is aware that the betrayal of the original ideal not only discredits the ideal itself, but devastates, but devastates his own soul. Hence, the motive of the inevitable deathbed return to the ideal of Eternal Femininity (“First Love”), passing through a number of poems, appeals to the female fidelity that saves and protects the sinner (images of Solveig, “merry bride”, “mother”, “Virgin Mary”). The interweaving of motifs of blasphemy and the return to Eternal Femininity is motivated by the title of the collection. As you know, the plot of the legend associated with the icon “Unexpected Joy” speaks of the repentance of the robber during prayer before the icon of the Virgin and of the Unexpected Joy of forgiveness granted to him thanks to the intercession of the Mother of God. In the plot of the collection there is no direct reproduction of the plot of this legend, only its main semantic conflict is reproduced: motives sin(a betrayal of the original values, self-change as an attempt to open the boundaries of the former harmonious, but isolated world 2 of the Beautiful Lady ”- motive memory-knowledge about the inviolability of the original high moral ideals, - the motive appeals to Eternal Femininity, hopes for overcoming spiritual emptiness, thanks to unchanging and faithful love, embodied in female “Sophianic” images that retain a successive connection with the image of the heroine of “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”.

This semantic conflict affects the construction of the entire collection and each of its seven cycles (“Spring”, “Children's”, “Magic”, “Suffering Ring”, “Submission”, “Unexpected Joy”, “Night Violet”).

In 2 Unexpected Joy, as in Blok's subsequent poetic books, there are not one, but two heroines, or rather two types of heroines. The first type genetically goes back to the "Sophian" female image of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (Solveig, Mother of God, bride). The second type - 2 "natural" heroines, at first glance, absolutely opposite to the "Sophian" heroines (Stranger, "sister of wild liberty", etc.). The same type of heroine appears in two plays - "The Stranger" and "Song of Fate".

From immersion in the natural elements (the cycle "Bubbles of the Earth") and the discordant elements of the modern city, Blok brings the lyrical hero to the world of "Snow Mask" - the compositional and semantic center of the 2nd volume, its "spontaneous" culmination. Blok said in 1920: “If we consider my work as a spiral, then the “Twelve” will be on the upper coil, corresponding to the lower one, where is the “Snow Mask”. This cycle is the absolute antithesis of the world of the 1st volume, and the hero's immersion in the world of "blizzard" passion is interpreted as a "second baptism" (in the poem of the same name):

The blizzard opened my door,

My chamber is frozen,

And in a new snow font

I am baptized with a second baptism.

The fusion of the hero with the elements is absolute. However, this dissolution does not become a genuine acquisition of a new positive ideal.

Both the image of the world and the heroine of the "Snow Mask" are devoid of any recognizable concrete signs, except for spontaneity. In the cycle "Faina", following the "Snow Mask", the appearance of the "natural" heroine changes: she takes on the features of an earthly woman and, moreover, in the poem "Oh, what a sunset blush to me ..." becomes the embodiment national character, "free Russia" 9 "Whose songs? And sounds? / What am I afraid of? / Pinching sounds / And - free Russia? ”).

The name of the heroine of the cycle "Faina" coincides with the name of the heroine of the play "Song of Fate", and this makes us correlate the dramatic plot with poems in which "spontaneous" female images appear. The play contains references to Blok's extremely important, key texts. And not only in 1906-1908, but also with poems from the period of the 1st volume, and with later works (the Carmen cycle).

The most difficult questions in the interpretation of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” are the problem of the relationship between “eternal”, “historical” and “modern” plans, as well as the problem of conjugation of personal and national-historical plots. The famous line “Oh, my Russia! My wife!..” is at the same time the semantic tuning fork of the cycle, and the subject of endless disputes and bewilderment of critics and readers.

The meaning of the line "Oh, my Russia, my wife! .." will become more understandable if we take into account the citation nature. In Blok's lyrics and journalism of this time, reminiscences from G. Ibsen's drama "Peer Gynt" repeatedly appear, especially from the scene of the fifth act, where Solveig is identified with the Mother of God, saving and forgiving the lost hero:

Peer Gynt

Il .. you yourself are a mother

The one you're talking about?

Solveig

And who is the father? Is it not the one who forgives

At the request of the mother?

Peer Gynt

(as if illuminated by a ray of light, screams).

Oh my mother!

My wife! The purest of women!

So give me shelter, shelter me!

The last line of Peer Gynt contains a poetic formula (“Oh, my mother! My wife!”), which appears in the Blok cycle in a different rhythmic version and with a synonymous replacement: “mother” and “Rus” sound like synonyms for Russian cultural consciousness. Ibsen equated the meanings of Solveig-mother-wife-Our Lady. Blok has Russia-mother-wife-Our Lady. And it is precisely the image of the Mother of God in both cases that makes possible the identification of mother and wife, which is unthinkable in any other contexts (cf. the stable naming of the Mother of God in Orthodox prayers: “Most Pure Mother”, “The Bride Not Bride”, “Wife”, “Virgo”).

Andrei Bely, in a speech in memory of Blok, connected the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” with the biographical myth of the poet about Sophia: “Blok becomes, touching the ground, here for the first time our national poet. He understood that the sophia of the world cannot be without a human frame, but he also understood that this frame of humanity without the face of the people, without the soul of the people, without touching the roots of the people, cannot bear fruit.

Lonely, I come to you

Bewitched by the fires of love...

A. Blok

The early A. Blok appears before us as a sensitive lyricist, who is characterized by romantic impulses, languor, delight, and forebodings. Gorky wrote about him that "he is a real, by the will of God, poet and a man of fearless sincerity."

The formation of A. Blok as a poet was greatly influenced by the teachings of Vl. Solovyov, poet, religious thinker and philosopher late XIX in. Blok temporarily becomes a mystic, seeing in the events of the surrounding world the harbingers of the end of the world. The poet sees salvation from the coming chaos in the beginning of "Eternal Femininity", a symbol of Beauty and Goodness, which received their detailed embodiment in the first poetry collection of A. Blok "Poems about the Beautiful Lady". This book not only reflected the poet's youthful love for L. D. Mendeleev, who later became his wife, it was always his torment and joy. But the Beautiful Lady in the poet's interpretation takes on extraterrestrial, supersensible forms, becomes a symbol of the highest embodiment of perfection, harmony, beauty, femininity.

I foresee You, Years pass by. All in one guise I foresee You.

"Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is almost completely detached from everyday life, from real life, therefore, the main image, to which all the dreams and hopes of the poet are directed, has no name - and many names: Daughter of Light, Mysterious Virgin, Eternal Love, Lady of the Universe, Holy, Light, Clear, Quiet, Singing ... The lyrical hero sincerely believes and is looking forward to meeting her, hoping that this will help transform the world:

Oh, rise before me Not in imagination alone!

However, at the same time, the poet anticipates and is infinitely afraid that deception, substitution may occur: “But I’m scared - you will change your appearance ...” This worries the lyrical hero, does not give him rest, but in the end it happens:

You, deceived by the unknown: For sacred dreams, It is impossible for the incorporeal to reveal their features.

Over time, the surrounding world with its tragedies and conflicts, human suffering, chaos, revolutionary events invades the isolated world of dreams and ideals of A. Blok, violates the harmony that has not been found. And the poet begins to understand how unattainable his ideal is in reality:

I'm afraid to meet You, It's more terrible not to meet You... And the gloomy sky is low - It covered the Temple itself. I know: You are here. You are close. You are not here. Are you there.

The poet feels impending great changes both in his own destiny and in the destiny of his country, he feels that the decisive one is approaching, unusual time that turns all past hopes into ghosts:

I run away in the past moments, I close my eyes in fear On the sheets of a chilling book - A golden maiden's braid.

Above me, the firmament is already low, A black dream gravitates in my chest. My destined end is near, Both war and fire are ahead.

It was at this time that A. Blok lost faith in his "vision, incomprehensible to the mind": "You went into the fields without a return." But the real world opened before the poet - diverse, contradictory, human-earthly, new.

The doors open - there are flickering, And behind the bright window - visions. I don’t know - and I won’t hide my ignorance, But I fall asleep - and dreams will flow.

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Chapter 7

Somehow, in the absence of Michel, I skimmed through it bookshelves in search of a volume of Blok and was surprised at the complete absence of poetry in the cabinets. I already knew that he did not like poetesses, but Litvinov read poets: I sometimes saw volumes of Brodsky and Mandelstam in his hands, he quoted Sasha Cherny and Don Aminado. He loved Litvinov and Horace. The last one, by the way, was on the shelf. But where did he get everyone else?

In the evening I took Blok to the library and asked Litvinov himself about it. He was in excellent spirits: his report on Dostoevsky was credited to him as a term paper, and this gave the rogue almost a month of free time. Michel told me about his luck and collapsed on the sofa.

He did not understand my question.

Poems? What verses? Michel blinked in surprise.

Where do you keep poetry collections? I didn't find them on the shelves, I explained.

I don’t keep them anywhere,” Litvinov shrugged his shoulders in confusion. - I read and share.

Poetry can be of three categories, - Litvinov replied, - firstly, these are verses that cannot be read, secondly, verses that may or may not be read, and, thirdly, these are verses that can be read and even memorized. However, a poet has not yet been born who would have more than a dozen of the latter. But I won't keep a book of three hundred pages on the shelf for a dozen verses? - Litvinov appealed to my sanity, waving his long-fingered hand in front of my nose.

Interesting - I decided to take advantage of Michel's complacency and talk him. - What is poetry to you?

Litvinov shrugged his shoulders.

Most people's understanding of poetry is so vague that vagueness is, in fact, the definition of poetry. Poetry is a confused thing, it is faith in the Word without hope of salvation, a kind of mystical Liturgy that turns God's blood into ink. Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind, just like true music is what Beethoven, who was deafened, heard. But this, you see, is not a definition.

Do you think, - I singled out the main thing from his chatter, - that a poet cannot write more than a dozen brilliant poems?

Of course, after all, the first one who compared a woman with a flower was a great poet, but the second one was the booby of the king of heaven. A dozen here is a mystical number: this is the limiting number of insights released to one creator. I only found two dozen magnificent poems from Horace, the rest were not enough for a dozen. Or maybe, - Michel suddenly thought, throwing his hands behind his head, - is it the other way around? Maybe it is the reader who is not able to perceive more than a dozen meanings from one poet? And "might to accommodate" - will accommodate more?

And how many poems do you like from Blok? I put a volume in front of him.

Michel was confused.

I read several collections, a couple of his letters to Bely and memoirs of contemporaries - that was enough for me. But five or six verses are not bad. Not bad and individual stanzas. He's just... a little crazy," Michel said apologetically.

I gave him a puzzled look.

Why abnormal?

Because his poems are not normal, - as if explaining that there is a sun in the sky, Litvinov replied.

But is he a poet? I clarified. - I don't understand it very well either. Can you analyze it?

Litvinov nodded.

All right, - he agreed complacently, - but then you make chops with mushrooms and cheese for dinner, - he bargained for himself an evening on the couch.

I agreed, went into the kitchen and started cooking, while Litvinov opened Blok and studied him until the evening meal. After supper Litvinov flopped down again on the sofa and began.

Well, - smiled Michel, leafing through the collection. - This is not Mayakovsky. This is the rare case when there is almost no gap between the poet and the verses. At the same time, I'm sorry, but I do not take into account his early poems - this is an imitation of Apollon Grigoriev, Fet, Polonsky and Tyutchev. In addition to formal borrowings, a closed and very contradictory nature is palpable in these early poems. This is not a person who is easy to get to know and easy to understand. It is noticeable that the young Blok is not so much intelligent as intuitive, he is overly emotional, his convictions are also instinctive, and not rational. He is a big lonely child: in the early poems there are no people, no personality dominates the poet, the topics of descriptions are trivial - nature, the moon, spring and fatigue from life at "eighteen years old".

Well, it's early...

Litvinov nodded.

Mature is strange - but not in the sense of "amazing." No, it is unnatural and even unnatural, although quite talented. His voice comes through, his intonations, over the years he expresses his thoughts more and more clearly. But in all his poems, an incomprehensible deadness is felt, and this is not asceticism, like the suppression of libido, but the unnatural composure of a person with fish blood. His wife testifies: “Alexander Alexandrovich loved and appreciated his appearance very much, she was far from his last“ joy of life ”. When, about a year before his illness, he began to give in a little, his temples thinned a little, a little not so straight, and his eyes were not so bright, he approached the mirror with bitterness and not loudly, but somehow, as if not wanting to soundly confirm what had happened, half in jest. said: “It’s not at all the same, they don’t look at me in the tram anymore” ... Therefore, at first I assumed that Blok was too handsome to be a good lover. According to psychologists, people of refined, refined beauty and a subtle psyche are characterized by a weakened libido. There is this in poetry, - Michel stuck his nose into the book. - “I believe and wonder: we are in a consonant dream. Anything you want will come true, lean over to me. Hug - and meet, hide in the grass, and then light up in the blue of the moon ... "These are the dreams of a firefly, not a normal man. “I am pitiful in deep impotence, but You are becoming clearer and more charming ...” A pretty confession, - Litvinov chuckled. But sometimes there is something more ardent: “I was slowly losing my mind at the door of the one I long for. The spring day was replaced by darkness and only kindled thirst ... ”Despite the triviality of rhymes and meter, the idea is expressed very well. Further, to the best of intensity: “I cried, tired with passion, and muffled my moans sullenly. The insane, sick thought was already doubling, moving, crazy ... "And now - the final apotheosis:" Spring day was replaced by darkness, the heart over the grave grew cold. I was slowly going crazy, I was thinking coldly about my dear…”

You are a cynic. Why don't you want to see pure poetic adoration here? I reproached him.

I'm not a cynic and I see what I see. Blok is almost impassive, more precisely, asexual, that's all. But it's not about beauty. It may be complex. Blok's first love was Ksenia Sadovskaya. Noticing their connection in Bad Nauheim, the mother began to throw tantrums with her son, wringing her hands and pleading: “Drip me, Sasha! Drops!" But nothing helped. For the first time, the son was completely indifferent to everything except his "blue-eyed beauty." He courted clumsily, but passionately, which confused Ksenia Mikhailovna a lot. And she gave up. Once Alexander returned home in the morning, pale and even more desperately in love. And he wrote in his book: “On such a night, I managed to recognize, at the sounds of night and spring, a beautiful woman’s arms in the rays of a lifeless moon ...” Isn't it strange? He could take any other epithet for the word "moon" - mysterious, shining, sparkling - after all, the epithet does not rhyme with anything. But the eerie word “lifeless”, that is, dead, pops up - and this is with the words “beautiful”, “woman”, “embrace” and “spring” standing next to it. This is not an imitation of Fet, this pyrrhic iambic pentameter reflects his internal rhythm of intercourse, and the word "lifeless" is very symptomatic here. At the same time, the mother, nervously and mentally not quite adequate, was cynical. “Where to go, Sashurochka, age-related physics, and maybe it’s better that way than a brothel, where are outrages and diseases?” she said, smiling. These words, perhaps, also greatly distorted and froze the unfortunate Blok. But this is an assumption. At the same time, - Michel added, - like all not quite mentally balanced people, Blok sometimes drops bad prophecies and shows all the signs of a masochist.

And the evidence?

Evidence of what? Prophecies? Please. “Above me, the firmament is already low, a black dream gravitates in my chest. My destined end is near, and war and fire are ahead. It was written at the very beginning of the century. “I am sorry that the great day will soon blow, the barely born child will die. Oh, I'm sorry, friend - the coming ardor will cool down, into the past darkness and leaving into the cold! This is a year later, 1902. All this will come true for him. As for masochism, it is noticeable in the very idea of serving the Beautiful Lady and in its implementation. “As a slave, insane and submissive, I hide for the time being and wait under this gaze, too black in my flaming delirium ...”, “You were hidden by mists, and your very voice was weak. I remember these deceptions, I remember, obedient slave…” “Silent ghost in the tower, I am a black slave of cursed blood. I keep semi-darkness in Her untouched alcove…” But the Ladies were served not by slaves, but by knights. In Blok, however, service is painted precisely with tones of slavish masochistic obedience to a woman. However, if we recall his heredity, then why be surprised?

What heredity?

Heavy, very heavy,” Litvinov grimaced. - From the memoirs of his mother's sister, Maria Beketova, it is known that Blok's paternal grandfather died in a psychiatric hospital. Blok's father was "with oddities on the verge of mental illness," and his mother "was repeatedly treated in a hospital for the mentally ill," just as Maria Beketova herself suffered from a nervous illness. She is echoed by Lyubov Mendeleev-Blok. “And on the part of the Bloks, and on the part of the Beketovs, and on the part of the Karelins, everywhere there is genuine clinical madness. Alexander Alexandrovich's cousin is a deaf-mute. These are only extreme, medically verified manifestations of their noble degeneration and impoverishment of blood. But imbalance is theirs common property. If all this is established and weighed, you will take a different attitude to all their words and deeds. Otherwise, you will appreciate the tragedy of Blok’s position among this family he loved, but which so often made him suffer and from which he sometimes so helplessly and so hopelessly torn. All this is true. Moreover, Blok’s mother had a “capricious, bizarre character” and “nervousness and extreme impressionability” from childhood, her first child was born dead, the second - Blok himself - from the first days of his birth became the focus of the life of the whole family, but the boy was sickly and grew weak, and only with the help of the wise advice of the old doctor turned into a pink butuz. “Only extreme nervousness remained for the rest of his life: he could hardly fall asleep, was restless, often screamed and was capricious for whole hours. The aunt notes that Blok was headstrong, with violent desires and irresistible dislikes. It was difficult to accustom him to anything, it was almost impossible to dissuade or stop him. I will not make diagnoses, but something, you must admit, is alarming, there are signs of a nervous disease.

Do you think that with such heredity, he could not be healthy?

Litvinov chuckled.

What is health? - he said in the manner of Pilate, like he once asked about the truth. - But in his life there are some oddities, moreover, almost inexplicable. Beketova says that childish games fascinated him for a long time, and in everyday life he remained a child almost until he was eighteen years old. Observation to natural phenomena and artistic inclinations appeared early. He learned to read by the age of five and at the same time began to compose poetry. That is, before us is a capricious child with poetic inclinations. Then the gymnasium, which seemed to him something wild, alien, rude. Then at the age of thirteen he became addicted to the theater and himself began to dream of acting career, and the actors, mind you, did not seem vulgar to him. At the same time, he began to publish the handwritten journal Vestnik. Even the aunt says that anyone who takes a closer look at the Vestnik will also be struck by the fact that at the age of sixteen Blok's level of development in everyday terms would be more suitable for a boy of about twelve.

Infantile?

Not the right word, - said Litvinov. - But then infantilism comes through, forgive me, stupidity. Here he is - young poet, attends a circle of "mystical argonauts". In order to understand the issues discussed there, I propose to read an excerpt from Blok's letter to Bely dated June 18, 1903. I take it at random - about the Soul of the World. “The indispensable lot of peoples or societies calling to battle is standing “an idol over a steep, tearing their clothes.” Because "early". This early morning, however pink, does not allow the voice to reach where it wants to go. It means that She is only potentially embodied in the people and society. The fate of an individual who calls to abuse is “a hundred times more enviable”, because the answer will never be less than an echo. Often it turns out in the answer and more than an echo. Therefore, it seems to me, She can rather be embodied in a separate person. That is why trust in the individual is greater than in the people and society. In order to appeal to individuals, one can stay in "one's own environment", in order to appeal to peoples, one has to be born a giant or bring oneself to soaring and metaphysical indifference in case of the surrounding deafness of the "sleepers". Thus, I think that She approaches everyone only in potentiality, but already in reality to an individual person. The question is to what extent? (mood, breath, or "under the visible shell"). I feel Her as a mood most of the time. I think that it is possible to see Her, but not embodied in the face, and the face itself cannot know whether She is present in it or not. Only for a moment, in a rush, can one see, as it were, Her Shadow in another person. This does not exclude dreams about Her as the Soul of the World, because the world is closer to the mystic than the people, the whole is more understandable than the parts, the macrocosm, like the microcosm, is closer than all the links intermediate between them.

I felt dumb and yawned.

And there are three pages of such nonsense, and I also simplified what was written, ”Litvinov summed up. - No less strange and absurd poet in family life.

I saw a wedding photo - handsome ...

Yes, Blok arrived in Boblovo on a white horse, in an elegant suit, a soft hat and smart boots, being in a state of mystical trance in search of Her - his great love, which he would later call the Mysterious Virgin, the Eternal Wife, the Beautiful Lady. And Lyuba Mendeleeva in the most unexpected way merged in his mind with the ideal that he was looking for. In turn, Lyuba was quite ready to take him for a prince on a white horse, because he spoke of love, raised her to a pedestal, even threatened to commit suicide if she did not accept his proposal. She accepts. But then a new oddity emerges. Alexander was not going to live carnally with his young wife. The Muse had to remain the Muse - unattainable, divinely distant. One can imagine the shock of a young wife who heard: “We don’t even need physical intimacy ...” He told Lyuba about the repulsive, rude, sensual rituals of the servants of Astarte, the goddess of love who knows no shame, and about That other Goddess from his letter to Bely - oh Soul of the World, Wise Sophia, immaculate and radiant.

This is the place where romanticism smoothly develops into idiocy, - I laughed. - You need a Muse - why get married, but called yourself a husband ... This is stupidity, of course.

Perhaps he is simply overly impressionable and receptive,” Litvinov stood up for Blok. - After all, this is all Solovyov with his "God-human love" and with his "rule": do not say "I love" out of mystical fear, calling it, to kill love. Blok kept repeating to the bride: “My life is unthinkable without some unknown Spirit coming from You, but only still vaguely felt by me. I don't want hugs. Hugs were and will be. I want an extra hug!" “It drove me to despair! Lyubov Blok writes. - Rejected, not yet a wife, killed at the root of the basic faith of any girl who fell in love for the first time in inviolability, uniqueness. I sobbed those evenings with such stormy despair, as I could no longer sob when everything really happened "as written." However, youth sometimes threw people who lived nearby to each other. On one of these evenings, unexpectedly for Sasha and with my "malicious intent" something happened that should have happened - this was already in the autumn of 1904. Since then, rare, brief, masculine selfish encounters have been established. My ignorance was the same, the riddle was not solved, and I did not know how to fight, considering my passivity inevitable. By the spring of 1906, this little stopped, ”Lyubov Dmitrievna later wrote in her“ Both true stories and tales ... ”At the same time, I’ll be honest,” Michel digressed for a minute, “Lyubov Blok’s memories are an order of magnitude smarter, more honest and talented than everything written by Blok . In general, Blok was sometimes unbearably poetic and often changed his taste. To say: "My Russia, my wife ..." - a normal person could not. But that’s just me, by the way,” Litvinov waved his hand.

But how does she explain the strangeness of her husband?

- “Physical intimacy with a woman for Blok from the gymnasium years is paid love, and the inevitable results are a disease. Thank God that all these cases in youth are not a fatal disease. It's definitely psychological trauma. It was not a idolized mistress who introduced him to life, but a casual, impersonal one, bought for a few minutes. Block still has it - a break for life. Even with his most significant meeting already in adulthood in 1914, it was like that, and only the dazzling, sunny cheerfulness of Carmen overcame all traumas, and only with her did Blok learn the desired synthesis of both loves, ”writes Lyubov Blok.

She talks about the singer Lyubov Delmas, but then a new oddity pops up: after all, Blok did not succeed with Delmas either. After three months novel, he gave her his photo as parting, she left the address and asked to write. At the end of June, a letter arrived from him. “We, who are in love with each other, will never, never understand each other,” he comes to a sad conclusion. Why? For him, art was where there was damage, loss, suffering, cold. An artist cannot be happy. She didn't agree. But “such is the hoary experience of artists of all times,” Blok insisted, considering himself a link in a long chain of these outcasts. Another example of masochism, by the way. Blok wrote to her: “I don’t know how it happened that I found you, I don’t know why I’m losing you, but it’s necessary. It is necessary for the months to stretch into years, it is necessary for my heart to bleed now, it is necessary for me to experience now what I have never experienced - as if with you I am losing the last earthly thing. Only God and I know how much I love you." Eloquent and poetic. And yet he breaks the connection, although sometimes her call will pity and he will agree to a date, then she will remind of herself with a basket of red roses. But, in general, it's easier. She just didn't need him. I think he was tired of love. And very quickly. After all, even the bride, in a moment of quarrel, parts him with “a veil with a fish temperament and eyes” ...

Alas, no, - Michel did not agree, - but for now we are following the life of Blok. I will return to 1903-4. Let's acknowledge our family life this man ruined himself. “As a child, I unshakably believed in the uniqueness of my love and in my unshakable loyalty, that our relationship with Sasha “later” would improve,” Lyubov Blok writes. But they never became the way Lyubov Dmitrievna saw them. They were sometimes trusting, tender, fraternal, but never simply conjugal. The affair of the wife with Bely, the subsequent stupidities - this is a consequence of the strangest penance in the form of Solovyov's teachings, pulled on by Blok. But a smart person will not allow other people's fictions to break his life.

But why do you think that it was "someone else's fiction" on his part?

Because the bride saw the same thing. Mendeleeva wanted to part with him and even wrote to him expressing her grievances. “You look at me as some kind of abstract idea; You imagined all sorts of good things about me, and behind this fantastic fiction that lived only in your imagination, you didn’t notice me, a living person, with a living soul, overlooked ... You, it seems, even loved - your fantasy, your philosophical ideal, and I kept waiting for you to see me, when you understand what I need, with which I am ready to answer with all my heart. But you continued to fantasize and philosophize. After all, I even hinted to you: “It is necessary to carry it out”, you answered with a phrase that perfectly characterizes your attitude towards me: “The thought expressed is a lie.” Yes, everything was just a thought, a fantasy, and not a feeling, even if only of friendship. For a long time, sincerely, I was waiting for at least a little feeling from you, but, finally, after our last conversation, returning home, I felt that something in my soul had suddenly broken off, died; I felt that your attitude towards me now only revolts my whole being. I am a living person and I want to be one, even with all the shortcomings; when they look at me as some kind of abstraction, even the most ideal, it is unbearable, insulting, alien to me ... Yes, I see now how alien we are to each other, that I will never forgive you for what you are with I have been doing all this time - after all, you pulled me from life to some heights, where I am cold, scared and ... bored! It is a pity that she handed this letter to the groom.

But in the end, they still lived together ... all their lives.

Eventually? As a result, according to Lyubov Blok, “chaotic confusion began. Layers of genuine feelings, genuine intoxication with youth for me, and layers of reticence and his and mine, other people's interventions - in a word, a springboard mined through and through by underground passages that conceal future catastrophes. As a result, his wife converges with other men and is soon expecting a child. And Block decides that for them it will be theirs. common child. But the boy was born in February 1909 and lived only eight days. Then they converge again and diverge again. And everyone is paying and paying for the absurdly broken family with bad torments and despair. Mendeleeva writes: “We immediately, from the first year of our common life, started some kind of game, we found “masks” for our feelings, surrounded ourselves with fictitious, but completely alive creatures for us, our language became completely conditional. So it is absolutely impossible to say “specifically”, it is completely imperceptible for a third person. And because, no matter what happens to us, we always had a way out into this world, where we were unshakably inseparable, faithful and pure. It was always easy and reliable for us in it, even if we sometimes cried about our earthly troubles ... "

Symbolism is not worth that much, - I sighed and reminded again, - but you were talking about abnormality.

Right. But so far we only notice the rare spiritual changeability of the poet. Judge for yourself. After the mystical "circle of Argonauts" from the winter of 1905, writes Beketova, Alexander Alexandrovich's indifference to the life around him was replaced by a keen interest in everything that happened. He followed the course of the revolution, the mood of the workers, and even participated in one of the street processions and carried the red flag at the head, feeling at one with the crowd. I don’t know about you, but such spiritual vacillations seem strange to me. He himself writes about it this way: “As soon as my bride became my wife, the purple worlds of the first revolution captured us and dragged us into a whirlpool. I, the first one, who wanted death for so long, was drawn into the gray purple of the silver Star, into the mother-of-pearl and amethyst of the blizzard. Behind the past blizzard, the iron emptiness of the day opened, threatening a new blizzard. Now again a flurry has flown in - I can’t determine the color and smell. ” The man who defines political upheavals "by smell", I'm sorry, is damn strange.

Well, then pompous words were in use. The man got carried away, - I muttered.

Aha,” Litvinov nodded mockingly. But it got cold very quickly. Here is Beketova: “In the summer of 1906, the destructive trends of the revolution were in the air. All new literature was imbued with them. Balmont, Bryusov, Merezhkovsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Hamsun, Pshibyshevsky - they all said the same thing, calling for a protest against a calm, balanced life, against the family hearth, calling for the rejection of happiness, for obscurity, for the destruction of the family, comfort. All this engulfed Blok: “Lord. So I can't do it anymore. I feel too good in my quiet white house. Give me the strength to say goodbye to him and see what life is like in the world. Soon his excitement found a channel for itself: he fell into the society of people who never left the language of the words "revolution", "rebellion", "anarchy", "madness". There were beautiful women "with an eternally crumpled rose on their chests" - with a raised head and parted lips. Wine flowed like a river. Everyone was "mad", everyone wanted to destroy the family, the home - his own together with someone else's.

But after all, Beketova says that everyone was fond of it.

Not all, by no means all. But Blok again slavishly submits to someone else's elements, however ... the revolution is choking, and now, a year later ... - Litvinov flashed his eyes, - he becomes a member of the Religious-Philosophical Society, in which the Merezhkovskys, Rozanov and Kartashev played a prominent role, - Litvinov shrugged his hands . - In 1910, Blok fell ill, the doctor found neurasthenia, loss of strength and advised spermine treatment and Swedish massage. Further - new novels and then unexpectedly "Our Ferdinand in Sarajevo was slammed away." The war has begun. “Alexander Alexandrovich met the news of the war with excitement and some kind of hope. He did not want to go to war, but he entered the nearest district guardianship, which provided assistance to the families of the reserve, did examinations and collected donations. Then he was enrolled in the organization of Zemsky and City Unions as a timekeeper of the 13th engineering and construction squad, which arranges fortifications. He writes: “For the most part very boring, almost doing nothing yet. I'm already used to living with everyone, so for now I suffer only from fleas and boredom. I got used to the mass of new impressions and people in two days as if I had been living here for a month.

I shrugged. Litvinov continued.

Then "a new flurry". Note that “the October Revolution, the collapse of the Constituent Assembly and the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Blok met with a new faith in the purifying power of the revolution. Beketova writes that it seemed to him that old world really collapses, and something new and beautiful must appear to replace it. He walked around young, cheerful, cheerful, with shining eyes, and listened to that "music of the revolution", to that noise from the fall of the old world, which was constantly heard in his ears. Blok himself wrote shortly before the “February Revolution” as follows: “The revolt of the purple worlds subsides. The violins who have been praising the ghost discover their true nature. And in the rarefied air, the bitter smell of almonds. In the lilac twilight of the vast world, a huge hearse sways, and on it lies a dead doll with a face vaguely reminiscent of the one that was seen through the heavenly roses ... ”At the same time, the vagueness of visions does not interfere with life. After the overthrow of the monarchy, power passed to the Provisional Government, the tsarist ministers were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and for some reason Blok joined the "Extraordinary Commission" to investigate the activities of these ministers - for 600 rubles a month salary. And then the “Great October Revolution” took place, the Bolsheviks put the ministers of the Provisional Government in the same fortress, and Blok went over to the Bolsheviks, became Lunacharsky’s personal secretary.

Hmmm, somewhat unexpectedly ... He perceived any changes with clearly inadequate enthusiasm.

Uh-huh, - mockingly nodded Michel. - At the same time, I do not want to comment on his stay in the camp of the Bolsheviks, his “Twelve” and the most ridiculous “Scythians”. This is just stupidity, and Bunin has long commented on everything for me. Further, as it is believed, "the poet was beaten to death." And the death of the poet is really mysterious. “He died somehow“ in general ”, because he was all sick, because he could no longer live,” Khodasevich said. Well, it's for the romantics. Beketova, on the other hand, describes Blok's last illness in great detail. At the beginning of 1921, nothing threatening had yet been found. He did not complain of being unwell, and only once during that winter did he develop some kind of suspicious pain in the region of the heart, which he mistook for something else and did not think to consult a doctor. And meanwhile, the disease, probably, was already creeping up on him. His nerves were in a very bad state, for the most part he was in the most gloomy mood. In mid-April, the first symptoms of the disease began, general weakness and severe pain in the arms and legs, but he was not treated. His mood at that time was terrible, and any unpleasant impression intensified the pain. In this dejected state, he went to Moscow. The performance at six nights finally tore his heart. Many heard from him that he was preparing for death. Despite all the triumphs, despite the most cordial reception given to him by the Muscovites, Blok was all the time unhappy, and animation did not return to him. He consulted in Moscow with a doctor who found nothing in him but exhaustion, anemia and deep neurasthenia. Blok returned home quite cheerful, but soon fell into his usual gloomy mood at that time. Shortly after his arrival, Blok had his first attack of heart disease, which began with a fever. Dr. Pekelis, who was called on this occasion, also did not immediately determine the heart disease: having confirmed the diagnosis of the Moscow doctor, he found that he had a severe nervous disorder, which he defined as a mental disorder that had not yet reached the degree of a clinical illness. This doctor was a very knowledgeable, intelligent and highly cultured and enlightened man. He wandered for a short time in the dark. At the first attacks of suffocation and pain in the chest, he listened to the heart and correctly diagnosed the disease, which was later confirmed by the famous professor Troitsky. By Pekelis' definition, Blok had inflammation of both heart valves. The disease began to develop rapidly. Dr. Pekelis, who visited A.A. daily, ordered him complete rest and ordered him to go to bed and not see anyone, so as not to tire his heart with conversations and impressions. But lying in bed worked so terribly on the patient's nerves that instead of benefit, it did harm. Last sickness it lasted almost three months. It was expressed mainly in shortness of breath and pain in the region of the heart during elevated temperature. The patient was very weak, his voice changed, he quickly began to lose weight, his eyes grew dim, his breathing was intermittent, and at the slightest excitement he began to choke. Here is how Korney Chukovsky describes him in the last year of his life: “In front of me was not Blok, but some other person, completely different, not even remotely similar to Blok. Rigid, gnawed, with empty eyes, as if covered with cobwebs. Even the hair, even the ears have changed.”

“Gnawed” sounds creepy… Was he starving?

No,” Litvinov remarked in a meaningful tone. - Blocks were offered money from all sides, medicines were delivered, chocolates and other sweets were sent. Lyubov Dmitrievna refused money, since there was enough of it, but she always accepted gifts and services with gratitude. In terms of food, she got everything she could get. The house had a quick and dexterous servant who provided substantial assistance. Blok, according to Beketova, “ate ham, fried chicken, fresh fish, caviar and fish soup, steaks, eggs, various pies, milk, berries, his favorite fresh raspberry jelly and cucumbers. Rolls, sugar, jam, chocolate, butter did not leave his table. They did not prepare sweet dishes for him, because he did not like them. But he ate, unfortunately, little. Sometimes he only woke up with an appetite and a special desire, for example, for fresh berries ... "

Thumbs up…

But it didn't help. After a temporary relief that came in June, the disease again laid its cruel hand on Blok, and everything began anew. On June 17, a council of three doctors was convened: Pekelis, Professor Troitsky, and Giese, a specialist in nervous diseases. The latter did not understand anything about Blok's illness, but Troitsky fully agreed with Pekelis in making a general diagnosis - he found the situation extremely serious and then told Pekelis: "We have lost Blok." Pekelis hid this opinion from the relatives of the patient for the time being. It was decided to take the patient to a sanatorium abroad. Trouble began about permission to go to Finland, but when it came, Blok was already so weak that it was unthinkable to move him from his place. A month before his death, the patient's mind began to darken. This was expressed in extreme irritability, a dejectedly apathetic state, and an incomplete consciousness of reality. From the memoirs of his wife: “In general, he had a terrible need to beat and break: several chairs, dishes, once in the morning, again, he walked around the apartment in annoyance, then he went from the hall into his room, closed the door behind him, and now but blows were heard, and something fell noisily. I went in, afraid that I would do myself some harm; but he had already finished smashing Apollo, who was standing on the cupboard, with the poker. This beating calmed him, and to my exclamation of surprise, not very approving, he calmly replied: “But I wanted to see how many pieces this dirty mug would fall apart.” But there were moments of enlightenment, after which the former came again. Dr. Pekelis attributed these phenomena, among other things, to cerebral edema associated with heart disease. The madness intensified and finally took sharp forms. He beat and crushed everything around, pounded dishes and marble figurines. The last two weeks have been the toughest. The process of inflammation went on unceasingly and quickly. Weakness reached extreme limits. But neither the doctor nor the wife still did not lose hope for recovery. Writer Yevgeny Knipovich recalls: “By the beginning of August, he was already almost all the time in oblivion, he was delirious at night and screamed a terrible cry, which I will never forget for the rest of my life. He was injected with morphine, but it did not help much ... ”Four days before the death of his son, the mother, called by the doctor, finally arrived in St. Petersburg. Blok suffered severely until the last minute. He died at 10 am on Sunday August 7, 1921 in the presence of his mother and wife. He didn't say anything before he died.

And why did he die? - I was confused. - What did the autopsy show?

Nothing. An autopsy was not performed, and there is no medical history either. Only Short story observation of one and a half years by the doctor Alexander Pekelis and the strange opinion of J. Mints, who diagnoses "epilepsy" mainly on the basis of Blok's poems. I’m not arguing with him here,” Michel interrupted himself. - His poetry is the poetry of twilight states of mind, and if I define it as ridiculous and stupid infantilism, nothing prevents the physician from expressing himself professionally. As a child, he had symptoms of hysteria, but it could also be epilepsy. Here I am not well versed. As a result, we can meet the opinion that Blok died of hunger-asthma-flu-overwork-heart attack-from "nothing to breathe in the atmosphere of Bolshevism" to disappointment-longing...

The temperature does not rise from melancholy, - I said confidently.

Reasonably, Michel did not challenge me. - At the time of his death, Blok was 40 years old. The last few years have been one of severe depression. Before death, madness became apparent. The cause of death was not indicated in the obituaries of official Soviet newspapers such as Izvestia.

As the old medical joke goes, in dubitantibus et ignorantibus suspice luem, that is, when in doubt or ignorance, always suspect syphilis.

Yes, the clinical picture of syphilis, which gave a complication to the brain, gives a breakdown of personality, fits of anger and aggressive delirium, is noticeable, here the symptoms are textbook, Michel agreed. - Chronic third stage affects various organs, including the nervous, respiratory and cardiovascular systems. In Blok's diary there is a mention of a medical examination for syphilis, which was carried out back in 1911. Syphilis was very common, it was easy to get infected in St. Petersburg. Blok's sexuality consisted of a few novels with actresses and frequent contacts with prostitutes. Doctors said that syphilis was not detected, but they stubbornly treated him allegedly for a rare disease with mercury and salvarsan. Perhaps they were just overthinking. Without making an accurate diagnosis, they proceeded from the possibility of the two most common contagious diseases in St. Petersburg at that time: tuberculosis and syphilis. Blok was ruled out for tuberculosis, but not for syphilis. The symptoms of the disease from which Blok died are similar to tertiary syphilis: constant complaints of chills, aches all over the body, limbs, pain in the heart. Somewhere six months before death - terrible pain in the legs, shortness of breath. Scorbutic tumors on the legs. Anemia. Feverish fluctuations in temperature. Terribly thin. A month before death - swelling, vomiting, pain in the pit of the stomach. Obvious mental abnormality, aggression. Before his death, Blok did not want to leave anything written, tore and burned drafts, manuscripts, published copies of the poem "The Twelve". It can be assumed that Blok really died of syphilis, the doctors knew this, but there was an instruction not to dirty the name of the poet, and they made up a fake conclusion about heart disease for posterity. Venereal diseases were considered shameful, characteristic of the social bottom. But…

After all, there was also Madame Kublitskaya-Piottuch, Blok's mother. Alexandra Andreevna generally had the property of spreading an anxious atmosphere around her, and her nervous disease, which did not weaken over the years, but intensified, could very seriously affect Blok. According to Dr. Pekelis, who advised her more than once on the occasion of her heart attacks, her nervous illness was of the same type as Blok's. The doctor was struck by the similarity of what his son and mother told him during his doctoral visits.

Are you implying that it could be a family disease?

Why not? Mendeleev writes: “Undoubtedly, the whole Blok family and he were not quite normal - I realized this too late, only after the death of all of them. Especially a lot of clarity was brought to me by her diaries and letters of Alexandra Andreevna, which fell into my hands after the death of Maria Andreevna. All this is a real pathology ... ”Modern doctors talk about subacute septic endocarditis. She disguises herself as fevers, neuroses, which doctors could fall for. In the final stage, meningoencephalitis, inflammation of the brain and its membranes with neurological symptoms, and death from heart failure or thromboembolism are added. However, if it's so simple, why wasn't an autopsy done?

Hmmm ... The singer of the Beautiful Lady could not die from a venus disease. Ugly. And most importantly ... somehow everything is absurd.

May the Lord be with him. But he did not lay hands on himself, and, I think, he could die from a pure illness. Michel looked out the window, where the snow was slowly falling. - Do you remember? “The same snow is whiter than an untouched and eternal robe. And the ever-pale wax of candles, and whitewashed cornices ... ”He is a Poet, damn him. And not just - Poet, but the last poet-aristocrat. People from the bottom always strive to climb higher, they - Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Yesenin - dreamed of glory and monuments. The thirst for glory has always distinguished the plebeians, and an excess of self-giving and the will to perfection is characteristic of the patricians. After all, Blok is a nobleman, one of the last aristocrats among all these self-satisfied upstarts. He dreamed not of monuments, but of Beautiful Ladies, he dreamed of the Soul of the World, he was kind, compassionate and even noble. And it's not his fault that he sometimes looked funny and stupid. In the age of parvenu, an aristocrat is always a little ridiculous.

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SINGER OF THE BEAUTIFUL LADY

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