Abstract
Aleksandr Blok's 1912 poem “The Commander's Footsteps” is a response to personal trauma and loss that points towards a collective catharsis in history, namely, the end of the feudal social order, signaled by the approach of an automobile in the night. A unique modernist re-imagining of the Don Juan legend's occult finale (the confrontation between Don Juan and the statue of the Commander he killed), written at the nadir of Blok’s personal happiness, the poem removes the elements of passion and desire to focus exclusively on the subject’s anxiety and guilt. Yet though the title of the poem famously heralds the retribution to be visited on Don Juan, the work notably omits any resolution-- beyond a cryptic prophecy that Donna Anna, Don Juan’s nemesis, victim and (within the poem’s anagrammatic structure, analyzed by V. V. Ivanov in a seminal 1982 paper) twin, will rise from the dead. The silent, ambivalent, un-dead ‘Dead Mother’ later theorized by André Green thus replaces the Phallic Mother and pre-Oedipal mother of Blok’s previous periods (preceding and immediately succeeding the failed 1905 Revolution) as the embodiment of hopes for a revolutionary cataclysm, likewise superseding the phallogocentric Law represented by the punishing patriarchal Commander.
Highlights
Heute verstehe ich es ja – ach, Du hast michs verstehen gelehrt! – daß das Gesicht eines Mädchens, einer Frau etwas ungemein Wandelhaftes sein muß für einen Mann, weil es meist nur Spiegel ist, bald einer Leidenschaft, bald einer Kindlichkeit, bald eines Müdeseins, und so leicht verfließt wie ein Bildnis im Spiegel, daß ein Mann leichter das Antlitz einer Frau verlieren kann
The closest readily available mythopoetic analogue to the Dead Mother might be an image from the work of another twentiethcentury artist heavily influenced by German Romanticism, namely Alfred Hitchcock: not the possessive, dominating cruelty of Mrs Bates in Psycho, but rather the inaccessibility and opacity of “Madeleine” in Vertigo, when she is staring into the portrait of Carlotta Valdes or otherwise lost in a reverie
Avril Pyman summarizes “Шаги Командора” as “the crystallization of the theme of retribution” (Pyman II, 98); since the personal and the political are inextricably intertwined in Blok’s vision of history and in his poetry, this implies both historical retribution against the ruling social class of which Blok was a member (Don Juan represents the aristocracy, the class which the coming Revolution will eliminate) and in the private sphere of romantic love, as a consequence of betrayal of ideals (Mints 219-223), as well as what can only be called the metaphysical sphere (Tager 90)
Summary
Heute verstehe ich es ja – ach, Du hast michs verstehen gelehrt! – daß das Gesicht eines Mädchens, einer Frau etwas ungemein Wandelhaftes sein muß für einen Mann, weil es meist nur Spiegel ist, bald einer Leidenschaft, bald einer Kindlichkeit, bald eines Müdeseins, und so leicht verfließt wie ein Bildnis im Spiegel, daß ein Mann leichter das Antlitz einer Frau verlieren kann.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
