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GYÖRGY ZOLTÁN Józsa de coeur with the young page Aliscan, Bertran achieves purification on the battlefield for his true faith. In his agony, entering into a spiritual realm he is already in the possession of his spiritual organs. The Trumpets, born from the roar of the waves Call louder and louder! A rosy light gleams on the white crests of the leaden, nocturnal waves!!> The magic number four is given a high priority in Blok’s drama. The Rose and the Cross is divided into four acts, Izora, whose name implies an anagram of the mystic Rose, is surrounded by four male dramatis personae. The number four is predominantly associated with the four arms of the Cross. The mystic meaning of the number four had fascinated Blok’s imagination long before the project to write the play. Ample evidence for this is found in Blok’s correspondence with Andrej Bely. Blok first addresses the hidden implications of the number four by asking Bely to “explain the fourth initiation” to him. While enumerating facts which will the prove the sacred nature of the number four, Blok points out that the Vedas, “the most ancient script” ever written, consist of four books, Buddha teaches four truths, “the fourth is about the Way [?], the ultimate approximation of Nirvana”. Blok also declares that “four is his own number”, and that “to guess one’s own number is a way to know oneself and to give up self-assertion here.”! Let it be added that Blok’s musing over this subject is prompted by Bely’s compendious remark, in which he explicitly, still with some uncertainty, identifies “the symbol of the 4" initiation of Egyptian mysteries” with “the Cross”.”” Little research has been done on Bryusov’s dramatic heritage, which has only become accessible thanks to a recent edition. The dramatic etude titled The Pythagoreans, first published in 1920, is preeminent as an inventory of themes and problems with which Bryusov had been preoccupied throughout his career as a poet and writer. There are certain parallelisms with the issues discussed in the case of Blok. At the time of his work on the play, these problems, modulated by the historical cataclysm, led Bryusov to attempt to synthesize the concept and potential of interpreting the phenomenon of culture. The oneact play is harmonized with the sacral code of Russian Symbolist dramaturgy. Bryusov appeals to the mystic roots of the dramatic genre, including the rite of initiation, and incorporates his philosophical prism. 5 Ibid., 101. AHApeú Beariü u AaexcaHap Baox: Ilepenmcxa 1903-1911 A B. AaBpos (ed.) Mocxsa, Tporpecc-Ilaesaa, 2001, 38-39. 7 Ibid. 26. + 264 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 264 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:23
