Night, street, lamp, pharmacy,

Meaningless and dim light.

Live another quarter of a century —

Everything will be the same. There is no way out.

You will die — and start all over again,

And everything will repeat as before:

Night, the icy ripple of the canal,

Pharmacy, street, lamp.

In her memoirs, Gippius wrote about meeting Blok on October 14, 1912: “He pulled out the drawer of the desk, took out a quarter sheet of paper, and handed it to me. I read: ‘Night, street, lamp, pharmacy...’ <...> This now well-known octet is dated October 10, 1912; the conversation was on October 14. The poem struck me with its grim irony. The ‘pharmacy’ seemed a remarkable poetic achievement, only at first glance a random element among night, street, and lamp. I told Blok this and half-jokingly added that I would remember these verses all the more because there was a pharmacy near our house. But Blok said very seriously: ‘There is a pharmacy near every house.’ Yes, there was a pharmacy near Blok’s house too.”

Debates still rage about which pharmacy is meant in the second poem of Blok’s cycle “Dances of Death.” According to Korney Chukovsky, this pharmacy, owned by the pharmacist Vinnikov, was located on Officers’ Street, near the “canal” of the Pryazhka River, at house number 51. Blok passed by this pharmacy every day, sometimes several times. It was called the Alekseevskaya and was on the way to his house number 57 on the same street.

Academician Likhachev, citing the testimony of Blok’s friend Ivanov, pointed to another pharmacy near the Malaya Nevka. He wrote: “We were walking along Bolshaya Zelenina... And further, before the wooden bridge to Krestovsky Island..., on the left corner he showed me a pharmacy and said that Blok is always specific in his poetry (the same was usually repeated by his cousin), and in the poem ‘Night, street, lamp, pharmacy...’ he meant precisely this pharmacy. Blok loved to walk here, loved the Petrograd side in general, even after he settled on Officers’ Street. ... The bridge to Krestovsky Island was especially deserted at night, not guarded by city policemen. Perhaps that is why it always attracted suicides. Before the revolution, first aid in accidents was usually provided in pharmacies.” Likhachev believed that the wealthy pharmacy of Vinnikov near the Mariinsky Theater, frequented by the rich artistic world, hardly corresponded to the theme of death in water, unlike the pharmacy Ivanov pointed out to him. However, when asked why Blok called the Malaya Nevka a “canal,” Likhachev did not answer. He believed that Blok was a poet, not a photographer, and the canal in this case better corresponded to his generalized vision of Petersburg.

The bridge to Krestovsky Island was especially deserted at night, not guarded by city policemen. Perhaps that is why it always attracted suicides. Before the revolution, first aid in accidents was usually provided in pharmacies. In the pharmacy on the corner of Bolshaya Zelenina and the embankment (now Admiral Lazarev Embankment, house 44), help was often given to those who attempted suicide. It was a gloomy, out-of-the-way pharmacy. The sign of the pharmacy was large vases with colored liquids (red, green, blue, and yellow), behind which kerosene lamps were lit at night to make the pharmacy easier to find (a golden pretzel was the sign of a bakery, a golden bull’s head — a butcher’s, large glasses with blue lenses — an optical workshop, etc.). The shore on which the pharmacy stood was low at that time (now the old wooden bridge has been replaced by a reinforced concrete one, the approach to it raised, and the windows of the former pharmacy have sunk halfway into the ground; there is no pharmacy here anymore). The colored lights of the pharmacy and the kerosene lantern standing at the entrance to the bridge were reflected in the water of the Malaya Nevka. The “pharmacy of suicides” had an inverted reflection in the water; the low shore without a granite embankment seemed to cut the double body of the pharmacy: the real one and the one inverted in the water, the “mortal” one. The poem “Night, street...” consists of two quatrains. The second quatrain (a reflected-symmetrical counterpart to the first) begins with the word “You will die.” If the first quatrain, relating to life, begins with the words “Night, street, lamp, pharmacy,” then the second, speaking about how after death “everything will repeat as before,” ends with words that seem to turn inside out the beginning of the first: “Pharmacy, street, lamp.” In this poem, its content is amazingly fused with its structure. The reflection of the street, lamp, and pharmacy is depicted in an inverted form.

In fact, there was another pharmacy, Novo-Mariinskaya, on Officers’ Street (now Dekabristov Street), at house number 27, near the Kryukov Canal and opposite the Mariinsky Theater. It was opened around 1910. Its owner was the pharmacist’s assistant Yakov Ivanovich Mandelstamm, and the manager was pharmacist Leib Rubin Bobrov.

The next two poems in the “Dances of Death” cycle are also connected with suicide, water, pharmacy, and lamps:

Empty street. One light in the window.

The Jewish pharmacist moans in his sleep.

And in front of the cabinet labeled Venena (poison)

.............................................................

Skeleton...

Most likely, the “icy ripple of the canal” in A. Blok’s poem refers precisely to the Kryukov Canal.

Source:

https://naukarus.com/apteka-v-stihotvorenii-a-bloka-noch-ulitsa-fonar-apteka

http://ksana-k.narod.ru/Book/3tom/3/literatura/13.htm

https://kudago.com/spb/list/peterburg-bloka/