The idea of love lost by the hands of a stranger or foreigner is a reoccurring theme in Blok’s writing and Stravinsky’s ballet. In Blok’s writings, he is prophesying the coming of dark times for Russia, in which people lose sight of what they once loved and are ultimately deceived. The way in which he portrays this deception is through the imagery of sorcery, witchcraft, and demons, as well as the numbing confusion of the blizzard. Both of these ideas lead to amazing spectacles that can beguile the mind but ultimately lead towards death and the loss of beauty and purity.
The sorcerers seduce and deceive and as a result the beauty of Russia is abused and tarnished, and the pure ideas of faith and love are confused. In this era of tumult and confusion, he does not know what god he believed or the girl he had loved. The blizzard, in all of its chaos overturned nature itself in the form of the sky causing the stars to fall, and with his eyes fixated on the descent, Blok writes about how he forgot about Russia and its landscapes that he loved. This deception by the blizzard distracts the individual from Russia in favor of the pure spectacle offered by the chaos.
The Russia that is being left behind, is in Blok’s eyes the true and right form of Russia as it was earlier in its glory days. In a time where the authority of the tsar is questioned and compromised, with the people seeking to destabilize the status quo through conflict and violence, he hearkens back to the simpler and more peaceful days that did not forebode this apocalyptic feeling. Those that would seek to turn Russia away from what it once was and plunge it into the blizzard are the sorcerers of whom he writes.
The foreign identity of the deceptive entity is seen in the ballet Petrouchka, in which the Moor steals away the girl Petrouchka loves. The Moor stands in sharp contrast to the other figures with his exotic style and dark skin and ultimately kills Petrouchka (I think) and steals away with the girl. Therefore what causes the downfall of Russia is a foreign element.