The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita ({{lang-ru|?????? ? ?????????}}) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. Many people consider the book as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century - and also the most humorous.

The novel: settings, themes and narrative style

The novel alternates between three settings.

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The first is 1930s Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of Woland (??????), a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin, who arrives with a retinue that includes a grotesquely dressed "ex-choirmaster" valet Fagotto (?????, the name means "bassoon" in Russian and some other languages) , a mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth (???????, a subversive Puss in Boots), a fanged hitman Azazello (????????, a hint to Azazel), a pale-faced Abadonna (????????, a hint to Abbadon) with death-inflicting stare and a witch Gella (?????). The havoc wreaked by this group targets the literary elite, along with its trade union, MASSOLIT, its privileged HQ-cum-restaurant Griboyedov's House, corrupt social-climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike) – bureaucrats and profiteers – and, more generally, sceptical unbelievers in the human spirit, as Bulgakov understands it. The dazzling opening fanfare of the book, a comic tour-de-force, presents a head-on/head-off collision between the unbelieving head of the literary bureaucracy, Berlioz (???????), and an urbane foreign gentleman who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers (Woland). This is witnessed by a young and enthusiastically modern poet, Ivan Bezdomny (???? ?????????, the name means "Homeless"), whose gradual conversion from "modern" to "traditional" and rejection of literature (shades of Tolstoy and Sartre!) provides a unifying narrative and ideological development curve in the novel. In one of its facets the book is a Bildungsroman with Ivan as its focus. His futile attempt to chase and capture the "gang" and warn of their evil and mysterious nature both leads the reader to other central scenes and lands Ivan himself in a lunatic asylum. Here we are introduced to The Master, a bitter author, the petty-minded rejection of whose historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ has led him to such despair that he burns his manuscript and turns his back on the "real" world including his devoted lover, Margarita (?????????). Major episodes in the first part of the novel include another comic masterpiece – Satan's show at the Variety, satirizing the vanity, greed and gulllibility of the new rich – and the capture and occupation of Berlioz's flat by Woland and his gang.

Related Topics:
1930s - Moscow - Satan - Woland - Bassoon - Puss in Boots - Azazel - Abbadon - Griboyedov - Bildungsroman

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Eventually, in Part 2, we finally meet Margarita, the Master's mistress, who represents human passion and refuses to despair of her lover or his work. She is made an offer by Satan, and accepts it, becoming a witch with supernatural powers on the night of his Midnight Ball, or Walpurgis Night, which coincides with the night of Good Friday, linking all three elements of the book together, since the Master's novel also deals with this same spring full moon when Christ's fate is sealed by Pontius Pilate and he is crucified in Jerusalem.

Related Topics:
Walpurgis Night - Good Friday

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The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland talking to Berlioz ("I was there") and echoed in the pages of the Master's rejected novel, which concerns Pontius Pilate's meeting with Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus), his recognition of an affinity with and spiritual need for him, and his reluctant but resigned and passive handing over of him to those who want to kill him. There is a complex relationship between Jerusalem and Moscow throughout the novel, sometimes polyphony, sometimes counterpoint. The themes of cowardice, trust, treachery, intellectual openness and curiosity, and redemption are prominent.

Related Topics:
Pontius Pilate - Jesus

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The third setting is the one to which Margarita provides a bridge. Learning to fly and control her unleashed passions (not without exacting violent retribution on the literary bureaucrats who condemned her beloved to despair), and taking her enthusiastic maid Natasha with her, she enters naked into the world of the night, flies over the deep forests and rivers of Mother Russia, bathes, and, cleansed, returns to Moscow as the annointed hostess for Satan's great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they pour up from the opened maw of Hell.

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She survives this ordeal without breaking, borne up by her unswerving love for the Master and her unflinching acknowledgement of darkness as part of human life. For her pains and her integrity, she is rewarded well. Satan's offer is extended to grant her her deepest wish. She chooses to liberate the Master and live in poverty and love with him. In an ironic ending, neither Satan nor God think this is any kind of life for good people, and the couple leave Moscow with the Devil, as its cupolas and windows burn in the setting sun of Easter Saturday.

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The interplay of fire, water, destruction and other natural forces provides a constant accompaniment to the events of the novel, as do light and darkness, noise and silence, sun and moon, storms and tranquillity, and other powerful polarities.

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Ultimately, the novel deals with the interplay of good and evil, innocence and guilt, courage and cowardice, exploring such issues as the responsibility towards truth when authority would deny it, and the freedom of the spirit in an unfree world. Love and sensuality are dominant themes in the novel. Margarita's love for the Master leads her to leave her husband, but she emerges victorious, and doesn't end up under a train. Her spiritual union with the Master is also a sexual one. The novel is a riot of sensual impressions, but the emptiness of sensual gratification without love is illustrated time and again in the satirical passages. However, the stupidity of rejecting sensuality for the sake of empty respectability is also pilloried in the figure of the neighbour who becomes Natasha's hog-broomstick.

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The novel is heavily influenced by Goethe's Faust. Part of its brilliance lies in the different levels on which it can be read, as hilarious slapstick, deep philosophical allegory, and biting socio-political satire critical of not just the Soviet system but also the superficiality and vanity of modern life in general – jazz is a favourite target, ambivalent like so much else in the book in the fascination and revulsion with which it is presented. But the novel is also full of modern amenities like the model asylum, radio, street and shopping lights, cars, lorries, trams, and air travel. There is little evident nostalgia for any "good old days" – in fact, the only figure in the book to even mention Tsarist Russia is Satan himself.

Related Topics:
Goethe - Faust - Slapstick - Philosophical - Satire - Soviet

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The narrative is brilliant in that Bulgakov employs entirely different writing styles in the alternating sections. The Moscow chapters, ostensibly involving the more "real and immediate" world, are written in a fast-paced, almost farcical tone, while the Jerusalem chapters – the words of the Master's fiction – are written in a hyper-realistic style. (See Mikhail Bulgakov for the impact of the novel on other writers.) The tone of the narrative swings freely from Soviet bureaucratic jargon to the visual impact of film noir, from sarcastic to deadpan to lyrical, as the scenes dictate. Sometimes the presentation is like an omniscient voice-over, sometimes in-your-face action. Dozens of characters are in focus at various times (a Russian nod to the collective spirit that Tolstoy would salute), and the memorable figures are memorable for their significance rather than the space they occupy in the novel.

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It is fast-moving and shamelessly scenic – filmic through and through. It even employs some macabre horror elements.

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The book was never completed, and the final chapters are late drafts that Bulgakov pasted to the back of his manuscript. This draft status is barely noticeable to the casual reader, except perhaps in the very last chapter, which reads like notes of the way the main characters lived on in the author's imagination. It would probably be included in a dvd as extra material these days.

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Bulgakov's old flat, in which parts of the novel are set, since 1980s has become a target for Moscow-based Satanist groups, as well as of Bulgakov's fans, and defaced with various kinds of graffitti. The building's residents, in an attempt to deter these groups, are currently attempting to turn the flat into a museum of Bulgakov's life and works. Unfortunately, they are having trouble contacting the flat's anonymous owner.

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