The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer's death, by his widow Elena Bulgakova (Russian: Елена Булгакова). The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and editions.
The story concerns a visit by the devil and his entourage to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. The devil, manifested as one Professor Woland, challenges the Soviet citizens' beliefs towards religion and condemns their behavior throughout the book. The Master and Margarita combines supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying categorization within a single genre. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires.[1][2]
History[edit]
Mikhail Bulgakov was a playwright and author. He started writing the novel in 1928, but burned the first manuscript in 1930 (just as his character The Master did) as he could not see a future as a writer in the Soviet Union at a time of widespread political repression.[3] He restarted the novel in 1931. In the early 1920s, Bulgakov had visited an editorial meeting of an atheist journal. He is believed to have drawn from this to create the Walpurgis Night ball of the novel.[4] He completed his second draft in 1936, by which point he had devised the major plot lines of the final version. He wrote another four versions. When Bulgakov stopped writing four weeks before his death in 1940, the novel had some unfinished sentences and loose ends. His novel was also written amidst heavy criticism for his other works and plays. During this time, he wrote to Stalin asking to be allowed to leave Russia because he felt the literature critics at the time were proving that Bulgakov's writing did not belong in Russia. This was not approved, which greatly affected the writing of the piece including the descriptions of the Master and his works.
A censored version, with about 12 percent of the text removed and more changed, was first published in Moskva magazine (no. 11, 1966 and no. 1, 1967).[5] A manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union to Paris, where the YMCA Press, celebrated for publishing the banned work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, published the first book edition in 1967.[6] The text, as published in the magazine Moskva in 1968, was swiftly translated into Estonian, remaining for decades the only printed edition of the novel in book form in the Soviet Union.[7] The original text of all the omitted and changed parts, with indications of the places of modification, was printed and distributed by hand in the Soviet Union (in the dissident practice known as samizdat). In 1969, the publisher Posev printed a version produced with the aid of these inserts.
In the Soviet Union, the novel was first published in book form in Estonian in 1968 with some passages edited out. The first complete version, prepared by Anna Sahakyants, was published in Russian by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura in 1973. This was based on Bulgakov's last 1940 version, as proofread by the publisher. This version remained the canonical edition until 1989. The last version, based on all available manuscripts, was prepared by Lidiya Yanovskaya.
Plot[edit]
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland. He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely dressed valet; Behemoth, a black cat; Azazello, a hitman; and Hella, a female vampire. They target the literary elite and Massolit, their trade union,[note 1] whose headquarters is Griboyedov House. Massolit consists of corrupt social climbers: bureaucrats, profiteers, and cynics. The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate: Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth), his recognition of an affinity with (and spiritual need for) Yeshua, and his reluctant acquiescence to Yeshua's execution. The Jerusalem plot of the novel is later revealed to be the novel written by the Master.
The novel's first part includes satirical depictions of Massolit and Griboyedov House; Satan's magic show at a variety theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed, and gullibility of the new elite; and Woland and his retinue appropriating Berlioz's apartment after his death. (Apartments – scarce in Moscow – were controlled by the state, and Bulgakov based the novel's apartment on his own.)
Part one opens with a confrontation between Berlioz (the head of Massolit) and Woland, who prophesies that Berlioz will die later that evening. This interaction between Woland and Berlioz is mirrored by the trial of Yeshua by Pontius Pilate. Woland entrances Ivan and Berlioz in the story that leads up to Yeshua's execution. In the story, Yeshua is presented as having inhuman characteristics. Woland tells this story to convince his audience of God's existence, but the two Soviet authors refuse to believe him. Although Berlioz dismisses his death prophecy as insane raving, he dies as the professor predicted. The fulfillment of his death prophecy is witnessed by Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, a young, enthusiastic, modern poet who uses the pen name Bezdomny ("homeless"). His nom de plume alludes to Maxim Gorky (Maxim the Bitter), Demyan Bedny (Demyan the Poor), and Michail Golodny (Michail the Hungry). His futile attempts to capture the "gang" (Woland and his entourage) and his warnings about their evil nature land Ivan in a lunatic psychiatric clinic, where he is treated by Stravinsky, a local doctor. The care he receives in the clinic is very good, especially by the standards of the time. It thus serves as an important place in the novel for many characters who Woland confronts, and derives special importance from its bringing together of Ivan and the Master, an embittered author whose name connects to the title of the text. Master explains to Ivan that the rejection of his novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ led the Master to burn his manuscript in despair and turn his back on Margarita, his devoted lover.
In Moscow, Woland and his retinue put on a show at the Variety theater. During the show master of ceremonies Bengalsky's head is ripped off then reattached at the urging of the audience. The audience is amazed when Koroviev makes money rain down and when Woland's retinue gives out luxury fashion items to the women of the audience. Later the money and clothes disappear, causing chaos and embarrassment. Here, Bulgakov portrays women's and men's sins very differently. The women of Moscow are condemned for accepting free clothing, while the men are condemned for adultery, excessive greed, etc., and the two are portrayed as equivalent transgressions. During this performance, Woland notes the lack of moral progress made in Soviet society, remarking that despite their technological advancements such as "buses, telephones, and other [apparatuses]," Muscovites remain "people like any other people... they love money, but that has always been so." This scene is a key moment in Bulgakov's societal criticism.
Ivan dreams of the execution of Yeshua as witnessed by Matthew Levi. In an attempt to save Yeshua from a torturous death, Levi steals a knife to kill him quickly, but he is too late to reach Yeshua. Yeshua hangs on the cross and suffers in the excruciating heat for hours until an executioner offers him some water and kills him. Levi cuts down Yeshua's body and carries it away.
Back in Moscow, after Woland's performance, the city is thrown into confusion. At the Variety Theatre, the highest-ranking employee left is Vassily Stepanovich, the bookkeeper. His attempt to make sense of the show's aftermath reveals a trail of chaos left by Woland and his retinue. Rubles are transforming into insects, bureaucrats have been replaced by animate suits, and entire offices have been cursed to break into song against their will. Similarly, Berlioz's uncle's attempt to claim his late nephew's apartment is thwarted by Behemoth and Azezello, who send him violently off. Immediately thereafter, Andrei Sokov, barman at the Variety Theatre, visits the apartment. Woland welcomes him in, offering fine food and drink, though Sokov declines these niceties. After some conversation, Woland reveals to Sokov that he will soon die of liver cancer and suggests that he spends his savings to enjoy a short life of hedonism.
Part two introduces Margarita, the Master's mistress, who refuses to despair of her lover and his work. Azazello gives her a magical skin ointment and invites her to the Devil's midnight Good Friday ball, where Woland gives her the chance to become a witch.
Margarita enters the realm of night and learns to fly and control her unleashed passions. Natasha, her maid, accompanies her as they fly over the Soviet Union's deep forests and rivers. Margarita bathes and returns to Moscow with Azazello as the hostess of Satan's spring ball. At Koroviev's side, she welcomes dark historical figures as they arrive from Hell.
Margarita survives the ordeal, and Satan offers to grant her deepest wish. She chooses to ask to free a woman she met at the ball from eternal punishment. The woman, who had been raped, murdered her child; her punishment was to wake each morning next to the handkerchief she used to smother it. Satan tells Margarita that she liberated the woman, and still has a wish to claim from him. She asks for the Master to be delivered to her and he appears, dazed and thinking he is still in the lunatic asylum. They are returned to the basement apartment which had been their love nest.
Matthew Levi delivers the verdict to Woland: the reunited couple will be sent to the afterlife. Azazello brings them a gift from Woland: a bottle of Pontius Pilate's (poisoned) wine. The Master and Margarita die; Azazello brings their souls to Satan and his retinue (awaiting them on horseback on a Moscow rooftop), and they fly away into the unknown, as cupolas and windows burn in the setting sun, leaving Earth behind and traveling into dark cosmic space. The Master and Margarita will spend eternity together in a shady, pleasant region resembling Dante Alighieri's Limbo, in a house under flowering cherry trees.
Woland and his retinue, including the Master and Margarita, become pure spirits. Moscow's authorities attribute its strange events to hysteria and mass hypnosis. In the final chapter, Woland tells the Master to finish his novel about Pontius Pilate – condemned by cowardice to limbo for eternity. The Master shouts "You are free! He is waiting for you!"; Pontius Pilate is freed, walking and talking with the Yeshua whose spirit and philosophy he had secretly admired. Moscow is now peaceful, although some experience great disquiet every May full moon. Ivan Ponyrev becomes a professor of philosophy, but he does not write poetry anymore.
Interpretations[edit]
There are several interpretations of the novel:
- Response to aggressive atheistic propaganda
Some critics suggest that Bulgakov was responding to poets and writers whom he believed were spreading atheist propaganda in the Soviet Union, and denying Jesus Christ as a historical person. He particularly objected to the anti-religious poems of Demyan Bedny. The novel can be seen as a rebuke to the aggressively "godless people." There is justification in both the Moscow and Judaea sections of the novel for the entire image of the devil. Bulgakov uses characters from Jewish demonology as a retort to the denial of God in the USSR.[citation needed]
Literary critic and assistant professor at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts Nadezhda Dozhdikova notes that the image of Jesus as a harmless madman presented in ″Master and Margarita″ has its source in the literature of the USSR of the 1920s, which, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus in the works of Strauss, Renan, Nietzsche and Binet-Sanglé, put forward two main themes – mental illness and deception. The mythological option, namely the denial of the existence of Jesus, only prevailed in the Soviet propaganda at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s.[8]
- Reflection of Bulgakov's experiences as a Soviet writer
Commentators often note autobiographical elements in the novel.[9] Beyond parallels between fictional characters and Bulgakov's acquaintances, the work has been examined as a reflection of Bulgakov's own psychological troubles[10] spurred by the oppression he faced in his creative career. Some also interpret Ivan and the Master as prototypes of the extremities of Soviet attitudes towards writers. Whereas Ivan is a celebrated rising star supported by MASSOLIT, the Master is a literary outsider who is at once denounced and cast away after submitting his novel for publishing. As a Soviet writer, Bulgakov walked a fine line between the two. Professor of religion and peace studies Alexandra Carroll analyzes Woland through the lens of Jungian psychology, suggesting that Woland serves as a "shadow archetype",[10] which she defined as a "paradoxical figure of evil that appears malevolent, yet works towards an individual's psychological renewal".[10] Other commentators note that Bulgakov's life experiences have also likely influenced the Yershalaim narrative of the novel; Haber and Weeks argue that it is Bulgakov's father's academic work that influenced the narrative,[11] rather than Bulgakov's own view of evil. Weeks interprets this as "Bulgakov's return to elements of his own childhood."[10]