The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита) 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.

Contents

1 History 2 The novel: settings, themes and narrative style 3 Art and women in the novel 4 English translations 5 External links

History

Bulgakov started writing his most famous and critically acclaimed novel in 1928. The first version of the novel was destroyed (actually, burned in a stove, according to Bulgakov) in March 1930 when he was notified that his piece Cabal of Sanctimonious Hypocrites (Кабала святош) was banned. The work was restarted in 1931 and the second draft was completed 1936 in the form that has all plot lines of the final version. The third draft was finished in 1937, and Bulgakov continued polishing it with the aid of his wife, but he had to break the work with the fourth version four weeks before his death in 1940. The work was finished by his wife during 1940-1941.

A censored version (12% of the text removed and still more changed) of the book was first published in Moscow magazine (no. 11, 1966 and no. 1, 1967). Samizdat printed the text of all omitted and changed places with indications of the places of modification. In 1967 the publisher Posev Frankfurt printed a version produced with the aid of these inserts. In Russia, the first complete version was published by Khudozhestvennaya Literatura publisher in 1973, based on the version of the beginning of 1940 proofread by the publisher. It was the canonical edtion until 1989, when the last version was prepared by literature expert L.Yanovskaya basing on all available manuscripts.

The novel: settings, themes and narrative style

The novel alternates between three settings. The first is 1930s Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of Woland (Воланд), a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin, who arrives with a retinue that includes a grotesquely dressed "ex-choirmaster" valet Fagotto (Фагот, the name means "bassoon" in Russian and some other languages) , a mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth (Бегемот, a subversive Puss in Boots), a fanged hitman Azazello (Азазелло, a hint to Azazel), a pale-faced Abadonna (Абадонна, a hint to Abbadon) with death-inflicting stare and a witch Gella (Гелла). 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 (Берлиоз), 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 (Иван Бездомный, 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 (Маргарита). 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Art and women in the novel

The bitterest ironies of the book emerge if we consider Shelley's remark in the Defence of Poetry that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". As a poet/writer, the Master is so unacknowledged that he feels more at home in a lunatic asylum than in society, at the mercy of the actual legislators of the world. But the whole novel is directed at demonstrating to the corrupt philistines in power that they are less in control than they might wish. Above all they have no control over death or the spirit. They might mobilize the forces of darkness themselves, but fall short in a face-to-face contest with the Prince of Darkness. It is notable that Bulgakov attacks no actual political leaders. His targets are all minions of one kind or another, albeit comfortably placed minions, like Berlioz, the head of Massolit, the literary bureaucracy. Despite the grand gestures of universality – darkness and light, the world and the stars, historical and geographical range – the novel is to a great extent a psycho-drama playing itself out in the literary world. The protagonists are the Academy and Bohemia. Even Pilate and Christ clash on these terms of authority vs authenticity. Bulgakov induces a "willing suspension of disbelief" almost as effective as the tricks pulled off in the Variety by Woland, Fagotto the valet and Behemoth the cat. Georg Lukacs's remarks on naturalism in his critical work apply powerfully to this novel, too – focus on either the close-up surface texture of society, or the distant mystery of the stars at night. Treating the doings of a narrow circle as affairs of universal significance, and so on. No balanced middle ground. Bulgakov has all this.

And this affects his portrayal of women, too. Natasha seeks her freedom in witchdom, and Margarita flees respectability to devote herself to the service of her lover. She saves him, as Gretchen saves Faust, but likewise only because of the heroic challenge he has mounted to the "peace of the graveyard". "Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan", Goethe wrote – "the eternal feminine draws us onward" – and the feeling is the same in The Master and Margarita. Most of the other female characters in the book are wives or mistresses of males in positions with some social clout. Or unattractive biddies.

Of course, this courtly idealism with regard to women and relationships (and the ethos of the Middle Ages forms a clear motif in the book, especially in the internal relations of Satan's team) is nothing new in Russian or European literature. What is a little surprising is that such a traditional portrayal of a woman's role is so skilfully presented that the novel achieved cult status and still enjoys it to some extent, first in the Soviet Union and now in the Russian Federation.

English translations

There are four published English translations of The Master and Margarita:

• Mirra Ginsburg (Grove Press, 1967)
• Michael Glenny (Harper & Row, 1967)
• Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (Ardis, 1995)
• Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin, 1997)

Ginsburg's translation was from a censored Soviet text and is therefore incomplete. While opinions vary over the literary merits of the different translations and none of them can be considered perfect, the latter two are generally viewed as being more faithful to the nuances of the original.

Glenny's translation runs more smoothly than that of Pevear and Volokhonsky, but is very cavalier with the text, whereas Pevear and Volokhonsky pay for their attempted closeness by losing idiomatic flow. A close examination of almost any paragraph of the novel in these two versions in comparison with the original reveals shortcomings and glaring discrepancies, however.

External links

• Bulgakov and The Master and Margarita (http://cr.middlebury.edu/public/russian/Bulgakov/public_html/) – a useful introduction with lots of illustrative material.
• The Master and Margarita (http://bulgakow.chkebelski.de/texts_e.html) – Excerpts in three languages
• Complete online texts (http://lib.ru/BULGAKOW) – the full text in Russian, and in two English versions, Glenny and Pevear & Volokhonsky
• Full text in Russian (http://ilibrary.ru/text/459/) at Alexei Komarov's Internet Libraryde:Der Meister und Margarita

el:Ο Μαιτρ και η Μαργαρίτα he:האמן ומרגריטה pl:Mistrz i Małgorzata ru:Мастер и Маргарита (роман)