Hello and welcome back, everyone! I’m excited to be continuing my blog this semester and I wanted to start by visiting The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This novel has quickly become a favorite of mine, and I only regret that I didn’t read it sooner. At its core, this text is a masterclass of satire, irony, and fantasy, the likes of which I can only compare to the works of Vonnegut, O’Connor, and Wallace. If you’re a fan of the actively surreal, you will no doubt love this novel. Before we jump into the text, I’d like to focus on the author, as the life of Mikhail Bulgakov is central to understanding his Magnum Opus.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kyiv before the turn of the 20th century. At the outbreak of World War 1, he volunteered with the Red Cross and was almost immediately sent to the front lines where he was nearly fatally wounded twice. To deal with the pain of his wounds, he began injecting himself with morphine, to which he quickly became addicted, another struggle he chronicles in his 1926 novel, Morphine. After he quit morphine cold turkey, he settled back into Kyiv as a physician only to be called to the White Army at the outbreak of the Russian Civil War. During his time with the White Army, he contracted Typhus. Though recovered after barely surviving the disease, he was banned from leaving Russia altogether. With the rise of the Soviets, his family fled to Paris, but for the rest of his life, he was never permitted to travel and didn’t see his family again until he was on his deathbed. While certainly tragic, this entrapment was perhaps the spark needed to ignite his literary pursuits. With the Soviets on the rise, he abandoned his medical practice entirely, dedicating his life to writing plays, novels, stories, and biographies. All of this started, as he details in his autobiography, on more or less of a whim. While he had always been infatuated with the works of Dostoevsky, Dickens, Pushkin, and many others, he hadn’t fancied himself a writer until, out of curiosity, boredom, or some inclination, he wrote a story while traveling at night by train. After a few short hours of writing, he got off the train and immediately took it to the publisher of the town’s newspaper who, upon reading it, took it in for publication that same night.
This was the beginning of a career nearly as absurd as his own writing. That very same year, 1919, almost immediately after swearing off his career as a physician, Bulgakov found immediate fame by publishing his first book Future Perspectives, and writing two plays, Self Defense and The Turbin Brothers, all of which were promptly lauded by critics and audiences alike. Makes ya think about your own achievements, doesn’t it? Bulgakov spent the next years settling in Moscow, where he would remain until his death in 1940. During his early Moscow years, a strange less-than-friendship blossomed with none other than Joseph Stalin. Though his novels were already widely censored, with most being completely banned by Stalin, the leader of the Soviets took a personal affection for Bulgakov’s writing, and even defended him amidst angry critics. Stalin was a fan of Bulgakov’s plays, especially The Day of the Turbins, which Stalin saw at least a reported fifteen times. Stalin praised Bulgakov (and saved his life) through the years, all the while censoring his works. By 1929, Bulgakov was banned from being published altogether- no more plays, no more stories, no more novels. Bulgakov wrote a letter personally to Stalin, begging him for permission to leave Russia, but to no avail. The leader called him after multiple letters and gave Bulgakov a job as a stage director’s assistant. While he may have had an income in these years, he was still not permitted to publish his work. Years of anguish and seemingly fruitless writing followed. Many of Bulgakov’s manuscripts were literally torn to shreds by publishers or hidden away. One manuscript, however, was thrown into a fire by Bulgakov himself, thus beginning the perceived end of The Master and Margarita. This masterpiece of a novel, after being thrown into the fire, was reshaped entirely by memory. Bulgakov revised the novel chapter by chapter until his death in 1940, leaving the duty of publication to his wife, who published the book in 1966. Even then, the novel was heavily censored until the manuscript was smuggled to Paris for full publication by the YMCA Press in 1967.
рукописи не горят– “Manuscripts do not burn.” This quote, found in the novel, quickly became a popular saying in Russia to connote the permanence of Art. Though it may face scrutiny, censorship, and destruction, authenticity is eternal.
As mentioned above, the core of this novel is satire. In a strictly secular political and literary world, Bulgakov set out to challenge the absurdity of life under the Soviet Union. The novel opens on Patriarch’s Ponds, a park in the Presnensky district of Moscow, where Bulgakov himself resided. Even this established setting is absurd, as “Patriarch’s Ponds” has only had one pond for the past two centuries. The first characters introduced to us are a poet and a publisher in the Russian literary elite, whose conversation ranges from the heat of the day to good and bad poetry. In the park, they meet a mysterious man who claims to be a professor of the dark arts, sent to Moscow for a conference. The professor makes wild claims ranging from the prediction of death to memories of having breakfast with Kant. This is where the novel initially becomes absurd beyond reason, setting up expectations for the rest of the novel. I don’t want to give too much away here, but honestly, even spoiling the events leaves much to be desired, so really, please read it yourself. This professor begins a conversation about Yeshua’s crucifixion, claiming to have known Pontius Pilate and witnessed the entire day. This is where Bulgakov starts writing stories within stories within stories. The reader is taken through Jesus’s last day, the depiction of which is still remarkably fresh, but ultimately the reader and the characters are left on a cliffhanger as the professor decides he’s done telling his story. The two writers confront the professor, demanding his identification, to which the professor laughs and obliges. What follows is absolute hilarity ranging from decapitation to a feline walking on its hind legs and paying a bus fare. See? Even spoiling these things brings more questions than answers.
“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!”
Therein lies the genius of this novel. Bulgakov seamlessly blurs the lines between character and reader, author and speaker, reality and fantasy, etc. and in the midst of all of this novel’s absurdity, tells a tragic, inspiring love story. A love story amidst devils, writers, politicians, mental patients, and Heaven and Hell themselves consumes the second half of the novel. Bulgakov clearly works himself and his wife into this through his depictions of the Master and Margarita. The Master, whose name we do not learn, is a writer condemned into exile by the Soviets for writing an absurd novel about Pontius Pilate. Like Bulgakov, the Master throws the manuscript into a stove, living the rest of his days in agony. Margarita, on the other hand, is his devoted love, who takes on his life’s work as her responsibility in hopes of embracing him again. Their journey through literal and metaphorical Hell is one worth witnessing yourself, and all this is barely scratching the surface of this novel. Before you jump in, I’d like to recommend the version translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor. This translation is known to capture the wonders of Bulgakov’s writings and is certainly my personal recommendation, but as even the translators state, no translation will ever capture the genius of Bulgakov’s final Russian version- so if you read Russian, proceed with that route and tell me what you think. At the risk of droning or spoiling more, I’ll leave this picture of the novel here. For a two or three-day read, this novel is absolutely mindblowingly absurd, hilarious, and remarkably fresh. I highly recommend you partake in Bulgakov’s masterfully crafted world.
-Samuel McFerron, Blog Editor.
Samuel McFerron – Blog Editor, Prose Editor & Poetry Editor: Samuel is a Junior at Lewis University. They are double majoring in English Literature and Philosophy. They aspire to become a professor of U.S. Literature and spend most of their free time reading and writing. They hope to improve upon their writing and literary analysis skills during their time here at Lewis and are seeking publication within this time frame. Some authors they recommend are David Foster Wallace, Milan Kundera, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Emma Goldman.