...
Show More
feeling high from this book, but certainly not as high as bulgakov when he wrote this
Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book
Community Reviews
Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
32(32%)
4 stars
37(37%)
3 stars
30(30%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
99 reviews
...
Show More
Soviet Ghost Stories
Stories, stories, all is stories: political stories, religious stories, scientific stories, even stories about stories. We live inside these stories. Like this one in The Master and Margarita. The story that we can more or less agree upon we call reality. But is it real?
Story-making and telling is what we do as human beings. Through stories we create meaning out of thin air, in the same way that plants create their food from light, and usually with about the same level of casual unconsciousness. We then learn to share meaning and thereby create language and societies. We call this culture and have little idea what it means or how it works.
What happens when stories, particularly stories about stories, are inhibited or forbidden? The most important result: society goes mad. And that part of society which becomes most mad is that of the professional story-tellers who, because they are the carriers of the essential human and cultural talent, become less than human. They are unable to tell the stories needed by the rest of us and enter a dream-like state of inexplicability and meaninglessness.
The Master and Margarita is obviously a satire, a purposeful distortion of language to demonstrate its corrupt use. It is also obviously meant to recall the necessity for religious stories in a society that has degraded and mocked them. But for me the book is less about the corruption of Soviet society and its attitude toward the Christian religion and more about the even more fundamental beliefs that are the unspoken tenets of story-telling, that is to say, the philosophy of literature.
In an important sense, literature is indistinguishable from religion. Religion cannot exist without it; but it is likely that literature could exist without religion. Literature precedes religion. Bulgakov notices this in his story of Christ before Pilate.
This is not to say that literature should cause trouble for religion. The use of language is itself a religious experience even when it is used to parody religion as in Bulgakov's Communion of Sinners Ball and demonic Eucharist. Literature, consequently, exists as a spiritual (and social) rather than a material (and merely sensory) process. Materialism, of a Marxist, Capitalist, Scientific or any other sort, tells a story that cannot account for where its story comes from. Its causes cannot be enumerated and accounted for. Such a story is deficient and incomplete.
Stories do not appear to be 'in nature' but they do comment upon nature. It is not inaccurate to say that they come from 'elsewhere.' And it is this elsewhere that is both the source and guarantor of the integrity of the stories that get told. Without the existence of this infinitely fecund elsewhere, the realm of the spirit, there is no way to verify the stories we tell ourselves. As Bulgakov has a psychiatrist point out to one writer, "People can go around telling all sorts of stories! But you don’t have to believe everything!”
It is this spiritual elsewhere that Bulgakov has intruding on and disrupting Russian civil society. In time-honoured fashion, the intruders are portrayed as devils who are able to exploit the presumptuous conceits of this society, especially those of the literary elite of the MASSOLIT, the state-run literary guild. It is the writers who sense this intrusion first and it is they who are quite properly driven mad - or to their death - by it.
Bulgakov's demonic characters are up-front in their challenge to cultural reality. They make a reductio ad absurdum by denying the reality of language and the society and the culture associated with it. "The seductive mystics lie, there are no Caribbean Seas on earth, and desperate filibusters do not sail them, and a corvette does not give chase, and cannon smoke does not spread above the waves. There is nothing, and never was there anything either!" This challenge of course passes over the heads of the Soviet Citizenry.
From the writers, the plague induced by constrained and distorted story-telling spreads to minor government officials. The local housing officer is the first casualty and he instinctively recognises the problem, "Comrades!... We’ve got unclean spirits in our building!” And he's right: the spiritual cannot be excluded, only deformed, by telling a story that denies the spirit. Such denial is patently a confirmation of what is being denied.
It is through entertainment, 1930's stage vaudeville, that the condition is spread through the wider population. The presumably hidden or at least repressed culture of Soviet consumer society is shown for what it is - impressed as deeply as in any capitalist society by the linguistic distortions of brand names and wealth without purpose. The 'watching mass' has no idea that it is being shown itself, literally exposed, in all its mendacious cupidity.
Even love, ultimately the cohesive force of marriage and family as well as society, is a product of language. It appears from that spiritual elsewhere, "as a murderer leaps out from under the ground in a side street” for the Master. Love may start with a look but it doesn’t progress beyond fantasy unless the look is the beginning of a shared story, interpreted by Margarita as an eternally fated event. The object that keeps them together while apart is of course the manuscript of the Master's book, an alternative gospel.
If the medieval troubadours are not enough evidence of the cultural determination of the meaning of love, surely the varieties of love articulated in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and accepted by generations since, clinch the case. Any society that attempts to limit what love, in all its variants, might mean is doomed by its own contradictions; and not just the Soviet variety. But it is Bulgakov’s conception of divine love that I find the most disturbing aspect of the piece.
Any theologically aware person must at some point confront the problem of evil. Evil demands a story. The monotheistic religions subscribe to the story line that not only the Creator but his creation are ‘good.’ How then does the obvious evil in the world come about?
The existence of evil is typically explained with one of several largely inadequate theories: Evil is a spontaneous development of a rebellious force against the goodness of God and His works; Evil is not an autonomous force but merely the localised absence of the divine within creation; Evil is actually inherent in a world that was formed by a subsidiary god.
This last theory has a number of designations but is usually associated with the third century CE Persian Mani. So-called Manichaeism is the perennial thinking persons solution to the problem of evil since it accounts for the available facts of life without the need to invent a number of questionable metaphysical entities. It needs only one such beast - the flawed demiurge, a satanic figure who made a few mistakes in the way he shaped the cosmos and we have been dealing with the consequences ever since.
It becomes apparent in The Master and Margarita that Bulgakov rejects all the classical theological explanations for evil, especially Manichaeism. But the resulting theology is not easy to digest. He suggests that what appears as evil, the work of Satan in the world, is in fact the disguised work of God. Bulgakov's contemporary, Carl Jung, termed this the Shadow and conceived it as an integral part of the divine. In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov echoes Jung exactly in Satan's criticism of the evangelist Matthew:
In other words: God is Satan; Satan is God. And God/Satan cannot be avoided or escaped. Even within evil, God is present. He is present among the atrocious evil-doers of his demonic ball; among the crass bureaucrats and proletarian graspers in the audience of the Black Magician; among the scammers and players of the system who try to get one-up on their fellow citizens; in Pilate and in Judas. And presumably God is present and active therefore within and through Soviet society despite official protestations to the contrary. (The idea of Soviet Moscow as Paradise Lost is perhaps the greatest irony/truth that Bulgakov expresses in the book)
Of course Bulgakov does not make a theological argument. He tells a story. But in this story Satan as well as his devoted angels transform suddenly into their opposites, caring agents of human well-being; then into clownish Loki or Coyote trinitarian figures whose function is to play the fool with social institutions. There is no logic that can capture this divine turnaround from evil to love and play. But there is a narrative in which it can be described, and, on the basis of that description, be believed.
Bulgakov’s technique, as well as the substance of his story, is not very different from, for example, the story of Exodus in which the God of Israel both allows the imprisonment of his people and then saves them from the situation he allowed to happen. The story also presents an alternative account of creation itself - as a text produced and protected by Adam and Eve, a couple which is bound together by it. Going beyond biblical bounds, religion itself is accounted for by the Master, the new Adam:
The theme, almost a running joke, is clear: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. The situation is dire but not hopeless. Exile from the Garden means freedom as well as toil. This is a theme that demands great faith to assert. More than I have had at times certainly.
Stories, stories, all is stories: political stories, religious stories, scientific stories, even stories about stories. We live inside these stories. Like this one in The Master and Margarita. The story that we can more or less agree upon we call reality. But is it real?
Story-making and telling is what we do as human beings. Through stories we create meaning out of thin air, in the same way that plants create their food from light, and usually with about the same level of casual unconsciousness. We then learn to share meaning and thereby create language and societies. We call this culture and have little idea what it means or how it works.
What happens when stories, particularly stories about stories, are inhibited or forbidden? The most important result: society goes mad. And that part of society which becomes most mad is that of the professional story-tellers who, because they are the carriers of the essential human and cultural talent, become less than human. They are unable to tell the stories needed by the rest of us and enter a dream-like state of inexplicability and meaninglessness.
The Master and Margarita is obviously a satire, a purposeful distortion of language to demonstrate its corrupt use. It is also obviously meant to recall the necessity for religious stories in a society that has degraded and mocked them. But for me the book is less about the corruption of Soviet society and its attitude toward the Christian religion and more about the even more fundamental beliefs that are the unspoken tenets of story-telling, that is to say, the philosophy of literature.
In an important sense, literature is indistinguishable from religion. Religion cannot exist without it; but it is likely that literature could exist without religion. Literature precedes religion. Bulgakov notices this in his story of Christ before Pilate.
“These good people,” the prisoner began, hastily added “Hegemon” and continued: “learnt nothing and muddled up all I said. In general, I’m beginning to worry that this muddle will continue for a very long time. And all because he records what I say incorrectly.”This is a direct attack on the ‘veracity’ of the gospel of Matthew. Bulgakov here implicitly contrasts religion against literature in his expanded and reinterpreted version of the biblical story of Jesus's condemnation and death; and he comes down decisively for literature as the more fundamental mode of thinking. The only thing beyond a text is... another text.
This is not to say that literature should cause trouble for religion. The use of language is itself a religious experience even when it is used to parody religion as in Bulgakov's Communion of Sinners Ball and demonic Eucharist. Literature, consequently, exists as a spiritual (and social) rather than a material (and merely sensory) process. Materialism, of a Marxist, Capitalist, Scientific or any other sort, tells a story that cannot account for where its story comes from. Its causes cannot be enumerated and accounted for. Such a story is deficient and incomplete.
Stories do not appear to be 'in nature' but they do comment upon nature. It is not inaccurate to say that they come from 'elsewhere.' And it is this elsewhere that is both the source and guarantor of the integrity of the stories that get told. Without the existence of this infinitely fecund elsewhere, the realm of the spirit, there is no way to verify the stories we tell ourselves. As Bulgakov has a psychiatrist point out to one writer, "People can go around telling all sorts of stories! But you don’t have to believe everything!”
It is this spiritual elsewhere that Bulgakov has intruding on and disrupting Russian civil society. In time-honoured fashion, the intruders are portrayed as devils who are able to exploit the presumptuous conceits of this society, especially those of the literary elite of the MASSOLIT, the state-run literary guild. It is the writers who sense this intrusion first and it is they who are quite properly driven mad - or to their death - by it.
Bulgakov's demonic characters are up-front in their challenge to cultural reality. They make a reductio ad absurdum by denying the reality of language and the society and the culture associated with it. "The seductive mystics lie, there are no Caribbean Seas on earth, and desperate filibusters do not sail them, and a corvette does not give chase, and cannon smoke does not spread above the waves. There is nothing, and never was there anything either!" This challenge of course passes over the heads of the Soviet Citizenry.
From the writers, the plague induced by constrained and distorted story-telling spreads to minor government officials. The local housing officer is the first casualty and he instinctively recognises the problem, "Comrades!... We’ve got unclean spirits in our building!” And he's right: the spiritual cannot be excluded, only deformed, by telling a story that denies the spirit. Such denial is patently a confirmation of what is being denied.
It is through entertainment, 1930's stage vaudeville, that the condition is spread through the wider population. The presumably hidden or at least repressed culture of Soviet consumer society is shown for what it is - impressed as deeply as in any capitalist society by the linguistic distortions of brand names and wealth without purpose. The 'watching mass' has no idea that it is being shown itself, literally exposed, in all its mendacious cupidity.
Even love, ultimately the cohesive force of marriage and family as well as society, is a product of language. It appears from that spiritual elsewhere, "as a murderer leaps out from under the ground in a side street” for the Master. Love may start with a look but it doesn’t progress beyond fantasy unless the look is the beginning of a shared story, interpreted by Margarita as an eternally fated event. The object that keeps them together while apart is of course the manuscript of the Master's book, an alternative gospel.
If the medieval troubadours are not enough evidence of the cultural determination of the meaning of love, surely the varieties of love articulated in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and accepted by generations since, clinch the case. Any society that attempts to limit what love, in all its variants, might mean is doomed by its own contradictions; and not just the Soviet variety. But it is Bulgakov’s conception of divine love that I find the most disturbing aspect of the piece.
Any theologically aware person must at some point confront the problem of evil. Evil demands a story. The monotheistic religions subscribe to the story line that not only the Creator but his creation are ‘good.’ How then does the obvious evil in the world come about?
The existence of evil is typically explained with one of several largely inadequate theories: Evil is a spontaneous development of a rebellious force against the goodness of God and His works; Evil is not an autonomous force but merely the localised absence of the divine within creation; Evil is actually inherent in a world that was formed by a subsidiary god.
This last theory has a number of designations but is usually associated with the third century CE Persian Mani. So-called Manichaeism is the perennial thinking persons solution to the problem of evil since it accounts for the available facts of life without the need to invent a number of questionable metaphysical entities. It needs only one such beast - the flawed demiurge, a satanic figure who made a few mistakes in the way he shaped the cosmos and we have been dealing with the consequences ever since.
It becomes apparent in The Master and Margarita that Bulgakov rejects all the classical theological explanations for evil, especially Manichaeism. But the resulting theology is not easy to digest. He suggests that what appears as evil, the work of Satan in the world, is in fact the disguised work of God. Bulgakov's contemporary, Carl Jung, termed this the Shadow and conceived it as an integral part of the divine. In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov echoes Jung exactly in Satan's criticism of the evangelist Matthew:
"Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it? After all, shadows come from objects and people."
In other words: God is Satan; Satan is God. And God/Satan cannot be avoided or escaped. Even within evil, God is present. He is present among the atrocious evil-doers of his demonic ball; among the crass bureaucrats and proletarian graspers in the audience of the Black Magician; among the scammers and players of the system who try to get one-up on their fellow citizens; in Pilate and in Judas. And presumably God is present and active therefore within and through Soviet society despite official protestations to the contrary. (The idea of Soviet Moscow as Paradise Lost is perhaps the greatest irony/truth that Bulgakov expresses in the book)
Of course Bulgakov does not make a theological argument. He tells a story. But in this story Satan as well as his devoted angels transform suddenly into their opposites, caring agents of human well-being; then into clownish Loki or Coyote trinitarian figures whose function is to play the fool with social institutions. There is no logic that can capture this divine turnaround from evil to love and play. But there is a narrative in which it can be described, and, on the basis of that description, be believed.
Bulgakov’s technique, as well as the substance of his story, is not very different from, for example, the story of Exodus in which the God of Israel both allows the imprisonment of his people and then saves them from the situation he allowed to happen. The story also presents an alternative account of creation itself - as a text produced and protected by Adam and Eve, a couple which is bound together by it. Going beyond biblical bounds, religion itself is accounted for by the Master, the new Adam:
"Of course, when people have been completely pillaged, like you and me, they seek salvation from a preternatural force!"And he is immediately corrected by Margarita, the new Eve with eminent practicality, "Preternatural or not preternatural –isn’t it all the same? I’m hungry.”
The theme, almost a running joke, is clear: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. The situation is dire but not hopeless. Exile from the Garden means freedom as well as toil. This is a theme that demands great faith to assert. More than I have had at times certainly.
...
Show More
„Ние с тебе говорим, както винаги, на различни езици — отвърна Воланд, — но от това нещата, за които говорим, не се променят.“
„Майстора и Маргарита“ е великолепен роман! Булгаков е създал неповторима фантастична история за пристигането на Дявола и неговата свита в Москва през 20-те години на миналия век. Тя представлява и брилянтна сатира на живота в тези времена - първите години на Съветския съюз. Освен това, авторът пренася читателите и в Йерусалим по времето на Пилат Понтийски - когато римският прокуратор не посмява да отмени смъртната присъда на Йешуа (Иисус)...
Любовта между Маргарита и Майстора е наистина впечатляваща! Както е казано: любовта пронизва като финландска кама... Междувременно Майстора пише исторически роман за Пилат, който е отхвърлен и заклеймен от тогавашната тоталитарна цензура. Появяването на Воланд, Бегемот, Азазело и останалите внася невероятен смут в съветското общество, което отказва да повярва в съществуването им, а и не осъзнава, че всъщност има повече отрицателни черти от самите демони. Книгата съдържа много и изключително силни мисли, които са вечно актуални! Най-силно засегната е непреходната тема за връзката между доброто и злото... Ако все още не сте прочели „Майстора и Маргарита“, то много силно препоръчвам, а и завиждам, че за пръв път ще се потопите в нея!
„— Ами кажете защо Маргарита ви нарича Майстор? — попита Воланд. Човекът се усмихна:
— Простима слабост. Тя има прекалено високо мнение за романа, който написах.
— Роман за какво?
— Роман за Пилат Понтийски.
И пак езичетата на свещите се олюляха и заподскачаха, съдовете върху масата зазвънтяха, Воланд се разсмя гръмогласно, но не уплаши и не учуди никого с този смях. Бегемот, кой знае защо, изръкопляска.
— За какво, за какво? За кого? — заговори Воланд и престана да се смее. — В наше време? Това е покъртително! Не можахте ли да намерите друга тема? Я дайте да видя — и Воланд протегна длан.
— За съжаление е невъзможно — отвърна Майстора, — защото го изгорих в печката.
— Извинете, но не ви вярвам — възрази Воланд, — това е изключено. Ръкописите не горят — той се обърна към Бегемот и каза: — Хайде, Бегемот, дай тук романа.“
„Майстора и Маргарита“ е великолепен роман! Булгаков е създал неповторима фантастична история за пристигането на Дявола и неговата свита в Москва през 20-те години на миналия век. Тя представлява и брилянтна сатира на живота в тези времена - първите години на Съветския съюз. Освен това, авторът пренася читателите и в Йерусалим по времето на Пилат Понтийски - когато римският прокуратор не посмява да отмени смъртната присъда на Йешуа (Иисус)...
Любовта между Маргарита и Майстора е наистина впечатляваща! Както е казано: любовта пронизва като финландска кама... Междувременно Майстора пише исторически роман за Пилат, който е отхвърлен и заклеймен от тогавашната тоталитарна цензура. Появяването на Воланд, Бегемот, Азазело и останалите внася невероятен смут в съветското общество, което отказва да повярва в съществуването им, а и не осъзнава, че всъщност има повече отрицателни черти от самите демони. Книгата съдържа много и изключително силни мисли, които са вечно актуални! Най-силно засегната е непреходната тема за връзката между доброто и злото... Ако все още не сте прочели „Майстора и Маргарита“, то много силно препоръчвам, а и завиждам, че за пръв път ще се потопите в нея!
„— Ами кажете защо Маргарита ви нарича Майстор? — попита Воланд. Човекът се усмихна:
— Простима слабост. Тя има прекалено високо мнение за романа, който написах.
— Роман за какво?
— Роман за Пилат Понтийски.
И пак езичетата на свещите се олюляха и заподскачаха, съдовете върху масата зазвънтяха, Воланд се разсмя гръмогласно, но не уплаши и не учуди никого с този смях. Бегемот, кой знае защо, изръкопляска.
— За какво, за какво? За кого? — заговори Воланд и престана да се смее. — В наше време? Това е покъртително! Не можахте ли да намерите друга тема? Я дайте да видя — и Воланд протегна длан.
— За съжаление е невъзможно — отвърна Майстора, — защото го изгорих в печката.
— Извинете, но не ви вярвам — възрази Воланд, — това е изключено. Ръкописите не горят — той се обърна към Бегемот и каза: — Хайде, Бегемот, дай тук романа.“
...
Show More
https://instagram.com/p/Ctg4HFwLyB6/
Hilarious and charming satire of life, love, and artistic expression in the Soviet Union. Our characters, ranging from average to absurd, hateful to heroic, wrestle with doing what is duty, what is allowed, and what is right, what is wanted. Even on surface level this story is wildly entertaining, but once you sit back and digest what the book is really saying, it gains so much depth and meaning. I will be thinking about this for a very long time! Highly recommended.
Bonus points: Behemoth reminds me of the personality of my own mischievous kitten and was easily one of my favorite parts.
Hilarious and charming satire of life, love, and artistic expression in the Soviet Union. Our characters, ranging from average to absurd, hateful to heroic, wrestle with doing what is duty, what is allowed, and what is right, what is wanted. Even on surface level this story is wildly entertaining, but once you sit back and digest what the book is really saying, it gains so much depth and meaning. I will be thinking about this for a very long time! Highly recommended.
Bonus points: Behemoth reminds me of the personality of my own mischievous kitten and was easily one of my favorite parts.
...
Show More
I wasn’t too sure what I was getting into with a book as famous and as beloved as “The Master and Margarita”. I had cracked it open once before, and barely made past page 10 before giving up – but to be fair, my head was not in the right place for a book like that at the time. This time around, I needed to cleanse my brain of the memory of a clumsily written and disappointing read, and I just figured Bulgakov had waited on my shelf long enough, and that he would do the trick.
“The Master and Margarita” is a strange and surreal novel that could not have been written had its author not felt trapped by the oppressive Soviet regime that kept such a tight leach on artists; it's a political satire that denounces the idea of people being put to death for saying the wrong thing, it's a strange Russian fairy tale where the Devil and witches on broomsticks flying over Moscow interact with ordinary humans and makes fun of their greed and selfishness, and finally, it is the sort of strange literary tour-de-force that commands respect, even if you don’t understand everything that’s going on all the time.
It is a remarkably tricky novel to summarize: one story line is set in 1930s Moscow, mostly following the poet Ivan Homeless and the people he comes into contact with after a strange encounter at the Patriarch’s Pond; the other narrative thread focuses on Pontius Pilate and how he came to condemn a man named Yeshua to death because what that man had said had been grossly misunderstood. Ivan meets a nameless writer only known as the Master, and the Master's mistress, Margarita, catches the Devil's eye and he asks her to host a ball.
A lot of people have noted the humour in “The Master and Margarita”, and while I wouldn’t say that it is laugh-out-loud funny, it definitely has a bittersweet and often absurd irony, which I suppose is as hilarious as you can expect Russian literature to get. The magical realism is about as far from the South American brand of magical realism you’d find, for example, in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, because it is darker, and more sinister – as Russian fairy tales tend to be. The theme of madness is right under the surface, as most of the characters who encounter Woland end up in a psychiatric hospital, believed by everyone else to be completely insane, when all they did was describe the events exactly as they had happened to them. This made me smile, but it also made me sad, because it rings painfully familiar – and strangely, reminded me a bit of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), where a lot of people end up in an asylum, not because they are insane, but simply because the world is too insane for them.
I read that Bulgakov’s view of the question of evil was that the work of Satan was the work of God in disguise. I have always found that view fascinating, and closely echoing Taoism: one is separate and both at the same time. When Woland shows up with his retinue of mischievous and bizarre demons, he doesn’t really seduce and corrupt anyone: he just nudges people towards their worse instincts, and they take the one step too far all by themselves – eventually suffering very karmic consequences.
I feel like I will need to read it again to absorb more details, and also because while I enjoyed it, it's hard for me to put my finger on precisely what I loved about it. The strange characters, the absurd events, the wild plot? I get 4 stars for now, but who know what I'll think next time around?
(All the Russian literature I’ve read so far this year has been translated by Pevear and Volokonsky; I’ve been happy with those translations, though I understand their monopoly of major Russian works is a bit controversial.)
“The Master and Margarita” is a strange and surreal novel that could not have been written had its author not felt trapped by the oppressive Soviet regime that kept such a tight leach on artists; it's a political satire that denounces the idea of people being put to death for saying the wrong thing, it's a strange Russian fairy tale where the Devil and witches on broomsticks flying over Moscow interact with ordinary humans and makes fun of their greed and selfishness, and finally, it is the sort of strange literary tour-de-force that commands respect, even if you don’t understand everything that’s going on all the time.
It is a remarkably tricky novel to summarize: one story line is set in 1930s Moscow, mostly following the poet Ivan Homeless and the people he comes into contact with after a strange encounter at the Patriarch’s Pond; the other narrative thread focuses on Pontius Pilate and how he came to condemn a man named Yeshua to death because what that man had said had been grossly misunderstood. Ivan meets a nameless writer only known as the Master, and the Master's mistress, Margarita, catches the Devil's eye and he asks her to host a ball.
A lot of people have noted the humour in “The Master and Margarita”, and while I wouldn’t say that it is laugh-out-loud funny, it definitely has a bittersweet and often absurd irony, which I suppose is as hilarious as you can expect Russian literature to get. The magical realism is about as far from the South American brand of magical realism you’d find, for example, in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, because it is darker, and more sinister – as Russian fairy tales tend to be. The theme of madness is right under the surface, as most of the characters who encounter Woland end up in a psychiatric hospital, believed by everyone else to be completely insane, when all they did was describe the events exactly as they had happened to them. This made me smile, but it also made me sad, because it rings painfully familiar – and strangely, reminded me a bit of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), where a lot of people end up in an asylum, not because they are insane, but simply because the world is too insane for them.
I read that Bulgakov’s view of the question of evil was that the work of Satan was the work of God in disguise. I have always found that view fascinating, and closely echoing Taoism: one is separate and both at the same time. When Woland shows up with his retinue of mischievous and bizarre demons, he doesn’t really seduce and corrupt anyone: he just nudges people towards their worse instincts, and they take the one step too far all by themselves – eventually suffering very karmic consequences.
I feel like I will need to read it again to absorb more details, and also because while I enjoyed it, it's hard for me to put my finger on precisely what I loved about it. The strange characters, the absurd events, the wild plot? I get 4 stars for now, but who know what I'll think next time around?
(All the Russian literature I’ve read so far this year has been translated by Pevear and Volokonsky; I’ve been happy with those translations, though I understand their monopoly of major Russian works is a bit controversial.)
...
Show More
Swimming Against the Stream
This was my second reading of “The Master and Margarita”, although the first must have been in the mid-70’s.
I had vivid memories of the first reading, although if you had asked me to describe them, I wouldn’t have been able to. All I can recall is something fluid and magical.
I hesitate to use the term “Magical Realism”, because I wasn’t aware of it at the time and, besides, I dispute whether the term applies to Bulgakov’s work.
My experience this time was quite different. It was a new translation, and I was initially skeptical about its merits.
Ultimately, I think I was unduely critical of the translation. At the beginning, I read, almost seeking fault in the text. I did find it, too, stiff and wooden expressions, but after a while I willed myself to overlook them.
If I continued to swim against the stream, I would never let this work win me over again. I stopped struggling, and let the stream take me to the source of its meaning.
After a while, I stopped noticing that the carpet was frayed or that the paint on the wall was chipped. It started to feel like a lounge room again and I got comfortable on my couch.
And so I entered the dream world that is “TM&M” and started to take it all in again.
All of My Heart
At its heart, “TM&M” is a satire about the Soviet Union at the peak of its oppression in the 1930’s.
Stalin ascended to power in 1927 and immediately took drastic steps to drag the Soviet economy into the twentieth century.
Collectivisation saw major inroads into personal and creative freedom, while the rest of the world looked on, not without its own problems, moving towards a second great war.
The arts were expected to reinforce the culture of Socialism, and Socialist Realism was imposed on artists.
The formal radicalism that had flowered at the same time as the Revolution was clipped and discarded.
Only, one Mikhail Bulgakov found that Socialist Realism was not the appropriate vehicle for the tales he wanted to tell.
Between 1928 and his death in 1940, Bulgakov started to construct his story his own way.
He was capable of descriptive realism, but he had also mastered the fantasy stylings of fairy tales and the parable structure of the Bible.
These styles flew around his head and poured onto the page, only to be rejected, altered, rearranged, burnt, rewritten, reconstructed and published in different iterations.
His progress was plagued by both institutional and personal censorship.
Still, the structure and substance of what he wanted to say was firmly etched in his mind.
After one spate of burning, when he sat down to rewrite it, his wife asked how he could remember it.
According to the translators, his reply was, “I know it by heart.”
Bulgakov died at the age of 49, before he could see his work published.
He gave this work all of his heart, he committed it to memory and then into writing, so that those around him could have the heart required to change what they saw around them.
Tearing the Fabric of Socialist Society
The Soviet Union of the 1930’s was supposed to be a product of Scientific Socialism and Historical Materialism.
The Materialist conception of History predicted and dictated that Socialism would one day overthrow Capitalism in each country.
However, the timing in each country was not certain, which left scope for the subjective intervention of a Revolutionary Vanguard.
The more premature the Revolution, the more despotic would be the measures required to retain power against Counter-Revolutionary forces.
The firm hand of Stalin did not waver from the task, indeed he seemed to thrive on it.
He turned society on itself. He turned child against parent, sibling against sibling, friend against friend, lover against lover, neighbor against neighbor, student against teacher, writer against artist.
In the process, he destroyed the fabric of society, the threads that hold it together. Love, trust, respect, truth.
In their place grew fear, hatred, suspicion, paranoia, falsity, propaganda, opportunism, careerism, cynicism.
Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, the security forces that preserved the State were responsible for the greatest insecurity in the people it was designed to serve.
Normality in a Normative State
Social and political norms were imposed from above by the State.
Normality wasn’t spontaneous, it was State-sanctioned.
The normal ceased to be individual and became a dictate of the State.
The normal was captive to the social norms of the collective.
The ordinary was subjected to order and became “ordernary”.
Totalitarianism destroyed things of ordinary beauty by turning them into the mundane.
The State Defies the Imagination
Bulgakov couldn't help but point out that the Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes.
He didn’t just do this in his work. His vocal stance made many enemies in the Socialist Political and Cultural Establishment, and it’s a wonder he didn’t simply vanish before his premature death.
However, his enemies inflicted the greatest damage possible on an author by denying him the right to publish and therefore denying him the lifeblood that every artist needs, an audience.
Thus, Bulgakov died a broken man, and potentially with a broken heart.
Yet, he had the foresight to make his own plight the implicit subject of his novel.
The Master of the title is much like Bulgakov personally. Margarita is much like his third wife, the wife at the time of his death.
Equally, the Moscow that he wrote of was much like the Moscow of the 30’s.
The State was a Totalitarian Dictatorship that had destroyed civil society and turned people upon themselves.
Truth was manipulated. People hear what is supposed to be the truth, and if they have the courage, proclaim, “That cannot be.”
What they hear doesn’t sound right. So life under Totalitarianism, life in a Totalitarian State defies the imagination.
Imagination Defies the State
Bulgakov recognized that the converse was also true.
Whatever the personal cost, it takes an act of the imagination, an act of fantasy to defy a Totalitarian State.
Totalitarianism wants control of your mind. Therefore, you can only defy Totalitarianism in your mind.
To defy it otherwise is to put your life at risk. To do so inevitably means that you will vanish or disappear.
Ultimately, this is why Bulgakov’s story is structured as a fantasy or a fairy tale or a parable.
It is as powerful as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”.
Even if the man, the author, is broken, the power of his fantasy, the product of his imagination cannot be broken, at least once it has escaped captivity (or destruction) and been published.
As the novel states, perhaps optimistically, “you cannot burn a manuscript.”
The power of Bulgakov’s fantasy, its fantastic narrative structure (in both senses of the word “fantastic”) was what allowed him to memorise and reconstruct it and preserve it for posterity.
The fantasy is constructed with the vividness of a fairy tale that can be learned and told orally, so that its outline cannot be forgotten.
It can be reconstructed after consecutive burnings.
Its memorability constituted its greatest danger, the greatest threat to the State.
It was engraved in and out of the Soul of Man under Socialism.
It originates as and becomes and remains an act of the collective imagination, the collective consciousness.
There, it cannot be destroyed.
This is the secret of its power and its danger to the State.
The Power of Love
The Master and Margarita are at the heart of Bulgakov’s story, and theirs is a love story.
It would be tempting to comment about the redemptive power of Love.
However, I think that might miss the point.
Bulgakov’s point is that Love is a natural quality of civil society.
Love is one of the primary qualities that suffers under Totalitarianism.
"TM&M" is not so much a story about the redemptive power of Love, it is about the rescue of Love, and the restoration of Love to its natural place in Society.
There can be no Society, no Family, no Individuals without Love.
If you quash Love, you destroy Society, the Family and the Individual.
And this is what Stalin had achieved in the Soviet Union under Communism.
Ironically, Socialism was conceived as a Political Philosophy of Fraternal Love.
Just as it was inspired by Liberty and Equality, two values promoted by the French Revolution, it valued Fraternity, a value that is less understood and discussed.
Fraternity promotes the value not just of the Individual, but of the Individual in Society.
It is concerned with the coexistence of Individuals and the relationship between them.
In this sense, it is compatible with the social teachings of Jesus Christ, when divorced from the spiritual and religious content.
"Cowardice is the Most Terrible of Vices"
In a way, Bulgakov contrasted Christ and Stalin, Christianity and Socialism (in practice), through the novel written by the Master.
In 1930’s Moscow, the Totalitarian State went so far as to deny the existence not just of God, but of Christ.
Whether or not you believe Jesus was the Son of God, it’s arguable that Jesus lived and that Pontius Pilate reluctantly had him killed on behalf of Caesar.
Pilate personally seems to have questioned whether he should be killed, but he lacked the courage to allow him to live.
In ordering his crucifixion, he almost killed off a philosophy of Fraternal Love, just as Stalin later destroyed faith in Socialism by attacking the Fraternalism at its heart.
Pilate lacked the courage to defy Caesar. Likewise, few stood up to Stalin and survived.
In this sense, both Pilate and the Soviet Union prove Bulgakov’s assertion that "Cowardice is the most terrible of vices."
Many Soviets were simply ignorant of the truth, whether willfully or not.
It is difficult to make them culpable in a Society where they might have disappeared, if they poked their head above the crowd.
Bulgakov reserves his greatest scorn for those who did know the Truth.
In his eyes, there is no greater coward than someone who knows the Truth and denies it.
A Flight of Fantasy
Ultimately, in order to seek the Truth and to find Love, the Master and Margarita must fly away from Moscow.
To the State, they constitute a flight risk. It takes the power of flight to liberate them from Totalitarianism.
It takes a flight of fantasy to escape. They have to flee to be free.
Again, this message is at the heart of the danger of Bulgakov’s tale.
The Soviet Union could not tolerate a message that suggested that salvation might be elsewhere, whether on Earth or in Heaven.
For those who remain, the salvation of the Master and Margarita is a folly.
Yet, each full moon, the researcher Ivan Homeless can see that it is the world of Socialism that is a folly.
In the world of the Master and Margarita, in the world of Love, the luminary Moon rules and plays, while on Earth, in the world of Socialism, lunacy prevails.
Falling in Love
It’s interesting that the character who offers the Lovers an escape route is Professor Woland, the Satan character.
While I might have misread Bulgakov’s intentions, it seems that Woland and Satan don’t so much represent Evil as Free Will, the ability to make up your own mind, notwithstanding the dictates of the State or Religion.
This is perhaps the relevance of Bulgakov’s Epigraph from Goethe's "Faust", in which Mephistopheles says:
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
There is a suggestion that there is only one force or power, and that it consists of both good and evil.
Life therefore is a product of the internal dialectical operation of good and evil.
Each of us can only hope that the product of the interaction is Love, that our Fall (whether graceful or not, whether a Fall from Grace or towards it) is to fall in Love, as it was for the Master and Margarita.
If you fall, may you fall into the arms of Love.
And when you do, may you remember the Master and Margarita. And the man who died at age 49 trying to tell us the Truth.
The Master's Wish for Margarita
We kiss with our words
They are the lips of our minds
Which have become one.
SOUNDTRACK:
Buzzcocks - "Ever Fallen in Love?" (Live at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester in June, 1978):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unxlh2...
Magazine - "A Song From Under The Floorboards":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBfh86...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Madonna of the Wasps":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryLSFW...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Birdshead":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdzIRK...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Arms of Love":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC6-gG...
R.E.M. - "Arms of Love [Robyn Hitchcock Cover]":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2xDpm...
ABC - "All Of My Heart":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfph30...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "The Power Of Love":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW9_zm...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Two Tribes":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUn...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Relax":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyl5Dl...
Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBecM3...
Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil [Live in St Louis on the 1998 Bridges to Babylon Tour]":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLddJ1...
This was my second reading of “The Master and Margarita”, although the first must have been in the mid-70’s.
I had vivid memories of the first reading, although if you had asked me to describe them, I wouldn’t have been able to. All I can recall is something fluid and magical.
I hesitate to use the term “Magical Realism”, because I wasn’t aware of it at the time and, besides, I dispute whether the term applies to Bulgakov’s work.
My experience this time was quite different. It was a new translation, and I was initially skeptical about its merits.
Ultimately, I think I was unduely critical of the translation. At the beginning, I read, almost seeking fault in the text. I did find it, too, stiff and wooden expressions, but after a while I willed myself to overlook them.
If I continued to swim against the stream, I would never let this work win me over again. I stopped struggling, and let the stream take me to the source of its meaning.
After a while, I stopped noticing that the carpet was frayed or that the paint on the wall was chipped. It started to feel like a lounge room again and I got comfortable on my couch.
And so I entered the dream world that is “TM&M” and started to take it all in again.
All of My Heart
At its heart, “TM&M” is a satire about the Soviet Union at the peak of its oppression in the 1930’s.
Stalin ascended to power in 1927 and immediately took drastic steps to drag the Soviet economy into the twentieth century.
Collectivisation saw major inroads into personal and creative freedom, while the rest of the world looked on, not without its own problems, moving towards a second great war.
The arts were expected to reinforce the culture of Socialism, and Socialist Realism was imposed on artists.
The formal radicalism that had flowered at the same time as the Revolution was clipped and discarded.
Only, one Mikhail Bulgakov found that Socialist Realism was not the appropriate vehicle for the tales he wanted to tell.
Between 1928 and his death in 1940, Bulgakov started to construct his story his own way.
He was capable of descriptive realism, but he had also mastered the fantasy stylings of fairy tales and the parable structure of the Bible.
These styles flew around his head and poured onto the page, only to be rejected, altered, rearranged, burnt, rewritten, reconstructed and published in different iterations.
His progress was plagued by both institutional and personal censorship.
Still, the structure and substance of what he wanted to say was firmly etched in his mind.
After one spate of burning, when he sat down to rewrite it, his wife asked how he could remember it.
According to the translators, his reply was, “I know it by heart.”
Bulgakov died at the age of 49, before he could see his work published.
He gave this work all of his heart, he committed it to memory and then into writing, so that those around him could have the heart required to change what they saw around them.
Tearing the Fabric of Socialist Society
The Soviet Union of the 1930’s was supposed to be a product of Scientific Socialism and Historical Materialism.
The Materialist conception of History predicted and dictated that Socialism would one day overthrow Capitalism in each country.
However, the timing in each country was not certain, which left scope for the subjective intervention of a Revolutionary Vanguard.
The more premature the Revolution, the more despotic would be the measures required to retain power against Counter-Revolutionary forces.
The firm hand of Stalin did not waver from the task, indeed he seemed to thrive on it.
He turned society on itself. He turned child against parent, sibling against sibling, friend against friend, lover against lover, neighbor against neighbor, student against teacher, writer against artist.
In the process, he destroyed the fabric of society, the threads that hold it together. Love, trust, respect, truth.
In their place grew fear, hatred, suspicion, paranoia, falsity, propaganda, opportunism, careerism, cynicism.
Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, the security forces that preserved the State were responsible for the greatest insecurity in the people it was designed to serve.
Normality in a Normative State
Social and political norms were imposed from above by the State.
Normality wasn’t spontaneous, it was State-sanctioned.
The normal ceased to be individual and became a dictate of the State.
The normal was captive to the social norms of the collective.
The ordinary was subjected to order and became “ordernary”.
Totalitarianism destroyed things of ordinary beauty by turning them into the mundane.
The State Defies the Imagination
Bulgakov couldn't help but point out that the Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes.
He didn’t just do this in his work. His vocal stance made many enemies in the Socialist Political and Cultural Establishment, and it’s a wonder he didn’t simply vanish before his premature death.
However, his enemies inflicted the greatest damage possible on an author by denying him the right to publish and therefore denying him the lifeblood that every artist needs, an audience.
Thus, Bulgakov died a broken man, and potentially with a broken heart.
Yet, he had the foresight to make his own plight the implicit subject of his novel.
The Master of the title is much like Bulgakov personally. Margarita is much like his third wife, the wife at the time of his death.
Equally, the Moscow that he wrote of was much like the Moscow of the 30’s.
The State was a Totalitarian Dictatorship that had destroyed civil society and turned people upon themselves.
Truth was manipulated. People hear what is supposed to be the truth, and if they have the courage, proclaim, “That cannot be.”
What they hear doesn’t sound right. So life under Totalitarianism, life in a Totalitarian State defies the imagination.
Imagination Defies the State
Bulgakov recognized that the converse was also true.
Whatever the personal cost, it takes an act of the imagination, an act of fantasy to defy a Totalitarian State.
Totalitarianism wants control of your mind. Therefore, you can only defy Totalitarianism in your mind.
To defy it otherwise is to put your life at risk. To do so inevitably means that you will vanish or disappear.
Ultimately, this is why Bulgakov’s story is structured as a fantasy or a fairy tale or a parable.
It is as powerful as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”.
Even if the man, the author, is broken, the power of his fantasy, the product of his imagination cannot be broken, at least once it has escaped captivity (or destruction) and been published.
As the novel states, perhaps optimistically, “you cannot burn a manuscript.”
The power of Bulgakov’s fantasy, its fantastic narrative structure (in both senses of the word “fantastic”) was what allowed him to memorise and reconstruct it and preserve it for posterity.
The fantasy is constructed with the vividness of a fairy tale that can be learned and told orally, so that its outline cannot be forgotten.
It can be reconstructed after consecutive burnings.
Its memorability constituted its greatest danger, the greatest threat to the State.
It was engraved in and out of the Soul of Man under Socialism.
It originates as and becomes and remains an act of the collective imagination, the collective consciousness.
There, it cannot be destroyed.
This is the secret of its power and its danger to the State.
The Power of Love
The Master and Margarita are at the heart of Bulgakov’s story, and theirs is a love story.
It would be tempting to comment about the redemptive power of Love.
However, I think that might miss the point.
Bulgakov’s point is that Love is a natural quality of civil society.
Love is one of the primary qualities that suffers under Totalitarianism.
"TM&M" is not so much a story about the redemptive power of Love, it is about the rescue of Love, and the restoration of Love to its natural place in Society.
There can be no Society, no Family, no Individuals without Love.
If you quash Love, you destroy Society, the Family and the Individual.
And this is what Stalin had achieved in the Soviet Union under Communism.
Ironically, Socialism was conceived as a Political Philosophy of Fraternal Love.
Just as it was inspired by Liberty and Equality, two values promoted by the French Revolution, it valued Fraternity, a value that is less understood and discussed.
Fraternity promotes the value not just of the Individual, but of the Individual in Society.
It is concerned with the coexistence of Individuals and the relationship between them.
In this sense, it is compatible with the social teachings of Jesus Christ, when divorced from the spiritual and religious content.
"Cowardice is the Most Terrible of Vices"
In a way, Bulgakov contrasted Christ and Stalin, Christianity and Socialism (in practice), through the novel written by the Master.
In 1930’s Moscow, the Totalitarian State went so far as to deny the existence not just of God, but of Christ.
Whether or not you believe Jesus was the Son of God, it’s arguable that Jesus lived and that Pontius Pilate reluctantly had him killed on behalf of Caesar.
Pilate personally seems to have questioned whether he should be killed, but he lacked the courage to allow him to live.
In ordering his crucifixion, he almost killed off a philosophy of Fraternal Love, just as Stalin later destroyed faith in Socialism by attacking the Fraternalism at its heart.
Pilate lacked the courage to defy Caesar. Likewise, few stood up to Stalin and survived.
In this sense, both Pilate and the Soviet Union prove Bulgakov’s assertion that "Cowardice is the most terrible of vices."
Many Soviets were simply ignorant of the truth, whether willfully or not.
It is difficult to make them culpable in a Society where they might have disappeared, if they poked their head above the crowd.
Bulgakov reserves his greatest scorn for those who did know the Truth.
In his eyes, there is no greater coward than someone who knows the Truth and denies it.
A Flight of Fantasy
Ultimately, in order to seek the Truth and to find Love, the Master and Margarita must fly away from Moscow.
To the State, they constitute a flight risk. It takes the power of flight to liberate them from Totalitarianism.
It takes a flight of fantasy to escape. They have to flee to be free.
Again, this message is at the heart of the danger of Bulgakov’s tale.
The Soviet Union could not tolerate a message that suggested that salvation might be elsewhere, whether on Earth or in Heaven.
For those who remain, the salvation of the Master and Margarita is a folly.
Yet, each full moon, the researcher Ivan Homeless can see that it is the world of Socialism that is a folly.
In the world of the Master and Margarita, in the world of Love, the luminary Moon rules and plays, while on Earth, in the world of Socialism, lunacy prevails.
Falling in Love
It’s interesting that the character who offers the Lovers an escape route is Professor Woland, the Satan character.
While I might have misread Bulgakov’s intentions, it seems that Woland and Satan don’t so much represent Evil as Free Will, the ability to make up your own mind, notwithstanding the dictates of the State or Religion.
This is perhaps the relevance of Bulgakov’s Epigraph from Goethe's "Faust", in which Mephistopheles says:
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
There is a suggestion that there is only one force or power, and that it consists of both good and evil.
Life therefore is a product of the internal dialectical operation of good and evil.
Each of us can only hope that the product of the interaction is Love, that our Fall (whether graceful or not, whether a Fall from Grace or towards it) is to fall in Love, as it was for the Master and Margarita.
If you fall, may you fall into the arms of Love.
And when you do, may you remember the Master and Margarita. And the man who died at age 49 trying to tell us the Truth.
The Master's Wish for Margarita
We kiss with our words
They are the lips of our minds
Which have become one.
SOUNDTRACK:
Buzzcocks - "Ever Fallen in Love?" (Live at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester in June, 1978):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unxlh2...
Magazine - "A Song From Under The Floorboards":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBfh86...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Madonna of the Wasps":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryLSFW...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Birdshead":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdzIRK...
Robyn Hitchcock - "Arms of Love":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC6-gG...
R.E.M. - "Arms of Love [Robyn Hitchcock Cover]":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2xDpm...
ABC - "All Of My Heart":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfph30...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "The Power Of Love":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW9_zm...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Two Tribes":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUn...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Relax":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyl5Dl...
Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBecM3...
Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil [Live in St Louis on the 1998 Bridges to Babylon Tour]":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLddJ1...
...
Show More
“Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for long, long years
Stole a million men’s soul and faith
I was around when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and faith
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game”
- Mick Jagger, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (1968)
************
“May I sit down?' the foreigner asked politely. 'Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say Jesus never existed?' ‘No, you did not hear wrong, that is precisely what I was saying.' 'Amazing! Forgive me, but as I understand you also do not believe in God? ' 'No, we don't believe in God, but can speak of it freely!’ 'You are atheists? Oh, how lovely!' 'In our country atheism does not surprise anyone. We have ceased believing in fairy tales about God.’ The stranger went on: ‘But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then who governs the order of things?' 'Man governs it himself.' 'Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern, one needs to plan for a certain length of time. Allow me to ask you how can man govern when he cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?”
***********
“Answer then, do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?' 'It was like this.' the prisoner began eagerly. 'The evening before last, near the temple, I met a young man who called himself Judas. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and asked me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.' 'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Among other things, I said that all authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need for any authority. Then men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’ ‘There never has been, is not, and never will be any authority in this world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor Tiberius!' Pilate's voice swelled.”
************
“One day I opened a newspaper and saw in it an article by a critic in which he warned to all and sundry that I attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ. Two days later appeared another article, in which its author recommended striking hard at ‘Pilatism’ and at the icon dauber who had ventured to foist it into print. I opened a third newspaper. There were two articles in it. I assure you that the earlier critiques could be counted as jokes compared to what this was. Suffice it to say one article was entitled "A Militant Old Believer".
“The fire roared in the stove. I took the heavy manuscript of the novel from the desk drawer and started burning it. This was hard to do because paper written upon it reluctantly burns. I tore up the notebooks and stuck them vertically between the logs, ruffling pages with the poker. The novel was stubbornly resisting but nevertheless perishing. Its familiar words flashed before me as the yellow climbed steadily up the pages, but the words still showed through. They would vanish only when the paper turned black and I finished them off with the poker.”
- Mikhail Bulgakov ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1891- 1940)
************
The Devil visits 1930’s Moscow and he meets two literary friends in the park having a conversation about atheism and the non-existence of Christ. He tells them Christ did exist and gives them a detailed account of Pontius Pilate’s moral dilemma as he condemned him to the cross. But how did he know? Because he was there. He then predicts the death of one of them later that night in exact detail. After seeing this happen the Poet becomes mentally disturbed and he tries to follow the Devil. He visits the literary club his dead friend planned to attend that night and is sent to a madhouse.
When citizens begin to mysteriously disappear it is difficult to tell if police or the Devil is responsible. He is a Professor of Black Magic, engaged by a resident of an accursed flat for seven performances, which the man has no recollection of contracting. He meets the Devil and his retinue of a tall thin man and a black cat big as a hog, who walks on two legs and speaks. The Devil requires more space in shared government apartments and he transports tenants to the Black Sea. They frame the flat manager who gets arrested for black market activity. Characters wind up in the same psychiatric hospital.
In the madhouse the Poet meets the Master, another patient who describes a love affair with Margarita and psychological descent after his novel about Pontius Pilate was censored by critics, which he burns. The Devil and his entourage perform a seance driving the audience to insanity. Currency hoarders are interrogated to cough up their cash. The seance had rained down ten rouble bills which infect the city with all sorts of mayhem, bureaucrats replaced by empty suits and money transformed into labels. As mass hypnosis ensues people across the city begin to sing the same song in unison.
Originally written in 1928 the manuscript was burned by Bulgakov out of a fear of state repression. He continued to work on it until his death in 1940. A censored version was published in 1966 in the Brezhnev years and a manuscript smuggled to Paris in 1967. It is a brilliant satire of Josef Stalin’s USSR with nighttime disappearances, communal housing and denunciation of neighbors. Bulgakov asked Stalin to emigrate and write in freedom but he was denied. Churchill said of Russia: “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside of an enigma”, as this masterpiece has remained.
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for long, long years
Stole a million men’s soul and faith
I was around when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and faith
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game”
- Mick Jagger, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (1968)
************
“May I sit down?' the foreigner asked politely. 'Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say Jesus never existed?' ‘No, you did not hear wrong, that is precisely what I was saying.' 'Amazing! Forgive me, but as I understand you also do not believe in God? ' 'No, we don't believe in God, but can speak of it freely!’ 'You are atheists? Oh, how lovely!' 'In our country atheism does not surprise anyone. We have ceased believing in fairy tales about God.’ The stranger went on: ‘But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then who governs the order of things?' 'Man governs it himself.' 'Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern, one needs to plan for a certain length of time. Allow me to ask you how can man govern when he cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?”
***********
“Answer then, do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?' 'It was like this.' the prisoner began eagerly. 'The evening before last, near the temple, I met a young man who called himself Judas. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and asked me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.' 'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Among other things, I said that all authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need for any authority. Then men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’ ‘There never has been, is not, and never will be any authority in this world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor Tiberius!' Pilate's voice swelled.”
************
“One day I opened a newspaper and saw in it an article by a critic in which he warned to all and sundry that I attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ. Two days later appeared another article, in which its author recommended striking hard at ‘Pilatism’ and at the icon dauber who had ventured to foist it into print. I opened a third newspaper. There were two articles in it. I assure you that the earlier critiques could be counted as jokes compared to what this was. Suffice it to say one article was entitled "A Militant Old Believer".
“The fire roared in the stove. I took the heavy manuscript of the novel from the desk drawer and started burning it. This was hard to do because paper written upon it reluctantly burns. I tore up the notebooks and stuck them vertically between the logs, ruffling pages with the poker. The novel was stubbornly resisting but nevertheless perishing. Its familiar words flashed before me as the yellow climbed steadily up the pages, but the words still showed through. They would vanish only when the paper turned black and I finished them off with the poker.”
- Mikhail Bulgakov ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1891- 1940)
************
The Devil visits 1930’s Moscow and he meets two literary friends in the park having a conversation about atheism and the non-existence of Christ. He tells them Christ did exist and gives them a detailed account of Pontius Pilate’s moral dilemma as he condemned him to the cross. But how did he know? Because he was there. He then predicts the death of one of them later that night in exact detail. After seeing this happen the Poet becomes mentally disturbed and he tries to follow the Devil. He visits the literary club his dead friend planned to attend that night and is sent to a madhouse.
When citizens begin to mysteriously disappear it is difficult to tell if police or the Devil is responsible. He is a Professor of Black Magic, engaged by a resident of an accursed flat for seven performances, which the man has no recollection of contracting. He meets the Devil and his retinue of a tall thin man and a black cat big as a hog, who walks on two legs and speaks. The Devil requires more space in shared government apartments and he transports tenants to the Black Sea. They frame the flat manager who gets arrested for black market activity. Characters wind up in the same psychiatric hospital.
In the madhouse the Poet meets the Master, another patient who describes a love affair with Margarita and psychological descent after his novel about Pontius Pilate was censored by critics, which he burns. The Devil and his entourage perform a seance driving the audience to insanity. Currency hoarders are interrogated to cough up their cash. The seance had rained down ten rouble bills which infect the city with all sorts of mayhem, bureaucrats replaced by empty suits and money transformed into labels. As mass hypnosis ensues people across the city begin to sing the same song in unison.
Originally written in 1928 the manuscript was burned by Bulgakov out of a fear of state repression. He continued to work on it until his death in 1940. A censored version was published in 1966 in the Brezhnev years and a manuscript smuggled to Paris in 1967. It is a brilliant satire of Josef Stalin’s USSR with nighttime disappearances, communal housing and denunciation of neighbors. Bulgakov asked Stalin to emigrate and write in freedom but he was denied. Churchill said of Russia: “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside of an enigma”, as this masterpiece has remained.
...
Show More
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
In this work, reality and fantasy, "Real" and "Surreal" are intertwined, it can be said that it is a kind of "Russian magical realism". The novel has philosophical and social themes, with a political background, which is subtly and indirectly reminiscent of the "Stalin" era, with a very delicate and artistic expression, and sometimes poetically, the problems of the society of the "Soviet" days. And at the philosophical level, reminds the reader of his book of the troubles and crises of contemporary man. "Murshid and Margarita" is a modern novel, which, according to Abbas Milani, "is considered by many critics to be a classic novel."
The Master and Margarita is a novel, by Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940 during Stalin's regime.
The story concerns a visit by the devil to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires.
The novel alternates between two settings.
The first is 1930's Moscow, where Satan appears at the Patriarch Ponds in the guise of "Professor" Woland, a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin. He arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed valet Koroviev; the mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth; the fanged hitman Azazello and the witch Hella.
They wreak havoc targeting the literary elite and its trade union MASSOLIT. Its privileged HQ is Griboyedov's house. The association is made up of corrupt social climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike), bureaucrats, profiteers, and, more generally, skeptics of the human spirit.
The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland in his conversations with Berlioz and later reflected in the Master's novel. This part of the novel concerns Pontius Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, his recognition of an affinity with, and spiritual need for, Yeshua, and his reluctant but resigned submission to Yeshua's execution.
Part one of the novel opens with a direct confrontation between Berlioz, the atheistic head of the literary bureaucracy, and an urbane foreign gentleman (Woland), who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers. Berlioz brushes off the prophecy of his death, but dies pages later in the novel. The fulfillment of the death prophecy is witnessed by Ivan Ponyrev, a young and enthusiastically modern poet. He writes poems under the alias Bezdomny ("homeless").
His futile attempt to chase and capture the "gang" and warn of their evil and mysterious nature lands Ponyrev in a lunatic asylum. There, he is introduced to the Master, an embittered author. The rejection of his historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ had led the Master to such despair that he burned his manuscript and turned his back on the world, including his devoted lover, Margarita.
Major episodes in the first part of the novel include a satirical portrait of the Massolit and their Griboyedov house; Satan's magic show at the Variety Theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed and gullibility of the new rich; and Woland and his retinue taking over the late Berlioz's apartment for their own use. (Apartments were at a premium in Moscow and were controlled by the state's elite. Bulgakov referred to his own apartment as one of the settings in the Moscow section of the novel.)
Part two of the novel introduces Margarita, the Master's mistress. She refuses to despair over her lover or his work. She is invited to the Devil's midnight ball, where Woland offers her the chance to become a witch with supernatural powers. This takes place the night of Good Friday. This is the time of the spring full moon, as it was traditionally when Christ's fate was affirmed by Pontius Pilate, sending him to be crucified in Jerusalem. The Master's novel also covers this event. All three events in the novel are linked by this.
Margarita enters naked into the realm of night after she learns to fly and control her unleashed passions. (She takes violent retribution on the literary bureaucrats who had condemned her beloved to despair.) She takes her enthusiastic maid Natasha with her, to fly over the deep forests and rivers of the USSR.
She bathes and returns to Moscow with Azazello, her escort, as the anointed hostess for Satan's great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they arrive from Hell. She survives this ordeal and, for her pains, Satan offers to grant Margarita her deepest wish. She chooses to liberate a woman whom she met at the ball from the woman's eternal punishment.
The woman had been raped and killed her resulting infant. Her punishment was to wake each morning and find the same handkerchief by which she had killed the child lying on her nightstand. Satan grants her first wish and offers her another, saying that Margarita's first wish was unrelated to her own desires. For her second wish, she chooses to liberate the Master and live in poverty-stricken love with him.
Neither Woland nor Yeshua appreciates her chosen way of life, and Azazello is sent to retrieve them. The three drink Pontius Pilate's poisoned wine in the Master's basement. The Master and Margarita die, metaphorically, as Azazello watches their physical manifestations die.
Azazello reawakens them, and they leave civilization with the Devil, while Moscow's cupolas and windows burn in the setting Easter sun. Because the Master and Margarita did not lose their faith in humanity, they are granted "peace" but are denied "light" — that is, they will spend eternity together in a shadowy yet pleasant region similar to Dante's depiction of Limbo. They have not earned the glories of Heaven, but do not deserve the punishments of Hell. As a parallel, the Master releases Pontius Pilate from eternal punishment, telling him he's free to walk up the moonbeam path in his dreams to Yeshua, where another eternity awaits.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه سپتامبر سال1984میلادی
عنوان: مرشد و مارگریتا؛ نویسنده: میخائیل بولگاکف؛ مترجم: عباس میلانی؛ تهران، فرهنگ نشر نو؛ چاپ اول سال1362؛ شابک9647443277؛ چاپ ششم سال1385؛ هفتم سال1386؛ چاپ دهم سال1389؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان روسیه - سده20م
عنوان: مرشد و مارگریتا؛ نویسنده: میخائیل بولگاکف؛ مترجم: پرویزی؛ تهران، نشر مجید؛ سال1395؛ در624ص؛ شابک9786007987278؛
در این اثر واقعیت و خیال، «رئال» و «سورئال» درهم تنیده شده، میتوان گفت: نوعی «رئالیسم جادویی روسیه» است؛ رمان بن مایه های فلسفی و اجتماعی دارد، با پس زمینه ای سیاسی، که به شکلی رقیق و غیرمستقیم، یادآور دوران حکومت «استالین» است، با بیانی بسیار ظریف و هنرمندانه، و گاه شاعرانه، مسائل جامعه آن روزهای «شوروی» را طرح، و در سطح فلسفی، گرفتاریها و بحرانهای انسان معاصر را، به خوانشگر کتاب خویش گوشزد میکند؛ «مرشد و مارگریتا» رمانی مدرن است، که به نقل از «عباس میلانی»: «به زعم بسیاری از منتقدان، به رمانهای کلاسیک پهلو میزند». پایان نقل؛
در این اثر سه داستان شکل میگیرند، و پا به پای هم پیش میروند، و گاه این سه درهم تنیده، و دوباره باز میشوند، تا سرانجام به نقطه ای یگانه رسیده، باهم یکی میشوند؛
داستان نخست: (داستان سفر شیطان است به «مسکو»، در چهره ی پروفسوری خارجی، به عنوان استاد جادوی سیاه، به نام «ولند»، به همراه گروه کوچک سه نفره «عزازیل»، «بهیموت» و «کروویف».)؛
داستان دوم: (داستان «پونتیوس پیلاطس» و مصلوب شدن «عیسی مسیح» در «اورشلیم»، بر سر «جلجتا» است)؛
و داستان سوم: (داستان دلدادگی رمان نویسی بینام، موسوم به «مرشد»، و ماجرای عشق پاک و آسمانی ایشان، به زنی به نام «مارگریتا» است.)؛
در این اثر، «بولگاکف» تنهایی ژرف انسان دوران کنونی در دنیای سکولار، و خالی از اسطوره، و معنویت کنونی را، گوشزد میکنند؛ دنیایی که مردمانش دلباخته، و تشنه ی معجزه، جادو، و چشم بندی هستند؛ گویی خسته از فضای تکنیک زده، و صنعتی معاصر، با ذهنی انباشته از خرافه، منتظر ظهور منجی، یا چشم به راه جادوگران افسانه ای هستند، و هنوز هم علم و مدرنیته را باور نکرده اند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 18/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ و 19/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
In this work, reality and fantasy, "Real" and "Surreal" are intertwined, it can be said that it is a kind of "Russian magical realism". The novel has philosophical and social themes, with a political background, which is subtly and indirectly reminiscent of the "Stalin" era, with a very delicate and artistic expression, and sometimes poetically, the problems of the society of the "Soviet" days. And at the philosophical level, reminds the reader of his book of the troubles and crises of contemporary man. "Murshid and Margarita" is a modern novel, which, according to Abbas Milani, "is considered by many critics to be a classic novel."
The Master and Margarita is a novel, by Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940 during Stalin's regime.
The story concerns a visit by the devil to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires.
The novel alternates between two settings.
The first is 1930's Moscow, where Satan appears at the Patriarch Ponds in the guise of "Professor" Woland, a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin. He arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed valet Koroviev; the mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth; the fanged hitman Azazello and the witch Hella.
They wreak havoc targeting the literary elite and its trade union MASSOLIT. Its privileged HQ is Griboyedov's house. The association is made up of corrupt social climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike), bureaucrats, profiteers, and, more generally, skeptics of the human spirit.
The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland in his conversations with Berlioz and later reflected in the Master's novel. This part of the novel concerns Pontius Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, his recognition of an affinity with, and spiritual need for, Yeshua, and his reluctant but resigned submission to Yeshua's execution.
Part one of the novel opens with a direct confrontation between Berlioz, the atheistic head of the literary bureaucracy, and an urbane foreign gentleman (Woland), who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers. Berlioz brushes off the prophecy of his death, but dies pages later in the novel. The fulfillment of the death prophecy is witnessed by Ivan Ponyrev, a young and enthusiastically modern poet. He writes poems under the alias Bezdomny ("homeless").
His futile attempt to chase and capture the "gang" and warn of their evil and mysterious nature lands Ponyrev in a lunatic asylum. There, he is introduced to the Master, an embittered author. The rejection of his historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ had led the Master to such despair that he burned his manuscript and turned his back on the world, including his devoted lover, Margarita.
Major episodes in the first part of the novel include a satirical portrait of the Massolit and their Griboyedov house; Satan's magic show at the Variety Theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed and gullibility of the new rich; and Woland and his retinue taking over the late Berlioz's apartment for their own use. (Apartments were at a premium in Moscow and were controlled by the state's elite. Bulgakov referred to his own apartment as one of the settings in the Moscow section of the novel.)
Part two of the novel introduces Margarita, the Master's mistress. She refuses to despair over her lover or his work. She is invited to the Devil's midnight ball, where Woland offers her the chance to become a witch with supernatural powers. This takes place the night of Good Friday. This is the time of the spring full moon, as it was traditionally when Christ's fate was affirmed by Pontius Pilate, sending him to be crucified in Jerusalem. The Master's novel also covers this event. All three events in the novel are linked by this.
Margarita enters naked into the realm of night after she learns to fly and control her unleashed passions. (She takes violent retribution on the literary bureaucrats who had condemned her beloved to despair.) She takes her enthusiastic maid Natasha with her, to fly over the deep forests and rivers of the USSR.
She bathes and returns to Moscow with Azazello, her escort, as the anointed hostess for Satan's great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they arrive from Hell. She survives this ordeal and, for her pains, Satan offers to grant Margarita her deepest wish. She chooses to liberate a woman whom she met at the ball from the woman's eternal punishment.
The woman had been raped and killed her resulting infant. Her punishment was to wake each morning and find the same handkerchief by which she had killed the child lying on her nightstand. Satan grants her first wish and offers her another, saying that Margarita's first wish was unrelated to her own desires. For her second wish, she chooses to liberate the Master and live in poverty-stricken love with him.
Neither Woland nor Yeshua appreciates her chosen way of life, and Azazello is sent to retrieve them. The three drink Pontius Pilate's poisoned wine in the Master's basement. The Master and Margarita die, metaphorically, as Azazello watches their physical manifestations die.
Azazello reawakens them, and they leave civilization with the Devil, while Moscow's cupolas and windows burn in the setting Easter sun. Because the Master and Margarita did not lose their faith in humanity, they are granted "peace" but are denied "light" — that is, they will spend eternity together in a shadowy yet pleasant region similar to Dante's depiction of Limbo. They have not earned the glories of Heaven, but do not deserve the punishments of Hell. As a parallel, the Master releases Pontius Pilate from eternal punishment, telling him he's free to walk up the moonbeam path in his dreams to Yeshua, where another eternity awaits.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه سپتامبر سال1984میلادی
عنوان: مرشد و مارگریتا؛ نویسنده: میخائیل بولگاکف؛ مترجم: عباس میلانی؛ تهران، فرهنگ نشر نو؛ چاپ اول سال1362؛ شابک9647443277؛ چاپ ششم سال1385؛ هفتم سال1386؛ چاپ دهم سال1389؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان روسیه - سده20م
عنوان: مرشد و مارگریتا؛ نویسنده: میخائیل بولگاکف؛ مترجم: پرویزی؛ تهران، نشر مجید؛ سال1395؛ در624ص؛ شابک9786007987278؛
در این اثر واقعیت و خیال، «رئال» و «سورئال» درهم تنیده شده، میتوان گفت: نوعی «رئالیسم جادویی روسیه» است؛ رمان بن مایه های فلسفی و اجتماعی دارد، با پس زمینه ای سیاسی، که به شکلی رقیق و غیرمستقیم، یادآور دوران حکومت «استالین» است، با بیانی بسیار ظریف و هنرمندانه، و گاه شاعرانه، مسائل جامعه آن روزهای «شوروی» را طرح، و در سطح فلسفی، گرفتاریها و بحرانهای انسان معاصر را، به خوانشگر کتاب خویش گوشزد میکند؛ «مرشد و مارگریتا» رمانی مدرن است، که به نقل از «عباس میلانی»: «به زعم بسیاری از منتقدان، به رمانهای کلاسیک پهلو میزند». پایان نقل؛
در این اثر سه داستان شکل میگیرند، و پا به پای هم پیش میروند، و گاه این سه درهم تنیده، و دوباره باز میشوند، تا سرانجام به نقطه ای یگانه رسیده، باهم یکی میشوند؛
داستان نخست: (داستان سفر شیطان است به «مسکو»، در چهره ی پروفسوری خارجی، به عنوان استاد جادوی سیاه، به نام «ولند»، به همراه گروه کوچک سه نفره «عزازیل»، «بهیموت» و «کروویف».)؛
داستان دوم: (داستان «پونتیوس پیلاطس» و مصلوب شدن «عیسی مسیح» در «اورشلیم»، بر سر «جلجتا» است)؛
و داستان سوم: (داستان دلدادگی رمان نویسی بینام، موسوم به «مرشد»، و ماجرای عشق پاک و آسمانی ایشان، به زنی به نام «مارگریتا» است.)؛
در این اثر، «بولگاکف» تنهایی ژرف انسان دوران کنونی در دنیای سکولار، و خالی از اسطوره، و معنویت کنونی را، گوشزد میکنند؛ دنیایی که مردمانش دلباخته، و تشنه ی معجزه، جادو، و چشم بندی هستند؛ گویی خسته از فضای تکنیک زده، و صنعتی معاصر، با ذهنی انباشته از خرافه، منتظر ظهور منجی، یا چشم به راه جادوگران افسانه ای هستند، و هنوز هم علم و مدرنیته را باور نکرده اند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 18/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ و 19/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
...
Show More
إن قراءة رواية مثل المعلم ومارغريتا مثل الدخول في حفلة صاخبة فيها أنشطة مختلفة وأنت تقف في المنتصف حائرا ولاتعرف ماذا تفعل بالضبط هذا كان حالي في وأنا أقرأ صفحات الرواية إلا إن المرحلة الهامة هي تلك التي تأتي بعد أن تغلق آخر صفحة وتفكر ماذا حدث بالضبط وأين كنت وأين ذهب كل هؤلاء المجانين !
بولغاكوف لديه مخيلة واسعة ولا أشك أن كتابته في المسرح ساعدته على أن يكتب بهذا الأسلوب الصاخب حتى إنك تشعر إن هناك ممرات سرية في مخيلة هذا الكاتب ليس سهلا أن تجدها ، إن رواية الشيطان يزور موسكو ممكن أن تقرأ برؤى عديدة لشدة ما ممكن أن ��ثيره من جدل بسبب فانتازيا القصة وعوالمها السحرية شخصياتها التي تقف بين النور والعتمة ، الحكمة والحماقة ، الحب والكراهية ، الوفاء و الخيانة ، الفرح والحزن ، الخدعة والطرفة رواية متشابكة متداخلة وهي من الروايات الفريدة والتي توضع في خانة الروايات العبقرية لأنها جمعت ما بين الخيال السحر والدين الفلسفة والسخرية ..
هناك زمنين في الرواية أحدهما واقع حاضر وآخر ماضي قادم من التاريخ وهناك عدة أبعاد في الرواية البعد الفلسفي وهو يظهر فلسفة الكاتب تجاه الشر والخير ، تعاطى الشر مع الخير ، و حتمية العقاب وهذا المسار كان يقوده الشيطان وزمرته ، البعد الثاني صراع الضمير والصوت الداخلي لبلاطس البنطي بعد دوره في تعذيب المسيح وصلبه ، والبعد الثالث وهو قصة الحب والوفاء والتفاني في علاقة المعلم ومارغريتا .. قارىء الرواية يلاحظ أن كل مسار من هذه المسارات الثلاثة تتقاطع وبولغاكوف خلال الزمنين كان يوجه الأنظار للحياة اليومية وطبيعة المجتمع والعادات في روسيا لتنال حظها من السخرية والنقد اللاذع !
تبدو الرواية كأنها شبكة بالغة التعقيد وعلى القارى المسكين أن يعرف مبتداها ومنتهاها وهي ليست بالعملية السهلة أمام تعدد الرواة و الإنتقالات الزمنية والتحولات الفجائية التي تجري للشخصيات على حين غره فمارغريت مثلا تتحول من تلك المرأة الحنونة والمحبة والغارقة في الأسى إلى ساحرة عارية تطير على مكنسة وتضحك بصوت هستيري مارغريت التي باعت روحها للشيطان من أجل الحب تمثل هذه القيمة النبيلة والتي يرفع بولغاكوف من شأنها في الرواية ويسخّر السحر والشياطين لأجل إعلاء كلمتها ..
بولغاكوف يطرح أفكارا شرسة تبدو كمخالب قطه الشرير .. تلفت نظرك منها مشاهد عري المرأة مثلا في الرواية وتتسائل لماذا النساء في أغلب المشاهد التي سيطر عليها السحر بدون ثياب ( ربي كما خلقتني ) كما يترجمها المترجم .. ظللت أفكر وأحاول أن أجد تفسيرا هل كان هذه العري يعكس حس النكتة لدى بولغاكوف أم إنه تعبيرا عن الحرية والخروج على القوانين الإجتماعية ! أو لعل الأمر يعبر عن الشجاعة .. إذ إن بلغاكوف ما فتأ ينتقد ويذم الجبن ويعتبره أسوء صفة ممكن أن يحملها إنسان حتى حسبته أحيانا يعنيني أو يعلم عني .. أو ربما هي البدائية الأولى ببساطتها وخلوها من تعقيدات الحياة أو لعل الأمر يأخذ تفسيرا دينيا أو إجتماعيا مرتبطا بكون المسيح يغطي عري الفقراء ويکسو عظامهم ويحميهم من المجاعة وأن تصنيف المرأة يقع في تلك الخانة !
إن الأفكار التي تطرحها الرواية هي ليست تلك التي نقرأها فقط ولكنها أيضا تلك التي تختبأ بين الأسطر و القارىء الذي يقرأ رواية مارغريتا والمعلم قد يخرج بأفكار عديدة قد لا تخطر لي أو لغيري ولا أعلم إن كان يصح لي أن أشبه الرواية بجريمة قتل كل قارىء يظن أنه يعرف من هو القاتل بل ولديه الأدلة والإثباتات وحين ينظر من وجهة نظر قارىء آخر قد يرى أدلة أخرى لا تقل أهمية عن الأدلة التي يدعي إنها بحوزته .. ولعل هذا الأمر يزيد من غموض الجريمة أعني الرواية ويزيد من حالة الجدل والتفسيرات ويدفع عشاق القراءة لإعادة قراءة الرواية لمزيد من الفهم والمزيد من المتعة والرغبة في الإكتشاف .. وعلى الرغم من الخيال الجامح الذي امتلكه بولغاكوف نهاية الرواية باردة نوعا ما لا أظنها كانت بمستوى الإثارة الذي عاشه القارىء طوال صفحات الرواية إنها تشبه تماما أن يعود شخص من تلك الحفلة الصاخبة ويلقي بنفسه على السرير لينام !
...
Show More
In a Moscow public garden, a writer and a poet discuss religion: Did Jesus exist? While the writer tries to impose his vision of things on the poet, a third character suddenly appears as a movement of the air. He joins in the conversation between the two men, says he is a professor of black magic visiting Moscow for a series of consultations, and begins to tell a strange story about Pontius Pilate.
This stranger is, in fact, the Devil. It predicts the writer's death and his stay in the psychiatric hospital of the poet. However, when he leaves the public garden, Berlioz, the writer, dies precisely in the manner described by the Devil.
Begun in 1928 by Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita" was not completed until 1940, shortly before the author's death. And it was not until 1966 that it was finally published in the USSR, cut by nearly 80 pages by censorship ...
Therefore, this magnificent novel was not immediately recognized for its actual value. And yet, what a masterpiece! A profusion of sets and characters, different plots from one chapter to another but invariably intertwined, makes this a magnificent fresco, colorful and still in motion, like a crazy carousel launched in endless, faster, and faster turns.
There are three stories organized around the character of the Devil, who in Bulgakov's work is called Woland. First, we witness the drama in which the Devil's arrival and his troop plunge into Moscow. And what a drama! The Muscovite militia gives the impression of running in all directions to fight against the strange events which manifest themselves in the four corners of the city:
a) strange disappearances
b) theft of individual pieces of corpses
c) embezzlement
d) women walking around naked ( while Woland has just offered them dresses of great couturiers)
e) counterfeit money
The whole city is plunged into perplexity in front of the almost supernatural phenomena in Moscow, which are usually so peaceful.
Then, we get to know the Master and his story, which forms the second story within the "Master and Margarita." Through the unfortunate Ivan, the poet gone mad and locked in a psychiatric establishment, we meet this famous Master. He is also a hospital resident and tells Ivan what made him angry. This Master is in love with Marguerite, a beautiful young woman who encouraged him to continue the novel he wrote when they met (because the Master is a writer) and deals with Pontius Pilate.
This famous historical figure, the procurator of Judea at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, forms the third story of the novel. Thanks to Woland's account, we are thus following in Pilate's footsteps from the moment he meets Jesus. Berlioz and Ivan also mention this historical moment in the Master's manuscript.
These three novels contain references and anecdotes about the USSR of Bulgakov's time. And the author is not kind to his country: more than once, he launches himself into hilarious scenes, which give the impression that he is trying to ridicule the established order. But, unfortunately, and fortunately for us, it is precisely this rather cruel humor of Bulgakov which, mixed with the many twists and turns of the story, make The Master and Margarita an absolute delight!
This stranger is, in fact, the Devil. It predicts the writer's death and his stay in the psychiatric hospital of the poet. However, when he leaves the public garden, Berlioz, the writer, dies precisely in the manner described by the Devil.
Begun in 1928 by Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita" was not completed until 1940, shortly before the author's death. And it was not until 1966 that it was finally published in the USSR, cut by nearly 80 pages by censorship ...
Therefore, this magnificent novel was not immediately recognized for its actual value. And yet, what a masterpiece! A profusion of sets and characters, different plots from one chapter to another but invariably intertwined, makes this a magnificent fresco, colorful and still in motion, like a crazy carousel launched in endless, faster, and faster turns.
There are three stories organized around the character of the Devil, who in Bulgakov's work is called Woland. First, we witness the drama in which the Devil's arrival and his troop plunge into Moscow. And what a drama! The Muscovite militia gives the impression of running in all directions to fight against the strange events which manifest themselves in the four corners of the city:
a) strange disappearances
b) theft of individual pieces of corpses
c) embezzlement
d) women walking around naked ( while Woland has just offered them dresses of great couturiers)
e) counterfeit money
The whole city is plunged into perplexity in front of the almost supernatural phenomena in Moscow, which are usually so peaceful.
Then, we get to know the Master and his story, which forms the second story within the "Master and Margarita." Through the unfortunate Ivan, the poet gone mad and locked in a psychiatric establishment, we meet this famous Master. He is also a hospital resident and tells Ivan what made him angry. This Master is in love with Marguerite, a beautiful young woman who encouraged him to continue the novel he wrote when they met (because the Master is a writer) and deals with Pontius Pilate.
This famous historical figure, the procurator of Judea at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, forms the third story of the novel. Thanks to Woland's account, we are thus following in Pilate's footsteps from the moment he meets Jesus. Berlioz and Ivan also mention this historical moment in the Master's manuscript.
These three novels contain references and anecdotes about the USSR of Bulgakov's time. And the author is not kind to his country: more than once, he launches himself into hilarious scenes, which give the impression that he is trying to ridicule the established order. But, unfortunately, and fortunately for us, it is precisely this rather cruel humor of Bulgakov which, mixed with the many twists and turns of the story, make The Master and Margarita an absolute delight!
...
Show More
What. The Hell. Was That?
This Russian novel was so wacky and schizophrenic that it gave me a headache.
I had never heard of "The Master and Margarita" until a book club friend said it was one of her favorites. It comes weighted with a lot of praise -- it is considered one of the great Russian novels and has been listed as one of the best books of the 20th Century.
I read a lot of glowing, 5-star reviews of this book, but I just didn't connect with it as others have. I didn't even like the book until page 217, which was when Margarita finally showed up. The second half of the book is definitely better than the first half, which really plodded along in places.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's back up. According to the introduction, Bulgakov was upset about how Christ was portrayed in Soviet anti-religious propaganda, so he wrote a satire about what would happen if Satan suddenly appeared in Moscow. The novel pokes fun at the greed and pettiness of people, and at the rigid social order in Russian life.
While I did have a few giggles at the hijinks that ensue when the devil starts making mischief -- and there's a talking cat! -- there were also these frustrating flashbacks to Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, which is what gave me a headache. And I'm getting another one just thinking about trying to summarize the rest of the story, so forgive me if I pop some aspirin and recommend anyone who is interested in this novel to read Kris' excellent review. She got way more out of this book than I did.
Bulgakov worked on the novel for more than a decade, but in several different versions because at one point he even burned the manuscript. (One of its most famous quotes is that "manuscripts don't burn.")
While I know enough about Stalin's oppressive regime to appreciate the creative protest that Bulgakov was undertaking, I think I would rather read a biography about the author than to ever reread "Master and Margarita."
This Russian novel was so wacky and schizophrenic that it gave me a headache.
I had never heard of "The Master and Margarita" until a book club friend said it was one of her favorites. It comes weighted with a lot of praise -- it is considered one of the great Russian novels and has been listed as one of the best books of the 20th Century.
I read a lot of glowing, 5-star reviews of this book, but I just didn't connect with it as others have. I didn't even like the book until page 217, which was when Margarita finally showed up. The second half of the book is definitely better than the first half, which really plodded along in places.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's back up. According to the introduction, Bulgakov was upset about how Christ was portrayed in Soviet anti-religious propaganda, so he wrote a satire about what would happen if Satan suddenly appeared in Moscow. The novel pokes fun at the greed and pettiness of people, and at the rigid social order in Russian life.
While I did have a few giggles at the hijinks that ensue when the devil starts making mischief -- and there's a talking cat! -- there were also these frustrating flashbacks to Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, which is what gave me a headache. And I'm getting another one just thinking about trying to summarize the rest of the story, so forgive me if I pop some aspirin and recommend anyone who is interested in this novel to read Kris' excellent review. She got way more out of this book than I did.
Bulgakov worked on the novel for more than a decade, but in several different versions because at one point he even burned the manuscript. (One of its most famous quotes is that "manuscripts don't burn.")
While I know enough about Stalin's oppressive regime to appreciate the creative protest that Bulgakov was undertaking, I think I would rather read a biography about the author than to ever reread "Master and Margarita."
...
Show More
This is going to be a short one. I am too disappointed to be able to write much. I am not disappointed with the book but with myself for failing to love this one. I have no idea what went wrong. I love satire and the subject seemed to be something I would be interested to explore. I liked it, I got some of the hidden meaning but overall I was not enthralled.
I tried both the audiobook narrated by one of my favourites, Julian Rhind-Tutt and the written Romanian version. None of the two versions left a lasting imprint in my soul. I could admire the craftmanship and the importance of the novel but I could not get immersed in the story. The plot felt too convoluted , there were too many characters, too much chaos, I got tired.
I plan to re-read it at some point in the future because I believe the novel deserves a 2nd chance.
I tried both the audiobook narrated by one of my favourites, Julian Rhind-Tutt and the written Romanian version. None of the two versions left a lasting imprint in my soul. I could admire the craftmanship and the importance of the novel but I could not get immersed in the story. The plot felt too convoluted , there were too many characters, too much chaos, I got tired.
I plan to re-read it at some point in the future because I believe the novel deserves a 2nd chance.
Leave a Review