The Master and Margarita

I'm a cynic, and gloss over the whole tormented, introspective creative narrative. Author wants to write a historical recounting of Jesus's life, creates a self-insert character who is loftily referred to as only "Master" who wishes to do the exact thing but also ironically can't because they're both stuck in Russia's bubble of influence. Plus the shock humor, because he must bite his thumb at the world. This guy knows he doesn't have much time left, so begin his magnum opus of outrage towards society at large. Skipping this part...

Anyway...

For a book that is near a hundred years old, this is an incredibly modern, pervasive use of literary voice. If you told me it was written from someone in the last 10 years, but featured this Russian noir setting mixed with some hellish interpretations of Studio Ghibli and 'The Master and Margarita' was the end result, I'd go, "Yeah, I can totally see it." It's utterly wild, strange, peculiar, but at the same time familiar. Why I bring up the self-insert part earlier, is most of his characters are creatives, particularly writers. There is an entire chapter of "Master" lamenting his work down to the critics laughing, "Haha, another Jesus fiction. These will never be published." Welcome to the 21st century, nothing has changed. If you're a writer, you will feel this. Other sensations might be revulsion or amusement depending on the reader's mindset. I'd compare the devil and his cohorts' ambitions as frolicking, strange yet gleeful, full of absurdities, money, and often nudity. Women without clothes is quite a thing in this book. Yet strangely enough, there isn't really a sense of shame. The Moscovites of the book are easily mortified, but the author comes across as quite a man before his time. He doesn't condemn the adultery of Margarita, nor the liberation of her maid. Margarita loves fiercely, but she is a woman, strong and proud. The author is a character that is self-aware and knows that in his story to introduce the nameless "Master" is odd, and even more so when the titular "Margarita" is brought in halfway through. Maybe a pacing problem, but it comes through with intention, everything does by the time it's over. Ending is quite rushed given there are scenes that are filler, more or less to prove that the devil roams wide in his pursuits. It's a very long book. Could it have been trimmed? Perhaps. Did we need the 'flashbacks which are actually Master's discarded prose?' Probably not. This is when the cross talk of editing versus preserving the intention comes up, but also the only thing that makes the book show its age. Modern books are axed into ruthless efficiency, this isn't.

I'm never a fan of books with theological connotations. I did however really appreciate the writing style, contemporary and gripping with bold literary characteristics. Mr. Bulgakov's characters are delightful, each one unique and profound, even those of minor significance. It's debaucherous and fun, snubbing at the world at large.

"Weird," was my reaction to much of the book. It's funny in an absurdist way that I'm not sure really translates in the moment, or perhaps in the translation. The image of the secret police shooting without success at Behemoth the cat is quietly hilarious.

I'm of two minds on my overall takeaway. I would have preferred more footnotes and annotations, since the few pages that my version offered didn't really give a great amount of insight into the people and places being satirized. I got the broad strokes: stalinism, gulags, etc., but the nuance I just assumed is there. So I would have liked to break that down more. Another example: an end note describes the repeated reference to a "Queen Margot", but doesn't give any further context. With no knowledge of the historical character, the allusion doesn't give me any better context for understanding Margarita in the novel.

That's one mind. The other says that a better accounting of allusions wouldn't necessarily be keeping with the spirit of the novel, and that maybe the best course of action is just to revisit it again at a later date. The characters, except the parade of useless writers, are memorable and worthy of revisit. The goal then would be not necessarily to decipher the book, but dwell on and draw out its absurdities.

Anyway, that is all to say, I liked it, and the book is Great (capital G).

When I first read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov back in 2012 I had no idea how to review it. Now that I have re-read the book, I am still at a loss. The Master and Margarita is often considered as one of the best novels of the 20th century by critics and cited as the top example of Soviet satire. Like most of Mikhail Bulgakov’s bibliography, this author never saw the effect that this novel had on the world; it was written between 1928 and 1940 but was first published in 1967, long after his death.

One of the things I love about Russian literature is the social commentary and satirical nature found in a lot of their books. During the Soviet era there was a lot written about the political state of the country but these were often heavily censored before publication. There was a distribution practise happening at the time call called samizdat, which is when individuals reproduced censored publications and passed them out to readers. The term samizdat comes from the Russian words, sam which roughly means “self” and izdat “publishing house”, so possibly the first use of self-publishing. If it wasn’t for this underground practice we may never have the uncensored editions of Russian classics like Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, the majority of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn books and of course The Master and Margarita.

The novel starts out with Berlioz and Bezdomny talking at the Patriarch ponds when a mysterious professor appears and strikes up a conversation. This professor is actually Satan and he was talking to them about the existence of God, the idea being if God doesn’t exist, can Satan?. Russia at the time was an atheist state, in fact communism and religion often do not go hand in hand. During the Stalinist era the Soviet government tried to suppress all forms of religious expression. Bulgakov’s commentary on religion and the government is an interesting one and while there are other interpretations of the novel this was what I took away from the novel this time round.

The ideas of censorship of religion continues with the Master’s book about Pontius Pilate, which was rejected and he was accused of pilatism. Though pilatism is found throughout the book The Master and Margarita as well, Pilate is not only in the Master’s novel but appears in Satan’s stories as well as dreams. The Master has poured his heart and soul into it his novel and having rejected sent him into a tailspin. This satirisation of censorship and religion plays though out the entire novel.

The idea of pilatism is an interesting one since in Christianity Pontius Pilate is the seen as the one that sentenced Jesus (referred to by his Hebrew name Yeshua Ha-Nozri in this novel) to die on the cross. Pilate becomes a symbol of humanity’s evil within religion and The Master and Margarita but you can argue that it is possible that he was a victim of society. Pilate’s ruling on Yeshua Ha-Nozri was due to pressure from the people and the high priests, he literally (and symbolically) washed his hands of the situation. I got the impression that Mikhail Bulgakov was comparing this idea of pilatism with the soviet government at the time. Human nature is apparently evil but it is also very influential of society, and what does that say about the atheist state?

There is so much going on within this novel and I would love to talk about the influences of Goethe’s tragic play Faust on the book. However I think I would need to re-read Faust to be able to compare it with The Master and Margarita. I would have also liked to explore the constant changes on narration, from an omniscient observer to the characters within the book but not sure what else to say about that. I re-read this book as part of a buddy read, my first buddy read in fact and I had a lot of fun doing this but I think I wasn’t a good reading partner. This time I read the Hugh Aplin translation of The Master and Margarita and I think I enjoyed it more than the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation I read last time. This may have been because I got more out of the book or maybe there is something about Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translations I didn’t like, I tend to avoid their translations.

I hope I have made a coherent review, I focused mainly on censorship and religion because this book is weird and all over the place so I needed to stick to one topic to make sense of what I have read. I do plan to re-read The Master and Margarita sometime in my life, I might even try a different translation again (any suggestions?). I got so much out of this book this time around and has really made me appreciate the value of re-reading. I ended my last review of this book telling people to ‘just read it’ and I think that sentiment still stands.

This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2015/03/10/the-master-and-margarita-by-mikhail-bulgakov/