The Master and Margarita
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A mysterious weirder and his retinue have astonished the locals of Stalin’s Moscow with the magic show to end all magic shows and have reasonably factually set the town alight. But what’s the real purpose behind their visit?
Surely no weirder work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov’s works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of excellent and evil. Or would that be the additional way around? The book’s chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a “translator” wearing a jockey’s cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz’s apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: “Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch’s Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.”) Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so terribly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.
Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the right object of Woland’s visit: the leader of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master–as he calls himself–has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors’ harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate’s tale becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov’s novel: as a manuscript read by the Master’s remorseless like, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet–and fellow lunatic–Ivan Homeless, and even as a tale told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its leader? Agreed that the Master’s novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: “What would your excellent be doing if there were no evil, and what would the planet look like if shadows disappeared from it?”
Unsurprisingly–in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror–Bulgakov’s masterwork was not published until 1967, nearly three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly amusing, it is a novel like no additional. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the right magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. –Mary Park
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Pretentious and dull, too clever for its own excellent, the only excellent chapters in this book are the ones about Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, and there’s not enough of that.
And this was the Michael Glenny translation.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Everyone, let’s forget about the analogies to Stalinist Russia and all the additional subterfuges used to acclaim a book that is nothing more than a devil-worshipping treatise. I simply dont know how people can give accolades to this novel when it shows innocent people being driven mad, and even has a physically sickening scene of satan rejoicing at the violent and gruesome death of a young child: “He was too young to have sinned.” What is that? What does it even mean? I can know all the clever references Bulgakov makes to Stalinist “purgings” and the like, but what his book boils down to, reasonably simply, is that Christianity is for the weak and insane, whilst satanism is for the strong and admirable. But how admirable does Woland (aka the evil one) show himself to be when he takes joy in a child’s death? Oh, and I really dont judge the Gospel NEEDED to be retold; especially from the viewpoint of one who obviously doesnt judge. The stout ancient Russian was simply fooling around, dabbling recklessly in witchcraft, and doing all he could to disparage the name of our Lord. I marvel why no one here has noticed the blatant attack on Christianity this book represents. The truth is, but, this book, though trying desperately to invert the Faustian myth, has only succeeded in further establishing it: the devil can only ever be a deceiver, and destroyer, a loathsome creature who despises mankind…such is Woland’s character.
Im not here to push my religious views, and I know that my one star stance on this pernicious piece of literature will get me lots of “NO”s as to whether this was helpful (if it is even published). But I felt I had to get this out there, because it appears so many people are missing the essential point of Bulgakov’s “classic”: to besmirch the Church and anything holy because he, through his black witch wife, was messed up in the occult. But agreed all the praise heaped on this book, I reflect I should be allowed to differ, and should be agreed voice among all these amazon posts.
No matter what the outcome, but, Bulgakov and the Mrs. are doing their time. Justifiably so.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The devil and a bunch of his companions land in 1930’s Stalinist Moscow and wreck havoc on the officially atheist city. What follows is an, in my opinion, incomprehensible tangle of out-of-the-ordinary events, not made any simpler to comprehend due to the impression that one half of the male characters in the book seems to be called Nikolai Ivanovitsch and the additional half Ivan Nikolaievitsch. There are probably a lot of very witty references to biblical events, but most of these will have escaped my atheist attention. In fleeting: this was no fun to read.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Unequivocally a heap of putrid, sickening tripe…a collection of overrated, overwritten, underimaginative, repetative fatuousness. Bulgakov is the perfect antithesis of Russian greats like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Nabakov. Bulgakov’s characters are predictable, his plots uninteresting, his descriptions jejune and redundant. If I could I would give it zero stars. Waste of time!
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I know that this book is considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Ok – but I don’t see it. It is wild with imagination, and pretty amusing, but there is nothing ‘fantastic’ about it. There are no principles here to improve the life of the reader. There is nothing here I can take away – not even a better comprehension of human scenery. I’m not qualified to talk about the translation, but I don’t reflect my complains are with the actual wording, but with the overall theme.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5