What idea is expressed by the author in the image of Yeshua. The image and characteristics of Yeshua in the novel The Master and Margarita essay

29.08.2019

Yeshua in The Master and Margarita is described as an infinitely merciful and all-forgiving wandering philosopher. The image of Yeshua in the novel is like the image of Jesus Christ, only in the interpretation of Bulgakov.

Before readers, Yeshua appears as a man in old and torn clothes and worn-out sandals. Despite the misadventures and beatings he has received, he smiles with his bright smile, and is not afraid to raise his eyes to Pontius Pilate.

In a conversation with the procurator of Judea, it turns out that Yeshua is alone, he does not know his parents, he has no family and no children. But he does not complain about his loneliness, but calmly says that "one before the whole world." Yeshua, even during interrogation by the prosecutor's office, tells the truth - he does not know how to lie. In addition, he does not understand violence, and speaks of it as "the kingdom of justice, and goodness, where no power is needed."

Yeshua is able to heal people, but he is not a doctor. He has some special healing powers. He is able to anticipate events and is very perceptive. In addition, Yeshua knows several languages ​​and is literate, which is revealed during a conversation with Pilate. Yeshua considers all people to be kind and does not blame anyone for the fact that they are going to execute him. He even considers Mark Ratslayer to be a "nice person". Before his execution, Yeshua Ha-Nozri forgives in advance all those who pass sentence on him.

Pontius Pilate understands that there is nothing to execute Yeshua for, he cannot understand what decision he should make, and yet sends him to his death. The procurator will then pay for his wrong decision for a very long time.

Yeshua Ha-Notsri is betrayed and slandered by Judas, but he also has a disciple, Matthew Levi. Who is devoted to his teacher, he goes after Yeshua and writes down what he said. It is Matvey Levi who conveys the request to Woland to give the Master and Margarita peace.

It is worth noting that the opposition of Yeshua and Woland in the novel is shown as an endless story of good and evil, which do not try to eliminate each other. Woland even treats Yeshua with respect, saying that: "Each department should mind its own business."

Yeshua is open to the world and kind to all people, but this does not make him weak, on the contrary, his faith and tolerance are his strength. Yeshua in the novel is an image of light, goodness and mercy, he is the opposite of Woland, the prince of darkness.

Essay about Yeshua

Another novel about the times of the ancient city of Yershalaim is built into the novel "The Master and Margarita". A novel written by the master about Pontius Pilate. Yeshua Ga-notsri is the main figure in this novel, along with Pilate.

Yeshua is represented by Jesus Christ. But Yeshua is not the son of God, he is an ordinary person, a wandering philosopher. An ordinary person with unusual kindness to people, who knows no fear; his image in the novel is idealistic.

Having met Levi Matthew, the tax collector, in Bethphage, Yeshua began a conversation with him. At first, Levi treated him with hostility, even tried to insult him, calling him a dog. However, for Yeshua this is not an insult, he does not accept insults, because he is self-sufficient and strong in spirit, and all these insults are the lot of the weak. Moreover, he influenced Levi so much that he gave up his money and decided to travel with Yeshua.

Yeshua is the source of the forces of Light, which is why he has such a strong influence on people. He was able to heal the procurator from a headache with one of his conversations.

The procurator, unexpectedly for himself, asks Yeshua a serious philosophical question: “What is truth”, to which he immediately receives an answer: “the truth, first of all, is that your head hurts.”

There is nothing complicated about Yeshua, all his words are short and simple, but deep at the same time. He declares that power is violence against people, that there will be a time when it will not be needed. These words led him to his death. But he was not afraid to say this to Judas, he was not afraid to repeat it to the procurator, "it is easy and pleasant to tell the truth."

Yeshua is convinced that all people are kind, but not all are happy. He considers the procurator before whom he is on trial to be kind, considers the Ratslayer good, considers the people who testified against him good.

Yeshua does not wear masks, does not lie, does not prevaricate, is not afraid of anything, he considers cowardice one of the most terrible human vices.

The main advantage of Yeshua is his inner freedom. He is a worthy person, and therefore he talks on an equal footing with the procurator, although he knows how much power is concentrated in his hands. He is not affected by circumstances, even the fact that Judas sold him to the authorities did not arouse anger or hatred in him.

Light, open, free, intelligent - these are the qualities that Yeshua endowed Bulgakov, creating the ideal of a moral person, to which other people should strive.

Some interesting essays

  • Analysis of Shukshin's story Exam 6, Grade 10

    Shukshin Vasily Makarovich - the great Soviet writer, director, screenwriter, honored art worker. The story "The Exam" talks about life, reveals the meaning of life.

  • Characteristics and image of Vakula in the story The Night Before Christmas by Gogol essay Grade 5

    In Gogol's story "The Night Before Christmas" there are a variety of characters, both fabulous and real. One of these characters is Vakula, an ordinary village blacksmith.

  • Analysis of Chekhov's story Darling essay

    Written in 1898, published in the magazine "Family" A.P. Chekhov's story "Darling" was included in the 9th volume of the collected works of the writer. The main character Olga Semyonovna Plemyannikova lives in her parents' house not far from the Tivoli Garden in the Gypsy Slobidka

  • Analysis of the fairy tale Alice in Wonderland

    In terms of genre, the work is a fairy tale in the style of the absurd, the author of which is an English mathematician who is fond of poetry and literature named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

  • What is the power of the spirit? Deep down, everyone knows the answer to this question. This is what makes you fight, step over difficulties, keep your head up and go forward, no matter what happens.

During the reign of the emperors Octavian Augustus and Tiberius, Jesus Christ lived in the Roman Empire, the myths about which became the basis of the Christian religion.
We can assume different dates of his birth. AD 14 corresponds to the reign of Quirinius in Syria and to that year's census in the Roman Empire. 8 BC will be obtained if we correlate the birth of Jesus Christ with the census in the Roman Empire in 8 BC and the reign of King Herod of Judea, who died in 4 BC.
An interesting evidence of the Gospels is the correlation of the birth of Jesus Christ with the appearance of a "Star" in the sky. A well-known such event of that time is the appearance of Halley's comet in 12 BC. This assumption does not contradict the information about the mother of Jesus Mary.
The Assumption of Mary, according to Christian tradition, took place in 44 AD, at the age of 71, that is, she was born in 27 BC.
As the legend says, in early childhood, Mary served in the temple, and the girls served in the temple until the onset of menstruation. That is, she, in principle, could leave the temple around 13 BC, and the following year, the year of the comet, she gave birth to Jesus (from the Roman soldier Panther, according to Celsus and the authors of the Talmud). Mary had other children: James, Josiah, Judas and Simeon, as well as at least two daughters.
According to the evangelists, the family of Jesus lived in Nazareth - "... and when he came, he settled (Joseph with Mary and the baby Jesus) in the city called Nazareth, so that it might come true that it was spoken through the prophets that He would be called Nazarene." (Matt. 2:23 ). But there was no such city in the time of Jesus. The village of Nazareth (Nazareth) appeared in the 2nd century AD as a settlement of Christians ("natsri" are Christians in Hebrew, followers of Yeshua Ha Notzri, Jesus of Nazareth).
The name Jesus - "Yeshua" - in Hebrew means "Yahweh will save." This is a common Aramaic name. But he was not a Nazarene, the "Nazarenes" - ascetics - took a vow of abstinence from wine and cutting their hair.
"The Son of Man has come, eating and drinking; and they say, Behold a man who loves to eat and drink wine, a friend to tax collectors and sinners." (Matt. 11:19).
The compilers of the Gospels, who did not know the geography of Galilee, decided that if Jesus was not an ascetic, then he was from Nazareth.
But it's not.
"...and leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum by the sea... (Matt. 4:13)
In Capernaum, Jesus performed many "miracles"...
In his native village, where he once returned, Jesus did not perform miracles, because they had to be prepared:
"He said to them: Of course, you will tell Me a proverb: Physician! Heal Yourself; do it here, in Your homeland, what we heard was in Capernaum. And he said: Truly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country." (Luke 4.23-24)
Capernaum (in Aramaic "Kfar Nahum" - the village of Consolation) was on the northern shore of Lake Kinneret - the Sea of ​​Galilee, at the time of Jesus was called the Lake of Gennesaret, after the fertile wooded plain on its western shore. Genisaret Greek transcription. "Ha (Ga, He, Ge)" in Hebrew (Hebrew) is the definite article. Netser is a shoot, a young shoot. Genisaret - Ge Nisaret - Ha Netzer - thickets, a valley of thickets, a forest valley or forest thickets, etc.
That is, Yeshua Ha Notzri - Jesus is not from Nazareth, which did not exist then, but from the valley of Genisaret (Ge) Netzer, or from some village in this valley, - Jesus of Gennesaret.
The religious activity of Jesus, as described in the Gospels, began at the age of 12, when he began to "teach the law" to people in the temple. He probably left the family very soon, perhaps at that time Joseph died. If at that time Jesus had not left the family, then, according to the custom of the Jews of that time, he would have already been married. Celsus and the Talmud say that Jesus worked as a day laborer in Egypt. It is possible that it was in Egypt that he began to listen to various "prophets" or joined the sect of the Essenes. The year 19 AD is the year of the 33rd birthday of Jesus and the year of one of the outbursts of fanaticism in Judea. According to the Gospel of Luke - "...Jesus, starting his ministry, was about thirty years old...". This year Jesus connected his activities with John the Baptist. The Apostle John Zevedeev, associated with Jesus from that time, in his Gospel, quite authentically describes his first coming to Jesus and the coming to him as disciples of other young guys who were carried away by his tricks and left their stern teacher, John the Baptist, for him. Other evangelists describe his more famous activity, which began in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, that is, in the year 29 AD after he left the desert, where he disappeared after the execution of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas. In this activity, Jesus is accompanied by fully grown apostles.
Signs of the genius of Jesus are described by the authors of the Gospels quite clearly, these are: a negative attitude towards the family, a negative attitude towards women, visions of the "devil" testing his faith.
Perhaps to promote his teachings, Jesus himself prepared his arrest, crucifixion and imaginary death. In the narrative of Christ's activities, long before his death, the enigmatic phrase "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Jesus prepared for a long time for the "miracle of the resurrection" in order to prove that he was a true "prophet," the messenger of "God." The very application of Roman execution, that is, crucifixion, and not stoning, which was to be applied to an apostate from Jewish laws, was carefully orchestrated by him. This can also be indicated by the fact that before that he made several trial experiments of the "resurrection" of his assistants: the daughter of Jairus, the son of a widow, Lazarus ... It can be assumed that he probably acted according to the recipes of sorcerers of some peoples, similar to those that preserved in the Haitian voodoo cult dating back to the Negro cults of Africa. (People know cases when, by all indications, obviously dead people suddenly came to life. Such cases are also known in the practice of various cults, in the cult of Haitian Negroes - Voodoo and in the Hindu cult in the practice of yogis. Many mammals can be in the same state of imaginary death animals, and in some of these animals, hibernation is a natural state for waiting out adverse conditions.The possibility of being in a state of imaginary death for mammals is due to the same mechanisms that are characteristic of fish and amphibians, waiting out adverse conditions in hibernation.) The gospels report details of the "miracle of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus". Being on the cross, Jesus received some kind of drink from the guard in a sponge planted on a spear and fell into such anesthesia that he did not react to a prick in the side with a spear. And the reason for the spear injection was, I must say, strange ...
The fact is that on the cross in the described case, all the crucified hung for only a few hours. This is unusual for this type of Roman execution, the executed slaves usually hung on the cross for a very long time, for weeks. It is also known that before being taken down from the cross, the legs of two other criminals were broken, and Jesus, who was in a state of anesthesia, was only stabbed with a spear. So that during the crucifixion the soldiers act according to the scenario known to Jesus and some of his associates, they could receive some gifts before the crucifixion in advance, and not only during the "execution" as described in the Gospels. But, the resurrection probably didn't quite succeed. Although Jesus may have appeared three days later to the apostles, then he does not really act anywhere else. And this means that from the infection of the wound inflicted by the spear, he most likely died at the same time ...
The date of Jesus' death is associated with the reign of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate in Judea. Little is known about the beginning of the reign of Pontius Pilate in Judea, but the end of his activities there is well known ... The Roman historian Josephus Flavius ​​reports that Pontius Pilate, for the bloody dispersal of a demonstration in 36 BC, was filed a complaint by the Samaritans, friends of the emperor Tiberius Roman legate Vittelius. In AD 37, Pontius Pilate was recalled to Rome. However, Pilate, as an official, could also be recalled in connection with the death of Tiberius in the same year.
The last date of the activity of Jesus Christ may be 37 AD, but 33 according to tradition, or 36, the year associated with some kind of demonstration suppressed by Pilate, are acceptable. By the time of the crucifixion, Jesus was about 50 years old, and his mother Mary was slightly over 60 years old.

The Master and Margarita is the last work of Mikhail Bulgakov. So say not only writers, but he himself. Dying from a serious illness, he said to St.

Yeshua Ga-Notsri in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: characterization of the image

By Masterweb

24.04.2018 02:01

The Master and Margarita is the last work of Mikhail Bulgakov. So say not only writers, but he himself. Dying from a serious illness, he said to his wife: “Perhaps this is right. What else could I create after the "Master"? Indeed, what else could the writer say? This work is so multifaceted that the reader does not immediately understand what genre it belongs to. An amazing plot, deep philosophy, a bit of satire and charismatic characters - all this created a unique masterpiece that is read all over the world.

An interesting character in this work is Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who will be discussed in the article. Of course, many readers, captured by the charisma of the dark lord Woland, do not particularly pay attention to such a character as Yeshua. But even if in the novel Woland himself recognized him as his equal, we should certainly not ignore him.

two towers

"The Master and Margarita" is a harmonious intricacies of opposite principles. Fantasy and philosophy, farce and tragedy, good and evil... Spatial, temporal and psychological characteristics are shifted here, and there is another novel in the novel itself. Before the eyes of readers, two completely different stories that were created by one author echo each other.

The first story takes place in Bulgakov's contemporary Moscow, and the events of the second take place in ancient Yershalaim, where Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate meet. Reading the novel, it is hard to believe that these two diametrically opposed novellas were created by one person. Events in Moscow are described in a living language, which is not alien to the notes of comedy, gossip, devilry and familiarity. But when it comes to Yershalaim, the artistic style of the work changes dramatically to a strict and solemn one:

In the early morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, in a white cloak with a bloody lining, shuffling gait, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, came out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push(());

These two parts should show the reader what state morality is in and how it has changed in the last 2000 years. Proceeding from this intention of the author, we will consider the image of Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Doctrine

Yeshua arrived in this world at the beginning of the Christian era and preached a simple doctrine of goodness. Only his contemporaries were not yet ready to accept new truths. Yeshua Ha-Nozri was sentenced to death - a shameful crucifixion on a pole, which was intended for dangerous criminals.

People have always been afraid of what their mind could not comprehend, and for this ignorance an innocent person paid with his life.

Gospel of...

Initially, it was believed that Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Jesus are one and the same person, but the author did not want to say this at all. The image of Yeshua does not correspond to any Christian canon. This character includes many religious, historical, ethical, psychological and philosophical characteristics, but still remains a simple person.


Bulgakov was educated and knew the gospel well, but he did not have the goal of creating another copy of spiritual literature. The writer deliberately distorts the facts, even the name Yeshua Ha-Nozri in translation means “savior from Nazareth”, and everyone knows that the biblical character was born in Bethlehem.

Inconsistencies

The above was not the only discrepancy. Yeshua Ha-Notsri in the novel "The Master and Margarita" is an original, truly Bulgakovian hero who has nothing in common with the biblical character. So, in the novel, he appears to the reader as a young man of 27 years old, while the Son of God was 33 years old. Yeshua has only one follower, Levi Matthew, Jesus had 12 disciples. In the novel, Judas was killed on the orders of Pontius Pilate, while in the Gospel he committed suicide.

With such inconsistencies, the author tries in every possible way to emphasize that Yeshua Ha-Notsri is, first of all, a person who was able to find psychological and moral support in himself, and he remained true to his convictions to the very end.

Appearance

In the novel The Master and Margarita, Yeshua Ha-Notsri appears to the reader in an ignoble external image: worn-out sandals, an old and torn blue tunic, a white bandage with a strap around his forehead covers his head. His hands are tied behind his back, there is a bruise under his eye, and an abrasion in the corner of his mouth. By this, Bulgakov wanted to show the reader that spiritual beauty is much higher than external attractiveness.


Yeshua was not divinely imperturbable, like all people, he felt fear of Pilate and Mark the Ratslayer. He did not even know about his (possibly divine) origin and acted in the same way as ordinary people.

Divinity is present

In the work, much attention is paid to the human qualities of the hero, but with all this, the author does not forget about his divine origin. At the end of the novel, it is Yeshua who becomes the personification of the power that told Woland to give the Master peace. And at the same time, the author does not want to perceive this character as a type of Christ. That is why the characterization of Yeshua Ha-Nozri is so ambiguous: some say that the Son of God was his prototype, others claim that he was a simple man with a good education, and still others believe that he was a little crazy.

moral truth

The hero of the novel came into the world with one moral truth: every person is kind. This position was the truth of the whole novel. Two thousand years ago, a “means of salvation” (that is, repentance for sins) was found that changed the course of all history. But Bulgakov saw salvation in the spiritual feat of man, in his morality and steadfastness.


Bulgakov himself was not a deeply religious person, he did not go to church, and before his death he even refused unction, but he did not welcome atheism either. He believed that the new era in the twentieth century is the time of self-salvation and self-government, which once appeared to the world in Jesus. The author believed that such an act could save Russia in the 20th century. It can be said that Bulgakov wanted people to believe in God, but not blindly follow everything that is written in the Gospel.

Even in the novel, he openly declares that the gospel is a fabrication. Yeshua evaluates Levi Matthew (he is also an evangelist who is known to everyone) with the following words:

He walks and walks alone with goat parchment and writes incessantly, but once I looked into this parchment and was horrified. Absolutely nothing of what is written there, I did not say. I begged him: burn your parchment for God's sake! var blockSettings13 = (blockId:"R-A-116722-13",renderTo:"yandex_rtb_R-A-116722-13",horizontalAlign:!1,async:!0); if(document.cookie.indexOf("abmatch=") >= 0)( blockSettings13 = (blockId:"R-A-116722-13",renderTo:"yandex_rtb_R-A-116722-13",horizontalAlign:!1,statId: 7,async:!0); ) !function(a,b,c,d,e)(a[c]=a[c]||,a[c].push(function()(Ya.Context. AdvManager.render(blockSettings13))),e=b.getElementsByTagName("script"),d=b.createElement("script"),d.type="text/javascript",d.src="http:// an.yandex.ru/system/context.js",d.async=!0,e.parentNode.insertBefore(d,e))(this,this.document,"yandexContextAsyncCallbacks");

Yeshua himself refutes the authenticity of the gospel testimony. And in this his views are one with Woland:

Someone already, - Woland turns to Berlioz, and you should know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the Gospels actually ever happened.

Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate

A special place in the novel is occupied by Yeshua's relationship with Pilate. It was to the latter that Yeshua said that all power is violence against people, and one day the time will come when there will be no power left except the kingdom of truth and justice. Pilate felt a grain of truth in the prisoner's words, but still he cannot let him go, fearing for his career. Circumstances pressed on him, and he signed a death sentence for the rootless philosopher, which he greatly regretted.

Later, Pilate tries to atone for his guilt and asks the priest to release this condemned man in honor of the holiday. But his idea was not crowned with success, so he ordered his servants to stop the suffering of the condemned and personally ordered that Judas be killed.


Getting to know each other better

You can fully understand Bulgakov's hero only by paying attention to the dialogue between Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate. It is from him that you can find out where Yeshua was from, how educated he was and how he relates to others.

Yeshua is just a personified image of the moral and philosophical ideas of mankind. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the novel there is no description of this man, there is only a mention of how he is dressed and that there are bruises and abrasions on his face.

You can also learn from a dialogue with Pontius Pilate that Yeshua is alone:

There is no one. I am alone in the world.

And, strangely, there is nothing in this statement that could sound like a complaint about loneliness. Yeshua does not need compassion, he does not feel like an orphan or somehow defective. He is self-sufficient, the whole world is before him, and he is open to him. It is a little difficult to understand the integrity of Yeshua, he is equal to himself and the whole world that he has absorbed. He does not hide in the colorful polyphony of roles and masks, he is free from all this.


The strength of Yeshua Ha-Nozri is so enormous that at first it is mistaken for weakness and lack of will. But he is not so simple: Woland feels himself on an equal footing with him. Bulgakov's character is a vivid example of the idea of ​​a god-man.

The wandering philosopher is strong in his unshakable faith in the good, and neither the fear of punishment nor apparent injustice can take away this faith from him. His faith exists in spite of everything. In this hero, the author sees not only a preacher-reformer, but also the embodiment of free spiritual activity.

Education

In the novel, Yeshua Ha-Nozri has developed intuition and intelligence, which allows him to guess the future, and not just possible events in the next few days. Yeshua is able to guess the fate of his teaching, which is already incorrectly expounded by Matthew Levi. This man is so internally free that even realizing that he is facing the death penalty, he considers it his duty to tell the Roman governor about his meager life.

Ha-Notsri sincerely preaches love and tolerance. He does not have those to whom he would give preference. Pilate, Judas and Ratslayer - they are all interesting and "good people", only crippled by circumstances and time. Conversing with Pilate, he says that there are no evil people in the world.

The main strength of Yeshua is in openness and spontaneity, he is constantly in such a state that at any moment he is ready to meet halfway. He is open to this world, therefore he understands every person with whom fate confronts him:

The trouble is, - continued the unstoppable bound man, - that you are too closed off and have finally lost faith in people.

Openness and isolation in Bulgakov's world are two poles of good and evil. Good always moves towards, and isolation opens the way for evil. For Yeshua, truth is what it really is, overcoming conventions, liberation from etiquette and dogma.

Tragedy

The tragedy of the story of Yeshua Ha-Nozri is that his teaching was not in demand. People were simply not ready to accept his truth. And the hero even fears that his words will be misunderstood, and the confusion will last for a very long time. But Yeshua did not renounce his ideas, he is a symbol of humanity and perseverance.

The Master experiences the tragedy of his character in the modern world. One can even say that Yeshua Ha-Nozri and the Master are somewhat similar. Neither of them abandoned their ideas, and both paid for them with their lives.

The death of Yeshua was predictable, and the author emphasizes its tragedy with the help of a thunderstorm, which ends the storyline and modern history:

Dark. Coming from the Mediterranean Sea, it covered the city hated by the procurator... An abyss descended from the sky. Yershalaim disappeared - the great city, as if it did not exist in the world ... Darkness devoured everything ...

Moral

With the death of the protagonist, not only Yershalaim plunged into darkness. The morality of its citizens left much to be desired. Many residents watched the torture with interest. They were not afraid of either the hellish heat or the long journey: execution is so interesting. And approximately the same situation occurs 2000 years later, when the people are eager to attend the scandalous performance of Woland.

Looking at how people behave, Satan draws the following conclusions:

... they are people as people. They love money, but it has always been ... humanity loves money, no matter what it is made of, whether it is leather, paper, bronze or gold ... Well, frivolous ... well, and mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts.

Yeshua is not a fading, but a forgotten light, on which shadows disappear. He is the embodiment of kindness and love, an ordinary person who, despite all the suffering, still believes in the world and people. Yeshua Ha-Nozri are powerful forces of good in human form, but even they can be influenced.


Throughout the novel, the author draws a clear line between the spheres of influence of Yeshua and Woland, but, on the other hand, it is difficult not to notice the unity of their opposites. Of course, in many situations Woland looks much more significant than Yeshua, but these rulers of light and darkness are equal. And thanks to this equality, there is harmony in the world, because if there were no one, the existence of the other would be meaningless. The peace that the Masters were awarded is a kind of agreement between two powerful forces, and two great forces are driven to this decision by ordinary human love, which is considered in the novel as the highest value.

Kievyan street, 16 0016 Armenia, Yerevan +374 11 233 255

The personality of Jesus Christ is timeless and has been actively discussed among people for more than two thousand years: from great scientists to ordinary believers. His name justified the murder of millions of people, conquered countries, forgave sins, baptized babies and healed the seriously ill.

Bulgakov, as a mystic and as a writer, could not be indifferent to such a person as Jesus Christ. He created his hero - Yeshua Ha-Nozri. This character walked with a light and almost ghostly step throughout the novel The Master and Margarita.

However, at the very end of the novel, it is Yeshua who becomes the one who decides the fate of the Master.

It is interesting that in the novel, Woland himself begins the storyline about Jesus. At Patriarch's Ponds, he tells a fascinating story to the skeptical atheists Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Homeless Ivan.

Yeshua looks and acts like an ordinary person of 27 years old, without a family and a permanent place of residence.

He comes from Galilee, believes in God, in goodness and has the ability to heal. By removing the intolerable headache of Pontius Pilate, he evokes a respectful attitude towards himself. And after conversations about truth and truth, he wins his trust.

He sees, first of all, the light in each person. I am deeply convinced that a conversation even with Mark Ratslayer, a cruel warrior who does not know a drop of mercy, can change his dark life.

Yeshua addresses any person: "A good person." By this he, as it were, emphasizes that good lives in the heart of everyone.

Undoubtedly, Yeshua is not an easy believing fanatic. Ha-Notsri is a creative person with a philosophical mindset, doing good consciously. He is smart and gentle in communication, but firmly convinced in the power of only the Creator.

Yeshua was loved. People followed him, listening to his every word. There were those who recorded for him. For example - Levi Matthew. When Ha-Nozri looked at the scrolls written by Levi Matthew, he was horrified by the amount of what he did not say.

One thing is known for sure - Yeshua accepts only the power of God and preaches about the Truth. Truth, truth, mercy and morality - that's what Yeshua's words were about.

Yeshua himself is turned to the light and does not show aggression towards human vices, even towards the most important, in his opinion, cowardice.

Pontius Pilate admits that it was his own cowardice that led a bright and innocent man to crucifixion and a terrible death. Whatever actions Pilate did later, nothing could calm the remorse of his conscience. Even cruel revenge is the bloody death of Judas.

However, released after two thousand years of solitude, Pilate goes to meet Yeshua in the moonlight.

In the novel The Master and Margarita, the two main forces of good and evil, which, according to Bulgakov, should be in balance on Earth, are embodied in the faces of Yeshua Ha-Notsri from Yershalaim, close in image to Christ, and Woland, Satan in human form. Apparently, Bulgakov, in order to show that good and evil exist outside of time and for thousands of years people live according to their laws, placed Yeshua at the beginning of a new time, in the fictional masterpiece of the Master, and Woland, as the arbiter of cruel justice, in Moscow in the 30s . 20th century. The latter came to Earth to restore harmony where it had been broken in favor of evil, which included lies, stupidity, hypocrisy and, finally, betrayal that filled Moscow.

The Earth was initially firmly established between hell and paradise, and there must be a balance of good and evil on it, and if its inhabitants try to break this harmony, then heaven or hell (depending on which way people “tipped” their House) they will “suck” the Earth, and it will cease to exist, merging with that of the kingdoms that people will earn with their actions.

Like good and evil, Yeshua and Woland are internally interconnected, and, opposing, they cannot do without each other. It's like we wouldn't know what white is if there were no black, what day is if there were no night. This relationship in the novel is expressed in the descriptions of both characters - the author focuses on the same things. Woland "in appearance - more than forty years old", and Yeshua - twenty-seven; “Under the left eye of a man (Yeshua - I.A.) there was a big bruise ...”, and Woland’s “right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason”; Ga-Notsri “had an abrasion with dried blood in the corner of his mouth”, and Woland had “some kind of crooked mouth”, Woland “was in an expensive gray suit ... He famously twisted his gray beret in his ear ...”, Yeshua appears before the procurator dressed “in an old and torn blue tunic. His head was covered with a white bandage with a strap around his forehead ... ”and, finally, Woland openly declared that he was a polyglot, and Yeshua, although he did not say this, knew Greek and Latin in addition to Aramaic.

But the dialectical unity, the complementarity of good and evil is most fully revealed in the words of Woland, addressed to Levi Matthew, who refused to wish health to the “spirit of evil and the lord of shadows”: “You spoke your words as if you do not recognize shadows, and also evil. Would you be so kind as to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are obtained from objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But there are shadows from trees and from living beings. Don't you want to rip the whole globe, blowing away all the trees and all living things from it because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light? You are stupid".

How does Woland appear? At the Patriarch's Ponds, he appears before M.A. Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny, representatives of Soviet literature, who, sitting on a bench, again, nineteen centuries later, judge Christ and reject his divinity (Bezdomny) and his very existence (Berlioz). Woland tries to convince them of the existence of God and the devil. So, again, a certain connection between them is revealed: the devil (i.e. Woland) exists because Christ exists (in the novel - Yeshua Ha-Nozri), and to deny him means to deny one's own existence. This is one side of the issue. The other is that Woland is in fact "... part of that force that always wants evil and always does good."

No wonder Bulgakov took the lines of Goethe's Faust as the epigraph of the novel. Woland is the devil, Satan, the "prince of darkness", "the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows" (all these definitions are found in the text of the novel), which is largely focused on Mephistopheles "Faust". In this work, the name Woland is mentioned only once and is usually omitted in Russian translations. This is how Mephistopheles calls himself in the scene of Walpurgis Night, demanding from evil spirits to give way: “Nobleman Woland is coming!” Woland is also associated through literary sources with the image of a famous adventurer, occultist and alchemist of the 18th century. Count Alessandro Cagliostro; An important literary prototype of Woland was Someone in Gray, called He from Leonid Andreev's play "The Life of a Man"; finally, many consider Stalin one of Woland's prototypes.

It is absolutely clear that the novel Woland is the devil, Satan, the embodiment of evil. But why did he come to Moscow in the 1930s? The purpose of his mission was to reveal the evil inclination in man. I must say that Woland, unlike Yeshua Ha-Nozri, considers all people not good, but evil. And in Moscow, where he arrived to do evil, he sees that there is nothing left to do - evil has already flooded the city, penetrated into all its corners. Woland could only laugh at people, at their naivety and stupidity, at their disbelief and vulgar attitude towards history (Ivan Bezdomny advises sending Kant to Solovki), and Woland's task was to extract Margarita, the genius of the Master and his novel about Pontius Pilate.

He and his entourage provoke Muscovites to unfaithful deeds, convincing them of complete impunity, and then they themselves punish them in a parody. During a session of black magic in the Variety Hall, turned into a laboratory for the study of human weaknesses, the Magician exposes the greed of the public, shamelessness and impudent confidence in Sempleyarov's impunity. This, one might say, is the specialty of Woland and his retinue: to punish those who are unworthy of light and peace - and they have been doing their job from century to century. Proof of this is the great ball at Satan's in apartment No. 50. Here, the evil spirit demonstrates its undoubted achievements: poisoners, scammers, traitors, madmen, lechers of all stripes pass in front of Margarita. And it is at this ball that the murder of Baron Meigel takes place - he had to be destroyed, because he threatened to destroy the whole world of Woland and acted as an extremely successful competitor of Satan in the devil's field. And then, this is a punishment for the evil that primarily destroyed Moscow and which Meigel personified, namely: betrayal, espionage, denunciations.

And what about Yeshua? He said that all people are kind and that someday the kingdom of truth will come on Earth. Of course, in the novel, he is the embodiment of the ideal to which one must strive. Yeshua haunts Pontius Pilate. The procurator of Judea tried to persuade the prisoner to lie in order to save him, but Yeshua insists that "it is easy and pleasant to tell the truth." So, the procurator declared: "I wash my hands" and doomed an innocent person to death, but he had the feeling that he did not say something with an unusual, something attractive prisoner. Yeshua performed a sacrificial feat in the name of truth and goodness, and Pilate suffered and suffered for “twelve thousand moons” until the Master gave him forgiveness and the opportunity to negotiate with Ha-Nozri. Bulgakov's Yeshua, of course, goes back to the Jesus Christ of the Gospels. The name "Yeshua Ha-Notsri" Bulgakov met in Sergei Chevkin's play "Yeshua Ganotsri. The Impartial Discovery of Truth" (1922), and then checked it against the writings of historians.

I think the writer made Yeshua the hero of the Master's masterpiece in order to say that art is divine and can incline a person to search for truth and strive for good, which was so lacking for most residents of Moscow in the 30s - the Master turned out to be almost the only servant of real art, worthy, if not of light (because he was disappointed in himself, for some time he surrendered to the onslaught of fools and hypocrites, through Margarita entered into a deal with the devil), then of peace. And this proved that Woland does not have the power to drag those who strive for truth, goodness and purity to the underworld.



Similar articles