Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov
Master and Margarita
Moscow 1984
The text is printed in the last lifetime edition (manuscripts are stored in the manuscript department of the State Library of the USSR named after V. I. Lenin), as well as with corrections and additions made under the dictation of the writer by his wife, E. S. Bulgakova.
PART ONE
…So who are you, finally?
I am part of that power
what you always want
evil and always doing good.
Goethe. "Faust"
Chapter 1 Never talk to strangers
One day in the spring, at the hour of an unprecedentedly hot sunset, two citizens appeared in Moscow, at the Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them, dressed in a summer gray pair, was small, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat with a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were glasses of supernatural size in black horn-rimmed. The other, a broad-shouldered, reddish, shaggy young man with a checkered cap folded at the back of his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewed white trousers, and black slippers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, abbreviated as MASSOLIT, and editor of a thick art magazine, and his young companion, the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.
Once in the shade of slightly green lindens, the writers first rushed to the colorfully painted booth with the inscription "Beer and water."
Yes, the first strangeness of this terrible May evening should be noted. Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, was falling in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the lindens, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty.
"Give me the narzan," Berlioz asked.
“Narzan is gone,” the woman in the booth answered, and for some reason took offense.
“The beer will be delivered by evening,” the woman replied.
– What is there? Berlioz asked.
“Apricot, but warm,” the woman said.
- Come on, come on, come on, come on!
The apricot gave a rich yellow foam, and the air smelled of a barbershop. Having drunk, the writers immediately began to hiccup, paid off and sat down on a bench facing the pond and with their backs to Bronnaya.
Here a second oddity happened, concerning Berlioz alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart thumped and fell somewhere for a moment, then returned, but with a blunt needle stuck in it. In addition, Berlioz was seized by an unreasonable, but such a strong fear that he wanted to immediately run away from the Patriarchs without looking back. Berlioz looked around sadly, not understanding what had frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, thought: “What is the matter with me? This has never happened... my heart is beating... I'm overtired. Perhaps it's time to throw everything to hell and to Kislovodsk ... "
And then the sultry air thickened in front of him, and a transparent citizen of a most strange appearance was woven from this air. On a small head there is a jockey cap, a checkered, short, airy jacket ... A citizen of a sazhen's height, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and a physiognomy, please note, mocking.
Berlioz's life developed in such a way that he was not accustomed to unusual phenomena. Even more pale, he goggled his eyes and thought in dismay: “This cannot be! ..”
But, alas, it was, and a long, through which one can see, a citizen, without touching the ground, swayed in front of him both to the left and to the right.
Here terror seized Berlioz to such an extent that he closed his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that everything was over, the haze dissolved, the checkered one disappeared, and at the same time a blunt needle jumped out of the heart.
- Damn you! - the editor exclaimed, - you know, Ivan, I just now almost had a stroke from the heat! There was even something like a hallucination,” he tried to grin, but anxiety still jumped in his eyes, and his hands were trembling.
However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with a handkerchief and, saying quite cheerfully: “Well, so ...” - he began his speech, interrupted by drinking apricot.
This speech, as they later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet for the next book of the magazine a large anti-religious poem. Ivan Nikolaevich composed this poem, and in a very short time, but, unfortunately, the editor was not at all satisfied with it. Bezdomny outlined the main character of his poem, that is, Jesus, with very black colors, and yet, according to the editor, the whole poem had to be written anew. And now the editor was giving the poet a kind of lecture about Jesus, in order to emphasize the poet's basic mistake. It is difficult to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolaevich down - whether the pictorial power of his talent or complete ignorance of the issue on which he was going to write - but Jesus in his image turned out to be well, just like a living, although not attracting character. Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing was not what Jesus was like, whether he was good or bad, but that this Jesus, as a person, did not exist at all in the world and that all the stories about him were mere inventions, the most common myth.
It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians, for example, the famous Philo of Alexandria, the brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, who never mentioned the existence of Jesus in a word. Displaying solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that that place in the 15th book, in chapter 44 of the famous Tacitus Annals, which speaks of the execution of Jesus, is nothing more than a later fake insert.
The poet, for whom everything reported by the editor was news, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his lively green eyes on him, and only occasionally hiccupped, cursing apricot water in a whisper.
- There is not a single Eastern religion, - said Berlioz, - in which, as a rule, an immaculate maiden would not give birth to a god. And Christians, without inventing anything new, created their own Jesus in the same way, who in fact never lived. This is where the main focus should be...
The high tenor of Berlioz resounded in the desert alley, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich climbed into the jungle, into which he could climb without the risk of breaking his neck, only a very educated person, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris , the blessed god and son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Tammuz, and about Marduk, and even about the less well-known formidable god Vitsliputsli, who was once highly revered by the Aztecs in Mexico.
And just at the time when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet about how the Aztecs sculpted the figurine of Vitsliputsli from dough, the first person appeared in the alley.
Subsequently, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, various institutions submitted their reports describing this person. Their comparison cannot but cause astonishment. So, in the first of them it is said that this man was small in stature, had golden teeth and limped on his right leg. In the second - that the man was of enormous growth, had platinum crowns, limped on his left leg. The third succinctly reports that the person had no special signs.
We have to admit that none of these reports is good for anything.
First of all: the described person did not limp on any leg, and his height was neither small nor huge, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side, and gold crowns on the right. He was in an expensive gray suit, in foreign shoes, matching the color of the suit. He famously twisted his gray beret over his ear, and under his arm he carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle's head. He looks to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaved smoothly. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word, a foreigner.
Passing by the bench on which the editor and the poet were seated, the foreigner glanced sideways at them, stopped, and suddenly sat down on a neighboring bench, two paces away from his friends.
"German," thought Berlioz.
"An Englishman," thought Bezdomny, "look, he's not hot in gloves."
And the foreigner looked around at the tall houses that bordered the pond in a square, and it became noticeable that he was seeing this place for the first time and that it interested him.
He fixed his gaze on the upper floors, which dazzlingly reflected in the glass the broken and forever departing sun from Mikhail Alexandrovich, then moved it down, where the glass began to darken in the evening, smiled condescendingly at something, screwed up his eyes, put his hands on the knob, and his chin on his hands.
- You, Ivan, - said Berlioz, - depicted very well and satirically, for example, the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the point is that even before Jesus, a number of sons of God were born, like, say, the Phrygian Attis, in short speaking, not one of them was born and there was no one, including Jesus, and it is necessary that you, instead of the birth and, say, the arrival of the Magi, describe the ridiculous rumors about this birth ... Otherwise, it turns out from your story that he really born!
On May 23, 1938, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov completed his novel The Master and Margarita. We offer readers of the Tabloid to get acquainted with interesting facts, as well as illustrations for the legendary novel, made by the Samara artist Nikolai Korolev. Let's begin with that…
... the time when work on The Master and Margarita began, Bulgakov in various manuscripts dated either 1928 or 1929. In the first edition, the novel had variants of the names "Black Magician", "Engineer's Hoof", "Juggler with a Hoof", "V.'s Son", "Tour". The first edition of The Master and Margarita was destroyed by the author on March 18, 1930, after receiving news of the ban on the play The Cabal of Saints. Bulgakov reported this in a letter to the government: “And personally, with my own hands, I threw a draft of a novel about the devil into the stove ...”.
Work on The Master and Margarita resumed in 1931. Rough sketches were made for the novel, and Margarita and her then nameless companion, the future Master, already appeared here, and Woland acquired his violent retinue. The second edition, which was created before 1936, had the subtitle "Fantastic novel" and variants of the names "The Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I am", "The Black Magician", "The Engineer's Hoof".
And finally, the third edition, begun in the second half of 1936, was originally called "Prince of Darkness", but already in 1937 the title "Master and Margarita" appeared. On June 25, 1938, the full text was reprinted for the first time (printed by O. S. Bokshanskaya, sister of E. S. Bulgakova). The author's editing continued almost until the death of the writer, Bulgakov stopped it at Margarita's phrase: “So this, then, is the writers following the coffin?” ...
Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita for a total of more than 10 years.
There is also one interesting meteorological correspondence that confirms the internal chronology of The Master and Margarita. Judging by press reports, on May 1, 1929, there was a sharp warming in Moscow, unusual for this time of year, as a result of which the temperature rose from zero to thirty degrees in one day. In the following days, an equally sharp cooling was observed, culminating in rains and thunderstorms. In Bulgakov's novel, the evening of May 1 turns out to be unusually hot, and on the eve of the last flight, as once over Yershalaim, a strong thunderstorm with a downpour sweeps over Moscow.
Hidden dating is also contained in the indication of the age of the Master - the most autobiographical of all the characters in the novel. A master is “a man of about thirty-eight years of age.” Bulgakov himself turned the same age on May 15, 1929. 1929 is also the time when Bulgakov began work on The Master and Margarita.
If we talk about predecessors, then the first impetus for the idea of the image of Satan, as A. Zerkalov suggests in his work, was music - an opera by Charles Gounod, written on the plot of I.V. Goethe and struck Bulgakov in childhood for life. Woland's idea was taken from a poem by I.V. Goethe's "Faust", where she is mentioned only once and is omitted in Russian translations.
It is believed that Bulgakov's apartment was repeatedly searched by the NKVD, and they were aware of the existence and content of the draft version of The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov also had a telephone conversation with Stalin in 1937 (the contents of which are unknown to anyone). Despite the mass repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor any of his family members were arrested.
In the novel, at the time of the death of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, unlike the Gospel, he pronounces the name not of God, but of Pontius Pilate. According to deacon Andrei Kuraev, for this reason (and not only for it), the Yershalaim story (a novel in a novel) from the point of view of Christianity should be perceived as blasphemous, but this, according to him, does not mean that the entire novel should also be considered blasphemous "Master and Margarita".
Woland in the early editions of the novel was called Astaroth. However, this name was later replaced, apparently due to the fact that the name "Astaroth" is associated with a specific demon of the same name, other than Satan.
The Variety Theater does not exist in Moscow and has never existed. But now several theaters sometimes compete for the title at once.
In the penultimate edition of the novel, Woland says the words “He has a courageous face, he does his job right, and in general, everything is over here. We've got to go!" referring to the pilot, a character later omitted from the novel.
According to the writer's widow, Elena Sergeevna, Bulgakov's last words about the novel "The Master and Margarita" before his death were: "To know ... To know."
In Moscow there is a house-museum "Bulgakov's House". It is located at st. Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10. In apartment number 50 there is a museum that tells about the life and work of the writer. There are also theatrical performances, original improvisations on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov.
Some oddities begin even during the creation of the novel. An interesting fact is that Bulgakov was prompted to write The Master and Margarita by the novel presented to him by Chayanov A.V. titled "Venediktov or Memorable Events of My Life". The protagonist of the novel is Bulgakov, who is faced with diabolical forces. M.A.'s wife Bulgakova, Elena Belozerova, in her memoirs, wrote about the strong impact of the coincidence of surnames on the writer.
Bulgakov wrote his novel in the atmosphere of Moscow in the 1930s: the destruction of religion and religious institutions and, as a result, the fall of spiritual and moral life. Naturally, in such years, the novel with biblical motifs was not accepted for publication, and Bulgakov tried to burn his creation. The resumption of work on the novel is attributed to the writer's clash with the forces of the devil, namely the conversation between Mikhail Afanasyevich and Stalin on the phone. After that, during the mass repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor his family members were arrested.
The novel by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" was not completed and was not published during the author's lifetime. It was first published only in 1966, 26 years after Bulgakov's death, and then in an abbreviated journal version. The fact that this greatest literary work has reached the reader, we owe to the writer's wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, who managed to save the manuscript of the novel in difficult Stalinist times.
In 2005, director Vladimir Bortko made an attempt to film Bulgakov's artistic canvas. The ten-episode series was shown on the Rossiya TV channel and was viewed by 40 million viewers. Here are some interesting facts about the movie.
Valentin Gaft, who played several minor roles in the television series, played Woland himself in the unreleased Kara film. In turn, Alexander Filippenko, who played the role of Azazello in that film, was another representative of the dark forces - Koroviev.
The man in the jacket wears the uniform of a major of state security (the rank corresponded to the rank of brigade commander of the Red Army) during the main action of the film and the uniform of a senior major of state security (corresponds to the commander of the Red Army) in the finale. This uniform was worn by employees of the NKVD GUGB in 1937-1943. The man in the jacket is not mentioned in the novel; all the episodes with his participation are a godsend of the authors.
During the main action of the film, the investigator wears the uniform of a junior lieutenant of state security (corresponding to a senior lieutenant of the Red Army). In the final, he has insignia - four cubes in buttonholes - which have never been in either the Red Army or the NKVD GUGB in the entire history of their existence.
Sergei Bezrukov, who played Yeshua, voiced the role of the Master, so the actor Alexander Galibin does not speak in his own voice throughout the entire film.
Oleg Basilashvili, who played Woland, voiced the role of the head of the secret guard of the procurator of Judea Aphranius, played by Lubomiras Laucevičius.
Despite the rather wide running time, some episodes from the original novel were missed in the film, for example, the announcement of the death sentence by Pontius Pilate in front of a crowd of people, the dream of Nikanor Ivanovich, the barman’s consultation with the doctor after visiting the “bad apartment”, the episode with Margarita in a trolley bus on the way to Alexander Garden, Margarita's collision with the illuminated disk during the flight, Margarita's conversation with the boy after the destruction of Latunsky's apartment (most of the details of Margarita's flight from Latunsky's apartment to the lake were also missed, except for the meeting with Natasha on the hog), a conversation with Goat-foot over a glass of champagne. The details of the Sabbath scene were modestly presented, for example, there were no fat-faced frogs, luminous rotten, Margarita's flight to the other side.
There is no episode of Margarita's initiation into a witch in the novel, this is a find by the authors of the film, Woland and the Cat Behemoth play chess (chess pieces, according to Bulgakov's novel, are alive), an episode of Woland and Margarita's observation of what is happening in the globe, a forest with parrots and Margarita's flight at the Ball Satan, episodes with Abaddonna, an enthusiastic conversation between Behemoth, Gella and Woland after the ball, the meeting of Aphranius with Niza, the conversation between Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth after the fire in Griboedovo.
Woland in the novel is no more than 50 years old, and Oleg Basilashvili is ~75. Azazello's hair color is red, while Alexander Filippenko in this role is dark. Woland's eyes are of different colors and one of them always looks straight, Basilashvili's eyes in this role are healthy and of the same color.
Some minor edits have been made to the text. In the 9th episode, Pilate is talking to Matthew: “And now I need parchment…”, “And do you want to take away the last one?”, “I didn’t say give it back, I said show it.”. In the scene of Sempliyarov's interrogation, he talks about a magician in a mask (as it was in the novel), although in the film Woland appears in the theater without it.
In the interrogation scene of Yeshua, he introduces himself as Ga Nozri, not Ga Nozri.
In episode 8, Koroviev gives the Master a clearly metal goblet (according to the text - a glass cup), the Master drops it on the carpet, Koroviev remarks: "fortunately, fortunately ...", although nothing was broken.
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is a work that reflects philosophical, and therefore eternal themes. Love and betrayal, good and evil, truth and lies, amaze with their duality, reflecting the inconsistency and, at the same time, the fullness of human nature. Mystification and romanticism, framed in the writer's elegant language, captivate with a depth of thought that requires repeated reading.
Tragically and ruthlessly, a difficult period of Russian history appears in the novel, unfolding in such a homespun side that the devil himself visits the halls of the capital in order to once again become a prisoner of the Faustian thesis about a force that always wants evil, but does good.
History of creation
In the first edition of 1928 (according to some sources, 1929), the novel was flatter, and it was not difficult to single out specific topics, but after almost a decade and as a result of difficult work, Bulgakov came to a complexly structured, fantastic, but because of this no less life story.
Along with this, being a man overcoming difficulties hand in hand with his beloved woman, the writer managed to find a place for the nature of feelings more subtle than vanity. Fireflies of hope leading the main characters through diabolical trials. So the novel in 1937 was given the final title: The Master and Margarita. And that was the third edition.
But the work continued almost until the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich, he made the last revision on February 13, 1940, and died on March 10 of the same year. The novel is considered unfinished, as evidenced by numerous notes in the drafts kept by the writer's third wife. It was thanks to her that the world saw the work, albeit in an abridged magazine version, in 1966.
The author's attempts to bring the novel to its logical conclusion testify to how important it was to him. Bulgakov burned out the last of his strength into the idea of creating a wonderful and tragic phantasmagoria. It clearly and harmoniously reflected his own life in a narrow room, like a stocking, where he fought the disease and came to realize the true values of human existence.
Analysis of the work
Description of the work
(Berlioz, Ivan the homeless and Woland between them)
The action begins with a description of the meeting of two Moscow writers with the devil. Of course, neither Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz nor Ivan the homeless even suspect who they are talking to on a May day at the Patriarch's Ponds. In the future, Berlioz dies according to Woland's prophecy, and Messire himself occupies his apartment in order to continue his practical jokes and hoaxes.
Ivan the homeless, in turn, becomes a patient in a psychiatric hospital, unable to cope with the impressions of meeting with Woland and his retinue. In the house of sorrow, the poet meets the Master, who wrote a novel about the procurator of Judea, Pilate. Ivan learns that the metropolitan world of critics is cruel to objectionable writers and begins to understand a lot about literature.
Margarita, a childless woman of thirty, the wife of a prominent specialist, yearns for the disappeared Master. Ignorance brings her to despair, in which she admits to herself that she is ready to give her soul to the devil, just to find out about the fate of her beloved. One of the members of Woland's retinue, the waterless desert demon Azazello, delivers a miraculous cream to Margarita, thanks to which the heroine turns into a witch in order to play the role of a queen at Satan's ball. Having overcome some torment with dignity, the woman receives the fulfillment of her desire - a meeting with the Master. Woland returns to the writer the manuscript burned during the persecution, proclaiming a deeply philosophical thesis that "manuscripts do not burn."
In parallel, a storyline develops about Pilate, a novel written by the Master. The story tells of the arrested wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who was betrayed by Judas of Kiriath, handing over to the authorities. The procurator of Judea administers judgment within the walls of the palace of Herod the Great and is forced to execute a man whose ideas, disdainful of the power of Caesar, and power in general, seem to him interesting and worthy of discussion, if not fair. Having coped with his duty, Pilate orders Aphranius, the head of the secret service, to kill Judas.
The plot lines are combined in the last chapters of the novel. One of Yeshua's disciples, Levi Matthew, visits Woland with a petition to grant peace to those in love. That same night, Satan and his retinue leave the capital, and the devil gives the Master and Margarita eternal shelter.
Main characters
Let's start with the dark forces appearing in the first chapters.
Woland's character is somewhat different from the canonical embodiment of evil in its purest form, although in the first edition he was assigned the role of a tempter. In the process of processing material on satanic topics, Bulgakov molded the image of a player with unlimited power to decide fate, endowed, at the same time, with omniscience, skepticism and a bit of playful curiosity. The author deprived the hero of any props, such as hooves or horns, and also removed most of the description of the appearance that took place in the second edition.
Moscow serves Woland as a stage on which, by the way, he does not leave any fatal destruction. Woland is called by Bulgakov as a higher power, a measure of human actions. He is a mirror that reflects the essence of other characters and society, mired in denunciations, deceit, greed and hypocrisy. And, like any mirror, messire gives people who think and tend to justice the opportunity to change for the better.
An image with an elusive portrait. Outwardly, the features of Faust, Gogol and Bulgakov himself intertwined in him, since the mental pain caused by harsh criticism and non-recognition caused the writer a lot of problems. The master is conceived by the author as a character whom the reader rather feels as if he is dealing with a close, dear person, and does not see him as an outsider through the prism of a deceptive appearance.
The master remembers little about life before meeting his love - Margarita, as if he did not really live. The biography of the hero bears a clear imprint of the events of the life of Mikhail Afanasyevich. Only the ending the writer came up with for the hero is lighter than he himself experienced.
A collective image that embodies the female courage to love in spite of circumstances. Margarita is attractive, brash and desperate in her quest to reunite with the Master. Without her, nothing would have happened, because through her prayers, so to speak, a meeting with Satan took place, her determination led to a great ball, and only thanks to her uncompromising dignity did the two main tragic heroes meet.
If you look back at Bulgakov’s life again, it’s easy to note that without Elena Sergeevna, the writer’s third wife, who worked on his manuscripts for twenty years and followed him during his lifetime, like a faithful, but expressive shadow, ready to put enemies and ill-wishers out of the light, it wouldn’t have happened either. publication of the novel.
Woland's retinue
(Woland and his retinue)
The retinue includes Azazello, Koroviev-Fagot, Behemoth Cat and Hella. The latter is a female vampire and occupies the lowest rung in the demonic hierarchy, a minor character.
The first is the prototype of the demon of the desert, he plays the role of Woland's right hand. So Azazello ruthlessly kills Baron Meigel. In addition to the ability to kill, Azazello skillfully seduces Margarita. In some way, this character was introduced by Bulgakov in order to remove characteristic behavioral habits from the image of Satan. In the first edition, the author wanted to name Woland Azazel, but changed his mind.
(Bad apartment)
Koroviev-Fagot is also a demon, and an older one, but a buffoon and a clown. His task is to confuse and mislead the venerable public. The character helps the author provide the novel with a satirical component, ridiculing the vices of society, crawling into such cracks where the seducer Azazello will not get. At the same time, in the finale, he turns out to be not at all a joker in essence, but a knight punished for an unsuccessful pun.
The cat Behemoth is the best of jesters, a werewolf, a demon prone to gluttony, every now and then making a stir in the life of Muscovites with his comical adventures. The prototypes were definitely cats, both mythological and quite real. For example, Flyushka, who lived in the Bulgakovs' house. The writer's love for the animal, on behalf of which he sometimes wrote notes to his second wife, migrated to the pages of the novel. The werewolf reflects the tendency of the intelligentsia to transform, as the writer himself did, receiving a fee and spending it on buying delicacies in the Torgsin store.
"The Master and Margarita" is a unique literary creation that has become a weapon in the hands of the writer. With his help, Bulgakov dealt with the hated social vices, including those to which he himself was subject. He was able to express his experience through the phrases of the characters, which became a household name. In particular, the statement about manuscripts goes back to the Latin proverb "Verba volant, scripta manent" - "words fly away, what is written remains." After all, burning the manuscript of the novel, Mikhail Afanasyevich could not forget what he had previously created and returned to work on the work.
The idea of a novel in a novel allows the author to lead two large storylines, gradually bringing them together in the timeline until they intersect "beyond", where fiction and reality are already indistinguishable. Which, in turn, raises a philosophical question about the significance of human thoughts, against the background of the emptiness of words that fly away with the noise of bird wings during the game of Behemoth and Woland.
Roman Bulgakov is destined to go through time, like the heroes themselves, in order to again and again touch on important aspects of human social life, religion, issues of moral and ethical choice and the eternal struggle between good and evil.
70 years ago, on February 13, 1940, Mikhail Bulgakov finished the novel The Master and Margarita.
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his novel The Master and Margarita for a total of 12 years. The concept of the book took shape gradually. Bulgakov himself dated the time when work on the novel began in different manuscripts either 1928 or 1929.
It is known that the idea of the novel came from the writer in 1928, and in 1929 Bulgakov began the novel The Master and Margarita (which did not yet have this title).
After Bulgakov's death, eight editions of the novel remained in his archive.
In the first edition of the novel "The Master and Margarita" had variants of the names "Black Magician", "Engineer's Hoof", "Juggler with a Hoof", "Son B", "Tour".
On March 18, 1930, after receiving the news about the ban on the play "The Cabal of the Saints", the first edition of the novel, brought to the 15th chapter, was destroyed by the author himself.
The second edition of The Master and Margarita, which was created until 1936, had the subtitle "Fantastic novel" and variants of the names "The Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I am", "Hat with a Feather", "Black Theologian", " He Appeared", "The Foreigner's Horseshoe", "He Appeared", "The Coming", "The Black Magician" and "The Counselor's Hoof".
In the second edition of the novel, Margarita and the Master already appeared, and Woland acquired his retinue.
The third edition of the novel, begun in the second half of 1936 or in 1937, was originally called The Prince of Darkness. In 1937, returning once again to the beginning of the novel, the author first wrote on the title page the title "Master and Margarita", which became final, put the dates 1928-1937 and no longer left work on it.
In May - June 1938, the full text of the novel was reprinted for the first time, the author's editing continued almost until the writer's death. In 1939, important changes were made to the end of the novel and an epilogue was added. But then the terminally ill Bulgakov dictated to his wife, Elena Sergeevna, amendments to the text. The extensiveness of inserts and amendments in the first part and at the beginning of the second suggests that no less work was to be done further, but the author did not have time to complete it. Bulgakov stopped work on the novel on February 13, 1940, less than four weeks before his death.
Mikhail Bulgakov took away from this world the secret of the creative concept of his last and, probably, the main work, The Master and Margarita.
The author's worldview turned out to be very eclectic: Judaic teachings, Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Masonic motifs were used when writing the novel. "Bulgakov's understanding of the world, at best, is based on the Catholic teaching about the imperfection of the primordial nature of man, which requires active external influence for its correction." It follows from this that the novel allows for a lot of interpretations in the Christian, atheistic, and occult traditions, the choice of which largely depends on the point of view of the researcher...
“Bulgakov’s novel is not dedicated to Yeshua at all, and not even primarily to the Master himself with his Margarita, but to Satan. Woland is the undoubted protagonist of the work, his image is a kind of energy node of the entire complex compositional structure of the novel.
The very title "Master and Margarita" "obscures the true meaning of the work: the reader's attention is focused on the two characters of the novel as the main ones, while in terms of the meaning of the events they are only henchmen of the protagonist. The content of the novel is not the history of the Master, not his literary misadventures, not even his relationship with Margarita (all this is secondary), but the story of one of Satan's visits to earth: with the beginning of it, the novel begins, and ends with its end. The master appears to the reader only in the thirteenth chapter, Margarita, and even later - as Woland needs them.
“The anti-Christian orientation of the novel leaves no doubt... It is not for nothing that Bulgakov so carefully disguised the true content, the deep meaning of his novel, entertaining the reader's attention with side details. But the dark mysticism of the work, in addition to the will and consciousness, penetrates into the soul of a person - and who will undertake to calculate the possible destruction that can be produced in it by that? .. "
The above description of the novel by the teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy, candidate of philological sciences Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunaev indicates a serious problem that Orthodox parents and teachers face in connection with the fact that the novel "The Master and Margarita" is included in the literature curriculum of state secondary educational institutions. How to protect religiously indifferent, and therefore defenseless against occult influences, students from the influence of that satanic mysticism, which is saturated in the novel?
One of the main holidays of the Orthodox Church is the Transfiguration of the Lord. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was transfigured before His disciples (, ), the souls of Christians are now transfigured through life in Christ. This transformation can be extended to the outside world - Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is no exception.
Era portrait
It is known from biographical information that Bulgakov himself perceived his novel as a kind of warning, as a superliterary text. Already dying, he asked his wife to bring the manuscript of the novel, pressed it to his chest and gave it away with the words: “Let them know!”
Accordingly, if our goal is not just to get aesthetic and emotional satisfaction from reading, but to understand the author’s idea, to understand why a person spent the last twelve years of his life, in fact, his whole life, we should treat this work not only from the point of view of literary criticism. To understand the author's idea, one must at least know something about the author's life - often its episodes are reflected in his creations.
Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) - the grandson of an Orthodox priest, the son of an Orthodox priest, professor, teacher of history at the Kyiv Theological Academy, a relative of the famous Orthodox theologian Fr. Sergei Bulgakov. This suggests that Mikhail Bulgakov was at least partially familiar with the Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world.
Now for many it is a wonder that there is some kind of Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world, but nevertheless it is so. The Orthodox worldview is actually very deep, it has been formed over more than seven and a half thousand years and has absolutely nothing to do with the caricature drawn on it by essentially ignorant people in the very era in which the novel “The Master and Margarita.
In the 1920s, Bulgakov became interested in the study of Kabbalism and occult literature. In the novel The Master and Margarita, the names of demons, the description of the satanic black mass (in the novel it is called “Satan’s ball”) and so on speak of a good knowledge of this literature ...
Already at the end of 1912, Bulgakov (he was then 21 years old) quite definitely declared to his sister Nadezhda: "You'll see, I'll be a writer." And he became one. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that Bulgakov is a Russian writer. And what has Russian literature always been primarily concerned with? Exploration of the human soul. Any episode of the life of a literary character is described exactly as much as is necessary to understand what impact he had on the human soul.
Bulgakov took the Western popular form and filled it with Russian content, said in a popular form about the most serious things. But!..
For a religiously ignorant reader, the novel, in a favorable case, remains a bestseller, since it does not have the foundation that is necessary to perceive the fullness of the idea invested in the novel. In the worst case, this very ignorance leads to the fact that the reader sees in The Master and Margarita and includes in his worldview such ideas of religious content that Mikhail Bulgakov himself would hardly have come up with. In particular, in a certain environment, this book is valued as a "hymn to Satan." The situation with the perception of the novel is similar to the delivery of potatoes to Russia under Peter I: the product is wonderful, but due to the fact that no one knew what to do with it and what part of it is edible, people were poisoned and died by entire villages.
In general, it must be said that the novel was written at a time when a kind of epidemic of "poisoning" on religious grounds was spreading in the USSR. The point is this: the 1920s and 30s in the Soviet Union were the years when Western anti-Christian books were published in huge numbers, in which the authors either completely denied the historicity of Jesus Christ, or sought to present Him as a simple Jewish philosopher and nothing more. The recommendations of Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz to Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (Bezdomny) at the Patriarch's Ponds (275) are a summary of such books. It is worth talking about the atheistic worldview in more detail in order to understand what Bulgakov is making fun of in his novel.
Atheistic worldview
In fact, the question "Is there a God or not" in the young Land of the Soviets was purely political in nature. The answer “God exists” required the immediate sending of the aforementioned God “to Solovki for three years” (278), which would be problematic to implement. Logically, the second option was inevitably chosen: "There is no God." Once again it is worth mentioning that this answer was purely political in nature, nobody cared about the truth.
For educated people, the question of the existence of God, in fact, never existed - another matter, they differed in opinions about the nature, features of this existence. The atheistic perception of the world in its modern form was formed only in the last quarter of the 18th century and took root with difficulty, since its birth was accompanied by terrible social catastrophes such as the French Revolution. That is why Woland is extremely happy to find in Moscow the most outspoken atheists in the person of Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny (277).
According to Orthodox theology, atheism is a parody of religion. It is the belief that there is no God. The word "atheism" itself is translated from Greek as follows: "a" is a negative particle "not", and "theos" - "God", literally - "godlessness". Atheists do not want to hear about any faith and assure that they base their assertion on strictly scientific facts, and “in the realm of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God” (278). But such “strictly scientific facts” in the field of knowledge of God fundamentally do not exist and cannot exist ... Science considers the world to be infinite, which means that God can always hide behind some pebble in the backyard of the universe, and not a single criminal investigation department can find Him (search Woland in Moscow, which is quite limited in space, and show the absurdity of such searches like: “Gagarin flew into space, did not see God”). There is not a single scientific fact about the non-existence of God (as well as about being), but to assert that something does not exist according to the laws of logic is much more difficult than to assert that it is. To make sure that there is no God, atheists need to conduct a scientific experiment: to experimentally test the religious path that claims that He exists. This means that atheism calls everyone who seeks the meaning of life to religious practice, that is, to prayer, fasting, and other features of the spiritual life. It's clearly absurd...
It is this very absurdity (“God does not exist because He cannot exist”) that Bulgakov demonstrates to the Soviet citizen, who pathologically does not want to notice the Behemoth riding the tram and paying the fare, as well as the breathtaking appearance of Koroviev and Azazello. Much later, already in the mid-1980s, Soviet punks experimentally proved that, having a similar appearance, one could walk around Moscow only until the first meeting with a policeman. In Bulgakov, however, only those people who are ready to take into account the otherworldly factor of earthly events begin to notice all these glaring things, who agree that the events of our life do not occur by chance, but with the participation of certain specific personalities from the "otherworldly » peace.
Biblical characters in the novel
How, in fact, to explain the appeal of Mikhail Bulgakov to the plot of the Bible?
If you look closely, the range of issues that concern humanity throughout history is rather limited. All these questions (they are also called "eternal" or "damned", depending on their relation) concern the meaning of life, or, what is the same, the meaning of death. Bulgakov turns to the New Testament biblical story, reminding the Soviet reader of the very existence of this Book. In it, by the way, these questions are formulated with the utmost precision. In it, in fact, there are answers - for those who want to accept them ...
The “Master and Margarita” raises all the same “eternal” questions: why, throughout his earthly life, a person encounters evil and where does God look (if He exists at all), what awaits a person after death, and so on. Mikhail Bulgakov changed the language of the Bible to the slang of a religiously uneducated Soviet intellectual of the 1920s and 30s. For what? In particular, in order to talk about freedom in a country that was degenerating into a single concentration camp.
Human freedom
It is only at first glance that Woland and his company do what they want with a person. In fact, only under the condition of the voluntary aspiration of the human soul to evil does Woland have the power to mock him. And here it would be worth turning to the Bible: what does it say about the power and authority of the devil?
Book of Job
Chapter 1
6 And there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; Satan also came between them.
8 And the Lord said to Satan, Have you taken notice of my servant Job?
12 ... behold, all that he has is in your hand; but do not stretch out your hand on him.
Chapter 2
4 And Satan answered the Lord, and said, ... A man will give all that he has for his life;
5 but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, will he bless you?
6 And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand; save only his life.
Satan fulfills the command of God and annoys Job in every possible way. Who does Job see as the source of his sorrows?
Chapter 27
1 And ... Job ... said:
2 God lives ... and the Almighty, who grieved my soul ...
Chapter 31
2 What is my fate from God above? And what is the inheritance from the Almighty from heaven?
Even such the greatest evil in the atheistic understanding as the death of a person does not occur at the will of Satan, but at the will of God - in a conversation with Job, one of his friends says the following words:
Chapter 32
6 And Elihu the son of Barahiel answered:
21 ... I will not flatter any person,
22 because I do not know how to flatter: now kill me, my Creator.
So, the Bible clearly shows: Satan can do only what God, who cares first of all about the eternal and priceless soul of every person, will allow him.
Satan can harm a person only with the consent of the person himself. This idea is persistently carried out in the novel: Woland first checks the disposition of a person’s soul, his readiness to commit a dishonest, sinful act, and, if any, gets the power to mock him.
Nikanor Ivanovich, the chairman of the housing association, agrees to a bribe (“Strictly persecuted,” the chairman whispered quietly and quietly and looked around), gets hold of “a double mark for two people in the front row” (366) and thereby gives Koroviev the opportunity to do him nasty things.
Entertainer Georges of Bengal constantly lies, hypocrites, and in the end, by the way, at the request of the workers, Behemoth leaves him without a head (392).
The financial director of the variety show, Rimsky, suffered because he was going to "get the wrong guy, blame everything on Likhodeev, shield himself, and so on" (420).
Prokhor Petrovich, head of the Spectacular Commission, does nothing at the workplace and does not want to do it, while expressing a desire to be "damned". It is clear that Behemoth does not refuse such an offer (458).
Employees of the Spectacle branch are fawning and cowardly in front of the authorities, which allows Koroviev to organize an unceasing choir from them (462).
Maximilian Andreevich, Berlioz's uncle, wants one thing - to move to Moscow "at all costs", that is, at any cost. It is for this peculiarity of innocent desire that what happens to him happens (465).
Andrey Fokich Sokov, the manager of the Variety Theater buffet, stole two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles, placed them in five savings banks and hid two hundred gold ten under the floor at home, before suffering all kinds of damage in apartment No. 50 (478).
Nikolai Ivanovich, Margarita's neighbor, becomes a transport hog because of the specific attention given to the maid Natasha (512).
It is significant that it is precisely for the sake of determining the tendency of Muscovites to fall away from the voice of their own conscience of all kinds that a performance is arranged in the Variety: Woland receives an answer to the “important question” that worries him: have these townspeople changed internally? (389).
Margarita, as they say, classically sells her soul to the devil ... But this is a completely separate topic in the novel.
margarita
The high priestess of a satanic sect is usually a woman. She is referred to as the "prom queen" in the novel. Woland offers Margarita to become such a priestess. Why to her? But because with the aspirations of her soul, her heart, she herself had already prepared herself for such a service: “What did this woman need, in whose eyes some kind of incomprehensible light always burned, what did this witch, who adorned herself a little squinting in one eye, need? then in the spring mimosa? (485) - this quote from the novel is taken six pages before Margarita's first proposal to become a witch. And as soon as the aspiration of her soul becomes conscious ("... oh, really, I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to find out ..."), Azazello appears (491). Margarita becomes the “final” witch only after she expresses her full consent to “go to hell in the middle of nowhere” (497).
Having become a witch, Margarita fully feels that state, which, perhaps, she did not always consciously strive for all her life: she “felt free, free from everything” (499). "From everything" - including from duties, from responsibility, from conscience - that is, from one's human dignity. The fact of experiencing such a feeling, by the way, suggests that from now on Margarita could never love anyone else except herself: to love a person means to voluntarily give up part of your freedom in his favor, that is, from desires, aspirations and everything else. To love someone means to give the beloved the strength of your soul, as they say, "invest your soul." Margarita gives her soul not to the Master, but to Woland. And she does this not at all for the sake of love for the Master, but for herself, for the sake of her whim: “I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to [me] find out…” (491).
Love in this world is subject not to human fantasies, but to a higher law, whether a person wants it or not. This law says that love is won not at any cost, but only at one cost - self-denial, that is, the rejection of one's desires, passions, whims and the patience of the pain arising from this. “Explain: I love because it hurts, or does it hurt because I love? ..” The Apostle Paul in one of his epistles has these words about love: “... I am not looking for yours, but you” ().
So, Margarita is looking not for the Master, but for his novel. She belongs to those aesthetic persons for whom the author is only an appendix to his creation. It is not the Master that is truly dear to Margarita, but his novel, or rather, the spirit of this novel, more precisely, the source of this spirit. It is to him that her soul aspires, it is to him that she will subsequently be given. Further relations between Margarita and the Master are just a moment of inertia, a person is by nature inert.
The Responsibility of Freedom
Even becoming a witch, Margarita still does not lose her human freedom: the decision of whether she should be the “prom queen” depends on her will. And only when she gives her consent, a sentence is pronounced on her soul: “In short! cried Koroviev, “quite briefly: will you not refuse to take on this duty?” “I won’t refuse,” Margarita answered firmly. "Finished!" - said Koroviev "(521).
It was with her consent that Margaret made the Black Mass possible. A lot in this world depends on the free will of a person, much more than it seems to those who now talk from TV screens about “freedom of conscience” and “universal values” ...
Black mass
The Black Mass is a mystical rite dedicated to Satan, a mockery of the Christian liturgy. In The Master and Margarita, she is called "Satan's ball."
Woland comes to Moscow precisely to perform this rite - this is the main purpose of his visit and one of the central episodes of the novel. The question is pertinent: Woland's arrival in Moscow to perform a black mass - is it just part of a "world tour" or something exclusive? What event made such a visit possible? The answer to this question is given by the scene on the balcony of the Pashkovs' house, from which Woland shows the Master Moscow.
“In order to understand this scene, you need to visit Moscow now, imagine yourself on the roof of the Pashkovs’ house and try to understand: what did a person see or not see from the roof of this house in Moscow in the second half of the 1930s? Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Bulgakov describes the gap between the explosion of the Temple and the beginning of the construction of the Palace of Soviets. At that time, the Temple had already been blown up and the area was built up by the "Shanghai". Therefore, there were visible huts, which are mentioned in the novel. Given the knowledge of the landscape of that time, this scene acquires a striking symbolic meaning: Woland turns out to be the master in the city in which the temple was blown up. There is a Russian proverb: "A holy place is never empty." Its meaning is this: demons settle in the place of the desecrated shrine. The place of the destroyed iconostases was taken by the "icons" of the Politburo. So it is here: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up and naturally a “noble foreigner” appears (275).
And this foreigner, right from the epigraph, reveals who he is: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” But this is Woland's autocharacteristic and this is a lie. The first part is just, and the second ... It's true: Satan wants evil for people, but good comes out of his temptations. But it is not Satan who does good, but God, for the sake of saving the human soul, turns his intrigues to good. This means that when Satan says that “desiring evil without end, he does only good,” he ascribes to himself the mystery of divine Providence. And this is a godless declaration.”
In fact, everything that has to do with Woland bears the stamp of imperfection and inferiority (the Orthodox understanding of the number "666" is just that). At a performance in a variety show, we see “a red-haired girl, good to everyone, if only her neck scar did not spoil” (394), before the start of the “ball”, Koroviev says that “there will be no shortage of electric light, even, perhaps, it would be good, if it were smaller" (519). And Woland’s appearance itself is far from perfect: “Woland’s face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was pulled down, deep wrinkles parallel to sharp eyebrows were cut on his high bald forehead. The skin on Woland's face seemed to be burned forever by a tan" (523). If we take into account the teeth and eyes of different colors, the crooked mouth and the slanted eyebrows (275), then it is clear that we are not a model of beauty.
But let us return to the purpose of Woland's stay in Moscow, to the black mass. One of the main, central moments of Christian worship is the reading of the Gospel. And, since the Black Mass is just a blasphemous parody of Christian worship, it is necessary to mock this part of it as well. But what to read instead of the hated Gospel???
And here the question arises: "Pilat's chapters" in the novel - who is their author? Who writes this novel based on the plot of the Master and Margarita novel itself? Woland.
Where did the Master's novel come from
“The fact is that Bulgakov left eight major editions of The Master and Margarita, which are very interesting and useful to compare. The unpublished scenes are by no means inferior to the final version of the text in their depth, artistic power and, importantly, semantic load, and sometimes they clarify and supplement it. So, if we focus on these editions, then the Master constantly says that he writes from dictation, performs someone's task. By the way, in the official version, the Master is also lamented by the misfortune that fell on him in the form of an ill-fated novel.
Woland reads burned and even unwritten chapters to Margarita.
Finally, in the recently published drafts, the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, when there is a conversation about whether Jesus was or not, is as follows. After Woland finished his story, Bezdomny says: “How well you talk about it, as if you yourself saw it! Maybe you should write a gospel too!” And then comes Woland's wonderful remark: “The Gospel from me??? Ha ha ha, interesting idea, though!”
What the Master writes is the “gospel of Satan,” which shows Christ the way Satan would like Him to be. Bulgakov hints at the censored Soviet times, tries to explain to the readers of anti-Christian pamphlets: "Look, here's who would like to see in Christ only a man, a philosopher - Woland."
In vain, the Master is self-absorbedly amazed at how accurately he “guessed” the ancient events (401). Such books are not "guessed" - they are inspired from outside. The Bible, according to Christians, is a God-inspired book, that is, at the time of its writing, the authors were in a state of special spiritual enlightenment, influence from God. And if the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God, then the source of inspiration for the novel about Yeshua is also easily visible. As a matter of fact, it is Woland who begins the story of the events in Yershalaim in the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, and the Master's text is only a continuation of this story. The master, accordingly, in the process of working on the novel about Pilate was under a special diabolical influence. Bulgakov shows the consequences of such an impact on a person.
The price of inspiration and the mystery of the name
While working on the novel, the Master notices changes in himself, which he himself regards as symptoms of a mental illness. But he is wrong. "His mind is in order, his soul is going crazy." The master begins to be afraid of the dark, it seems to him that at night some “octopus with very long and cold tentacles” climbs through the window (413), fear takes possession of “every cell” of his body (417), the novel becomes “hated” to him (563 ) and then, according to the Master, "the last thing happens": he "takes out of the desk drawer the heavy lists of the novel and draft notebooks" and begins to "burn them" (414).
In fact, in this case, Bulgakov somewhat idealized the situation: the artist, indeed, drawing inspiration from the source of all evil and decay, begins to feel hatred towards his creation and sooner or later destroys it. But this is not “the last”, according to the Master ... The fact is that the artist begins to be afraid of creativity itself, afraid of inspiration, expecting fear and despair to return behind them: “nothing around interests me, they broke me, I’m bored, I want to go to the basement "- says Woland the Master (563). And what is an artist without inspiration?.. Sooner or later, following his work, he destroys himself. What is a Master for?
In the Master's worldview, the reality of Satan is obvious and beyond any doubt - it is not for nothing that he immediately recognizes him in a foreigner who talked with Berlioz and Ivan at the Patriarch's Ponds (402). But there is no place for God in the Master's worldview — the master's Yeshua has nothing in common with the real, historical God-Man Jesus Christ. Here the secret of this name itself is revealed - the Master. He is not just a writer, he is precisely a creator, a master of a new world, a new reality in which, in a fit of suicidal pride, he puts himself in the role of Master and Creator.
Before the beginning of the construction of the era of “universal happiness” in our country, this era was first described by individuals on paper, the idea of its construction first appeared, the idea of this era itself. The master created the idea of a new world in which only one spiritual entity is real - Satan. The real Woland, the authentic one, is described by Bulgakov (the same one “slanted forever tanned”). And the transformed, magnificent and majestic horseman with his retinue, whom we see on the last pages of The Master and Margarita, is Woland, as the soul of the Master sees him. About the disease of this soul has already been said ...
Hell out of brackets
The end of the novel is marked by a kind of Happy End. It looks like it, but it does. It would seem: the Master is with Margarita, Pilate finds a certain state of peace, a bewitching picture of horsemen retreating, - only the titles and the word “end” are missing. But the fact is that during his last conversation with the Master, even before his death, Woland utters words that bring the real end of the novel beyond its cover: “I’ll tell you,” Woland turned to the Master with a smile, “that your novel will bring you more surprises.” » (563). And with these "surprises" the Master will be destined to meet in the very idealistic house to which he and Margarita are sent on the last pages of the novel (656). It is there that Margarita will stop “loving” him, it is there that he will never again experience creative inspiration, it is there that he will never be able to turn to God in despair because there is no God in the world created by the Master, it is there that the Master will not be able to do the last thing that the life of a desperate person who has not found God ends on earth - he will not be able to arbitrarily end his life by suicide: he is already dead and is in the world of eternity, in a world whose owner is the devil. In the language of Orthodox theology, this place is called hell...
Where does the novel take the reader?
Does the novel lead the reader to God? Dare to say "Yes!" The novel, as well as the “satanic bible,” leads a person honest to himself to God. If, thanks to The Master and Margarita, one believes in the reality of Satan as a person, then one will inevitably have to believe in God as a Person: after all, Woland categorically stated that “Jesus really existed” (284). And the fact that Bulgakov's Yeshua is not God, while Bulgakov's Satan in the "gospel from himself" is trying to show and prove by all means. But is Mikhail Bulgakov correctly described the events that took place in Palestine two thousand years ago from a scientific (that is, an atheistic) point of view? Perhaps there is some reason to believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth is Yeshua Ha-Notsri, not described by Bulgakov at all? But then, who is he?
So, it follows from here that the reader is logically and inevitably obliged before his own conscience to embark on the path of searching for God, on the path of knowing God.
).Alexander Bashlachev. Staff.
Sakharov V. I. Mikhail Bulgakov: lessons of fate. // Bulgakov M. White Guard. Master and Margarita. Minsk, 1988, p. 12.
Andrey Kuraev, deacon. The answer to the question about the novel "The Master and Margarita" // Audio recording of the lecture "On the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ."
Dunaev M. M. Manuscripts do not burn? Perm, 1999, p. 24.
Frank Coppola. Apocalypse now. Hood. Movie.
