The main philosophical line of the novel is the struggle between good and evil.
condemned Yeshua.
For his brilliant novel, the master suffers, writers accuse him of
what he writes about Jesus Christ. And the hero is going through a spiritual crisis, in the course of
whom he burns his romance, but his beloved, apparently sensing
something wrong with the heart, saves one pack. About the fate of the Master it is said as follows:
"He didn't deserve the light, he deserved the peace."
The sin of the Master is connected with his novel. The Master is judged by Yeshua. But
but also Woland. Therefore, he asks Woland for peace for the Master. But Satan
rules hell.
the answer to the question why the master deserved peace, and not light, turns out to be
as a result of comparing the heroes who deserved the light (Levi Matthew and Yeshua) with
master.
The image of Levi Matthew is complex and contradictory, it is necessary in the novel for
retribution for the evil done in the world. For example, he tried to save Yeshua,
an innocent man whom Pontius Pilate punished.
Matthew Levi let Yeshua go alone, and that was a mistake. Possibly due to
this he did not save his teacher from execution and torture.
Levi falls into despair, curses God for allowing death
Yeshua. The master is in the same despair when he is briefly
leaving Margaret. And the hero in a fit destroys his work.
Having betrayed Yeshua, Levi earned the light, and the master, who betrayed no one, did not
deserved
In fact, Levi wanted to save a person from torment, even at the cost of his
life, the one who loved everyone and believed that there were no evil people at all. Student
Yeshua fought for justice, not for himself, but for his teacher. Master
he wanted to correspond to the love that was given to him by Margarita and
which lifted him up. That is, in fact, the masters only bother them with
Margaret relationship.
The act of Levi Matthew is valued in the novel higher than love experiences
main characters. And I think that's why Levi deserved the light
following the teacher.
And the master and Margarita receive peace from the hands of the devil; Woland presents
peace as follows: "Oh, thrice-romantic master, don't you
you want to walk with your girlfriend in the afternoon under the cherries, which are beginning to
bloom, and in the evening listen to the music of Schubert? .. "
But the master is a creator, a free nature, and it is more terrible for him than this peace
come up with, because the existence of the hero will be meaningless. ... memory
masters, restless, began to fade ....
Good and evil complement each other in the novel, they represent a single
whole and cannot exist without each other.
On the one hand, peace is evil for the hero, as mentioned above. But
after all, Woland frees the master from earthly torment, suffering, which
loved ones have experienced; he offers them a new harmonious world.
Bulgakov leaves the considered question open; he does not give exact
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is the pinnacle work of M. A. Bulgakov, on which he worked from 1928 until the end of his life. At first, Bulgakov called it "The Engineer with a Hoof", but in 1937 he gave the book a new title - "The Master and Margarita". This novel is an extraordinary creation, a historically and psychologically reliable book about that time. This is a combination of Gogol's satire and Dante's poetry, an alloy of high and low, funny and lyrical. The novel is dominated by a happy freedom of creative imagination and at the same time the rigor of compositional design. The basis of the plot of the novel is the opposition of true freedom and lack of freedom in all its manifestations. Satan rules the ball, and the inspired Master, a contemporary of Bulgakov, writes his immortal novel. There, the procurator of Judea sends the messiah to be executed, and nearby, fussing, mean, adapt, betray quite earthly citizens inhabiting Sadovye and Bronny streets of the 20-30s of our century. Laughter and sadness, joy and pain are mixed together, as in life, but in that high degree of concentration that is available only to literature. "The Master and Margarita" is a lyric-philosophical poem in prose about love and moral duty, about the inhumanity of evil, about true creativity. Despite the comedy and satire, this is a philosophical novel, in which one of the main themes is the theme of choice. This topic allows you to reveal many philosophical questions, to show their solution with concrete examples. Choice is the core on which the whole novel rests. Any hero goes through the opportunity to choose. But all heroes have different motives for choosing. Some make a choice after much thought, others without hesitation and cannot shift the responsibility for their actions to someone else. The choice of the Master and Pontius Pilate is based on their negative human qualities; they bring suffering not only to themselves, but also to other people. Both heroes choose the side of evil. Pilate faced a tragic dilemma: to fulfill his duty, drowning out his awakened conscience, or to act according to his conscience, but lose power, wealth, and maybe even life. His painful thoughts lead to the fact that the procurator makes a choice in favor of duty, neglecting the truth that Yeshua brings. For this, the higher powers doom him to eternal torment: he gains the glory of a traitor. The master is also driven by cowardice and weakness, disbelief in Margarita's love. He pretends to be crazy and voluntarily enters a psychiatric hospital. The motive for such an act was the failure of the novel about Pilate. Burning the manuscript. The master renounces not only his creation, but also love, life, and himself. Thinking that his choice is the best for Margarita, he involuntarily dooms her to suffering. Instead of fighting, he runs away from life. And despite the fact that both Pilate and the Master take the side of evil, one creates it consciously, out of fear, and the other unconsciously, out of weakness. But heroes do not always choose evil, guided by negative qualities or emotions. An example of this is Margarita. She deliberately became a witch in order to bring back the Master. Margarita has no faith, but strong love replaces her faith. Love serves as her support in her decision. And her choice is right because it does not bring grief and suffering. Only one hero of the novel chooses not evil, but good. This is Yeshua Ga - Nozri. His only purpose in the book is to express the idea that will be subjected to all sorts of tests in the future, the idea given to him from above: all people are good, therefore the time will come when “man will pass into the realm of truth and justice, where no power will be needed at all” . Yeshua not only chooses the good, but he himself is the bearer of the good. Even to save his life, he does not renounce his beliefs. He guesses that he will be executed, but still does not try to lie or hide something, since it is “easy and pleasant” for him to tell the truth. It can be said that only Yeshua and Margarita made the really right choice; only they are able to fully bear responsibility for their actions. Bulgakov also develops the theme of choice and responsibility for one's choice in the "Moscow" chapters of the novel. Woland and his retinue (Azazello, Koroviev, Behemoth, Gella) are a kind of punishing sword of justice, exposing and naming various manifestations of evil. Woland arrives with a kind of revision in the country, which is declared the country of victorious goodness, happiness. And in fact, it turns out that people are what they were, and have remained so. At a performance in a variety show, Woland tests people, and people simply throw themselves at money and things. The people themselves made this choice. And many of them are justly punished when their clothes disappear, and gold coins turn into stickers from narzan. Man's choice is an internal struggle between good and evil. A person makes his own choice: who to be, what to be and on whose side. In any case, a person has an inner inexorable judge - conscience. People who have an unclean conscience, who are guilty and do not want to admit it, are punished by Woland and his retinue. But he does not punish everyone, but only those who deserve it. Woland returns to the Master his novel about Pontius Pilate, which he burned in a fit of fear and cowardice. The atheist and dogmatist Berlioz dies, and Kant, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Master and Margarita, who believe in the power of love and words, are transferred to a higher reality, because “manuscripts do not burn”, the creations of the human spirit are imperishable. A true understanding of the "Moscow" chapters of the novel is impossible without a deep insight into the story of Yeshua. The story of Yeshua and Pontius Pilate, recreated in the Master's book, affirms the idea that the confrontation between good and evil is eternal, it lies in the very circumstances of life, in the human soul, capable of lofty impulses and enslaved by the false, transient interests of today. Bulgakov's version of biblical events is extremely original. The author depicted not the death and resurrection of the son of God, but the death of an unknown wanderer, who was also declared a criminal. Yes, Yeshua was a criminal in the sense that he transgressed the seemingly immutable laws of this world - and gained immortality. These two temporal and spatial layers are interconnected by another grandiose phenomenon - thunderstorm and darkness, the forces of nature that cover the earth at the moment of “world catastrophes”, when Yeshua leaves Yershalaim, and the Master and his companion leave Moscow. Each reader of the novel, closing the last page, wonders whether the end of any life is so unambiguously determined, whether spiritual death is inevitable and how it can be avoided. Man and war in A. T. Tvardovsky's poem "Vasily Terkin" A. T. Tvardovsky's poem "Vasily Terkin" is the highest achievement of poetic mastery, a manifestation of a civic position, an understanding of the essence of the Russian national character. "What freedom ..." - I. A. Bunin said about this book. This is a selfless impulse to tell the truth about the war, about everything that she brought with her, that she discovered, about which she made us think: And everything else is more forest Not to live for sure - Without what? Without the truth of the existing Truth, right into the soul beating, Yes, it would be thicker, No matter how bitter it is. The poem "Vasily Terkin" can be called an encyclopedia of the Great Patriotic War. “Here is the terrible face of the war, and the ordinary simple way of life, here is life itself, where there are heroic deeds and ordinary deeds nearby; here is the poet's reflection, where folk wisdom, and a sly joke, and deep thought are intertwined. Here, finally, the seemingly incompatible is nearby - blood and tears, joke and laughter. All this is written in a simple and at the same time bright, figurative language ”(Yu. G. Razumovsky). The first chapters of "Vasily Terkin" were published in 1943, when the enemy was rushing to the Volga, in the most difficult moments for the fighters, Terkin helped them with his enthusiasm, fortitude, faith in victory. “Vasily Terkin is a fictional person from beginning to end, a figment of the imagination ... And although the features expressed in him were observed by me in many living people, none of these people can be called the prototype of Terkin ...” - the poet wrote. The chapter "Crossing" largely reflected the poet's experience during the Finnish war, and "Before the battle" - the impressions of the sad retreat of our troops "into the depths of Russia": "It was great sadness, as we wandered to the east."
The idea of Paradise is the logical end of the human
thoughts in the sense that further it, thought,
does not go; for beyond Paradise there is nothing more, nothing
not happening. And so it can be said that
Paradise is a dead end; this is ... the top of the mountain, the peak, with
which there is nowhere to step, only in Chronos 1.
I. Brodsky 2
In the 29th chapter of The Master and Margarita, Levi Matvey, the messenger of the highest divine power, appears before Woland with a request:
“He [Yeshua] read the Master’s work… and asks you to take the Master with you and reward him with peace. Is it really difficult for you to do, spirit of evil?
“He did not deserve the light, he deserved peace,” said Levi in a sad voice.
This dialogue raises a number of questions from readers of the novel: why did the Master "not deserve the light"? If the Master "deserved rest", why does Levi announce this in a "sad voice"? Why does Yeshua turn to Woland with this request, because Yeshua is omnipotent? Where should Master Woland take with him, and how can the reward that Yeshua asks for pass through the "department" of his antagonist? How to assess the fate of the Master in the light of this reward-punishment? What does "peace" mean and how does it correlate with "light" and "darkness" in M. Bulgakov's novel?
As you can see, the quoted dialogue is conceptual in nature, but its conceptuality requires deciphering (interpretation).
The description of the "light" (that is, Paradise), which the Master was not awarded, in fact, remains outside the scope of the text of the novel, and this gives reason to think that this work means "light" in its traditional religious content: "Christ was the true light" says the Gospel of John (1:9). A. Bely, a poet and theorist of symbolism, in the article "Sacred Colors" interprets the symbolism of light in this way, in contrast to its private manifestation - colors: "God is light and there is no darkness in him." Light differs from color in the fullness of the colors enclosed in it... Color is light, in one way or another limited by darkness... God appears to us: 1) as an unconditional being, 2) as an infinite being. The infinite can be symbolized by the infinity of colors contained in a beam of white light. That is why "God is light and there is no darkness in him" 3 .
Dark, respectively, symbolizes the god-fighting, satanic forces, which was written, in particular, by the psychologist L.S. Vygotsky: “What is pure black light?
As you know, this symbolism received a classical artistic embodiment in Dante's Divine Comedy. The third part of the comedy is devoted to the description of "Paradise". In its very center, Dante sees a dazzling Point, "pouring such a sharp light that there is no urine to endure." It is made up of three equal-sized fiery circles, symbolizing the Divine Trinity. Dante did not imagine the dwelling of God in the form of any specific sensual image, and therefore he placed this Point radiating light, love and life in the ninth heaven.
L. Yanovskaya, V. Lakshin, M. Chudakova, N. Utekhin, O. Zapalskaya, V. Kotelnikov and other researchers drew attention to some of the reasons why the Master "did not deserve the light" at different times, offering answers more often than ethical , religious and ethical plan. It is obvious that the range of answers should be expanded and they should follow from the analysis of different levels, "zones" of the novel. At the same time, it must be remembered that The Master and Margarita - a phantasmagoric, mystical, "deceitful" novel - serves as a shaky ground for any rational constructions. In it, one thing can be refuted by another, and this other, in turn, can be refuted by a third. And yet…
The master did not deserve the light because it would contradict:
- Christian canons ("the zone of the heroes of the novel");
- the philosophical concept of the world in the novel ("the zone of the author");
- the genre nature of the novel ("genre zone");
- aesthetic realities of the twentieth century ("the zone of the era, time and place of writing and reading the novel").
Of course, such a division is conditional and is dictated primarily by the purpose of this essay.
First of all, let us turn to the religious-ethical, Christian reasons. They are in the "zone of heroes" and flow from the fates of the novel characters, as if they lived "on their own", according to their own will, and not according to the author's. And this is the most common approach.
WITH Christian point of view, the Master did not deserve the light, because even beyond the threshold of death he remained too earthly. He did not overcome the human, bodily beginning in himself. This was expressed, in particular, in the fact that he looks back at his earthly sinful love - Margarita, he would like to share his future unearthly life with her. The classic precedent in world literature is known: Dante in the Divine Comedy denied those who were devoted to earthly love, denied light, placed them in Hell or Purgatory. Let me remind you that in the second circle of Dante's Hell - Paris, who seduced Elena the Beautiful and took her away from her lawful spouse, and the unfortunate Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, "destroyed by a thirst for pleasure", and many, many others. This and similar stories in their various variations go back, in particular, to the biblical parable of Lot's wife, who looked back at the city, perishing in fire, and turned into a pillar of salt. According to Christian ideas, earthly worries, sorrows and joys should not weigh down the one who leaves the sinful earth. The situation in the novel, in fact, repeats the biblical one: the Master also "looks back" at his past. But Bulgakov disposed of the fate of his hero differently: if he does not fully justify the Master, distancing himself from him, then, of course, he sympathizes with him.
According to Christian ideas, a true believer, thirsting for salvation, must renounce everything earthly, especially since he should not be burdened by earthly sinful love. Christianity puts earthly ties of kinship below spiritual ties. See the Gospel of Luke (8:19-21): Jesus spoke to the people when "the mother and his brothers came to him, and they could not approach him because of the people. And they let him know: Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you, he answered and said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."
Masters can be reproached for despondency, capitulation. Yes, the Master is tired, he drank the cup of suffering to the end, we are far from thinking of condemning him. But despondency and despair are also sinful, and not only according to Christian canons. The master refuses the truth he guessed in his novel, he admits:
I no longer have any dreams and no inspiration either ... nothing interests me around, except for her [Margarita] ... They broke me, I'm bored, and I want to go to the basement ... He hates me, this novel ... I experienced too much because of him .
Burning a novel is a kind of suicide, creative. It can be assumed that Woland appeared in Moscow because the destruction of the novel served as an appeal to him, to the forces of evil. Woland is the lord of shadows, and the "shadow" of the novel, the burnt novel, now passes through his department.
The list of the Master's sins, if desired, could be continued, if it could be argued that he was aware of himself as a particle of the Christian system of the world. But did the Master believe, did he, like the hero of Dante's poem, strive for the blessed light? The novel does not provide grounds for an affirmative answer. The Master's value system is different. How universal it is is another question, no less important for Bulgakov's novel.
This reason - the lack of faith and the desire for light - is the most important, and it is connected, in particular, with the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel. Although the author does not renounce the divine hypostasis of Yeshua, he [Yeshua] appears before the reader, first of all, as a morally excellent person who suffered undeservedly. There is no resurrection of Yeshua in the novel, and he does not look like the one who should be resurrected. The master "guessed" what happened two thousand years ago, when Yeshua came into the world, but from the point of view of a believer, he did not guess everything. The truth was revealed to him as historical truth, as a morally attractive image of Yeshua, but not the full truth of a true Christian.
The biography of Yeshua, given by the Master, is an artistic embodiment of the proof of the existence of God, given by Kant, - moral evidence, or "the idea of moral retribution", as it is stated, in particular, in the dictionary entry "God" in the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron: "The combination of virtue with happiness does not depend on ourselves, and experience shows that in this life virtue is not rewarded deserved happiness. There is another, a moral being, who both can and wants to do this, that is, to reward virtue with happiness worthy of it. Such a being is the only God. This contains the plot of the Master's novel about Yeshua. But, from a Christian point of view, the novel is not built on a self-sufficient foundation, therefore Yeshua himself cannot reward the Master with either light or, even more so, peace.
What has already been said is enough to deny the Master the "light". But still, the reasons of the religious and ethical order are limited and cannot be considered exhaustive. Christian critics call Bulgakov's novel heretical, but, of course, it is unlawful to approach the novel only with religious requirements.
"Light" (Paradise) as a reward for the tormented, tired Master would not correspond to artistic and philosophical concept of the novel and would be a one-sided solution to the problem of good and evil, light and darkness, would be a simplification of the dialectic of their connection in the novel. This dialectic is that good and evil cannot exist separately. It is no coincidence that Matthew Levi refuses to argue with Woland, who asks: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? all living things because of your fantasy to enjoy the naked light?
“I won’t argue with you, old sophist,” answered Matthew Levi.
It is obvious that there were no counterarguments, "indications" on this subject of who Levi, the faithful "slave" (fanatic), was sent to, and they cannot be in Bulgakov's novel. “Perhaps,” one of the researchers suggests, “there is a “deep unity and mysterious connection between Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan”” 4 . What is it expressed in?
As is known, the Christian church professes monotheism, where the devil occupies a subordinate position 5 . It is obvious that the relationship between Yeshua and Woland is non-traditional, rather, it is a partnership. The model of the world in the novel, despite its intentional incompleteness, "openness", can be characterized with good reason as dualistic. It is reminiscent of the heretical teaching of Origen, who put forward the idea of reconciliation (and not defeat) of the Devil with God at the end of world history, as well as the teaching of the Albigensians, Manicheans, etc., who claimed that the earth (unlike the sky) is not subject to God, but is located under the control of the Devil. Interestingly, in the early editions of the novel, in accordance with traditional Christian cosmology, Woland received an "instruction" from Yeshua regarding the fate of the Master. "Can they tell you?" the Master asked Woland in surprise, knowing of his might.
In the final version of the novel, on the one hand, the border between the possessions of Yeshua and Woland is drawn, and on the other hand, their unity of opposites is clearly felt. In dualistic myths, the opposition of good and evil as polar principles was formed, but it is also obvious that these concepts can exist only relative to each other. In the novel, this is indirectly confirmed by the symbolism of Woland's triangle, which is interpreted by Bulgakov scholars ambiguously. So, L.M. Yanovskaya sees in the triangle the initial letter of the word "Devil" 7 . I.F. Belza believes that this is a divine triangle: "It is quite well known that the triangle depicted on the royal gates and on the portals of temples has always been a symbolic image of the "All-seeing eye" - in other words, the first hypostasis of the Trinity" 8 . Handing Woland the divine triangle is thus a confirmation of his power, omniscience, just like Yeshua 9 .
A clarification is needed here. It is known that "The Holy Church of Christ allows the depiction of the Most Holy Trinity as a figure of an equilateral triangle with its apex upwards. According to Revelation, the devil imagined himself to be similar to the Most High (Is., XIV, 14). The cabalistic tetragram, or Masonic seal, therefore depicts the devil is also an equilateral triangle, equal to the first, but only with the top turned down, and not up, thus denoting the complete opposite of Satan to God, not without evidence that God's adversary was cast out of heaven "9. Of course, the novel does not say exactly how the "diamond triangle" is located on Woland's cigarette case, and then the "diamond triangle" on the cover of his gold watch - this would be a direct clue to the reader. But it is precisely in connection with the accepted symbolism (and regardless of Freemasonry) that it makes sense to fix the reader's attention on Woland's triangle. At the same time, the polar aspiration of the vertices of both triangles (the Trinity and the Devil) in the novel appears as their attraction to each other, the impossibility of existing separately.
In Bulgakov's novel, Woland turns out to be even more significant than Yeshua, at least in an artistic sense, which researchers have already paid attention to more than once. Bulgakov's Woland is not just the Devil, whose existence Yeshua is forced to temporarily put up with, but he is a necessary, equal element of the model of the world 9 . The strange "peace" in Bulgakov's novel is a kind of "agreement", an attempt not to oppose "light" and "shadow" in the transcendental world, as well as in the real earthly one.
Yeshua asks to arrange the fate of the Master and Margarita, but Woland "guessed" the same thing. "Reconciles" their creative feat of the Master, albeit inconsistent, "reconciles" human earthly love - "real, eternal, true." And in this sense, the title of the novel has a philosophical and ethical connotation: it affirms love as the highest value. Bulgakov spoke of himself as a "mystical" writer. Probably, nevertheless, mystical - outwardly, but inwardly, judging by the ideas dear to him - he is a down-to-earth writer, to whom earthly human feelings are dear.
And, of course, the highest value for the author of the novel is creativity. When deciding the fate of the Master, love and creativity balanced the lack of faith on the scales. A compromise solution was needed - to reward-punish the Master with "peace". In this decision one can read the approval of the highest earthly truth — the truth of creativity and love. But again, it must be said that this approval in the final turns into an unexpected side.
We remember that Matthew Levi speaks about peace-reward in a "sad voice." O. Zapalskaya, assessing the fate of the Master as a religious reader of the novel, argues that ““peace” is not a reward, it is the misfortune of the Master, who refused to make a choice between good and evil, light and darkness” 10 . Hence the sadness of Levi Matthew.
"Light" (heavenly peace, Paradise) as a Master's reward would be unmotivated not only from the religious-ethical, philosophical-conceptual points of view. Such an end is hardly possible within the framework of unique genre, in which the novel is written, within the framework of the menippea (a genre that is both philosophical and satirical). The Master and Margarita is a tragic and at the same time farcical, lyrical, and autobiographical novel. It feels irony in relation to the protagonist, it is a philosophical and at the same time satirical novel, it combines sacred and comic principles, grotesque fantastic and irrefutably realistic. It would be superfluous to give examples - they are in the reader's memory.
In the novel, the lyrical, trusting atmosphere is so captivating (we care about "modern chapters") that there is an effect of narration in the first person. Of course, Bulgakov and his hero are not identical to each other, the author sometimes sneers at his hero, and yet the confessional, autobiographical nature of the novel, with obvious irony (self-irony), is beyond doubt. In such a novel, the canonical hagiographic conclusion of the plot seems unlikely.
Apparently, L.M. Yanovskaya very correctly feels the tone and logic of Bulgakov's novel when she speaks of the impossibility for Bulgakov to repeat the finale of Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust: it is "impossible," she writes, "in the attitude of the 20th century. To reward an autobiographical hero with heavenly radiance? And Would you, dear reader, retain this heartfelt gullibility towards the writer, who so sincerely told everything - about himself, about creativity, about justice? 11 It is not so much about the worldview of a person of the twentieth century in general, it is eclectical, but how this worldview, including its eclecticism, was reflected in the novel by M. Bulgakov - a true novel of his time, although, one believes, and not only of his .
In addition to the "hero zone", "author zone", "genre zone", there is also an "epoch zone" - new aesthetic realities of modern times. In the 20th century, the idea of achieved happiness, stopped time, happiness-reward is not indisputable, meaning the mindset of the era.
M. Bulgakov's novel was created in accordance with a well-known trend in the art of the 20th century - the secularization of evangelical motifs and images, the "demystification" of culture, a trend that originates in the Renaissance era. This concerns, first of all, Jesus Christ — in modern times, "the search for realistic motivations for his existence" 12 comes to the fore. The novel "The Master and Margarita" is sometimes called the "Gospel of Woland", and this is really the "Gospel" of the twentieth century - each era creates its own gospel. The image of Bulgakov's Yeshua is often brought closer to Renan's Jesus, since both authors focus on the human, moral and ethical content of the images. And this comparison has its basis. But then the words of the religious philosopher S. N. Bulgakov also refer to the novel by M. Bulgakov, who noted with irritation in the book "The Life of Jesus" "the merry, rollicking skepticism of Renan with an aesthetic-religious garnish and with a tabloid novel instead of the Gospel" 13.
The novel by M. Bulgakov was created in an era that, according to S. N. Bulgakov, is characterized by separation, discord between church life and cultural life, and the context of this era undoubtedly influenced the author of The Master and Margarita, it has an even greater influence on perception of this novel by readers.
It should also be noted that the finale of Bulgakov's novel is determined not only by the internal logic of the work itself, but also by the logic of the development of the writer's work as a whole. M. Bulgakov's talent is predominantly satirical, ironic, "earthly". Even after the publication of The White Guard, G. Adamovich wrote about a characteristic feature of the talent of a novice writer - about the "dry and rather sad smile" 14 with which Bulgakov presents the reader with a panorama of human life. This smile, Bulgakov's skepticism is also felt in his last novel - in the decision of the posthumous fate of the protagonist, who deserved "peace", but not "light". However, "peace" in Bulgakov's novel poses new problems for the reader and researcher of the novel.
For many centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, only prominent
Torah scholars who were rewarded with Spiritual Ascension understood that the goal of Judaism is not at all the simple observance of the commandments in order to get into Paradise or, at worst, to be rewarded with a good reincarnation (what exactly reincarnates deserves a separate discussion, and we will return to it in the SBP) . They understood that the result should be a complete rebirth of the personality, its transformation into an altruistic superpersonality - Ben Aliya, the Son of Ascension.
But only in the New Age, through Hasidism, Musar and Kabbalah, the real Wise Men
tried to convey this idea to the “grown up” by that time masses. However, the overwhelming majority encountered an obvious misunderstanding: what exactly needs to be corrected/improved? Middot/Kelim/Reshimot? But what are they?
Volumes of explanation did not clarify much: if this were not the case, secular Jews would not have appeared, at least not in such numbers.
Remember this word: ENGRAM. Just do not google it, too much brutal nonsense has been written about it.
The fundamental difference between Hasidism and Musar, on the one hand, and Kabbalah, on the other, is as follows: the former propose to correct negative properties separately, and Kabbalah as a whole (selfishness, the desire to receive or give for the sake of self-satisfaction). But how to really roll this block? Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Ashlag had 40 to 60 students who simply lived Kabbalah, excluding working hours and 4 hours of sleep. And hundreds more students who studied on softer schedules. Out of this whole mass came a few Sons of Ascension - and nothing more. To the question of one of the students why he has been studying for so many years, and nothing happens, RABASH answered: Torah is an internal medicine, and you smear it on your leg. But what does this mean: internal? It is not so easy to answer this question.
But nevertheless it is possible, using the practical experience of non-orthodox psychological schools. In brackets, I note that orthodox schools in the humanities and social disciplines are no different from Bolshevism and the Inquisition: only the hands are short, according to current laws, to burn a "heretic" at the stake. But to expel from the university, to close access to scientific journals - that's all you want.
Orthodox materialists consider the consciousness and even the subconscious (of which they themselves admit that they know nothing) the product of the material activity of the brain. The gigantic empirical experience accumulated by unorthodox psychology since the 1960s shows that consciousness/soul can exist outside the body/brain and move from one body to another. See the writings of Grof, Moody and many others.
It is known that the ratio of consciousness and subconsciousness is, at best, one to ten. And this is where the dog is buried. Without working with the subconscious (and it is the very "inner"), very few people are able to achieve spiritual ascent.
At the end of this passage, I note: neither BS nor RABASH PROMISED ANYTHING TO ANYONE. They offered their own way, but they did not guarantee success to anyone.
An engram is a record of an emotional sensation imprinted in us and stored in the subconscious, associated with the experience of pain, fear and other painful feelings.
An engram is an unconsciously occurring recording. Engram recording occurs when a person is in pain, completely or partially unconscious and unable to use calm reflection - analytical mind / consciousness
Shock, blow, fear, stunnedness, a state of relative unconsciousness - unfortunately, all this happened dozens and hundreds of times in the life of each of us, and it is all this that imprints in us all the experiences and sensations of those minutes, and first of all - pain and then what those around you said. Everything is lumped together and tied into one knot. This entry is the engram. And now, completely random, just things that were then nearby, words and sounds can return to us that nightmare, that fear and that pain. This is illogical, it is not connected in any way in meaning, but it is written down together, and now we will do and live all this completely unreasonably and illogically.
The very concept of an engram was introduced by Hubbard, but he failed to develop an effective technique for neutralizing it.
Stanley Grof went much further, introducing patients into a state of altered consciousness through psychedelics, until their use was banned by the orthodoxies of science.
However, it was discovered quite by chance that similar states can be achieved using a special way of breathing, called by Grof HOLOTROPIC.
Several other schools followed, using this method with slight variations, and were also successful in releasing and neutralizing engrams.
All of them, including Grof's method, provided for a "debriefing" after a breathing session and attached excessive importance to it, both from a therapeutic and informational point of view.
And now, relatively recently, the method of "circular breathing" based on rebirthing, which appeared in Israel, completely discarded the "debriefing", which did not affect the quality of treatment at all. Visual images, mental memories, auditory effects - all this turned out to be just unnecessary rubbish, from which the brain was freed, and 95% of this rubbish had no direct relation to silent engrams.
As already mentioned, consciousness determines no more than 10% of the personality. These 10% are affected by the study of the Torah and the fulfillment of the commandments. But not for 90% of the personality clogged with engrams (their own and their ancestors), determined by the subconscious: "there is no presence of the Divinity, as soon as from the joy caused by the fulfillment of the commandment." But what joy can be in a person whose subconscious is overflowing with negative engrams - reshimot?
And so that life does not seem like honey to us at all, the surrounding society continuously pours out on us emotions caused by their own engrams.
Is it not these two factors that determine the general decline of spirituality - starting from the level of "domem" (simple observance) and ending with an ever-decreasing number of the Sons of the Ascension?
Doesn't this explain the fact that the majority of Jews feel the commandments are dry and unnecessary - after all, the simple pleasure from their fulfillment, bestowed by the Surrounding Light, is blocked by its engrams and the negative emotional field that modern society creates?
If so, then, apparently, the Almighty has prepared two medicines for us:
1. Getting rid of engrams by removing them from the subconscious - the technique of "circular breathing"
2. Maximum self-isolation from the consumer society - look at the youth of the Hills rejoicing even while under administrative (arbitrary and extrajudicial) arrest.
Of course, all this does not guarantee Ascension. But at worst, you can be content with this: "He did not deserve light, he deserved peace"
The idea of Paradise is the logical end of the human
thoughts in the sense that further it, thought,
does not go; for beyond Paradise there is nothing more, nothing
not happening. And so it can be said that
Paradise is a dead end; this is ... the top of the mountain, the peak, with
which there is nowhere to step, only in Chronos 1.
I. Brodsky 2
In the 29th chapter of The Master and Margarita, Levi Matvey, the messenger of the highest divine power, appears before Woland with a request:
He [Yeshua] read the Master's work... and asks you to take the Master with you and reward him with peace. Is it really difficult for you to do, spirit of evil?
He did not deserve the light, he deserved peace, - Levi said in a sad voice.
This dialogue raises a number of questions from readers of the novel: why did the Master "not deserve the light"? If the Master "deserved rest", why does Levi announce this in a "sad voice"? Why does Yeshua turn to Woland with this request, because Yeshua is omnipotent? Where should Master Woland take with him, and how can the reward that Yeshua asks for pass through the "department" of his antagonist? How to assess the fate of the Master in the light of this reward-punishment? What does "peace" mean and how does it correlate with "light" and "darkness" in M. Bulgakov's novel?
As you can see, the quoted dialogue is conceptual in nature, but its conceptuality requires deciphering (interpretation).
The description of the "light" (that is, Paradise), which the Master was not awarded, in fact, remains outside the scope of the text of the novel, and this gives reason to think that this work means "light" in its traditional religious content: "Christ was the true light" - says the Gospel of John (1:9). A. Bely, a poet and theorist of symbolism, in the article "Sacred Colors" interprets the symbolism of light in this way, in contrast to its private manifestation - colors: "God is light and there is no darkness in him." Light differs from color in the fullness of the colors enclosed in it... Color is light, in one way or another limited by darkness... God appears to us: 1) as an unconditional being, 2) as an infinite being. The infinite can be symbolized by the infinity of colors contained in a beam of white light. That is why "God is light and there is no darkness in him" 3 .
Dark, respectively, symbolizes the god-fighting, satanic forces, which was written, in particular, by the psychologist L.S. Vygotsky: “What is pure black light?
As you know, this symbolism received a classical artistic embodiment in Dante's Divine Comedy. The third part of the comedy is devoted to the description of "Paradise". In its very center, Dante sees a dazzling Point, "pouring such a sharp light that there is no urine to endure." It is made up of three equal-sized fiery circles, symbolizing the Divine Trinity. Dante did not imagine the dwelling of God in the form of any specific sensual image, and therefore he placed this Point radiating light, love and life in the ninth heaven.
L. Yanovskaya, V. Lakshin, M. Chudakova, N. Utekhin, O. Zapalskaya, V. Kotelnikov and other researchers drew attention to some of the reasons why the Master "did not deserve the light" at different times, offering answers more often than ethical , religious and ethical plan. It is obvious that the range of answers should be expanded and they should follow from the analysis of different levels, "zones" of the novel. At the same time, it must be remembered that "The Master and Margarita" - a phantasmagoric, mystical, "deceitful" novel - serves as a shaky ground for any rational constructions. In it, one thing can be refuted by another, and this other, in turn, can be refuted by a third. And yet…
The master did not deserve the light because it would contradict:
- Christian canons ("the zone of the heroes of the novel");
- the philosophical concept of the world in the novel ("the zone of the author");
- the genre nature of the novel ("genre zone");
- aesthetic realities of the twentieth century ("the zone of the era, time and place of writing and reading the novel").
Of course, such a division is conditional and is dictated primarily by the purpose of this essay.
First of all, let us turn to the religious-ethical, Christian reasons. They are in the "zone of heroes" and flow from the fates of the novel characters, as if they lived "on their own", according to their own will, and not according to the author's. And this is the most common approach.
WITH Christian point of view, the Master did not deserve the light, because even beyond the threshold of death he remained too earthly. He did not overcome the human, bodily beginning in himself. This was expressed, in particular, in the fact that he looks back at his earthly sinful love - Margarita, he would like to share his future unearthly life with her. The classic precedent in world literature is known: Dante in the Divine Comedy denied those who were devoted to earthly love, denied light, placed them in Hell or Purgatory. Let me remind you that in the second circle of Dante's Hell - Paris, who seduced Elena the Beautiful and took her away from her lawful spouse, and the unfortunate Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, "destroyed by a thirst for pleasure," and many, many others. This and similar stories in their various variations go back, in particular, to the biblical parable of Lot's wife, who looked back at the city, perishing in fire, and turned into a pillar of salt. According to Christian ideas, earthly worries, sorrows and joys should not weigh down the one who leaves the sinful earth. The situation in the novel, in fact, repeats the biblical one: the Master also "looks back" at his past. But Bulgakov disposed of the fate of his hero differently: if he does not fully justify the Master, distancing himself from him, then, of course, he sympathizes with him.
According to Christian ideas, a true believer, thirsting for salvation, must renounce everything earthly, especially since he should not be burdened by earthly sinful love. Christianity puts earthly ties of kinship below spiritual ties. See the Gospel of Luke (8:19–21): Jesus was speaking to the people when “his mother and his brothers came to him, and because of the people they could not approach him. desiring to see you, he answered and said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."
Masters can be reproached for despondency, capitulation. Yes, the Master is tired, he drank the cup of suffering to the end, we are far from thinking of condemning him. But despondency and despair are also sinful, and not only according to Christian canons. The master refuses the truth he guessed in his novel, he admits:
I no longer have any dreams and no inspiration either ... nothing interests me around, except for her [Margarita] ... They broke me, I'm bored, and I want to go to the basement ... He hates me, this novel ... I experienced too much because of him .
Burning a novel is a kind of suicide - creative. It can be assumed that Woland appeared in Moscow because the destruction of the novel served as an appeal to him, to the forces of evil. Woland is the lord of shadows, and the "shadow" of the novel, the burnt novel, now passes through his department.
The list of the Master's sins, if desired, could be continued, if it could be argued that he was aware of himself as a particle of the Christian system of the world. But did the Master believe, did he, like the hero of Dante's poem, strive for the blessed light? The novel does not provide grounds for an affirmative answer. The Master's value system is different. How universal it is is another question, no less important for Bulgakov's novel.
This reason - the lack of faith and the desire for light - is the most important, and it is connected, in particular, with the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel. Although the author does not renounce the divine hypostasis of Yeshua, he [Yeshua] appears before the reader, first of all, as a morally excellent person who suffered undeservedly. There is no resurrection of Yeshua in the novel, and he does not look like the one who should be resurrected. The master "guessed" what happened two thousand years ago, when Yeshua came into the world, but from the point of view of a believer, he did not guess everything. The truth was revealed to him as historical truth, as a morally attractive image of Yeshua, but not the full truth of a true Christian.
The biography of Yeshua, given by the Master, is an artistic embodiment of the proof of the existence of God, given by Kant, - moral evidence, or "the idea of moral retribution", as it is stated, in particular, in the dictionary entry "God" in the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron: "The combination of virtue with happiness does not depend on ourselves, and experience shows that in this life virtue is not rewarded deserved happiness. There is another - a moral being, which both can and wants to do this, that is, to reward virtue with happiness worthy of it. Such a being is the only God. This contains the plot of the Master's novel about Yeshua. But, from a Christian point of view, the novel is not built on a self-sufficient foundation, therefore Yeshua himself cannot reward the Master with either light or, even more so, peace.
What has already been said is enough to deny the Master the "light". But still, the reasons of the religious and ethical order are limited and cannot be considered exhaustive. Christian critics call Bulgakov's novel heretical, but, of course, it is unlawful to approach the novel only with religious requirements.
"Light" (Paradise) as a reward for the tormented, tired Master would not correspond to artistic and philosophical concept of the novel and would be a one-sided solution to the problem of good and evil, light and darkness, would be a simplification of the dialectic of their connection in the novel. This dialectic is that good and evil cannot exist separately. It is no coincidence that Matthew Levi refuses to argue with Woland, who asks: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? all living things because of your fantasy to enjoy the naked light?
“I won’t argue with you, old sophist,” answered Matthew Levi.
It is obvious that there were no counterarguments, "indications" on this subject of who Levi, the faithful "slave" (fanatic), was sent to, and they cannot be in Bulgakov's novel. “Perhaps,” one of the researchers suggests, “there is a “deep unity and mysterious connection between Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan”” 4 . What is it expressed in?
As is known, the Christian church professes monotheism, where the devil occupies a subordinate position 5 . It is obvious that the relationship between Yeshua and Woland is non-traditional, rather, it is a partnership. The model of the world in the novel, despite its intentional incompleteness, "openness", can be characterized with good reason as dualistic. It is reminiscent of the heretical teaching of Origen, who put forward the idea of reconciliation (and not defeat) of the Devil with God at the end of world history, as well as the teaching of the Albigensians, Manicheans, etc., who claimed that the earth (unlike the sky) is not subject to God, but is located under the control of the Devil. Interestingly, in the early editions of the novel, in accordance with traditional Christian cosmology, Woland received an "instruction" from Yeshua regarding the fate of the Master. "Can they tell you?" - Master asked Woland in surprise, knowing about his power 6 .
In the final version of the novel, on the one hand, the border between the possessions of Yeshua and Woland seems to be drawn, and on the other hand, their unity of opposites is clearly felt. In dualistic myths, the opposition of good and evil as polar principles was formed, but it is also obvious that these concepts can exist only relative to each other. In the novel, this is indirectly confirmed by the symbolism of Woland's triangle, which is interpreted by Bulgakov scholars ambiguously. So, L.M. Yanovskaya sees in the triangle the initial letter of the word "Devil" 7 . I.F. Belza believes that we are talking about a divine triangle: "It is quite well known that the triangle depicted on the royal gates and on the portals of temples has always been a symbolic image of the "All-Seeing Eye" - in other words, the first hypostasis of the Trinity" 8 . Handing Woland the divine triangle is thus a confirmation of his power, omniscience, just like Yeshua 9 .
A clarification is needed here. It is known that "The Holy Church of Christ allows the depiction of the Most Holy Trinity as a figure of an equilateral triangle with its apex upwards. According to Revelation, the devil imagined himself to be similar to the Most High (Is., XIV, 14). The cabalistic tetragram, or Masonic seal, therefore depicts the devil is also an equilateral triangle, equal to the first, but only with the top turned down, and not up, thus denoting the complete opposite of Satan to God, not without evidence that God's adversary was cast out of heaven "9. Of course, the novel does not say exactly how the "diamond triangle" is located on Woland's cigarette case, and then the "diamond triangle" on the cover of his gold watch - this would be a direct clue to the reader. But it is precisely in connection with the accepted symbolism (and regardless of Freemasonry) that it makes sense to fix the reader's attention on Woland's triangle. At the same time, the polar aspiration of the vertices of both triangles (the Trinity and the Devil) in the novel appears as their attraction to each other, the impossibility of existing separately.
In Bulgakov's novel, Woland turns out to be even more significant than Yeshua, at least in an artistic sense, which researchers have already paid attention to more than once. Bulgakov's Woland is not just the Devil, whose existence Yeshua is forced to temporarily put up with, but he is a necessary, equal element of the model of the world 9 . The strange "peace" in Bulgakov's novel is a kind of "agreement", an attempt not to oppose "light" and "shadow" in the transcendental world, as well as in the real earthly one.
Yeshua asks to arrange the fate of the Master and Margarita, but Woland "guessed" the same thing. "Reconciles" their creative feat of the Master, albeit inconsistent, "reconciles" human earthly love - "real, eternal, true." And in this sense, the title of the novel has a philosophical and ethical connotation: it affirms love as the highest value. Bulgakov used to say about himself that he was a "mystical" writer. Probably, nevertheless, mystical - externally, but internally, judging by the ideas dear to him, - he is a writer through and through, to whom earthly human feelings are dear.
And, of course, the highest value for the author of the novel is creativity. When deciding the fate of the Master, love and creativity balanced the lack of faith on the scales. A compromise solution was needed - to reward-punish the Master with "peace". In this decision one can read the approval of the highest earthly truth - the truth of creativity and love. But again, it must be said that this approval in the final turns into an unexpected side.
We remember that Matthew Levi speaks about peace-reward in a "sad voice." O. Zapalskaya, assessing the fate of the Master as a religious reader of the novel, argues that ““peace” is not a reward, it is the misfortune of the Master, who refused to make a choice between good and evil, light and darkness” 10 . Hence the sadness of Levi Matthew.
"Light" (heavenly peace, Paradise) as a Master's reward would be unmotivated not only from the religious-ethical, philosophical-conceptual points of view. Such an end is hardly possible within the framework of unique genre, in which the novel is written, within the framework of the menippea (a genre that is both philosophical and satirical). The Master and Margarita is a tragic and at the same time farcical, lyrical, and autobiographical novel. It feels irony in relation to the protagonist, it is a philosophical and at the same time satirical novel, it combines sacred and comic principles, grotesque fantastic and irrefutably realistic. It would be superfluous to give examples - they are in the reader's memory.
In the novel, the lyrical, trusting atmosphere is so captivating (we care about "modern chapters") that there is an effect of narration in the first person. Of course, Bulgakov and his hero are not identical to each other, the author sometimes sneers at his hero, and yet the confessional, autobiographical nature of the novel, with obvious irony (self-irony), is beyond doubt. In such a novel, the canonical hagiographic conclusion of the plot seems unlikely.
Apparently, L.M. Yanovskaya very correctly feels the tone and logic of Bulgakov's novel when she speaks of the impossibility for Bulgakov to repeat the finale of Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust: it is "impossible," she writes, "in the attitude of the 20th century. To reward an autobiographical hero with heavenly radiance? And Would you, dear reader, retain this heartfelt gullibility towards the writer, who so sincerely told everything - about himself, about creativity, about justice? 11 This is not so much about the worldview of a person of the twentieth century in general, it is eclectical, but how this worldview, including its eclecticism, was reflected in the novel by M. Bulgakov - a true novel of his time, although, one believes, and not only of his .
In addition to the "hero zone", "author zone", "genre zone", there is also an "epoch zone" - new aesthetic realities of modern times. In the 20th century, the idea of achieved happiness, stopped time, happiness-reward is not indisputable, - meaning the mindset of the era.
M. Bulgakov's novel was created in accordance with the well-known trend in the art of the 20th century - the secularization of evangelical motifs and images, the "demystification" of culture, a trend that originated in the Renaissance era. This applies primarily to Jesus Christ - in modern times, "the search for realistic motivations for his existence" 12 comes to the fore. The novel "The Master and Margarita" is sometimes called the "Gospel of Woland", and this is really the "Gospel" of the twentieth century - each era creates its own gospel. The image of Bulgakov's Yeshua is often brought closer to Renan's Jesus, since both authors focus on the human, moral and ethical content of the images. And this comparison has its basis. But then the words of the religious philosopher S. N. Bulgakov also refer to the novel by M. Bulgakov, who noted with irritation in the book "The Life of Jesus" "the merry, rollicking skepticism of Renan with an aesthetic-religious garnish and with a tabloid novel instead of the Gospel" 13.
The novel by M. Bulgakov was created in an era that, according to S. N. Bulgakov, is characterized by separation, discord between church life and cultural life, and the context of this era undoubtedly influenced the author of The Master and Margarita, it has an even greater influence on perception of this novel by readers.
It should also be noted that the finale of Bulgakov's novel is determined not only by the internal logic of the work itself, but also by the logic of the development of the writer's work as a whole. M. Bulgakov's talent is predominantly a satirical, ironic, "earthly" talent. Even after the release of The White Guard, G. Adamovich wrote about a characteristic feature of the talent of a novice writer - about the "dry and rather sad smile" 14 with which Bulgakov presents the reader with a panorama of human life. This smile, Bulgakov's skepticism is also felt in his last novel - in the decision of the posthumous fate of the protagonist, who deserved "peace", but not "light". However, "peace" in Bulgakov's novel poses new problems for the reader and researcher of the novel.
