The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Members almost universally gave a thumbs down for this book, describing it as too weird, too different, too black, too challenging, not funny, too anguished, too painful, too silly, too difficult and too avant garde to finish. For some of us it may have been a question of 'lost in translation', and since it was translated from Russian to English in the 1960s and a number of versions have appeared since, there may be something in that.

However, some of us wanted to read it because of the back story. Bulgakov wrote the novel in 1928, then burned the first manuscript in 1930 (The Master despairingly does this, too, in the novel). He could not see a future as a writer in the Soviet Union under Stalin (who led the USSR from 1922 - 1953), a time of widespread censorship and political repression. Nevertheless, he completed a second draft in 1936 and wrote another four versions. He died in 1940 from an inherited kidney disorder and at the time the novel still had some unfinished sentences and loose ends.

A manuscript was smuggled to Paris where the first book edition appeared in 1967. In the Soviet Union, the novel was first published in book form in Estonian in 1968 with some passages edited out. The first complete uncensored version published in Russian did not appear until 1973. Well, what's it all about? It's complicated!

There are two major plot lines. One is the story of Pontius Pilate meeting Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus Christ) shortly before he agrees that the prisoner should be executed. Talking to him, Pontius Pilate realises that while Jesus must be mad to find good in everyone he (Pilate) has a spiritual need for him (Jesus also cures him of migraine). Pilate must live with his guilt and cowardice after Jesus is executed.

The second major plot line is the arrival of Satan in 1930s Moscow which is officially atheist. Satan overhears Berlioz, the head of MASSOLIT, the association of the literary elite, arguing with Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (aka Homeless), a young modern poet. Berlioz says Homeless's poetry has not been strong enough on the point that Jesus was mythological and never

historically existed.

Satan is disguised as a foreign professor, Woland, who is in Moscow to present a performance of magic at a local theatre. He contradicts Berlioz, saying that Jesus did exist and he knows because he was there when Pontius Pilate sentenced him. He goes on to predict Berlioz's death in bizarre circumstances the same day. Sure enough, Berlioz is killed and Homeless is a

witness.

Homeless sounds the alarm about the evil he has experienced and pursues Woland and his strange entourage who we meet as the book goes on - Korovyev who is Woland's assistant and capable of creating any magical illusion; Behemoth, an enormous black cat who speaks and walks on two legs; Azazello, Woland's messenger and assassin; and Hella, a beautiful supernatural seductress and vampire. Homeless fails to catch Woland and after a series of events visits the restaurant used by the MASSOLIT members late at night in only his underwear. He is considered to be a madman, arrested and sent to the lunatic asylum.

Here he meets 'The Master', who has written a novel about the meeting of Pontius Pilate and Jesus which has been rejected by the literary bureaucracy. In despair, he has burnt the manuscript and run away from his lover, Margarita, ending up in the asylum.

Meanwhile, Woland and his entourage have set themselves up in Berlioz's apartment. They proceed to get rid of the management committee of the Variety Theatre, one by one, to enable the performance of Woland's black magic show. The bizarre show (it is performed only once), points to the shallow vanity and money hungry nature of the people in the audience. A series of other supernatural incidents follow and more people end up in the asylum.

In Part Two of the book, we meet Margarita who, despite a seemingly perfect life with a lovely apartment in Moscow (a big deal in 1930s Moscow) is unhappy with her passionless, respectable husband and in love with the writer, who she met in the street and who she calls The Master. She has attempted to preserve the few remaining pieces of the manuscript after the fire but doesn't know whether he is alive or dead.

On errand from Satan, Azazello meets her in the street while watching Berlioz's funeral cortège, which is attended by the literati. Margarita hates several of them because of their attitude to The Master's work.

Azazello tells her The Master is alive. Margarita will do anything to see him. Azazello gives her a gold box of ointment and tells her to use it on her body that night. She does so and becomes a witch, giving all her clothes to her maid, Natasha. She rides off naked and invisible on a broomstick to play hostess (still naked) at Satan's spring ball, welcoming a series of people who return from the grave.

After the ball, Satan asks what she wants and she asks for something he cannot grant her as it would require him to be merciful, which he says is outside his jurisdiction. She then asks for The Master and he is plucked by magic from the asylum.

The threads from the two plots are woven together in the final chapters of the book and we find out how The Master and Margarita end up together forever.

It would take a PhD to describe properly the symbolism of this book and all the references to Russian and European writers and their works, and to operas such as Berlioz's Faust. (This writer resorted to Wikipedia.) The book is on the surface a silly farce but clearly satirical, full of sensual moments and a belief in the conquering power of love, but with glimpses of brutality and terror, mindless bureaucracy, and despairing autobiographical elements.
Quite a ride.

A series of films, television series, radio shows, pop songs, plays, and ballets, have been made from the book. In 2019, Baz Luhrmann acquired the rights, with himself as producer and director of an upcoming film at a date to be announced.

Who was Mikhail Bulgakov?

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in May 1891. He graduated as a doctor from Kiev University in 1916, but gave up practice in 1920 to devote himself to literature.

In 1925, he completed the satirical novel, The Heart of a Dog, which remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1987 (the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991).

This was one of the many defeats he was to suffer during his lifetime at the hands of the censors.

By 1930, Bulgakov had become so frustrated by the political atmosphere and the suppression of his works that he wrote to Stalin begging to be allow to emigrate if he was not to be given the opportunity to make his living as a writer in the USSR.

Stalin telephoned him personally and offered to arrange a job or him at the Moscow Arts Theatre instead as a playwright. In 1938, a year before his health began to fail, he finally completed his prose masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. He was still tinkering with it a month before he died in 1940.

In 1966-7, thanks to the persistence of his widow, the novel made a first incomplete appearance in the Moscow literary magazine, Moskva, and in 1973 was published in full.