Russian-English translation THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
More meanings of the word and translation of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA from English into Russian in English-Russian dictionaries.
What is the translation of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA from Russian into English in Russian-English dictionaries.
More meanings of this word and English-Russian, Russian-English translations for THE MASTER AND MARGARITA in dictionaries.
- MASTER - Gamemaster
- MARGARITA - Margarita
Russian-American English Dictionary - MASTER - 1. (workshop, etc.) foreman* 2. mouth. (craftsman) master gunsmith - gunsmith, armorer of gold ...
English-Russian-English dictionary of general vocabulary - Collection of the best dictionaries - MASTER - dab hand They could leave the baby at its grandmother's place - she was a dab hand with children - ...
- MARGARITA - female Margaret Margaret
Russian-English dictionary of general topics - MARGARITA - female Margaret
Russian-English dictionary of general topics - MARGARITA - small. (Margarites) top shell
New Russian-English biological dictionary - MASTER – The foreman
Russian Learner's Dictionary - MASTER - craftsman
Russian Learner's Dictionary - MASTER
Russian-English dictionary - MASTER - m. 1. (workshop, etc.) foreman* 2. mouth. (craftsman) master gunsmith - gunsmith, armorer ...
Russian-English Smirnitsky abbreviations dictionary - MASTER - shopfloor foreman, supervising foreman, foreman, shopfloor manager, master
Russian-English dictionary of mechanical engineering and production automation - MASTER - husband. 1) master; craftsman, skilled workman watchmaker - watch-maker obsolete. gunsmith - armourer, gunmaker, gun-man, gunman, gunsmith...
Russian-English short dictionary of general vocabulary - MASTER - foreman, foremaster, maker, master, overseer
Russian-English dictionary on construction and new construction technologies - MASTER - Ruler
- MASTER - Playmaker
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER - Master
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER - Main
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER – Maestro
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER – Compère
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER - Boss
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER – Adept
British Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER - craftsman, foreman, master, overman
Russian-English economic dictionary - MASTER - (blat.) 1) a qualified criminal, 2) a person who knows how to forge handwriting
- MARGARITA - (name) (from Latin) pearl; colloquial - Rita; derivatives - daisy, rita, ritanya, ritokha, ritosh, ritulya, ritunya, ritusya, tusya, ritusha, marga, ...
English-Russian-English dictionary of slang, jargon, Russian names - MASTER - 1. Skillfully forging signatures; 2. A skilled thief who enjoys authority in his community
English-Russian-English dictionary of slang, jargon, Russian names - MASTER - 1. skilled craftsman*; maker; shoemaker ~ shoemaker; 2. (great specialist in his field) master, expert; ~ artistic word skilled reciter; ~ expert in his field, a great...
Russian-English Dictionary - QD - MASTER - (developer program) wizard
Modern Russian-English dictionary of mechanical engineering and production automation - MARGARITA - (Margrete af Danmark) (1353-1412), queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, daughter of King Waldemar IV of Denmark. Born in Søborg (near Copenhagen) in...
Russian Dictionary Colier - MARGARITA - (Marguerite d "Angouleme) (1492-1549), otherwise - Valois or Navarre. Born on April 11, 1492 in Angouleme. Daughter of Charles of Orleans and Louise of Savoy. ...
Russian Dictionary Colier - MASTER - m. foreman maintenance and repair foreman - maintenance foreman - shift foreman
Russian-English automobile dictionary - MASTER - wizard
Russian-English explanatory dictionary of terms and abbreviations for VT, Internet and programming - MASTER – m Maker
Russian-English WinCept Glass dictionary - MASTER - husband. 1) master craftsman, skilled workman watchmaker - watch-maker mouth. violin maker - violin-maker, weapon maker - armourer, ...
- MARGARITA - female Margaret
Large Russian-English Dictionary - MARGARITA - female Margaret
Large Russian-English Dictionary - MASTER - master master
Russian-English Dictionary Socrates - ODU, MARGARET – Marguerite Audoux
Russian-American English Dictionary - DOUGLAS, MARGARET – Margaret Douglas
Russian-American English Dictionary - REPAIRER - noun repairer; making repairs or repairs, master watch repairer ≈ watchmaker, watchmaker cabinet repairer repairman; repair specialist -...
- PIKE - I noun. pike a) a large freshwater fish Esox lucius b) any fish resembling a pike in shape or behavior Syn: ...
Large English-Russian Dictionary - MASTER - 1. noun. 1) owner, owner; master The dog obeyed his master. ≈ The dog listened to its owner. Syn: owner, boss, …
Large English-Russian Dictionary - MARGARET
Large English-Russian Dictionary - MARGARET - noun Margaret; Margaret Margaret
Large English-Russian Dictionary - MARGUERITE - Margarita
- MARGARITA - Margarita
American English-Russian Dictionary - MARGARET - Margaret of Antioch
American English-Russian Dictionary - THE MASTER AND MARGARITA - The Master and Margarita
American English-Russian Dictionary - SAINT MARGARET - Margaret of Antioch
American English-Russian Dictionary
I have long wanted to find time to chair the jury of a competition for the best translation. "The Master and Margarita". And when else to do this, if not on forcibly imposed idle days?
But first, on the shore, we need to agree on the criteria. How to determine which translation is better? What exactly is the difference between good and bad? Why add or deduct points?
Since it is impossible to grasp the immensity, and it is impossible (and pointless!) to compare different translations of each individual phrase, assigning points for them, and then add up and compare the amounts, I would propose a criterion for the correct transfer of style.
I dare to hope that for you, as for me, the main charm of the novel is not in the events and adventures of the characters or the twists and turns of the plot, but in its gentle humor, which - all - is built on the contrast of styles, such as:
If I heard correctly, you deigned to say, that Jesus was not alive? - asked the foreigner...
... "What the hell does he want?" - thought Homeless and frowned.
“Style is a person,” said Buffon. IMHO "The Master and Margarita" is a style. Try replacing, for example, in this passage:
"And then the sultry air thickened in front of him, and woven from this air a transparent citizen weird look. On a small head there is a checkered jockey cap short-haired an airy jacket... A citizen is a fathom tall, but his shoulders narrow, thin incredibly And face, please note mocking..."
woven- arose, appeared
weird- very strange
short-haired- short
in the shoulders narrow, thin - narrow-shouldered and thin
incredibly- Very
face- face
mocking- mocking
“And then hot air thickened in front of him, and from this air a transparent citizen arose very strange kind : narrow-shouldered, tall and thin, with a mocking expression on his face, dressed in a checkered short transparent jacket. He had a jockey's cap on his little head."
That's all. And - there is no great novel!
And further. I once heard on the radio a reading of excerpts from a novel by a modern American writer about the magician Guzzini. Then, an interview with the author, where he teaches how to write a novel correctly. Among other recommendations, I remember “in explanations of direct speech and dialogues, use only the verb “said, said”, in no case “responded”, “whispered”, “exclaimed”, “spoken”, etc. Eliminate any descriptions of the person or the appearance of the characters."
Without realizing it, this novelist was giving advice on writing a movie script, not a novel. Their population reads little, so even the most famous writer cannot live off literary fees. The dream of any of them is for his novel to be noticed in Hollywood. Then - yes!
In order not to scroll too far, Cf:
Give it to Narzan, - asked Berlioz.
Narzan is gone, - answered the woman in the booth and for some reason was offended.
Damn you! - exclaimed editor
“Well, sir, so...” - made a speech interrupted by drinking apricot.
Excuse me please, - spoke approached with a foreign accent
The foreigner leaned back on the bench and asked, even
squealing out of curiosity:
Are you atheists?!
See also the description of appearance above.
This is all to say that American translators, it seems to me, unconsciously follow such rules, thereby emasculating the text.
Well, let's get down to business!
Directory / Index| Original | translationRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1999 |
| translationDiana Burgin & Katherine Tiernan O"Connor, 1995 | translationMichael Glenny, 1967 |
1.
| The question arises whether Maximilian Andreevich was in a hurry to complain about the robbers to the police, committed over it wild violence in broad daylight? | The question arises whether it might have been the police that Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? |
| The question arises: did Maximilian Andreyevich rush off to the police station to lodge a complaint against the thugs who had brutalized him so savagely in broad daylight. | You may ask whether Maximilian Andreyevich hurried to the police to complain about the Ruffians who had handled him with such violence in broad daylight. |
2.
| “Your presence at the funeral is cancelled,” the cat continued in an official voice. - Work hard go to your place of residence. | "Your presence at the funeral is cancelled," the cat continued in an official voice. "Kindly return to your place of residence." |
| "Permissionto attend the funeral is hereby revoked," the cat continued in an official-sounding voice." Be so kind as to return to your place of residence." | "You may not attend the funeral," went on the cat in an official voice. "Kindly go home at once. |
What is the resolution?
3.
| The cat moved, jumped from the chair, stood on its hind legs, akimbo, opened his mouth and said: “Well, I gave a telegram!” Further What ? | The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs, front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said: "Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?" |
| The cat stirred, jumped down from the chair, stood on its hind legs, spread its forepaws, opened its jaws and said: “Well, I sent the telegram. Now what? | The cat jumped down from the chair, stood up on its hind legs, put its forelegs akimbo, opened its mouth and said: “I sent the telegram. So what? |
4.
| Who are you you will, citizen? - Nikanor Ivanovich asked in fear. - Bah! Nikanor Ivanovich, yelled in a rattling tenor unexpected citizen and, jumping up, greeted the chairman violent and a sudden handshake. This greeting did not please Nikanor Ivanovich at all. “I’m sorry,” he spoke suspiciously, “who are you?” Are you an official? Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich! - sincerely exclaimed the unknown person. What is official or unofficial? All this depends on from what point of view you look at the subject; all this, Nikanor Ivanovich, is conditional and unsteady. Today I am an unofficial person, and tomorrow, look, official! And it happens the other way around, Nikanor Ivanovich. And how it happens! This reasoning did not in any way satisfy the chairman of the house management. Being a generally suspicious person by nature, he concluded that ranting in front of him is a citizen - not an official person, but perhaps idle. | "And who might you be, citizen?" Nikanor Ivanovich asked fearfully. "Hah! Nikanor Ivanovich!" the unexpected citizen yelled in a rattling tenor and, jumping up, greeted the chairman with a forced and sudden handshake. This greeting by no means gladdened Nikanor Ivanovich. "Excuse me," he said suspiciously, "but who might you be? Are you an official person?" "Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich!" the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. "What are official and unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the subject. It"s all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I"m an unofficial person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I"m an official one! And it also happens the other way round - oh, how it does!" This argument in no way satisfied the chairman of the house management. Being a generally suspicious person by nature, he concluded that the man holding forth in front of him was precisely an unofficial person, and perhaps even an idle one. |
| "And who might you be, citizen?" asked Nikanor Ivanovich in a frightened voice. "Hullo! Nikanor Ivanovich!" the unexpected citizen called out in a quavering tenor and, leaping to his feet, he greeted the chairman with an abrupt and forceful handshake. Nikanor Ivanovich was hardly enthralled by this welcome."Excuse me," he began suspiciously, "but who exactly are you? Are you here in an official capacity?" "Ah, Nikanor Ivanovich!" the stranger exclaimed confidentially. "How do you define official and unofficial? All that depends on your point of view. All that is arbitrary and relative. Today I"m unofficial, but tomorrow I might be official. And vice versa, of cose, or even something worse. "This kind of reasoning gave no satisfaction whatsoever to the chairman of the house committee. A suspicious person by nature, he decided that the bombastic citizen was certainly unofficial, and maybe even superfluous. | "And who might you be, citizen?" asked Nikanor Ivanovich. "Nikanor Ivanovich!" cried the mysterious stranger in a quavering tenor. He leaped up and greeted the chairman with an unexpectedly powerful handshake which Nikanor Ivanovich found painful extremely. "Pardon me," he said suspiciously, "but who are you? Are you somebody official?" "Ah, Nikanor Ivanovich!" said the stranger in a man-to-man voice. "Who is official and who is unofficial these days? It all depends on your point of view. It"s all so vague and changeable, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I"m unofficial, tomorrow, hey presto! I"m official! Or maybe vice-versa--who knows? "None of this satisfied the chairman. By nature a suspicious man, he decided that this voluble individual was not only unofficial but had no business to be there. |
There is a difference between “Who are you?”, “Who are you?” and “Who are you?” In school literature it was called "Speech characteristics of the character."
5.
| Yesterday you if you please do tricks... - Me? - exclaimed in amazement magician - have mercy. Somehow it doesn’t even suit me! “I’m sorry,” he said. taken aback barman, - to give a session of black magic... | "Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks..." "I?" the magician exclaimed in amazement. "Good gracious, it"s somehow even unbecoming to me!" "I"m sorry," said the barman, taken back. "I mean the session of black magic..." |
| "Yesterday you had the occasion to perform some tricks..." "I?" the magician exclaimed in amazement. "I beg your pardon. That isn't my sort of thing!" "Sorry," said the bartender, taken back. "But what about the performance of black magic..." | "Yesterday you did some tricks....""I did? Tricks?" exclaimed the magician indignantly. "I beg your pardon! What a rude suggestion! ""I"m sorry," said the barman in consternation. "I mean. . . black magic...at the theater." |
I beg your pardon =have mercy ?
6.
| Here -With, what weasel, and if you please interpret about the fifth dimension. | A real slicker, you see, ma"am, and you keep talking about the fifth dimension! |
| Now there"s an operator for you, and you were pleased to talk of the fifth dimension! | There's a sharp operator for you - and you talk about the fifth dimension! |
7.
| Can I ask for the artist Woland? - sweet Varenukha asked. “They’re busy,” the receiver answered in a rattling voice, “and who’s asking?” Variety show administrator Varenukha. Ivan Savelyevich? - joyfully the receiver cried,- I’m terribly glad to hear your voice! How is your health? - Mercy,- Varenukha answered in amazement, - who am I talking to? Assistant, his assistant and translator Koroviev, - cracked a tube, - all at your service, dear Ivan Savelievich! Dispose of me as you please. So? - Excuse me, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home right now? Alas, no! No! - the receiver screamed, - he left. | "May I speak with the artiste Woland?" Varenukha asked sweetly. `Mister"s busy," the receiver answered in a rattling voice, "who"s calling? ""The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha. "`Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver cried out joyfully. Terribly glad to hear your voice! How"re you doing? ""Merci," Varenukha replied in amazement, "and with whom am I speaking? ""His assistant, his assistant and interpreter, Koroviev!" crackled the receiver. "I"m entirely at your service, my dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Order me around as you like. And so?" `Excuse me, but ... what, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home now?" "Alas, no! No!" the receiver shouted. "He left!" |
| "May I speak to the artist Woland?" Varenukha asked sweetly. "They"re busy," a crackling voice replied. ""Who may I say is calling? "The manager of the Variety Theatre, Varenukha. ""Ivan Savelyevich?" the receiver exclaimed joyfully." I"m terribly happy to hear your voice! How"s your health? "Merci," the astonished Varenukha replied. "And who am I speaking to?" "The assistant, his assistant and interpreter, Korovyov" crackled the receiver. "I"m at your service, my dear Ivan Savelyevich! Tell me how I can be of help to you. Well? ""Excuse me, but is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev at home?" "Alas, no! He"s not" shouted the receiver. "He"s gone." | "May I speak to Monsieur Woland, please?" asked Varenukha sweetly. "He"s busy," answered the receiver in a quavering voice. "Who wants him?" "Varenukha, house manager of the Variety Theater." "Ivan Savyelich?" squeaked the earpiece delightedly." How very nice to hear your voice! How are you?" "Merci," replied Varenukha in some consternation. "Who's speaking?" "This is Koroviev, his assistant and interpreter," trilled the receiver. "At your service, my dear Ivan Savyelich! Just tell me what I can do for you. What is it?" "I'm sorry... is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev at home?" "Alas, no, he isn't," cried the telephone. "He"s gone out." |
8.
| Bartender said: “I humbly thank you,” and sank down on the bench. | The barman managed to say: "I humbly thank you," and lowered himself on to the stool. |
| "Thank you very much," said the bartender, lowering himself onto the stool... | The barman said: "Thank you very much," and sat down on the stool. |
“Thank you,” the barman said and sat down on the bench.
This is a translation into Basic English.
9.
| Would you like to see among others pieces of paper flew from the ceiling,” the barman lowered his voice and embarrassed looked around - well, there are all of them and caught it. | "If you please, you see, among other things there were banknotes flying down from the ceiling..." The barman lowered his voice and looked around abashedly. So they snatched them all up. |
| "If you recall, among other things, paper money flew down from the ceiling..." the bartender lowered his voice and looked around in embarrassment. "Well, everyone started grabbing the bills. | "During your act you made bank-notes float down from the ceiling..." The barman lowered his voice and looked round in embarrassment. "Well, all the audience picked them up |
Total:
| RichardPevear, Larissa Volokhonsky | ||
| Diana Burgin, Katherine Tiernan O"Connor | Not awarded |
Michael Glenny- disqualified, though, Diana Burgin's translation seems to be a slightly corrected Glenny's.
To be continued.“The Master and Margarita” a summary in English of Bulgakov’s novel will help you prepare for the lesson and improve your knowledge.
"The Master and Margarita" summary in English
The novel alternates between two settings. The first is 1930s Moscow, where Satan appears at the Patriarch Ponds in the guise of “Professor” Woland, a mysterious gentleman “magician” of uncertain origin. He arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed valet Koroviev; the mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth; the fanged hitman Azazello; the pale-faced Abadonna; and the witch Hella. They wreak havoc targeting the literary elite and their trade union MASSOLIT. Its privileged HQ is Griboyedov’s House and is made up of corrupt social climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike), bureaucrats, profiteers, and, more generally, skeptical unbelievers in the human spirit.
The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland in his conversations with Berlioz and later echoed in the pages of the Master’s novel. This part of the novel concerns Pontius Pilate’s trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, his recognition of an affinity with, and spiritual need for, Yeshua and his reluctant but submitted submission to Yeshua’s execution.
Part one of the novel opens with a direct confrontation between the unbelieving head of the literary bureaucracy, Berlioz, and an urbane foreign gentleman (Woland) who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers. Berlioz brushes off the prophecy of his death, only to have it come true just pages later in the novel. The fulfillment of this death prophecy is witnessed by a young and enthusiastically modern poet, Ivan Ponyrev, who writes his poems under the alias Bezdomny (“homeless”). His futile attempt to chase and capture the “gang” and warn of their evil and mysterious nature lands Ivan in a lunatic asylum. There, Ivan is introduced to the Master, an embittered author, the petty-minded rejection of whose historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ leads him to such despair that he burns his manuscript and turns his back on the “real” world, including his devoted lover, Margarita.
Major episodes in the first part of the novel include a satirical portrait of the Massolit and their Griboyedov house; Satan’s magic show at the Variety Theatre, satirizing the vanity, greed and gullibility of the new rich; and Woland and his retinue capturing the late Berlioz’s apartment for their own use.
Part two of the novel introduces Margarita, the Master’s mistress, who refuses to despair over her lover or his work. She is invited to the Devil’s midnight ball, where Woland offers her the chance to become a witch with supernatural powers. This takes place the night of Good Friday, with the same spring full moon as when Christ’s fate is sealed by Pontius Pilate and he is crucified in Jerusalem, which is also dealt with in the Master’s novel. All three events in the novel are linked by this.
Learning to fly and control her unleashed passions (not without exacting violent retribution on the literary bureaucrats who condemned her beloved to despair) and taking her enthusiastic maid Natasha with her, Margarita enters naked into the realm of night. She flies over the deep forests and rivers of the USSR, bathes and returns with Azazello, her escort, to Moscow as the anointed hostess for Satan’s great Spring Ball. Standing by his side, she welcomes the dark celebrities of human history as they arrive from Hell.
She survives this ordeal without breaking; and, for her pains, Satan offers to grant Margarita her deepest wish. Margarita selflessly chooses to liberate a woman whom she met at the ball from the woman’s eternal punishment: the woman was raped and had later suffocated her newborn by stuffing a handkerchief in its mouth. Her punishment was to wake up every morning and find the same handkerchief lying on her nightstand. Satan grants her first wish and offers her another, citing that the first wish was unrelated to Margarita’s own desires. For her second wish, she chooses to liberate the Master and live in poverty-stricken love with him.
Neither Woland nor Yeshua appreciates her chosen way of life, and Azazello is sent to retrieve them. The three drink Pontius Pilate’s poisoned wine in the Master’s basement. Master and Margarita die, though their death is metaphorical as Azazello watches their physical manifestations die. Azazello reawakens them, and they leave civilization with the Devil as Moscow’s cupolas and windows burn in the setting Easter sun. The Master and Margarita, for not having lost their faith in humanity, are granted “peace” but are denied “light” - that is, they will spend eternity together in a shadowy yet pleasant region similar to Dante's depiction of Limbo, having not earned the glories of Heaven, but not deserving the punishments of Hell. As a parallel to the Master and Margarita’s freedom, Pontius Pilate is released from his eternal punishment when the Master finally calls out to Pontius Pilate telling him he’s free to finally walk up the moonbeam path in his dreams to Yeshua, where another eternity awaits.
The Master and Margarita
Author's last name: Bulgakov
Author name: Mikhail
Artist: Julian Rhind-Tutt
Year of manufacture: 2009
English language
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
Playing time: 16:59:00
Description: The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn’t all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don’t burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world’s great novels.
ABOUT The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita is a novel that could not have been published when the author was alive; it was indeed quite remarkable that it got published when it did, some 26 years after his death. In its energy, inventiveness, fantastic imagery, spirituality and belief in the capacity of the human spirit, it was a dangerously liberating book, and liberating books were not going to be published in the USSR of the 1920s and 30s. It was a world of overwhelming fear and suspicion, where the repressive State machinery made any opposition – real or imagined – punishable by death or imprisonment. This dark brutality infected every aspect of life; and the strict bureaucracy that enforced the State’s decrees led to profound social stagnation, quite apart from numbing inefficiency in even the most straightforward of transactions. In this world, art of any form was a dangerous currency, and the State did everything it could to ensure that only those works of which it approved were published. The Master and Margarita would not have been approved.
For a start, it is a satire, and people holding absolute power are rarely amused by being mocked. It pokes fun at the catastrophic absurdity of the system, uncovering the vanity and duplicity of those who operated within it. It makes a point of sending up the pompous literary establishment of the time, which would hardly endear it to publishers. More dangerously, it is also sympathetic to the figure of Christ (if not quite the orthodox one), an attitude the atheistic State would again have been ready and keen to punish. For today’s readers, these satirical elements would make the book worth attention. But what elevates it beyond its time, makes it more than a significant period-piece, is its dizzying, dazzling invention, its vivid fantasy, its complex, ambivalent morality, its humanity and its breadth of humor. It is Solzhenitsyn written by Lewis Carroll, Dostoevsky by Vonnegut.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891, a son of a professor at a theological academy. He went on to study medicine, but after the turmoil of the Civil War (in which he served as a doctor) he turned to the area he had always loved – theater and literature. One day in 1919 while on a train, he had written a story and when the train stopped, he sold it to the first paper he could find. It was never going to be that easy for him again. Over the next ten years, he wrote sketches, stories, novellas and plays which gradually displayed a more critical attitude to the Soviet system. As a result his works began to be banned and were viciously attacked in the press. Deeply frustrated by this official interference, he wrote a letter asking for permission to go abroad. In an irony that Thomas Hardy might have enjoyed, Bulgakov was telephoned by Stalin himself, who asked if he really wanted to go. The author, quite possibly fearing for his life, rescinded his request, claiming that a writer could not work outside his homeland; and the dictator arranged for him to work at the Moscow Art Theater adapting Gogol’s work for the stage. But even here, his work continued to be banned, as it was later when he was at the Bolshoi Opera House as a librettist. In this atmosphere, The Master and Margarita had to be written in secret. He started it in 1928, and it took, in its various forms, twelve years; and nearly never got written at all.
The novel contains several incidents taken from Bulgakov’s life. He was married three times, and the figure of Margarita is probably based on his third wife; Pilate’s faithful and brave dog is called Banga, the nickname of Bulgakov’s second wife. Bulgakov knew what it was like to be rejected and publicly humiliated by the literary establishment, for example – something the Master has to endure. There are also plenty of references to real people (in disguised form) in the characters. But in perhaps the most significant autobiographical incident, Bulgakov had been so alarmed by the potential threat if his novel was discovered that he had burned the manuscript. When he later decided to carry on, his wife asked how he would manage without all his notes. And just as the Master does, he said he could remember it all. ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’ became something of a catchphrase in the USSR when the book was eventually published, and this personal reflection of the author was recognized as a statement about the indomitable nature of human invention. This incident and its implications echoes through the whole book, as does the expression ‘Cowardice is the worst of sins’. It relates to Bulgakov’s own fear about the novel and his own attitude to the Stalinist regime; and by extension to everyone else who suffered under it.
He had lost his faith for a while, but regained it in later life, finding comfort in his belief in God. This might also have made him a target for the authorities, since the State enforced atheism. But again, the capacity of some humans to follow their own convictions despite the threats of the all-powerful State demonstrated a tenacious capacity for individualism. And in the end, even Stalin failed to eradicate faith in the USSR, just as Caesar had failed to eliminate Christianity two thousand years before – the two periods reflected in the book.
The book weaves three separate strands together in its narrative. The first is 1920s and 30s Moscow, visited by the Devil in the form of Professor Woland and his crew of bizarre assistants (including a talking, shooting, bipedal cat). They set about destroying the comfortable pretensions of the jobsworths who superintend apartments or run theaters, and in particular the smug literary world, through displays of impossible, wild, unpredictable, cruel, bloody and sometimes fatal magic. The second is set in Jerusalem (named Yershalaim in the book), where Pontius Pilate is about to sentence a charismatic leader accused of inciting the population against their Roman overlords. Again, the name is altered, shifted from Jesus to Yeshua; and the characters are different, too. Pilate is tortured by the problem of goodness and obedience, while Yeshua dismisses some of the claims made for him by his followers but remains powerfully, luminously strong yet tender. The third strand binds the
se two together, and features the Master and Margarita themselves. He wrote the story of Pilate; but dispirited by its rejection by the establishment, he despairs of his work and himself, burning the former and committing the latter to an asylum. Margarita never loses faith in him or the book, and enters into a Faustian pact to save them all.
These interweaving plot lines are told either with extraordinary brio or brilliant control. In the Moscow sequences, the appearance of supernatural characters naturally allows for fantastic imaginings and events, creating an impossible, magic world inside the repressive reality of Moscow. Meanwhile, the discussions with Yeshua are told with a powerfully contrasting directness and simplicity. In both cases, Bulgakov examines the ideas of goodness, of obedience, of creativity, of courage and of freedom, but never reaches an easy moral conclusion. Woland may be the Devil – but his actions are sometimes beneficial. The Master has created a great work of art, but he is not granted simple or complete absolution. The system is mocked, but not directly. Pontius Pilate is made a human, sympathetic character; while innocents are sometimes punished. Margarita sides with Woland, but there is no retribution.
The Master and Margarita was eventually published in 1966. This was strange in itself – the Communist Party was still very strongly in power. The book came out in serial form, slightly censored and – equally strangely – in a rather conservative magazine. Whatever prompted the publication, it was greeted with a kind of rapturous joy. The boldness of its writing, the breadth and freshness of its imagining, the spirited and vivid characters, the courage to refer to the dire shortcomings of the system so fearlessly and with such humor – these were all inspirational and offered moral and intellectual hope. Since then, interest has if anything increased. The novel is filled with literary and musical references, especially Faust and the opera Eugene Onegin, allowing almost infinite academic speculation about its symbolic and thematic intentions, all fully justified by the text’s unobtrusive complexity. But whatever these close studies reveal, the magical depth of the book makes it as endlessly rewarding as it is immediately accessible.
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