How the master and margarita begins. The hidden meaning of "the master and margarita" How does the work of the master and margarita begin why

Bulgakov worked on the novel The Master and Margarita for about 12 years and did not have time to finally edit it. This novel was a real revelation of the writer, Bulgakov himself said that this was his main message to humanity, a testament to posterity.

Many books have been written about this novel. Among the researchers of Bulgakov's creative heritage there is an opinion that this work is a kind of political treatise. In Woland, they saw Stalin and identified his retinue with political figures of that time. However, it would not be correct to consider the novel "The Master and Margarita" only from this point of view and to see in it only political satire.

Some literary scholars believe that the main meaning of this mystical work is the eternal struggle between good and evil. According to Bulgakov, it turns out that evil on Earth must always be in balance. Yeshua and Woland personify precisely these two spiritual principles. One of the key phrases of the novel was the words of Woland, which he uttered, referring to Levi Matthew: “Isn’t it so kind, to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would it look like if shadows?

In the novel, evil, in the person of Woland, ceases to be humane and just. Good and evil are intertwined and are in close interaction, especially in human souls. Woland punished people with evil for evil for the sake of justice.

No wonder some critics drew an analogy between Bulgakov's novel and the story of Faust, though in The Master and Margarita the situation is presented upside down. Faust sold his soul to the devil and betrayed Margarita's love for the sake of a thirst for knowledge, and in Bulgakov's novel Margarita concludes with the devil for the sake of love for the Master.

Fight for a man

Residents of Bulgakov's Moscow appear before the reader as a collection of puppets, tormented by passions. It is of great importance in Variety, where Woland sits down in front of the audience and begins to argue that people do not change for centuries.

Against the background of this faceless mass, only the Master and Margarita are deeply aware of how the world works and who rules it.

The image of the Master is collective and autobiographical. The reader will not recognize his real name. Any artist, as well as a person who has his own vision of the world, acts as a master. Margarita is the image of an ideal woman who is able to love to the end, despite difficulties and obstacles. They are ideal collective images of a devoted man and a woman true to her feelings.

Thus, the meaning of this immortal novel can be conditionally divided into three layers.

Above everything is the confrontation between Woland and Yeshua, who, together with their students and retinue, are constantly fighting for the immortal human soul, playing with the fate of people.

A little lower are such people as the Master and Margarita, later the Master's student Professor Ponyrev joins them. These people are spiritually more mature, who realize that life is much more complicated than it seems at first glance.

And, finally, at the very bottom are the ordinary inhabitants of Bulgakov's Moscow. They have no will and seek only material values.

Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" serves as a constant warning against inattention to oneself, from blindly following the established order of things, to the detriment of awareness of one's own personality.

The novel "The Master and Margarita" is a work that reflects philosophical, and therefore eternal themes. Love and betrayal, good and evil, truth and lies, amaze with their duality, reflecting the inconsistency and, at the same time, the fullness of human nature. Mystification and romanticism, framed in the writer's elegant language, captivate with a depth of thought that requires repeated reading.

Tragically and ruthlessly, a difficult period of Russian history appears in the novel, unfolding in such a homespun side that the devil himself visits the halls of the capital in order to once again become a prisoner of the Faustian thesis about a force that always wants evil, but does good.

History of creation

In the first edition of 1928 (according to some sources, 1929), the novel was flatter, and it was not difficult to single out specific topics, but after almost a decade and as a result of difficult work, Bulgakov came to a complexly structured, fantastic, but because of this no less life story.

Along with this, being a man overcoming difficulties hand in hand with his beloved woman, the writer managed to find a place for the nature of feelings more subtle than vanity. Fireflies of hope leading the main characters through diabolical trials. So the novel in 1937 was given the final title: The Master and Margarita. And that was the third edition.

But the work continued almost until the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich, he made the last revision on February 13, 1940, and died on March 10 of the same year. The novel is considered unfinished, as evidenced by numerous notes in the drafts kept by the writer's third wife. It was thanks to her that the world saw the work, albeit in an abridged magazine version, in 1966.

The author's attempts to bring the novel to its logical conclusion testify to how important it was to him. Bulgakov burned out the last of his strength into the idea of ​​​​creating a wonderful and tragic phantasmagoria. It clearly and harmoniously reflected his own life in a narrow room, like a stocking, where he fought the disease and came to realize the true values ​​​​of human existence.

Analysis of the work

Description of the artwork

(Berlioz, Ivan the homeless and Woland between them)

The action begins with a description of the meeting of two Moscow writers with the devil. Of course, neither Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz nor Ivan the homeless even suspect who they are talking to on a May day at the Patriarch's Ponds. In the future, Berlioz dies according to Woland's prophecy, and Messire himself occupies his apartment in order to continue his practical jokes and hoaxes.

Ivan the homeless, in turn, becomes a patient in a psychiatric hospital, unable to cope with the impressions of meeting with Woland and his retinue. In the house of sorrow, the poet meets the Master, who wrote a novel about the procurator of Judea, Pilate. Ivan learns that the metropolitan world of critics is cruel to objectionable writers and begins to understand a lot about literature.

Margarita, a childless woman of thirty, the wife of a prominent specialist, yearns for the disappeared Master. Ignorance brings her to despair, in which she admits to herself that she is ready to give her soul to the devil, just to find out about the fate of her beloved. One of the members of Woland's retinue, the waterless desert demon Azazello, delivers a miraculous cream to Margarita, thanks to which the heroine turns into a witch in order to play the role of a queen at Satan's ball. Having overcome some torment with dignity, the woman receives the fulfillment of her desire - a meeting with the Master. Woland returns to the writer the manuscript burned during the persecution, proclaiming a deeply philosophical thesis that "manuscripts do not burn."

In parallel, a storyline develops about Pilate, a novel written by the Master. The story tells of the arrested wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who was betrayed by Judas of Kiriath, handing over to the authorities. The procurator of Judea administers court within the walls of the palace of Herod the Great and is forced to execute a man whose ideas that are disdainful of the power of Caesar, and power in general, seem to him interesting and worthy of discussion, if not fair. Having coped with his duty, Pilate orders Aphranius, the head of the secret service, to kill Judas.

The plot lines are combined in the last chapters of the novel. One of Yeshua's disciples, Levi Matthew, visits Woland with a petition to grant peace to those in love. That same night, Satan and his retinue leave the capital, and the devil gives the Master and Margarita eternal shelter.

Main characters

Let's start with the dark forces appearing in the first chapters.

Woland's character is somewhat different from the canonical embodiment of evil in its purest form, although in the first edition he was assigned the role of a tempter. In the process of processing material on satanic topics, Bulgakov molded the image of a player with unlimited power to decide fate, endowed, at the same time, with omniscience, skepticism and a bit of playful curiosity. The author deprived the hero of any props, such as hooves or horns, and also removed most of the description of the appearance that took place in the second edition.

Moscow serves Woland as a stage on which, by the way, he does not leave any fatal destruction. Woland is called by Bulgakov as a higher power, a measure of human actions. He is a mirror that reflects the essence of other characters and society, mired in denunciations, deceit, greed and hypocrisy. And, like any mirror, messire gives people who think and tend to justice the opportunity to change for the better.

An image with an elusive portrait. Outwardly, the features of Faust, Gogol and Bulgakov himself intertwined in him, since the mental pain caused by harsh criticism and non-recognition caused the writer a lot of problems. The master is conceived by the author as a character whom the reader rather feels as if he is dealing with a close, dear person, and does not see him as an outsider through the prism of a deceptive appearance.

The master remembers little about life before meeting his love - Margarita, as if he did not really live. The biography of the hero bears a clear imprint of the events of the life of Mikhail Afanasyevich. Only the ending the writer came up with for the hero is lighter than he himself experienced.

A collective image that embodies the female courage to love in spite of circumstances. Margarita is attractive, brash and desperate in her quest to reunite with the Master. Without her, nothing would have happened, because through her prayers, so to speak, a meeting with Satan took place, her determination led to a great ball, and only thanks to her uncompromising dignity did the two main tragic heroes meet.
If you look back at Bulgakov’s life again, it’s easy to note that without Elena Sergeevna, the writer’s third wife, who worked on his manuscripts for twenty years and followed him during his lifetime, like a faithful, but expressive shadow, ready to put enemies and ill-wishers out of the light, it wouldn’t have happened either. publication of the novel.

Woland's retinue

(Woland and his retinue)

The retinue includes Azazello, Koroviev-Fagot, Behemoth Cat and Hella. The latter is a female vampire and occupies the lowest rung in the demonic hierarchy, a minor character.
The first is the prototype of the demon of the desert, he plays the role of Woland's right hand. So Azazello ruthlessly kills Baron Meigel. In addition to the ability to kill, Azazello skillfully seduces Margarita. In some way, this character was introduced by Bulgakov in order to remove characteristic behavioral habits from the image of Satan. In the first edition, the author wanted to name Woland Azazel, but changed his mind.

(Bad apartment)

Koroviev-Fagot is also a demon, and an older one, but a buffoon and a clown. His task is to confuse and mislead the venerable public. The character helps the author provide the novel with a satirical component, ridiculing the vices of society, crawling into such cracks where the seducer Azazello will not get. At the same time, in the finale, he turns out to be not at all a joker in essence, but a knight punished for an unsuccessful pun.

The cat Behemoth is the best of jesters, a werewolf, a demon prone to gluttony, every now and then making a stir in the life of Muscovites with his comical adventures. The prototypes were definitely cats, both mythological and quite real. For example, Flyushka, who lived in the Bulgakovs' house. The writer's love for the animal, on behalf of which he sometimes wrote notes to his second wife, migrated to the pages of the novel. The werewolf reflects the tendency of the intelligentsia to transform, as the writer himself did, receiving a fee and spending it on buying delicacies in the Torgsin store.

"The Master and Margarita" is a unique literary creation that has become a weapon in the hands of the writer. With his help, Bulgakov dealt with the hated social vices, including those to which he himself was subject. He was able to express his experience through the phrases of the characters, which became a household name. In particular, the statement about manuscripts goes back to the Latin proverb "Verba volant, scripta manent" - "words fly away, what is written remains." After all, burning the manuscript of the novel, Mikhail Afanasyevich could not forget what he had previously created and returned to work on the work.

The idea of ​​a novel in a novel allows the author to lead two large storylines, gradually bringing them together in the timeline until they intersect "beyond", where fiction and reality are already indistinguishable. Which, in turn, raises the philosophical question of the significance of human thoughts, against the background of the emptiness of words that fly away with the noise of bird wings during the game of Behemoth and Woland.

Roman Bulgakov is destined to go through time, like the heroes themselves, in order to again and again touch on important aspects of human social life, religion, issues of moral and ethical choice and the eternal struggle between good and evil.

Who pretends to be a specialist in dark magic, in fact, is Satan. The first to meet him at the Patriarch's Ponds is Berlioz, the editor of a major magazine and the poet Ivan Bezdomny. They argue about Christ.

Woland says that Christ actually existed and proves this by predicting death to Berlioz with beheading. And before the eyes of Ivan Bezdomny, Berlioz falls under a tram. The poet Ivan Bezdomny unsuccessfully tries to pursue Woland, then, being in Massolit (Moscow Literary Association), he talks about the events so unrelatedly that they try to send him to a suburban psychiatric hospital.

Woland, having appeared at the address of the late Berlioz, who lived with Stepan Likhodeev, the director of the Variety, finds Stepan in a state of severe hangover and presents him with a contract for Woland's performance in the theater, signed by him, Likhodeev, then escorts Likhodeev out of the apartment and he strangely turns out to be in Yalta.

Satan is accompanied by a strange retinue: the pretty witch Hella, the terrible Azazello, Koroviev (Bassoon), and Behemoth, who is presented in the form of a frightening black cat. Nikonor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the housing association of house number 302 - an bis along Sadovaya Street ends up in apartment 50 and finds Koroviev there. He offers to rent Woland's apartment, since Berlioz died, and Likhodeev is in Yalta, and after much persuasion, Nikonor Ivanovich agrees. Having received four hundred rubles in excess of the fee, he hides them in the ventilation hole. On the same day, they come to him with an arrest for possession of currency, because these rubles turned out to be dollars.

The financial director of Variety - Rimsky and the administrator Varenukha unsuccessfully try to find Likhodeev, who, in turn, sends them telegram after telegram trying to confirm his identity and get at least some money to return from Yalta. Deciding that this is a stupid joke, Rimsky sends telegrams to Varenukha to take them to the right place, but Varenukha does not reach his destination, because Behemoth picks him up.

In the evening, the performance of the great magician and his retinue begins on the Variety stage. Putting a pistol in front of Fagot, Vland organizes a rain of money, people grab the gold coins falling from the sky, a shop for ladies opens on the stage, where every woman sitting in the hall can change her wardrobe. Some time after the end of the performance, all chervonets turn into simple pieces of paper, and women are forced to rush along the street in their underwear, because everything they were wearing has disappeared without a trace.

After the performance, Rimsky lingers in the office, Varenukha, turned by Gella into a vampire, comes to him. Seeing that Varenukha does not cast a shadow, Rimsky tries to run away, hears the cock cries and the vampires disappear. Rimsky, turning gray in an instant, rushes to the station to leave by courier train for Petersburg.

The poet Ivan Bezdomny meets the Master in the clinic, the Master tells about himself. He was a historian, worked in a museum, and having received a big win, he decided to rent an apartment in one of the Arbat lanes and began to write a novel about Pontius Pilate there. One day he saw Margarita on the street. They immediately fell in love with each other, and despite the fact that Margarita was the wife of one of the respected people, she came to the Master every day. The master wrote his novel, then he finished it and took it to the editor, but they refused to publish the novel. Although the passage was published, it was criticized and the Master fell ill.

In the morning, Margarita wakes up with the feeling that something must happen and goes for a walk in the park, where she meets Azezzelo. He, in turn, invites her to meet with a foreigner and Margarita agrees. Azazzelo gives her a jar of cream, with the help of which the margarita can fly. Woland asks Margarita to be the queen at his ball and promises to do whatever she wishes. Satan's ball begins at midnight. The men are in tailcoats and the women are naked. When the ball ends, Margarita asks to return the Master to her, and Woland fulfills the promise.

In the second storyline in the palace, the procurator Pontius Pilate, interrogating the arrested person, realizes that he is not a robber, but just a wandering philosopher, but still approves the guilty verdict. He hopes that Kaifa will be able to release one of the condemned, but Kaifa refuses. Levi Motvei brings Ha-Notsri's sermons, and Pontius Pilate reads "The most terrible vice is cowardice."

At this time in Moscow. At sunset Woland's retinue says goodbye to the city. At sunset, Levi Motvey appears and invites them to take the Master with them. Azazzelo comes to the master's house and brings wine as a gift from Volan, when they drink it The black horse takes away the Master, Woland's retinue and Margarita.

94. A large six-story house, peacefully located on Sadovaya Street. This is not an easy-to-translate sentence due to one simple Russian word - peace. In Bulgakov's original, the house in which Styopa lived was described as "a large six-story house, peacefully located on Sadovaya Street." I tried - and I must admit that this required more than the help of a dictionary - to translate it as "a five-story house, quietly located on Sadovaya Street." But the English translators Richard Pivia and his wife Larisa Volokhonskaya had a different point of view. They did not translate the word "peace" (which is a declension of the word "peace") as calmly (peacefully). They apparently read somewhere that the house was horseshoe-shaped, and so they translated: "...a big, six-storeyed, U-shaped building on Sadovaya Street" or "a large six-story horseshoe-shaped house on Sadovaya Street." But according to my dictionary, the English word u-shaped is translated into Russian as "horseshoe". I decided to see how it is translated into other languages. And guess! Nobody used the word peace. Mark Fondse and Ai Prins - Dutch translators - also translated as "a five-story horseshoe building". And this is most likely connected with this word “peace”.
It seems that “peace” has another meaning besides calmness. Until the 1990s, Russians used Slavic church names to indicate the letters of the Russian alphabet (the Cyrillic alphabet). The Slavic ecclesiastical name for the letter known as Pe and written as P was ... rest. Thus, the Russian text could be translated as "a six-story U-shaped house on Sadovaya Street." But due to the fact that the letter "P" is absent in the Latin alphabet, Pivia and Volokhonskaya, as well as Fondse and Prince, simply turned this letter upside down, making it a "U". The French translator, as well as the English translator Michael Gleny, solved this problem in a very pragmatic way. Both of them simply did not translate the word “peace”, as if this word was not in the original Russian text. Most likely, the interpreters never saw the houses on Sadovaya Street. If they had seen, they would have known that the house was rectangular, not horseshoe shaped, and surrounded on all sides by patios. It was also in the time of Bulgakov. But unlike today, it was a very quiet area in his time. In front of the house, as in many places in the Garden Ring, there was a very wide pedestrian zone ... thus a lot of peace ...
Another observation: the attentive reader may also notice that in the Dutch translation the house is five stories high, while in the English it is six stories high. In Bulgakov's original text, it is written in a six-story building. Translators into English and French translated verbatim and described the house as having six floors. Some confusion arises due to the numbering of floors, due to the fact that in Russia floors are counted starting from the lowest floor (including the basement). In other countries, often the lower floor is considered "zero", i.e. the building has 6 floors: ground (or basement) floor and subsequent 5 floors.

Foreword

Mikhail Bulgakov took away from this world the secret of the creative concept of his last and, probably, the main work, The Master and Margarita.

The author's worldview turned out to be very eclectic: when writing the novel, Judaic teachings, Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Masonic motifs were used. "Bulgakov's understanding of the world, at best, is based on the Catholic teaching about the imperfection of the primordial nature of man, which requires active external influence for its correction." It follows from this that the novel allows for a lot of interpretations in the Christian, atheistic, and occult traditions, the choice of which largely depends on the point of view of the researcher...

“Bulgakov’s novel is not dedicated to Yeshua at all, and not even primarily to the Master himself with his Margarita, but to Satan. Woland is the undoubted protagonist of the work, his image is a kind of energy node of the entire complex compositional structure of the novel.

The very title "Master and Margarita" "obscures the true meaning of the work: the reader's attention is focused on the two characters of the novel as the main ones, while in terms of the meaning of the events they are only henchmen of the protagonist. The content of the novel is not the history of the Master, not his literary misadventures, not even his relationship with Margarita (all this is secondary), but the story of one of Satan's visits to earth: with the beginning of it, the novel begins, and ends with its end. The master appears to the reader only in the thirteenth chapter, Margarita, and even later - as Woland needs them.

“The anti-Christian orientation of the novel leaves no doubt... It is not for nothing that Bulgakov so carefully disguised the true content, the deep meaning of his novel, entertaining the reader's attention with side details. But the dark mysticism of the work, in addition to the will and consciousness, penetrates into the soul of a person - and who will undertake to calculate the possible destruction that can be produced in it by that? .. "

The above description of the novel by the teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy, candidate of philological sciences Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunaev indicates a serious problem that Orthodox parents and teachers face in connection with the fact that the novel The Master and Margarita is included in the literature curriculum of state secondary educational institutions. How to protect religiously indifferent, and therefore defenseless against occult influences, students from the influence of that satanic mysticism, which is saturated in the novel?

One of the main holidays of the Orthodox Church is the Transfiguration of the Lord. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was transfigured before His disciples (, ), the souls of Christians are now transfigured through life in Christ. This transformation can be extended to the outside world - Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is no exception.

Era portrait

It is known from biographical information that Bulgakov himself perceived his novel as a kind of warning, as a superliterary text. Already dying, he asked his wife to bring the manuscript of the novel, pressed it to his chest and gave it away with the words: “Let them know!”

Accordingly, if our goal is not just to get aesthetic and emotional satisfaction from reading, but to understand the author’s idea, to understand why a person spent the last twelve years of his life, in fact, his whole life, we should treat this work not only from the point of view of literary criticism. To understand the author's idea, one must at least know something about the author's life - often its episodes are reflected in his creations.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) - the grandson of an Orthodox priest, the son of an Orthodox priest, professor, teacher of history at the Kyiv Theological Academy, a relative of the famous Orthodox theologian Fr. Sergei Bulgakov. This suggests that Mikhail Bulgakov was at least partially familiar with the Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world.

Now for many it is a wonder that there is some kind of Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world, but nevertheless it is so. The Orthodox worldview is actually very deep, it has been formed over more than seven and a half thousand years and has absolutely nothing to do with the caricature drawn on it by essentially ignorant people in the very era in which the novel “The Master and Margarita.

In the 1920s, Bulgakov became interested in the study of Kabbalism and occult literature. In the novel The Master and Margarita, the names of demons, the description of the satanic black mass (in the novel it is called “Satan’s ball”) and so on speak of a good knowledge of this literature ...

Already at the end of 1912, Bulgakov (he was then 21 years old) quite definitely declared to his sister Nadezhda: "You'll see, I'll be a writer." And he became one. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that Bulgakov is a Russian writer. And what has Russian literature always been primarily concerned with? Exploration of the human soul. Any episode of the life of a literary character is described exactly as much as is necessary to understand what impact he had on the human soul.

Bulgakov took the Western popular form and filled it with Russian content, said in a popular form about the most serious things. But!..

For a religiously ignorant reader, the novel, in a favorable case, remains a bestseller, since it does not have the foundation that is necessary to perceive the fullness of the idea invested in the novel. In the worst case, this very ignorance leads to the fact that the reader sees in The Master and Margarita and includes in his worldview such ideas of religious content that Mikhail Bulgakov himself would hardly have come up with. In particular, in a certain environment, this book is valued as a "hymn to Satan." The situation with the perception of the novel is similar to the delivery of potatoes to Russia under Peter I: the product is wonderful, but due to the fact that no one knew what to do with it and what part of it is edible, people were poisoned and died by entire villages.

In general, it must be said that the novel was written at a time when a kind of epidemic of "poisoning" on religious grounds was spreading in the USSR. The point is this: the 1920s and 30s in the Soviet Union were the years when Western anti-Christian books were published in huge numbers, in which the authors either completely denied the historicity of Jesus Christ, or sought to present Him as a simple Jewish philosopher and nothing more. The recommendations of Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz to Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (Bezdomny) at the Patriarch's Ponds (275) are a summary of such books. It is worth talking about the atheistic worldview in more detail in order to understand what Bulgakov is making fun of in his novel.

Atheistic worldview

In fact, the question "Is there a God or not" in the young Land of the Soviets was purely political in nature. The answer “God exists” required the immediate sending of the aforementioned God “to Solovki for three years” (278), which would be problematic to implement. Logically, the second option was inevitably chosen: "There is no God." Once again it is worth mentioning that this answer was purely political in nature, nobody cared about the truth.

For educated people, the question of the existence of God, in fact, never existed - another matter, they differed in opinions about the nature, features of this existence. The atheistic perception of the world in its modern form was formed only in the last quarter of the 18th century and took root with difficulty, since its birth was accompanied by terrible social catastrophes such as the French Revolution. That is why Woland is extremely happy to find in Moscow the most outspoken atheists in the person of Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny (277).

According to Orthodox theology, atheism is a parody of religion. It is the belief that there is no God. The word "atheism" itself is translated from Greek as follows: "a" is a negative particle "not", and "theos" - "God", literally - "godlessness". Atheists do not want to hear about any faith and assure that they base their assertion on strictly scientific facts, and “in the realm of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God” (278). But such “strictly scientific facts” in the field of knowledge of God fundamentally do not exist and cannot exist ... Science considers the world to be infinite, which means that God can always hide behind some pebble in the backyard of the universe, and not a single criminal investigation department can find Him (search Woland in Moscow, which is quite limited in space, and show the absurdity of such searches like: “Gagarin flew into space, did not see God”). There is not a single scientific fact about the non-existence of God (as well as about being), but to assert that something does not exist according to the laws of logic is much more difficult than to assert that it is. To make sure that there is no God, atheists need to conduct a scientific experiment: to experimentally test the religious path that claims that He exists. This means that atheism calls everyone who seeks the meaning of life to religious practice, that is, to prayer, fasting, and other features of the spiritual life. It's clearly absurd...

It is this very absurdity (“God does not exist because He cannot exist”) that Bulgakov demonstrates to the Soviet citizen, who pathologically does not want to notice the Behemoth riding the tram and paying the fare, as well as the breathtaking appearance of Koroviev and Azazello. Much later, already in the mid-1980s, Soviet punks experimentally proved that, having a similar appearance, one could walk around Moscow only until the first meeting with a policeman. In Bulgakov, however, only those people who are ready to take into account the otherworldly factor of earthly events begin to notice all these glaring things, who agree that the events of our life do not occur by chance, but with the participation of certain specific personalities from the "otherworldly » peace.

Biblical characters in the novel

How, in fact, to explain the appeal of Mikhail Bulgakov to the plot of the Bible?

If you look closely, the range of issues that concern humanity throughout history is rather limited. All these questions (they are also called "eternal" or "damned", depending on their relation) concern the meaning of life, or, what is the same, the meaning of death. Bulgakov turns to the New Testament biblical story, reminding the Soviet reader of the very existence of this Book. In it, by the way, these questions are formulated with the utmost precision. In it, in fact, there are answers - for those who want to accept them ...

The “Master and Margarita” raises all the same “eternal” questions: why, throughout his earthly life, a person encounters evil and where does God look (if He exists at all), what awaits a person after death, and so on. Mikhail Bulgakov changed the language of the Bible to the slang of a religiously uneducated Soviet intellectual of the 1920s and 30s. For what? In particular, in order to talk about freedom in a country that was degenerating into a single concentration camp.

Human freedom

It is only at first glance that Woland and his company do what they want with a person. In fact, only under the condition of the voluntary aspiration of the human soul to evil does Woland have the power to mock him. And here it would be worth turning to the Bible: what does it say about the power and authority of the devil?

Book of Job

Chapter 1

6 And there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; Satan also came between them.

8 And the Lord said to Satan, Have you taken notice of my servant Job?

12 ... behold, all that he has is in your hand; but do not stretch out your hand on him.

Chapter 2

4 And Satan answered the Lord, and said, ... A man will give all that he has for his life;

5 but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, will he bless you?

6 And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand; save only his life.

Satan fulfills the command of God and annoys Job in every possible way. Who does Job see as the source of his sorrows?

Chapter 27

1 And ... Job ... said:

2 God lives ... and the Almighty, who grieved my soul ...

Chapter 31

2 What is my fate from God above? And what is the inheritance from the Almighty from heaven?

Even such the greatest evil in the atheistic understanding as the death of a person does not occur at the will of Satan, but at the will of God - in a conversation with Job, one of his friends says the following words:

Chapter 32

6 And Elihu the son of Barahiel answered:

21 ... I will not flatter any person,

22 because I do not know how to flatter: now kill me, my Creator.

So, the Bible clearly shows: Satan can do only what God, who cares first of all about the eternal and priceless soul of every person, will allow him.

Satan can harm a person only with the consent of the person himself. This idea is persistently pursued in the novel: Woland first checks the disposition of a person’s soul, his readiness to commit a dishonest, sinful act, and, if any, gets the power to mock him.

Nikanor Ivanovich, the chairman of the housing association, agrees to a bribe (“Strictly persecuted,” the chairman whispered quietly, and looked around), gets hold of “a double mark for two people in the front row” (366) and thereby gives Koroviev the opportunity to do him nasty things.

Entertainer Georges of Bengal constantly lies, hypocrites, and in the end, by the way, at the request of the workers, Behemoth leaves him without a head (392).

The financial director of the variety show, Rimsky, suffered because he was going to "get the wrong guy, blame everything on Likhodeev, shield himself, and so on" (420).

Prokhor Petrovich, head of the Spectacular Commission, does nothing at the workplace and does not want to do it, while expressing a desire to be "damned". It is clear that Behemoth does not refuse such an offer (458).

Employees of the Spectacle branch are fawning and cowardly in front of the authorities, which allows Koroviev to organize an unceasing choir from them (462).

Maximilian Andreevich, Berlioz's uncle, wants one thing - to move to Moscow "at all costs", that is, at any cost. It is for this peculiarity of innocent desire that what happens to him happens (465).

Andrey Fokich Sokov, the manager of the Variety Theater buffet, stole two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles, placed them in five savings banks and hid two hundred gold ten under the floor at home, before suffering all kinds of damage in apartment No. 50 (478).

Nikolai Ivanovich, Margarita's neighbor, becomes a transport hog because of the specific attention given to the maid Natasha (512).

It is significant that it is precisely for the sake of determining the tendency of Muscovites to fall away from the voice of their own conscience of all kinds that a performance is arranged in the Variety: Woland receives an answer to the “important question” that worries him: have these townspeople changed internally? (389).

Margarita, as they say, classically sells her soul to the devil ... But this is a completely separate topic in the novel.

margarita

The high priestess of a satanic sect is usually a woman. She is referred to as the "prom queen" in the novel. Woland offers Margarita to become such a priestess. Why to her? But because with the aspirations of her soul, her heart, she herself had already prepared herself for such a service: “What did this woman need, in whose eyes some kind of incomprehensible light always burned, what did this witch, who adorned herself a little squinting in one eye, need? then in the spring mimosa? (485) - this quote from the novel is taken six pages before Margarita's first proposal to become a witch. And as soon as the aspiration of her soul becomes conscious ("... oh, really, I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to find out ..."), Azazello appears (491). Margarita becomes the “final” witch only after she expresses her full consent to “go to hell in the middle of nowhere” (497).

Having become a witch, Margarita fully feels that state, which, perhaps, she did not always consciously strive for all her life: she “felt free, free from everything” (499). "From everything" - including from duties, from responsibility, from conscience - that is, from one's human dignity. The fact of experiencing such a feeling, by the way, suggests that from now on Margarita could never love anyone else but herself: to love a person means to voluntarily give up part of your freedom in his favor, that is, from desires, aspirations and everything else. To love someone means to give the beloved the strength of your soul, as they say, "invest your soul." Margarita gives her soul not to the Master, but to Woland. And she does this not at all for the sake of love for the Master, but for herself, for the sake of her whim: “I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to [me] find out…” (491).

Love in this world is subject not to human fantasies, but to a higher law, whether a person wants it or not. This law says that love is won not at any cost, but only at one cost - self-denial, that is, the rejection of one's desires, passions, whims and the patience of the pain arising from this. “Explain: I love because it hurts, or does it hurt because I love? ..” The Apostle Paul in one of his epistles has these words about love: “... I am not looking for yours, but you” ().

So, Margarita is looking not for the Master, but for his novel. She belongs to those aesthetic persons for whom the author is only an appendix to his creation. It is not the Master that is truly dear to Margarita, but his novel, or rather, the spirit of this novel, more precisely, the source of this spirit. It is to him that her soul aspires, it is to him that she will subsequently be given. Further relations between Margarita and the Master are just a moment of inertia, a person is by nature inert.

The Responsibility of Freedom

Even becoming a witch, Margarita still does not lose her human freedom: the decision of whether she should be the “prom queen” depends on her will. And only when she gives her consent, a sentence is pronounced on her soul: “In short! cried Koroviev, “quite briefly: will you not refuse to take on this duty?” “I won’t refuse,” Margarita answered firmly. "Finished!" - said Koroviev "(521).

It was with her consent that Margaret made the Black Mass possible. A lot in this world depends on the free will of a person, much more than it seems to those who now talk from TV screens about “freedom of conscience” and “universal values” ...

Black mass

The Black Mass is a mystical rite dedicated to Satan, a mockery of the Christian liturgy. In The Master and Margarita, she is called "Satan's ball."

Woland comes to Moscow precisely to perform this rite - this is the main purpose of his visit and one of the central episodes of the novel. The question is pertinent: Woland's arrival in Moscow to perform a black mass - is it just part of a "world tour" or something exclusive? What event made such a visit possible? The answer to this question is given by the scene on the balcony of the Pashkovs' house, from which Woland shows the Master Moscow.

“In order to understand this scene, you need to visit Moscow now, imagine yourself on the roof of the Pashkovs’ house and try to understand: what did a person see or not see from the roof of this house in Moscow in the second half of the 1930s? Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Bulgakov describes the gap between the explosion of the Temple and the beginning of the construction of the Palace of Soviets. At that time, the Temple had already been blown up and the area was built up by the "Shanghai". Therefore, there were visible huts, which are mentioned in the novel. Given the knowledge of the landscape of that time, this scene acquires a striking symbolic meaning: Woland turns out to be the master in the city in which the temple was blown up. There is a Russian proverb: "A holy place is never empty." Its meaning is this: demons settle in the place of the desecrated shrine. The place of the destroyed iconostases was taken by the "icons" of the Politburo. So it is here: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up and naturally a “noble foreigner” appears (275).

And this foreigner, right from the epigraph, reveals who he is: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” But this is Woland's autocharacteristic and this is a lie. The first part is just, and the second ... It's true: Satan wants evil for people, but good comes out of his temptations. But it is not Satan who does good, but God, for the sake of saving the human soul, turns his intrigues to good. This means that when Satan says that “desiring evil without end, he does only good,” he ascribes to himself the mystery of divine Providence. And this is a godless declaration.”

In fact, everything that has to do with Woland bears the stamp of imperfection and inferiority (the Orthodox understanding of the number "666" is just that). At a performance in a variety show, we see “a red-haired girl, good to everyone, if only the scar on her neck did not spoil her” (394), before the start of the “ball”, Koroviev says that “there will be no shortage of electric light, even, perhaps, it would be good, if it were smaller" (519). And the very appearance of Woland is far from perfect: “Woland’s face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was pulled down, deep wrinkles parallel to sharp eyebrows were cut on his high bald forehead. The skin on Woland's face seemed to be burned forever by a tan" (523). If we take into account the teeth and eyes of different colors, the crooked mouth and the slanted eyebrows (275), then it is clear that we are not a model of beauty.

But let us return to the purpose of Woland's stay in Moscow, to the black mass. One of the main, central moments of Christian worship is the reading of the Gospel. And, since the Black Mass is just a blasphemous parody of Christian worship, it is necessary to mock this part of it as well. But what to read instead of the hated Gospel???

And here the question arises: "Pilat's chapters" in the novel - who is their author? Who writes this novel based on the plot of the Master and Margarita novel itself? Woland.

Where did the Master's novel come from

“The fact is that Bulgakov left eight major editions of The Master and Margarita, which are very interesting and useful to compare. The unpublished scenes are by no means inferior to the final version of the text in their depth, artistic power and, importantly, semantic load, and sometimes they clarify and supplement it. So, if we focus on these editions, then the Master constantly says that he writes from dictation, performs someone's task. By the way, in the official version, the Master is also lamented by the misfortune that fell on him in the form of an ill-fated novel.

Woland reads burned and even unwritten chapters to Margarita.

Finally, in the recently published drafts, the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, when there is a conversation about whether Jesus was or not, is as follows. After Woland finished his story, Bezdomny says: “How well you talk about it, as if you yourself saw it! Maybe you should write a gospel too!” And then comes Woland's wonderful remark: “The Gospel from me??? Ha ha ha, interesting idea, though!”

What the Master writes is the “gospel of Satan,” which shows Christ the way Satan would like Him to be. Bulgakov hints at the censored Soviet times, tries to explain to the readers of anti-Christian pamphlets: "Look, here's who would like to see in Christ only a man, a philosopher - Woland."

In vain, the Master is self-absorbedly amazed at how accurately he “guessed” the ancient events (401). Such books are not "guessed" - they are inspired from outside. The Bible, according to Christians, is a God-inspired book, that is, at the time of its writing, the authors were in a state of special spiritual enlightenment, influence from God. And if the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God, then the source of inspiration for the novel about Yeshua is also easily visible. As a matter of fact, it is Woland who begins the story of the events in Yershalaim in the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, and the Master's text is only a continuation of this story. The master, accordingly, in the process of working on the novel about Pilate was under a special diabolical influence. Bulgakov shows the consequences of such an impact on a person.

The price of inspiration and the mystery of the name

While working on the novel, the Master notices changes in himself, which he himself regards as symptoms of a mental illness. But he is wrong. "His mind is in order, his soul is going crazy." The master begins to be afraid of the dark, it seems to him that at night some “octopus with very long and cold tentacles” climbs through the window (413), fear takes possession of “every cell” of his body (417), the novel becomes “hated” to him (563 ) and then, according to the Master, "the last thing happens": he "takes out of the drawer the heavy lists of the novel and draft notebooks" and begins to "burn them" (414).

In fact, in this case, Bulgakov somewhat idealized the situation: the artist, indeed, having drawn inspiration from the source of all evil and decay, begins to feel hatred towards his creation and sooner or later destroys it. But this is not “the last”, according to the Master ... The fact is that the artist begins to be afraid of creativity itself, afraid of inspiration, expecting fear and despair to return behind them: “nothing around interests me, they broke me, I’m bored, I want to go to the basement "- says Woland the Master (563). And what is an artist without inspiration?.. Sooner or later, following his work, he destroys himself. What is a Master for?

In the Master's worldview, the reality of Satan is obvious and beyond any doubt - it is not for nothing that he immediately recognizes him in a foreigner who talked with Berlioz and Ivan at the Patriarch's Ponds (402). But there is no place for God in the Master's worldview — the master's Yeshua has nothing in common with the real, historical God-Man Jesus Christ. Here the secret of this name itself is revealed - the Master. He is not just a writer, he is precisely a creator, a master of a new world, a new reality in which, in a fit of suicidal pride, he puts himself in the role of Master and Creator.

Before the beginning of the construction of the era of “universal happiness” in our country, this era was first described by individuals on paper, the idea of ​​its construction first appeared, the idea of ​​this era itself. The master created the idea of ​​a new world in which only one spiritual entity is real - Satan. The real Woland, the authentic one, is described by Bulgakov (the same one “slanted forever tanned”). And the transformed, magnificent and majestic horseman with his retinue, whom we see on the last pages of The Master and Margarita, is Woland, as the soul of the Master sees him. About the disease of this soul has already been said ...

Hell out of brackets

The end of the novel is marked by a kind of Happy End. It looks like it, but it does. It would seem: the Master is with Margarita, Pilate finds a certain state of peace, a bewitching picture of horsemen retreating, - only the titles and the word “end” are missing. But the fact is that during his last conversation with the Master, even before his death, Woland utters words that bring the real end of the novel beyond its cover: “I’ll tell you,” Woland turned to the Master with a smile, “that your novel will bring you more surprises.” » (563). And with these "surprises" the Master will be destined to meet in the very idealistic house to which he and Margarita are sent on the last pages of the novel (656). It is there that Margarita will stop “loving” him, it is there that he will never again experience creative inspiration, it is there that he will never be able to turn to God in despair because there is no God in the world created by the Master, it is there that the Master will not be able to do the last thing that the life of a desperate person who has not found God ends on earth - he will not be able to arbitrarily end his life by suicide: he is already dead and is in the world of eternity, in a world whose owner is the devil. In the language of Orthodox theology, this place is called hell...

Where does the novel take the reader?

Does the novel lead the reader to God? Dare to say "Yes!" The novel, as well as the “satanic bible,” leads a person honest to himself to God. If, thanks to The Master and Margarita, one believes in the reality of Satan as a person, then one will inevitably have to believe in God as a Person: after all, Woland categorically stated that "Jesus really existed" (284). And the fact that Bulgakov's Yeshua is not God, while Bulgakov's Satan in the "gospel from himself" is trying to show and prove by all means. But is Mikhail Bulgakov correctly described the events that took place in Palestine two thousand years ago from a scientific (that is, an atheistic) point of view? Perhaps there is some reason to believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth is Yeshua Ha-Notsri, not described by Bulgakov at all? But then, who is he?

So, it follows from here that the reader is logically and inevitably obliged before his own conscience to embark on the path of searching for God, on the path of knowing God.

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Alexander Bashlachev. Staff.

Sakharov V. I. Mikhail Bulgakov: lessons of fate. // Bulgakov M. White Guard. Master and Margarita. Minsk, 1988, p. 12.

Andrey Kuraev, deacon. The answer to the question about the novel "The Master and Margarita" // Audio recording of the lecture "On the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ."

Dunaev M. M. Manuscripts do not burn? Perm, 1999, p. 24.

Frank Coppola. Apocalypse now. Hood. Movie.