The novel that Master had been writing - a retelling of the story of Pontius Pilate in the time of the Crucifixion - is the third narrative strand.Įvery time I read Master and Margarita I enjoy it and find something new in it. Interwoven with the tale of Woland's visit to Moscow is the story of the Master whom we met - in an eerily futuristic mental asylum - only on page 156, and Margarita, who doesn't appear in person until much later. However, all the plots and threads are woven together, all interlock perfectly and we realise, eventually, that Bulgakov is telling just one story, albeit a complicated one, and one that stretches for almost 2000 years.Īs the events progress and the Devil's intervention in the lives of Muscovites becomes more noticeable, the story turns decidedly into a farce, reaching its climax in the show in a certain Variety theatre, where the Devil wreaks havoc by playing on people's old sins: greed, vanity, cowardice. This initial scene sets out for the reader almost all the main themes of the book: and it is a multi-themed novel indeed. Rightly so, as Woland (the Satan in 'Master and Margarita') predicts the exact hour and manner of his death and thus provides the definite proof of the existence of God. Then, out of a sultry air of a Moscow afternoon a hallucination of the Devil, claiming to be a witness to the original events of Easter and having breakfasted with Kant, appears and a needle of what but metaphysical anxiety pierces Berlioz's heart.
It starts with an editor Berlioz and a poet Bezdomny discussing an anti-religious poem that the poet wrote, but which, alas, isn't anti-religious enough because Jesus' figure, however morally blackened, seems real. The frame of the novel consists of the events taking place during three spring days in Moscow. Luckily, I have never studied or analysed it except for occasional glimpses of interpretation that accidentally fell my way. Sadly, I have never read it in original, as Cyrillic alphabet slows me down to the level of a struggling 6 year old. Since then - and it's more than 20 years - I have read Master and Margarita several times, in Polish and English. Little I expected that the following ones will include Soviet literati, broom-stick riding witches, great ball at Satan's and flying pigs. I didn't know that the the first one took place 1900 years later in Stalinist Moscow. I didn't know it was beginning of the second chapter. In the days before commercial radio, when some books were banned and others would be only available on the second-hand market at a price akin to 10% of a teacher's monthly salary, I heard this read aloud on Polish Radio 3: early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan, the Procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red.
Wholeheartedly recommended to anybody who can cope with several interwoven stories and a quite serious helping of fantasy and the grotesque. Summary: The Devil visits Stalin's Moscow - and mayhem ensues in this unique combination of a love story, vicious satire, philosophical treaty, fantasy, horror and re-telling of the Christian Gospel story.
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