"Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

or produce his work. In an extraordinarily forthright letter to the central
government, he asked for permission to emigrate, since the hostility of the
literary powers made it impossible for him to live. If emigration was not
permitted, 'and if I am condemned to keep silent in the Soviet Union for the
rest of my days, then I ask the Soviet government to give me a job in my
speciality and assign me to a theatre as a titular director.' Stalin himself
answered this letter by telephone on 17 April, and shortly afterwards the
Moscow Art Theatre hired Bulgakov as an assistant director and literary
consultant. However, during the thirties only his stage adaptations of
Gogol's Dead Souls and Cervantes' Don Quixote were granted a normal run. His
own plays either were not staged at all or were quickly withdrawn, and his
Life of Monsieur de Moliere, written in 1932--5 for the collection Lives of
Illustrious Men, was rejected by the publisher. These circumstances are
everywhere present in The Master and Margarita, which was in part Bulgakov's
challenge to the rule of terror in literature. The successive stages of his
work on the novel, his changing evaluations of the nature of the book and
its characters, reflect events in his life and his deepening grasp of what
was at stake in the struggle. I will briefly sketch what the study of his
archives has made known of this process.
The novel in its definitive version is composed of two distinct but
interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient
Jerusalem (called Yershalaim). Its central characters are Woland (Satan) and
his retinue, the poet Ivan Homeless, Pontius Pilate, an unnamed writer known
as 'the master', and Margarita. The Pilate story is condensed into four
chapters and focused on four or five large-scale figures. The Moscow story
includes a whole array of minor characters. The Pilate story, which passes
through a succession of narrators, finally joins the Moscow story at the
end, when the fates of Pilate and the master are simultaneously decided. The
earliest version, narrated by a first-person 'chronicler' and entitled The
Engineer's Hoof, was written in the first few months of 1929. It contained
no trace of Margarita and only a faint hint of the master in a minor
character representing the old intelligentsia. The Pilate story was confined
to a single chapter. This version included the essentials of the Moscow
satire, which afterwards underwent only minor revisions and rearrangements.
It began in much the same way as the definitive version, with a dialogue
between a people's poet and an editor (here of an anti-religious magazine.
The Godless) on the correct portrayal of Christ as an exploiter of the
proletariat. A stranger (Woland) appears and, surprised at their unbelief,
astounds them with an eyewitness account of Christ's crucifixion. This
account forms the second chapter, entitled 'The Gospel of Woland'.
Clearly, what first spurred Bulgakov to write the novel was his outrage
at the portrayals of Christ in Soviet anti-religious propaganda (The Godless
was an actual monthly magazine of atheism, published from 1922 to 1940). His
response was based on a simple reversal -- a vivid circumstantial narrative
of what was thought to be a 'myth' invented by the ruling class, and a
breaking down of the self-evident reality of Moscow life by the intrusion of
the 'stranger'. This device, fundamental to the novel, would be more fully
elaborated in its final form. Literary satire was also present from the
start. The fifth chapter of the definitive version, entitled There were
Doings at Griboedov's', already appeared intact in this earliest draft,