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

Testament of the poet Francois Villon, who in the liveliest verse handed out
appropriate 'legacies' to all his enemies, thus entering into tradition and
even earning himself a place in the fourth book of Rabelais's Gargantua and
Pantagruel. So, too, Bakhtin says of Rabelais:
In his novel ... he uses the popular-festive system of images with its
charter of freedoms consecrated by many centuries; and he uses it to inflict
a severe punishment upon his foe, the Gothic age ... In this setting of
consecrated rights Rabelais attacks the fundamental dogmas and sacraments,
the holy of holies of medieval ideology.
And he comments further on the broad nature of this tradition:
For thousands of years the people have used these festive comic images
to express their criticism, their deep distrust of official truth, and their
highest hopes and aspirations. Freedom was not so much an exterior right as
it was the inner content of these images. It was the thousand-year-old
language of feariessness, a language with no reservations and omissions,
about the world and about power.
Bulgakov drew on this same source in settling his scores with the
custodians of official literature and official reality.
The novel's form excludes psychological analysis and historical
commentary. Hence the quickness and pungency of Bulgakov's writing. At the
same time, it allows Bulgakov to exploit all the theatricality of its great
scenes -- storms, flight, the attack of vampires, all the antics of the
demons Koroviev and Behemoth, the seance in the Variety theatre, the ball at
Satan's, but also the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, the crucifixion as
witnessed by Matthew Levi, the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of
Gethsemane.
Bulgakov's treatment of Gospel figures is the most controversial aspect
of The Master and Margarita and has met with the greatest incomprehension.
Yet his premises are made clear in the very first pages of the novel, in the
dialogue between Woland and the atheist Berlioz. By the deepest irony of
all, the 'prince of this world' stands as guarantor of the 'other' world. It
exists, since he exists. But he says nothing directly about it. Apart from
divine revelation, the only language able to speak of the 'other' world is
the language of parable. Of this language Kafka wrote, in his parable 'On
Parables':
Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and
of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says:
'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which
we could do anyhow if it was worth the trouble; he means some fabulous
yonder, something unknown to us, something, too, that he cannot designate
more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the least. All these
parables really set out to say simply that the incomprehensible is
incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to
struggle with every day: that is a different matter.
Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only
followed the parables, you yourselves would become parables and with that nd
of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You win.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.