Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" was published in 1966-1967 and immediately brought the writer worldwide fame. The author himself defines the genre of the work as a novel, but genre uniqueness still causes controversy among writers. It is defined as a myth novel, philosophical novel, mystery novel and so on. This happens because the novel combines all genres at once, even those that cannot exist together. The novel's narrative is directed to the future, the content is both psychologically and philosophically reliable, the problems raised in the novel are eternal. The main idea of the novel is the struggle between good and evil, inseparable and eternal concepts.
The composition of the novel is as original as genre - novel in the novel. One is about the fate of the Master, the other is about Pontius Pilate. On the one hand, they are opposed to each other, on the other, they seem to form a single whole. This novel within a novel brings together global problems and contradictions. The master is concerned about the same problems as Pontius Pilate. At the end of the novel, you can see how Moscow connects with Yershalaim, that is, one novel is combined with another and turns into one storyline. Reading the work, we are in two dimensions at once: the 30s of the 20th century and the 30s of the 1st century new era. We see that the events took place in the same month and on several days before Easter, only with an interval of 1900 years, which proves the deep connection between the Moscow and Yershalaim chapters. The action of the novel, which are separated by almost two thousand years, are in harmony with each other, and they are connected by the fight against evil, the search for truth, and creativity. And yet the main character of the novel is love. Love is what captivates the reader. In general, the theme of love is the writer’s favorite. According to the author, all the happiness that a person has in life comes from love. Love elevates a person above the world and comprehends the spiritual. This is the feeling of The Master and Margarita. That is why the author included these names in the title. Margarita completely surrenders to love, and for the sake of saving the Master, she sells her soul to the devil, taking on a huge sin. But still, the author makes her the most positive heroine of the novel and himself takes her side. Using the example of Margarita, Bulgakov showed that each person must make his own personal choice, without asking for help from higher powers, not expecting favors from life, a person must make his own destiny.
There are three in the novel storylines: philosophical - Yeshua and Pontius Pilate, love - The Master and Margarita, mystical and satirical - Woland, his entire retinue and Muscovites. These lines are closely related to each other by the image of Woland. He feels free in both biblical and modern writer time
The plot of the novel is the scene on the Patriarch's Ponds, where Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny argue with a stranger about the existence of God. To Woland’s question about “who controls human life and all order on earth in general,” if there is no God, Ivan Bezdomny replies: “Man himself controls.” The author reveals the relativity of human knowledge and at the same time affirms man's responsibility for his destiny. The author tells what is true in the biblical chapters, which are the center of the novel. Move modern life lies in the Master's story about Pontius Pilate. Another feature of this work is that it is autobiographical. In the image of the Master we recognize Bulgakov himself, and in the image of Margarita - his beloved woman, his wife Elena Sergeevna. This is probably why we perceive heroes as real individuals. We sympathize with them, worry, put ourselves in their place. The reader seems to move along the artistic ladder of the work, improving along with the characters.
The storylines are completed, connecting at one point in Eternity. This unique composition of the novel makes it interesting for the reader, and most importantly, an immortal work. There are few novels that have generated as much controversy as The Master and Margarita. Arguing about prototypes characters, about the book sources of certain components of the plot, the philosophical and aesthetic roots of the novel and its moral and ethical principles, about who is the main character of the work: the Master, Woland, Yeshua or Ivan Bezdomny (despite the fact that the author quite clearly expressed his position, calling the 13th chapter, in which the Master first appears on stage, “The Appearance of the Hero”), finally, about the genre in which the novel was written. The latter cannot be determined unambiguously. This was noted very well by the American literary critic M. Kreps in his book “Bulgakov and Pasternak as Novelists: Analysis of the Novels “The Master and Margarita” and “Doctor Zhivago”” (1984): “Bulgakov’s novel for Russian literature is indeed highly innovative, and therefore not easy to grasp. As soon as the critic approaches him with the old standard system of measures, it turns out that some things are true, and some things are completely wrong. Dress of Menippean satire (the founder of this genre - ancient Greek poet Swiss BC e. Menippus - I.A.) when trying on, covers some places well, but leaves others bare, Proppian criteria fairy tale are applicable only to individual, very modest events in terms of specific gravity, leaving almost the entire novel and its main characters behind. Fiction collides with strict realism, myth with scrupulous historical authenticity, theosophy with demonism, romance with clownery.” If we add that the action of the Yershalaim scenes - the Master's novel about Pontius Pilate takes place over the course of one day, which satisfies the requirements of classicism, then we can say that Bulgakov's novel combined almost all the genres existing in the world and literary trends. Moreover, definitions of “The Master and Margarita” as a symbolist, post-symbolist or neo-romantic novel are quite common. In addition, it can well be called a post-realistic novel, since with modernist and postmodernist, avant-garde literature“The Masters...” is similar in that Bulgakov builds the novel’s reality, not excluding the modern Moscow chapters, almost exclusively on the basis of literary sources, and infernal fiction penetrates deeply into Soviet life. Perhaps the prerequisite for such a multifaceted genre of the novel is that Bulgakov himself for a long time could not decide on its final plot and title. Thus, there were three editions of the novel, in which there were the following title options: “Black Magician”, “Engineer’s Hoof”, “Juggler with a Hoof”, “Son of V(eliar?)”, “Tour (Woland?)” (1st editorial); "The Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I Come", "The Hat with a Feather", "The Black Theologian", "He Appeared", "The Foreigner's Horseshoe", "He Appeared", "The Advent", "The Black Magician" and “The Consultant’s Hoof” (2nd edition, which bore the subtitle “Fantastic Novel” - perhaps this is a hint at how the author himself determined the genre of his work); and, finally, the third edition was originally called “The Prince of Darkness”, and less than a year later, the now well-known title “The Master and Margarita” appeared.
It must be said that when writing the novel, Bulgakov used several philosophical theories: some compositional moments were based on them, as well as mystical episodes and episodes of the Yershalaim chapters. The writer borrowed most of his ideas from the 18th century Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda (whose works he studied thoroughly). Thus, in the novel there is an interaction between three worlds: the human (all the people in the novel), the biblical (biblical characters) and the cosmic (Woland and his retinue). Let’s compare: according to Skovoroda’s “three worlds” theory, the most main world- cosmic, Universe, all-encompassing macrocosm. The other two worlds are private. One of them is human, microcosm; the other is symbolic, i.e. biblical world. Each of the three worlds has two “natures”: visible and invisible. All three worlds are woven from good and evil, and the biblical world appears in Skovoroda as a connecting link between the visible and invisible natures of the macrocosm and microcosm. Man has two bodies and two hearts: corruptible and eternal, earthly and spiritual, and this means that man is “external” and “internal.” And the latter never dies: by dying, he only loses his earthly body. In the novel "The Master and Margarita" duality is expressed in the dialectical interaction and struggle of good and evil (this is main problem novel). According to the same Skovoroda, good cannot exist without evil, people simply will not know that it is good. As Woland said to Levi Matthew: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared from it?” There must be some kind of balance between good and evil, which was disrupted in Moscow: the scales tipped sharply towards the latter and Woland came, as the chief punisher, to restore it.
The three-world nature of “The Master and Margarita” can also be correlated with the views of the famous Russian religious philosopher, theologian and mathematician P.A. Florensky (1882-1937), who developed the idea that “trinity is the most general characteristic of being,” connecting it with the Christian Trinity. He also wrote: “...Truth is a single essence with three hypostases...”. For Bulgakov, the composition of the novel really consists of three layers, which together lead us to understand the main idea of the novel: about the moral responsibility of a person for his actions, that all people at all times should strive for truth.
And finally, recent studies of Bulgakov’s work lead many scientists and literary critics to believe that the philosophical concept of the novel was influenced by the views of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, his work “I and IT” about the separation of the I, IT and the I-ideal in a person. The composition of the novel is formed by three intricately intertwined storylines, in each of which the elements of Freud’s idea of the human psyche are refracted in a unique way: the biblical chapters of the novel narrate the life and death of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, personifying the I-ideal (strives for goodness, truth and speaks only the truth), the Moscow chapters show the adventures of IT - Woland and his retinue, exposing human base passions, vulgar lust, lust. Who personifies I? The tragedy of the Master, called a hero by the author, lies in the loss of his Self. “Now I’m nobody... I don’t have any dreams and I don’t have any inspiration either... I was broken, I’m bored, and I want to go to the basement,” he says. Like a truly tragic hero, the Master is guilty and not guilty. Having entered into a deal with evil spirits through Margarita, “he did not deserve light, he deserved peace,” the desired balance between IT and the I-ideal.
To finally understand the problems and idea of the novel, you need to consider in more detail the characters, their role in the work and prototypes in history, literature or the life of the author.
The novel is written “as if the author, feeling in advance that it was his last piece“, I wanted to put into it without reserve all the sharpness of my satirical eye, the unbridled imagination, the power of psychological observation.” Bulgakov pushed the boundaries of the novel genre; he managed to achieve an organic combination of historical-epic, philosophical and satirical principles. In terms of the depth of philosophical content and level of artistic skill, “The Master and Margarita” rightfully stands on a par with “ Divine Comedy“Dante, “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, Goethe’s “Faust”, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and other “eternal companions of humanity in its quest for the truth of “freedom”.
The amount of research devoted to the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov is enormous. Even the publication of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia did not put an end to the work of the researchers. The thing is that the novel is quite complex in genre and therefore difficult to analyze. According to the definition of the British researcher of the work of M. Bulgakov J. Curtis, given in her book “The Last Bulgakov Decade: The Writer as a Hero,” “The Master and Margarita” has the property of a rich deposit where as yet unidentified minerals lie together. Both the form of the novel and its content distinguish it as a unique masterpiece: parallels with it are difficult to find in both the Russian and Western European cultural traditions.”
The characters and plots of “The Master and Margarita” are projected simultaneously onto both the Gospel and the legend of Faust, onto specific historical figures Bulgakov's contemporaries, which gives the novel a paradoxical and sometimes controversial nature. In one field, holiness and demonism, miracle and magic, temptation and betrayal are inextricably combined.
It is customary to talk about three planes of the novel - ancient, Yershalaim, eternal otherworldly and modern Moscow, which surprisingly turn out to be connected with each other, the role of this connection is played by the world evil spirits, headed by the majestic and regal Woland. But “no matter how many plans are highlighted in the novel and no matter how they are called, it is indisputable that the author had in mind to show the reflection of eternal, transtemporal images and relationships in the unsteady surface of historical existence.”
The image of Jesus Christ as an ideal of moral perfection invariably attracts many writers and artists. Some of them adhered to the traditional, canonical interpretation of it, based on the four gospels and the apostolic epistles, while others gravitated toward apocryphal or simply heretical subjects. As is well known, M. Bulgakov took the second path. Jesus himself, as he appears in the novel, rejects the authenticity of the evidence of the “Gospel of Matthew” (let us remember here the words of Yeshua about what he saw when he looked into the goat parchment of Matthew Levi). And in this regard, he demonstrates a striking unity of views with Woland-Satan: “... just anyone,” Woland turns to Berlioz, “but you should know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the Gospels, never really happened..." Woland is the devil, Satan, the prince of darkness, the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows (all these definitions are found in the text of the novel). “It is undeniable... that not only Jesus, but also Satan in the novel are not presented in the New Testament interpretation.” Woland is largely focused on Mephistopheles, even the name Woland itself is taken from Goethe’s poem, where it is mentioned only once and is usually omitted in Russian translations. The novel's epigraph also reminds us of Goethe's poem. In addition, researchers find that when creating Woland, Bulgakov also remembered the opera by Charles Gounod, and the contemporary Bulgakov version of Faust, written by the writer and journalist E.L. Mindlin, the beginning of whose novel was published in 1923. Generally speaking, the images of evil spirits in the novel carry with them many allusions - literary, operatic, musical. It seems that none of the researchers remembered that French composer Berlioz (1803-1869), whose last name is one of the characters in the novel, is the author of the opera The Damnation of Doctor Faustus.
And yet Woland is, first of all, Satan. With all this, the image of Satan in the novel is not traditional.
Woland's unconventionality lies in the fact that, being a devil, he is endowed with some obvious attributes of God. And Woland-Satan himself sees himself with him in the “cosmic hierarchy” on approximately equal terms. No wonder Woland remarks to Levi Matvey: “It’s not difficult for me to do anything.”
Traditionally, the image of the devil has been portrayed comically in literature. And in the edition of the novel 1929-1930. Woland had a number of derogatory traits: he giggled, spoke with a “rogue smile,” used colloquial expressions, calling, for example, Bezdomny a “pig liar,” and feigningly complaining to the bartender Sokov: “Oh, the bastard people in Moscow!” and tearfully begging on his knees : “Do not destroy the orphan.” However, in the final text of the novel, Woland became different, majestic and regal: “He was in an expensive gray suit, in foreign-made shoes that matched the color of the suit, he dashed his gray beret behind his ear, and under his arm he carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle’s head. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaven clean. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other.” “Two eyes fixed on Margarita’s face. The right one with a golden spark at the bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of the soul, and the left one is empty and black, kind of like a narrow eye of a needle, like an exit into a bottomless well of all darkness and shadows. Woland's face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was pulled down, and deep wrinkles were cut into his high, bald forehead, parallel to his sharp eyebrows. The skin on Woland’s face seemed to be forever burned by a tan.”
Woland has many faces, as befits the devil, and in conversations with different people puts on different masks. At the same time, Woland’s omniscience of Satan is completely preserved (he and his people are well aware of both the past and future lives of those with whom they come into contact, they also know the text of the Master’s novel, which literally coincides with the “Gospel of Woland”, the same thing that was told to the unlucky writers at the Patriarch's).
In addition, Woland does not come to Moscow alone, but surrounded by his retinue, which is also unusual for the traditional embodiment of the devil in literature. After all, Satan usually appears on his own - without accomplices. Bulgakov's devil has a retinue, and a retinue in which a strict hierarchy reigns, and each has his own function. The closest to the devil in position is Koroviev-Fagot, the first in rank among demons, the main assistant of Satan. Azazello and Gella are subordinate to Bassoon. A somewhat special position is occupied by the werecat Behemoth, a favorite jester and a kind of confidant of the “prince of darkness.”
And it seems that Koroviev, aka Fagot, is the eldest of the demons subordinate to Woland, introducing himself to Muscovites as a translator for a foreign professor and a former regent church choir, has many similarities with the traditional embodiment of a small demon. Through the entire logic of the novel, the reader is led to the idea of not judging characters by their appearance, and the final scene of the “transformation” of evil spirits looks like a confirmation of the correctness of the guesses that arise involuntarily. Woland's henchman, only when necessary, puts on various disguises: a drunken regent, a gayer, a clever swindler. And only in the final chapters of the novel Koroviev sheds his disguise and appears before the reader as a dark purple knight with a never smiling face.
In the same way, the Behemoth cat changes its appearance: “He who was a cat who amused the prince of darkness now turned out to be a thin youth, a demon page, the best jester that ever existed in the world.” These characters in the novel, it turns out, have their own history that is not connected with biblical history. So the purple knight, as it turns out, is paying for some joke that turned out to be unsuccessful. The cat Behemoth was the personal page of the purple knight. And only the transformation of another servant of Woland does not occur: the changes that happened to Azazello did not turn him into a person, like Woland’s other companions - in the farewell flight over Moscow we see a cold and impassive demon of death.
It is interesting that Gella, a female vampire, another member of Woland's retinue, is missing from the scene of the last flight. “The writer’s third wife believed that this was the result of unfinished work on “Master Margarita.”
However, it is possible that Bulgakov deliberately removed Gella as the youngest member of the retinue, performing only auxiliary functions. Vampires are traditionally the lowest category of evil spirits.”
One of the researchers makes an interesting observation: “And finally, Woland flew in his real guise.” Which one? Not a word is said about this."
The unconventional nature of the images of evil spirits also lies in the fact that “usually the evil spirits in Bulgakov’s novel are not at all inclined to engage in what, according to tradition, they are absorbed in - the seduction and temptation of people. On the contrary, Woland’s gang defends integrity, purity of morals... In fact, what are he and his associates primarily doing in Moscow, for what purpose did the author let them walk and misbehave in the capital for four days?
In fact, the forces of hell play a somewhat unusual role for them in The Master and Margarita. (Actually, only one scene in the novel - the scene of "mass hypnosis in the Variety Show - shows the devil completely in his original role as a tempter. But here too Woland acts exactly like a moral corrector or, in other words, like a very satirical writer to the advantage of the author who invented it. “Woland, as it were, deliberately narrows his functions, he is inclined not so much to seduce as to punish.” there are so many good and decent people who are brought to light and punished who have already committed sinners.
At the behest of Bulgakov, evil spirits commit many different outrages in Moscow. It’s not for nothing that Woland has a riotous retinue assigned to him. It brings together experts different profiles: the master of mischievous tricks and practical jokes - the cat Behemoth, the eloquent Koroviev, who speaks all the dialects and jargons - from semi-criminal to high-society, the gloomy Azazello, extremely inventive in the sense of kicking out various kinds of sinners from apartment No. 50, from Moscow, even from this to the next world. And then alternating, then acting together or three, they create situations, sometimes creepy, as in the case of Rimsky, but more often comic, despite the destructive consequences of their actions.
Styopa Likhodeev, the director of the variety show, gets away with Woland's assistants throwing him from Moscow to Yalta. And he has a whole cartload of sins: “... in general,” Koroviev reports, speaking about Stepa in the plural, “in lately They're terribly piggy. They get drunk, have relationships with women, using their position, don’t do a damn thing, and they can’t do a damn thing, because they don’t understand anything about what they are entrusted with. The authorities are being bullied. - They are driving a government car in vain! - the cat also told lies"
And for all this, just a forced walk to Yalta. Nikanor Ivanovich Bosom, who really doesn’t play around with currency, but still takes bribes, and Berlioz’s uncle, a cunning hunter for his nephew’s Moscow apartment, and the leaders of the Entertainment Commission, typical bureaucrats and slackers, avoid any too serious consequences from meeting with evil spirits. .
On the other hand, extremely severe punishments fall on those who do not steal and who do not seem to have been covered up by Stepa’s vices, but who have one seemingly harmless flaw. The master defines it this way: a person without a surprise inside. For the financial director of the variety show Rimsky, who is trying to invent “ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena,” Woland’s retinue creates such a scene of horror that in a matter of minutes he turns into a gray-haired old man with a shaking head. They are also completely merciless towards the bartender of the variety show, the very one who utters the famous words about sturgeon of the second freshness. For what? The bartender steals and cheats, but this is not his most serious vice - hoarding, the fact that he robs himself. “Something, as you please,” notes Woland, “unkindness lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and table conversation. Such people are either seriously ill or secretly hate those around them.”
But the saddest fate befalls the head of MASSOLIT, Berlioz. Berlioz's fault is that he, an educated man who grew up in pre-Soviet Russia, hoped to adapt to new government openly changed his beliefs (he, of course, could be an atheist, but at the same time not claim that the story of Jesus Christ, on which the entire European civilization was based, is “simple fiction, the most ordinary myth.”) and began to preach what was from him this power will require. But he is also in special demand, because he is the head of a writers’ organization - and his sermons tempt those who are just joining the world of literature and culture. How can one not remember the words of Christ: “Woe to those who tempt these little ones.” It is clear that the choice made by Berlioz was conscious. In exchange for betraying literature, the authorities give him a lot - position, money, the opportunity to occupy a leadership position.
It is interesting to observe how Berlioz's death is predicted. “The stranger looked Berlioz up and down, as if he was going to sew him a suit, muttered through his teeth something like: “One, two... Mercury in the second house... the moon is gone... six is misfortune... evening is seven...” and announced loudly and joyfully: “Your head will be cut off!” .
Here is what we read about this in the Bulgakov Encyclopedia: “According to the principles of astrology, twelve houses are twelve parts of the ecliptic. The location of certain luminaries in each of their houses reflects certain events in a person’s fate. Mercury in the second house means happiness in trade. Berlioz was really punished for introducing traders into the temple of literature - members of MASSOLIT, which he headed, who were concerned only with obtaining material benefits in the form of dachas, creative business trips, vouchers to sanatoriums (Mikhail Alexandrovich was thinking about such a voucher in the last hours of his life).” .
The writer Berlioz, like all the writers from the House of Griboedov, decided for himself that the affairs of the writer matter only for the time in which he himself lives. Further - nothingness. Raising Berlioz's severed head at the Great Ball, Woland addresses it: “Everyone will be given according to his faith...” Thus, it turns out that “justice in the novel invariably celebrates victory, but this is most often achieved through witchcraft, in an incomprehensible way.”
Woland turns out to be the bearer of fate, and here Bulgakov finds himself in line with the traditions of Russian literature, which linked fate not with God, but with the devil.
With seeming omnipotence, the devil carries out his judgment and reprisals in Soviet Moscow. Generally speaking, good and evil in a novel are created by the hands of man himself. Woland and his retinue only give the opportunity to manifest those vices and virtues that are inherent in people. For example, the cruelty of the crowd towards Georges Bengalsky at the Variety Theater is replaced by mercy, and the initial evil, when they wanted to tear off the head of the unfortunate entertainer, becomes a necessary condition for good - pity for the entertainer who lost his head.
But the evil spirits in the novel not only punish, forcing people to suffer from their own depravity. She also helps those who cannot stand up for themselves in the fight against those who violate all moral laws. In Bulgakov, Woland literally revives the Master's burned novel - the product artistic creativity, preserved only in the head of the creator, materializes again, turns into a tangible thing.
Woland, who explained the purpose of his visit to the Soviet capital for various reasons, eventually admits that he arrived in Moscow in order to fulfill the order, or rather the request, of Yeshua to take the Master and Margarita to him. It turns out that Satan in Bulgakov’s novel is the servant of Ha-Notsri “on commissions of this kind that the highest holiness cannot... directly touch.” Maybe that’s why it seems that Woland is the first devil in world literature, admonishing the atheists and punishing them for non-observance of the commandments of Christ. Now it becomes clear that the epigraph to the novel “I am part of that force that wants evil and always does good” is an important part of the author’s worldview, according to which high ideals can only be preserved in the supermundane. In earthly life, the brilliant Master can only be saved from death by Satan and his retinue, who are not bound by this ideal in their lives. And in order to get the Master to himself with his novel, Woland, wishing evil, must do good: he punishes the opportunistic writer Berlioz, the traitor Baron Meigel and many petty swindlers, like the thief-bartender Sokov or the grabber-house manager Bosogo. Moreover, it turns out that giving the author of the novel about Pontius Pilate to the power of otherworldly forces is only a formal evil, since it is done with the blessing and even on the direct instructions of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who personifies the forces of good.
Dialectical unity, the complementarity of good and evil are most clearly revealed in Woland’s words addressed to Matthew Levi, who refused to wish health to the “spirit of evil and the lord of shadows”: “Would you be kind enough to think about what your good would do if it did not exist evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows come from objects and people. But shadows come from trees and living creatures. globe, having swept away all the trees and all living things because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light. You are stupid."
Thus, the eternal, traditional opposition of good and evil, light and darkness is absent in Bulgakov’s novel. The forces of darkness, with all the evil that they bring to the Soviet capital, turn out to be assistants to the forces of light and good, because they are at war with those who have long forgotten how to distinguish between both - with the new Soviet religion, which has crossed out the entire history of mankind, abolished and rejected all the moral experience of previous generations.
M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” is one of the most significant creations of world literature of the 20th century. In this work, the writer expanded the genre boundaries literary novel, having managed to be the first among numerous writers of the twentieth century to achieve an organic combination of historical, philosophical and satirical principles.
Another important feature of the novel is the parallel between two worlds - the world of Yershalaim and the world of Moscow in the twentieth century. The period of time separating the Yershalaim and Moscow heroes is approximately two thousand years. But this did not prevent M.A. Bulgakov from finding certain points of contact in their worldview, behavior, and attitude towards the ruling regime. It is these genre features of “The Master and Margarita” that make the novel a new, original, and interesting phenomenon for the reader.
In describing the Yershalaim scenes, in creating the heroes of that time - Yeshua Ha-Nozri, Pontius Pilate, Matthew Levi - Bulgakov relies on many historical sources. But, perhaps, the main source for Mikhail Afanasyevich when working on the novel was the work of the British Bishop F. Farrar “The Life of Jesus Christ”, which in every possible way called for the preservation and revival of the foundations of evangelical traditions, and their protection from critical attacks.
Not only the historical, but also the philosophical content of M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” is incredibly great. The author carried the ideas of humanism and anti-humanism in human behavior throughout the entire work. The subject of Ha-Notsri's and the Master's discussions are such philosophical categories as the meaning of life, darkness and light, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, love and hatred in their absolute meaning.
However, the novel “The Master and Margarita” is also a love story, a fantasy novel. The love story of the heroes is full of passion and romance, complete mutual understanding and agreement, as well as quarrels, mysteries and omissions.
Bulgakov's Master is a philosopher, he is indifferent to the joys of family life, he does not remember his name ex-wife, he is a resident of his own small closed world. The master is very disappointed in life; in recent years he has been constantly unlucky: unlucky in love, unlucky in work. Margarita, as depicted by the author, is the direct opposite of the Master; she is beautiful, frivolous, sociable, full of happiness and joy. Her vital energy also feeds the Master; after meeting Margarita, he again begins to work on his work.
The love of the Master and Margarita did not imply earthly family happiness; the heroes were able to finally unite only in the other world of Woland. Mystical powers in the novel they act as a kind of connecting link between the ancient and modern worlds. Woland in “The Master and Margarita”, not without humor, exposes to us a great many human vices. However, in relation to Woland, Bulgakov himself does not allow himself irony. Woland is the prince of darkness, he personifies eternity. This hero appears as that eternally existing evil, without which the existence of good, pure and sincere good, is unthinkable. In general, the depiction of demons and evil spirits in Russian and world literature has a centuries-old tradition.
M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” has many faces, like art itself - it is romance and realism, painting and clairvoyance, history and philosophy.
Bulgakov's novel is a mystery novel. Not all of his literary lines have been comprehended and mastered. For modern readers The work “The Master and Margarita” is destined to be read and perceived in its own way, to discover new values and ideals hidden in the depths of the novel.
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The artistic originality of M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”
M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” is very complex in compositionally. In its plot, two worlds exist in parallel: the world in which Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Nozri lived, and contemporary to Bulgakov Moscow of the twenties and thirties of the XX century. Associated with the complex composition is a complex, branched system of characters, large number doubles, parallels and antitheses.
The novel “The Master and Margarita” includes two narratives (about the fate of the Master and about Pontius Pilate), which are in a complex relationship of opposition, but at the same time are united by a common idea.
The novel about Pontius Pilate occupies less text space than the novel about the fate of the Master, but it plays an important semantic role, since it contains deep philosophical subtext. It consists of four chapters, which are, as it were, “scattered” in the text of the story about the Master and Margarita. The first chapter - “Pontius Pilate” - is Woland’s story, which Ivan Bezdomny and Berlioz listen to. The second chapter - “Execution” - is presented as a dream of Ivan Bezdomny. The third and fourth chapters - “How the procurator tried to save Judas from Kiriath” and “Burial” - are introduced into the novel as the Master’s manuscripts restored by Woland, which Margarita reads. It should be noted that the novel about Pilate is introduced into the narrative with the help of characters included in the system of images of the main novel, as a result of which the chapters about Pontius Pilate become part of the novel about the Master and Margarita.
The chapters telling about the procurator differ sharply in style from the chapters describing Moscow. The style of the inserted narrative is distinguished by its homogeneity, the stinginess of measured, precise prose, which turns, for example, in the chapter “Execution”, into the high style of tragedy: “You are not an omnipotent god. You are a black god. I curse you, god of robbers, their patron and soul!”
The novel about the Master is dedicated to contemporary author Moscow, its inhabitants and their morals. This narrative contains both grotesque scenes and scenes of a lyrical-dramatic and phantasmagoric nature, which leads to a variety of storytelling styles. It contains both low vocabulary (“If you, bastard, allow yourself to get involved in the conversation again...”), and poetic, especially in the episodes dedicated to the Master, where the narrative language is replete with repetitions and metaphors (“anxious yellow flowers”).
It should be noted that the scenes in which Woland meets with the residents of Moscow are built according to the same plan: meeting, test, exposure, punishment.
Woland and his retinue come to Moscow to see if people have changed since the last time he saw them, and if Yeshua’s sacrifice was in vain.
And what does he see? Woland meets Muscovites at a performance at the Variety Theater. He sees that people are the same as they were: moderately greedy, selfish, but also quite merciful. “People are like people, the housing issue has only spoiled them.” They do not feel their responsibility, so denunciations and bribery are common in the city.
Residents of Krshalaim are no different from residents of Moscow. Also, not noticing their personal responsibility and choosing the death of Yeshua, who is innocent of anything, instead of the death of Bar-Rabban, they thereby serve the darkness.
Many visitors to “Variety” changed their clothes for new ones, which seemed to make a deal with the devil. They picked up flying banknotes and were punished for their greed. The director of the entertainment sector was also punished for bureaucracy. Bulgakov clearly showed that even a suit without an owner could do the work of a director. Other workers in the entertainment sector involved in the “circle fever” were also punished. Nikanor Ivanovich was punished for greed (who was choosing between “not allowed” and money), Styopa Likhodeev was sent to Yalta. In all these episodes, Woland and his retinue act as just retribution.
Since the novel “The Master and Margarita” consists of two relatively autonomous narratives, it contains two main characters in the character system - the Master and Yeshua. These heroes are double heroes. Also doubles are Ivan Bezdomny and Levi Matvey as followers of their teachers, Aloysius Mogarych and Judas from Kiriath as traitors.
In the novel “The Master and Margarita” there is also a love conflict. Love relationships The Masters and Margaritas are associated with the change of seasons. This love story (idyllic in its essence) is destroyed when colliding with the outside world, and is restored with the help of otherworldly forces. Like all the heroes in the novel, the Master and Margarita make their choice. The Master makes his choice quite consciously: he began to hate the fruit of his life’s labors, the novel about Pontius Pilate, the Master experienced too much grief because of this novel. Margarita takes the path of dedication, sacrificing herself for the sake of her loved one. She prefers the Master to her rich, carefree life in the house of a loving but unloved husband, then she again sacrifices herself in the name of love, surrendering to the hands of evil spirits and becoming a witch in order to find out something about the Master. And for this Margarita was rewarded with eternal love.
Thus, we see that Bulgakov violates the genre canons of the novel. He makes the main object of the narrative not the history of individuals, but the history of an entire people.
M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” is structured as a “novel within a novel.” As a result, two sharply contrasting narrative styles and two main characters can be distinguished in it. The novel about the Master is much more complex in compositional terms than the novel about Pilate, but when reading there is no feeling of disjointed parts of the work. The whole secret of the novel's compositional integrity lies in the connecting threads between the past and the present.
Accept the collection of colorful heads,
Half funny, half sad.
Common people, ideal,
The careless fruit of my amusements,
Insomnia, light inspirations,
Immature and faded years,
Crazy cold observations
And hearts of sorrowful notes.
A.S. Pushkin
In the story " Heart of a Dog"Bulgakov described as the main character an outstanding scientist (Professor Preobrazhensky) and his scientific activities, and from specific scientific problems eugenics (the science of improving the human race) moved to philosophical problems revolutionary and evolutionary development of human knowledge, human society and nature in general. In The Master and Margarita, this pattern is repeated, but the main character becomes a writer who wrote only one novel, and even that one was not finished. With all this, he can be called outstanding because he devoted his novel to the fundamental moral issues of humanity, and did not succumb to the pressure of the authorities, which called on (and, with the help of literary associations, forced) cultural figures to glorify the successes of the proletarian state. From issues that concern creative people (freedom of creativity, openness, the problem of choice), Bulgakov in the novel moved on to the philosophical problems of good and evil, conscience and fate, to the question of the meaning of life and death, therefore the social and philosophical content in “The Master and Margarita” , compared to the story “Heart of a Dog,” is distinguished by greater depth and significance due to the many episodes and characters.
The genre of “The Master and Margarita” is a novel. Genre originality it can be revealed as follows: a satirical, socio-philosophical, fantasy novel within a novel. The novel is social, as it describes life in the USSR in the last years of NEP, that is, in the late 20s of the 20th century. It is impossible to more accurately date the time of action in the work: the author deliberately (or not intentionally) connects facts from different times on the pages of the work: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has not yet been destroyed (1931), but passports have already been introduced (1932), and Muscovites travel in trolleybuses (1934). The setting of the novel is philistine Moscow, not ministerial, not academic, not party and government, but communal and everyday. In the capital throughout three days Woland and his retinue study the morals of ordinary (average) Soviet people, who, according to communist ideologists, should represent a new type of citizen, free from social illnesses and shortcomings inherent in people of a class society.
The life of Moscow inhabitants is described satirically. Evil spirits punish grabbers, careerists, schemers who “flourished magnificently” on the “healthy soil of Soviet society.” The scene of Koroviev and Behemoth's visit to the Smolensk market at the Torgsin store is wonderfully presented - Bulgakov considers this establishment a bright sign of the times. Small demons casually expose the swindler posing as a foreigner and deliberately destroy the entire store, where an ordinary Soviet citizen (due to the lack of currency and gold items) has no access (2, 28). Woland punishes a cunning businessman who carries out clever fraud with living space, a thief-bartender from the Variety Theater Andrei Fokich Sokov (1, 18), a bribe-taker-chairman of the house committee Nikanor Ivanovich Bosogo (1, 9) and others. Bulgakov very wittily depicts Woland's performance in the theater (1, 12), when all interested ladies are offered free new beautiful outfits in exchange for their own modest clothes. At first, the audience does not believe in such a miracle, but very quickly greed and the opportunity to receive unexpected gifts overcome mistrust. The crowd rushes to the stage, where everyone gets dressed to their liking. The performance ends funny and instructive: after the performance, the ladies, flattered by the gifts of evil spirits, find themselves naked, and Woland sums up the whole performance: “... people are like people. They love money, but that’s always been the case... (...) in general, they resemble the old ones, the housing issue only spoiled them...” (1, 12). In other words, the new Soviet man, about whom the authorities talk so much, has not yet been brought up in the country of the Soviets.
In parallel with the satirical depiction of swindlers of various stripes, the author gives a description of the spiritual life of Soviet society. It is clear that Bulgakov was primarily interested in the literary life of Moscow in the late 20s of the 20th century. Bright representatives of the new creative intelligentsia in the novel are the semi-literate, but very self-confident Ivan Bezdomny, who considers himself a poet, and the literary official Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, who educates and inspires young members of MASSOLIT (in different editions of the novel, the literary association, located in the house of Griboyedov’s aunt, is designated either Massolit or MASSOLIT) . Satirical image figures proletarian culture based on the fact that their high self-esteem and pretensions do not correspond to their “creative” achievements. Officials from the “Commission for Shows and Entertainment of the Light Type” are shown simply grotesquely (1, 17): the suit calmly replaces the head of the Commission, Prokhor Petrovich, and signs official documents, and minor clerks chant during working hours folk songs(Domkom activists in the story “Heart of a Dog” were busy with the same “serious” activity in the evenings).
Next to such “creative” workers the author places tragic hero- a real writer. As Bulgakov half-jokingly and half-seriously said, the Moscow chapters can be briefly retold as follows: a story about a writer who ends up in a madhouse for writing the truth in his novel and hoping that it would be published. The Fate of the Master (Bulgakov in the novel calls his hero “master”, but in critical literature another designation for this hero is accepted - Master, which is used in this analysis) proves that in literary life The Soviet Union is dominated by the dictatorship of mediocrities and functionaries like Berlioz, who allow themselves to rudely interfere with the work of a real writer. He cannot fight them, because there is no freedom of creativity in the USSR, although the most proletarian writers and leaders speak about it from the highest stands. The state uses its entire repressive apparatus against independent, independent writers, as is shown in the example of the Master.
The philosophical content of the novel is intertwined with the social, scenes from ancient era alternate with a description of Soviet reality. The philosophical moral content of the work is revealed from the relationship between Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea, the all-powerful governor of Rome, and Yeshua Ha-Nozri, a poor preacher. It can be argued that in the clash of these heroes Bulgakov sees a manifestation of the eternal confrontation between the ideas of good and evil. The Master, living in Moscow in the late 20s of the 20th century, enters into the same fundamental confrontation with the state system. In the philosophical content of the novel, the author offers his solution to the “eternal” moral issues: what is life, what is the main thing in life, can a person, alone opposing the whole society, be right, etc.? Separately in the novel there is a problem of choice associated with the actions of the procurator and Yeshua, who profess opposite principles of life.
The procurator understands from a personal conversation with Yeshua that the accused is not a criminal at all. However, the Jewish high priest Kaifa comes to Pontius Pilate and convinces the Roman governor that Yeshua is a terrible rebel-inciter who preaches heresy and pushes the people towards unrest. Kaifa demands the execution of Yeshua. Consequently, Pontius Pilate faces a dilemma: execute an innocent man and calm the crowd, or spare this innocent man, but prepare for a popular revolt, which the Jewish priests themselves can provoke. In other words, Pilate is faced with a choice: to act according to his conscience or against his conscience, guided by immediate interests.
Yeshua does not face such a dilemma. He could choose: to tell the truth and thereby help people, or to renounce the truth and be saved from crucifixion, but he had already made his choice. The procurator asks him what is the worst thing in the world, and receives the answer - cowardice. Yeshua himself demonstrates by his behavior that he is not afraid of anything. The interrogation scene with Pontius Pilate indicates that Bulgakov, like his hero, a wandering philosopher, considers truth to be the main value in life. God (the highest justice) is on the side physically weak person, if he stands for the truth, therefore the beaten, poor, lonely philosopher wins a moral victory over the procurator and makes him painfully experience the cowardly act committed by Pilate precisely out of cowardice. This problem worried Bulgakov himself both as a writer and as a person. Living in a state that he considered unjust, he had to decide for himself: to serve such a state or resist it, for the second he could pay for it, as happened with Yeshua and the Master. Still, Bulgakov, like his heroes, chose confrontation, and the writer’s work itself became a brave act, even a feat of an honest man.
Elements of fantasy allow Bulgakov to more fully reveal the ideological concept of the work. Some literary scholars see in The Master and Margarita features that bring the novel closer to the menippea - literary genre, in which laughter and an adventurous plot create a situation of testing high philosophical ideas. Distinctive feature The menippea is fantasy (Satan's ball, the last refuge of the Master and Margarita), it overturns the usual system of values, gives rise to a special type of behavior of the heroes, free from any conventions (Ivan Bezdomny in a madhouse, Margarita in the role of a witch).
The demonic principle in the images of Woland and his retinue performs a complex function in the novel: these characters are capable of doing not only evil, but also good. In Bulgakov's novel, Woland opposes the earthly world of swindlers and unscrupulous functionaries from art, that is, he defends justice (!); he sympathizes with the Master and Margarita, helps the separated lovers unite and settle scores with the traitor (Aloysius Mogarych) and persecutor (critic Latunsky). But even Woland is powerless to save the Master from the tragic ending of life (complete disappointment and spiritual devastation). This image of Satan, of course, reflected the European tradition, which comes from Goethe’s Mephistopheles, as indicated by the epigraph to the novel from Faust: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good...”. Maybe that’s why Bulgakov turned out to have Woland and the little demons as likable, even generous, and their witty pranks prove the writer’s extraordinary ingenuity.
“The Master and Margarita” is a novel within a novel, since chapters from the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate and chapters in which the Master himself is the main character, that is, the “ancient” and “Moscow” chapters, are intertwined in one work. Through the comparison of two different novels within one, Bulgakov expresses his philosophy of history: ideological and moral crisis ancient world led to the emergence of a new religion - Christianity and Christian morality, crisis European civilization XX century - to social revolutions and atheism, that is, to the rejection of Christianity. Thus, humanity moves in a vicious circle and after two thousand years (less one century) returns to the same thing from which it once left. The main thing that attracts Bulgakov's attention is, of course, the depiction of contemporary Soviet reality. Understanding modernity and the fate of the writer in the modern world, the author resorts to an analogy - to depict a historical situation (the life and execution of the philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri in Judea at the beginning of the new era).
So, the novel “The Master and Margarita” is a very complex work in genre. The description of the life of Moscow during the NEP period, that is, the social content, is intertwined with scenes in ancient Judea, that is, with the philosophical content. Bulgakov satirically ridicules various Soviet swindlers, semi-literate poets, cynical functionaries from culture and literature, and useless officials. At the same time, he sympathetically tells the story of the love and suffering of the Master and Margarita. This is how satire and lyricism are combined in the novel. Along with a realistic depiction of Muscovites, Bulgakov places fantastic images of Woland and his retinue in the novel. All these various scenes and depiction techniques are combined in one work through a complex composition - a novel within a novel.
At first glance, “The Master and Margarita” is a fascinating novel about the fantastic tricks of evil spirits in Moscow, a witty novel that sarcastically ridicules the mores of NEP life. However, behind the external entertainment and fun in the work one can see deep philosophical content - a discussion about the struggle between good and evil in the human soul and in the history of mankind. Bulgakov's novel is often compared to the great novel by J.-W. Goethe "Faust", and not only because of the image of Woland, who is both similar and not similar to Mephistopheles. Another thing is important: the similarities between the two novels are expressed in humanistic idea. Goethe's novel arose as philosophical understanding European world after the Great french revolution 1789; Bulgakov in his novel comprehends the fate of Russia after October Revolution 1917. Both Goethe and Bulgakov claim that main value man - in his desire for goodness and creativity. Both authors contrast these qualities with chaos in the human soul and destructive processes in society. However, periods of chaos and destruction in history are always replaced by creation. That is why Goethe’s Mephistopheles never receives the soul of Faust, and Bulgakov’s Master, unable to withstand the struggle with the surrounding spiritless world, burns his novel, but does not become bitter, retains in his soul love for Margarita, sympathy for Ivan Bezdomny, sympathy for Pontius Pilate, who dreams of forgiveness .
"The Master and Margarita" is the final work of M. Bulgakov. This is how the author regarded his novel. Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova recalled: “Dying, he said: “Maybe this is right... What could I write after “The Master”?”
Bulgakov named his novel fantasy novel . Readers usually determine its genre in the same way, since fantastic paintings It's really bright and colorful. A novel can also be called a work adventurous, satirical, philosophical.
But the genre nature of the novel is more complex. This is a unique novel. It has become traditional to define the genre of a novel as menippea, to which, for example, the novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Francois Rabelais belongs. In the menippea, under the mask of laughter, serious philosophical content is hidden. "The Master and Margarita", like any menippea, is a two-dimensional novel, it combines polar principles: philosophical and satirical, tragic and farcical, fantastic and realistic. Moreover, they do not just combine, but form an organic unity.
Menippea 1 is also characterized by stylistic diversity, displacement and mixing of spatial, temporal and psychological plans. And we also find this in “The Master and Margarita”: the narrative here is conducted either in a satirical manner, or in a serious, sacred manner; the reader of this novel finds himself either in modern Moscow, or in ancient Yershalaim, or in another transcendental dimension.
Such a novel is difficult to analyze: it is difficult to identify general meaning(those meanings) that contains such contradictory content of the novel.
The novel "The Master and Margarita" has important feature- This double romance, romance within a romance(text in text): the hero of one novel is the Master and its action takes place in modern Moscow, the hero of another novel (written by the Master) is Yeshua Ha-Nozri and the action of this novel takes place in ancient Yershalaim. These novels within the novel are very different, as if they were written by more than one author.
Yershalaim chapters- that is, the novel about Pontius Pilate, Yeshua Ha-Nozri - are written in precise and laconic, spare prose. The author does not allow himself any elements of fantasy or grotesquery. And this is quite understandable: we are talking about an event of world-historical proportions - the death of Yeshua. The author here doesn’t seem to be composing literary text, but recreates history, writes the Gospel measuredly, strictly, solemnly. This severity is already present in the very title of the “ancient” chapter (the second chapter of the novel) - “Pontius Pilate” - and in its opening lines:
In a white cloak with a bloody lining, and with a shuffling gait, in the early morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, came out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great...
The procurator twitched his cheek and said quietly:
- Bring the accused.
And immediately, from the garden platform under the columns to the balcony, two legionnaires brought in a man of about twenty-seven and placed him in front of the procurator’s chair. This man was dressed in an old and torn blue chiton, and his hands were tied behind his back. The man had a large bruise under his left eye and an abrasion with dried blood in the corner of his mouth. The man brought in looked at the procurator with anxious curiosity.
Modern ones are written completely differently. Moscow chapters- a novel about the Master. There is a lot of fantasy, comedy, grotesque, devilry, which discharge the tragic tension. There are also lyrical pages here. Moreover, lyricism and farce are often combined in one situation, within one paragraph, for example, in the famous beginning of the second part: "Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no real, true, eternal love? May the liar be cut off vile language!" In all this, the personality of the author-narrator is revealed, who builds his narrative in the form of familiar chatter with the reader, sometimes turning into gossip. This narrative, which the author calls “the most truthful,” contains so many rumors and innuendos, which rather indicates the unreliability of this part of the novel. See, for example, the title and beginning of the fifth chapter "There was a thing in Griboedov":
The house was called the “Griboyedov House” on the grounds that it was once owned by the aunt of the writer, Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov. Well, whether she owned it or not, we don’t know for sure. I even remember that, it seems, Griboyedov did not have any aunt-landowner... However, that was the name of the house. Moreover, one Moscow liar said that supposedly on the second floor, in a round hall with columns, famous writer I read excerpts from “Woe from Wit” to this same aunt, who was reclining on the sofa. But who knows, maybe I read it, it doesn’t matter! And the important thing is that this house was currently owned by the same MASSOLIT, headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch’s Ponds.
The ancient (antique) and modern (Moscow) parts of the novel are independent, different from each other, and at the same time echo, represent an integral unity, they represent the history of mankind, the state of morality over the past two thousand years.
At the beginning of the Christian era, two thousand years ago, Yeshua Ha-Nozri 2 came into the world with the teaching of goodness, but his contemporaries did not accept his truth, and Yeshua was sentenced to the shameful death penalty - hanging on a pole. The date itself - the twentieth century - seemed to oblige us to take stock of the life of mankind in the bosom of Christianity: has the world become better, has man become smarter, kinder, more merciful during this time, have Moscow residents, in particular, changed internally, since external circumstances have changed? What values do they consider the most important in life? In addition, in modern Moscow in the 1920-1930s, the construction of a new world, the creation of a new man, was announced. And Bulgakov compares modern humanity in his novel with what it was like in the time of Yeshua Ha-Nozri. The result is by no means optimistic, if we recall the “certificate” about Moscow residents that Woland received during a performance at the Variety Show:
Well, they are people like people. They love money, no matter what it is made of, whether leather, paper, bronze or gold. Well, they are frivolous... well, well... and mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts... ordinary people... In general, they resemble the previous ones... the housing issue only spoiled them.
M. Bulgakov’s novel as a whole is a kind of “information” from the author about humanity in the conditions of the Soviet experiment and about man in general, about philosophical and ethical values in this world in the understanding of M. Bulgakov.
Read also other articles on the work of M.A. Bulgakov and the analysis of the novel "The Master and Margarita":
- 2.2. Features of the novel genre
