The Master and Margarita
I first read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov about 15 years ago. I’m pretty sure I picked it up after reading that “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones was written after Mick Jagger read the book. I was in the bookstore recently and saw this 50th anniversary edition1 and liked the cover art so I bought it and read it again.
If you’re unfamiliar with the book, here’s a real shit summary by Peter Thiel2. I mean yes, the devil comes to Moscow, but it’s also absurdist humor, Biblical allegory, a writer writing about the difficulty of writing in Stalinist Russia, the absurdity of writers in general, and the disconnect between Russians and religion and morality. The titular characters occupy about a quarter of the plot. Jesus shows up but he’s just a nice guy in a shit situation. There’s a cat that drinks pure alcohol and carries a gun.
These are some aspects of the book that I enjoyed more the second time around:
- The narrative framing around the story of the devil (Woland) coming to Moscow interspersed with the story of Pontius Pilate as it happened, and as written by the Master, is better than I remembered. If that sentence sounds overly religious to you, I agree, that’s how I felt the first time I read the book too. The context I didn’t fully understand on my first read was that the Soviet Union at the time had a policy of state atheism, and more important than the specific religious connotations of the Biblical figures is the Muscovites’s inability to see Woland as the Devil because they “believe” they don’t believe in religion.
- Likewise, the suffering of both Pilate and the Master are allegories for those who suffered under the Stalinist purges. Certainly Ivan the Homeless’s story as well, although I interpret his ending in slightly more optimistic terms.
- The dynamics between Woland and Mathew Levi, Pilate and Yeshua, and Woland and Margarita show that the world is morally ambiguous, at best. For a book with so many religious figures, the only thing it really says about living is the worst thing you can do is be a coward.
- All of Woland’s associates are amazing in their own way, but I believe that a lot of writers either directly or indirectly owe a debt of gratitude to Bulgakov for creating Behemoth. He’s basically Rocket Raccoon but a cat, and also he can become extra large and sort of appear like a human, and occasionally drinks directly from a primus stove. It’s a level of modernity and humor that you would not expect from a book written in 1930s Russia.
- Giving the line ‘Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.” to the devil remains delightful.
- I didn’t fully understand the romance between the Master and Margarita the first time I read the book. After being married for over a decade, I get it better now. I particularly get the line “Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.” now.
A few things I still struggle with:
- There’s some amount of humor and social and political commentary lost in translation, and lost to time. The book’s notes do a decent job of explaining some of the missing context, but a joke is never quite as good if someone has to explain it to you. In some ways the experience of reading The Master and Margarita is like reading Dante’s Inferno — you can enjoy the story as is, but there are so many small references to people and events of the author’s time that you can go an entire level deeper into the people and events that the book is, literally in both cases, wishing the devil upon.
- Chapter 25, “How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath” is not any easy read, but it’s quite critical to understanding the book. The combination of it being translated text, a story about something that happened in the Bible, an allegory for Stalinist Russia, and an entire conversation where everyone talks euphemistically around the fact that (mild spoilers) Pilate intends to kill Judas is a lot to take in.
Do I think this blog post will convince anyone to read the book? No, probably not! I mean it’s on dozens of “top 100 books that whatever whatever whatever” so there are better people than me out there who could convince you. If anything, just get on board with me hoping for Daniel Radcliffe being involved in a film adaptation. And if you need convincing of that, I can easily point you to A Young Doctor’s Notebook & Other Stories.
Footnotes
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The 50th anniversary copy was published in 2016, which is 50 years after 1966. But the book was published posthumously and was primarily written in the 1930s, which I find somewhat amazing because outside of some of the descriptions of “modern life” not being 1960s modern it reads like something that would fit in the literary environment of the 60s more than the 30s. ↩
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I just like saying bad things about Peter Thiel. But also you can find this quote all over the place and it’s funny that he calls it “a little more intellectual” and then poorly summarizes the book. ↩