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Satan in Moscow: An Approach to Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

A. C. Wright
A. C. Wright*
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

BULGAKOV'S NOVEL The Master andMargarita is a confusing combination of different elements: satire, fantasy, serious philosophical and religious questioning.1 The variety of critical commentaries has already shown the impossibility of reducing it to one single interpretation. The action can be stated briefly. Satan, alias Woland, arrives in Moscow with two demonic henchmen, a thug Azazello and a tomcat Behemoth; plus an “interpreter,” Koroviev. Among bureaucrats, petty crooks, and those simply concerned with personal gain they cause havoc.2 But they give aid and protection to a persecuted writer in an asylum, the Master, and to his love, Margarita, after she has agreed to act as hostess for Satan's Ball. A hack poet, Ivan Homeless, is brought to a deeper understanding of life and becomes a “disciple” of the Master. Central to the book is the Master's novel about Pontius Pilate, the chapters of which form part of Bulgakov's text and conclude simultaneously with the story about the Master in an epilogue. A strong connection with the Faust tradition is evident.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , October 1973 , pp. 1162 - 1172
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 The respective English versions are : Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York: Grove, 1967), and Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Michael Glenny (New York: Harper, 1967). For references, all of which are included in the text, I have made use of the first of these, as being the more easily accessible. The Russian version consulted was that printed in Paris by the YMCA Press, 1968.

2 Michèle Colucci, in his “Moralité e poesia in ?1 Maestro e Margherita,' ” Convivium, 36 (1968), 429, points out that those punished by the devil—not too severely—are hardly the worst of sinners but rather philistines and careerists.

3 References to Faust, to be included in the text, are from Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bànden, 8th ed. (Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1967), in.

4 Michael Glenny, “Mikhail Bulgakov,” Survey, No. 65 (Oct. 1967), p. 13.

5 See Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare, International Psycho-Analytical Libr., No. 20 (London: L. and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho analysis, 1931), p. 162. Although strictly a book on psycho analysis, this is very useful as a general introduction to demonology in popular tradition. For my discussion of Satan in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I have also drawn extensively on Edward Langton, Essentials of Demonology (London: Epworth, 1949). References to both works appear in the text.

6 See A. Vulis, an untitled commentary on the novel, Moskva, No. 11 (Nov. 1966), pp. 127–30, and V. Lakshin, “Roman M. Bulgakova ‘Master i Margarita,‘ ” Novyj mir, 44, No. 6(1968), 284–311.

7 He does the same with popular tradition, too. Thus in the same way that he presents Christ's actual life as dif ferent from the Gospel version, which is nevertheless reported by Pilate (see Colucci, pp. 437–39, for an excellent discussion of this), he presents the “facts” concerning the devil as different from popular tradition, which is likewise mentioned in the rumors that circulate. Woland is “reported” (p. 6) as limping, being either short or enormously tall (gigantic size is popularly attributed to the devil); in “fact,” he did not limp nor was he gigantic, but simply tall (p. 7). At the ball, of course, he does limp.

8 Faust also refers to himself as “Master,” if in the sense however of the holder of an academic degree: “Heifie Magister, heifie Doktor gar” (1. 360).

9 See Vulis, p. 129, and [Henricus Institoris and Jakob Sprenger] Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Rev. Montague Summers (London: J. Rodker, 1928), p. 30.

10 The devil himself is sometimes portrayed as a jester, of course. In Russian, the word for joker is used as an alternative for “devil” in colloquial expressions: Chert s nim or Shut s nim.

11 It is tempting to extend the parallel: Azazello/Mephistopheles would become the unholy Christ, as suggested above, and Behemoth the Unholy Ghost—an idea not without a certain charm!

121 have been tempted to consider the similarities between “Fagot” and “Faust.” By a mixture of Cyrillic and Roman handwriting, such as can sometimes occur accidentally, and a considerable stretch of the imagination, it is possible to show that “Fagot” is derived from “Faust.” Elisabeth Stenbock-Fermor (in her “Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Goethe's Faust,” SEEJ, 13, 1969, 312) makes a good case, however, for Fagot being the reincarnation of Faust, although she does not make the equation Azazello/Mephistopheles.

13 Cf. The Interpreter's Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick et al. (New York: Abington, 1951), xi, 434.

14 Not, of course, from “hell,” which in Russian is a different word entirely.

15 Cf. Jones, pp. 202–07, for this and the following.

16 Colucci is good on this, pp. 437–41.

17 The Interpreter's Bible, vii, 629.

18 See A. Altschuler, “Der Prosaschriftsteller Michail Bulgakow,” Kunst und Literatur, 16 (1968), 622.

19 See on this L. Rzhevsky, “Pilatov grekh: ? tajnopisi v romane M. Bulgakova ‘Master i Margarita,‘ ” Novyj Zhurnal, No. 90 (March 1968), pp. 68–69, 76. Rzhevsky, too, is good on the comparison of Ancient Jerusalem and Modern Moscow. (A translation of this article also appears in Canadian Slavonic Papers, 13, No. 1, 1971, 1–19.)

20 “Manuskripte brennen nicht: Uber Michail Bulgakow,” Akzente, 15, No. 4 (1968), 323.

21 Except for the addition of the word “cruel.” The variant “horseman” for “rider” on p. 155 is an inconsistency of the translation.