Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
10 >
German-Romantic setting, with Schubert's music and blossoming cherry trees.
Asked by Woland, 'But why don't you take him with you into the light?' Levi
replies in a sorrowful voice, 'He does not deserve the light, he deserves
peace.' Bulgakov, still pondering the problem of the master's guilt (and his
own, for what he considered various compromises, including his work on a
play about Stalin's youth), went back to his notes and revisions from 1936,
but lightened their severity with an enigmatic irony. This was to be the
definitive resolution. Clearly, the master is not to be seen as a heroic
martyr for art or a 'Christ-figure'. Bulgakov's gentle irony is a warning
against the mistake, more common in our time than we might think, of
equating artistic mastery with a sort of saintliness, or, in Kierkegaard's
terms, of confusing the aesthetic with the ethical.
In the evolution of The Master and Margarita, the Moscow satire
of
Woland and his retinue versus the literary powers and the imposed normality
of Soviet life in general is there from the first, and comes to involve the
master when he appears, acquiring details from the writer's own life and
with them a more personal tone alongside the bantering irreverence of the
demonic retinue. The Pilate story, on the other hand, the story of an act of
cowardice and an interrupted dialogue, gains in weight and independence as
Bulgakov's work progresses. From a single inset episode, it becomes the
centrepiece of the novel, setting off the contemporary events and serving as
their measure. In style and form it is a counterpoint to the rest of the
book. Finally, rather late in the process, the master and Margarita appear,
with Margarita coming to dominate the second part of the novel. Her story is
a romance in the old sense - the celebration of a beautiful woman, of a true