Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
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already published editions with materials in the Bulgakov archive. It
included additions and changes taken from written corrections on other
existing typescripts. The latest Russian edition (1990) has removed the most
important of those additions, bringing the text close once again to Elena
Sergeevna's 1965 typescript. Given the absence of a definitive authorial
text, this process of revision is virtually endless. However, it involves
changes that in most cases have little bearing for a translator.
The present translation has been made from the text of the original
magazine publication, based on Elena Sergeevna's 1965 typescript, with all
cuts restored as in the Possev and YMCA-Press editions. It is complete and
unabridged.
The translators wish to express their gratitude to M. 0. Chudakova for
her advice on the text and to Irina Kronrod for her help in preparing the
Further Reading.
R. P., L. V.
The Master and Margarita
'... who are you, then?'
'I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works
good.'
Goethe, Faust
At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the
Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a
grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his
respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neady shaven face was adorned with
black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The odier, a
broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap
cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers
and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich
Berlioz,[2] editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the