Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
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response was based on a simple reversal -- a vivid circumstantial narrative
of what was thought to be a 'myth' invented by the ruling class, and a
breaking down of the self-evident reality of Moscow life by the intrusion of
the 'stranger'. This device, fundamental to the novel, would be more fully
elaborated in its final form. Literary satire was also present from the
start. The fifth chapter of the definitive version, entitled There were
Doings at Griboedov's', already appeared intact in this earliest draft,
where it was entitled 'Mania Furibunda'. In May of 1929, Bulgakov sent this
chapter to a publisher, who rejected it. This was his only attempt to
publish anything from the novel.
The second version, from later in the same year, was a reworking of the
first four chapters, filling out certain episodes and adding the death of
Judas to the second chapter, which also began to detach itself from Woland
and become a more autonomous narrative. According to the author's wife,
Elena Sergeevna, Bulgakov partially destroyed these two versions in the
spring of 1930 -- 'threw them in the fire', in the writer's own words. What
survived were two large notebooks with many pages torn out. This was at the
height of the attacks on Bulgakov . in the press, the moment of his letter
to the government.
After that came some scattered notes in two notebooks, kept
intermittently over the next two years, which was a very difficult time for
Bulgakov. In the upper-right-hand corner of the second, he wrote:
'Lord, help me to finish my novel, 1931.' In a fragment of a later
chapter, entitled 'Woland's Flight', there is a reference to someone
addressed familiarly as ty, who is told that he 'will meet with Schubert
and
clear mornings'. This is obviously the master, though he is not called so.
There is also the first mention of the name of Margarita. In Bulgakov's