Mysticism, riddles, supernatural powers - everything is so frightening, but terribly alluring. This is beyond human consciousness, so people tend to grab onto any piece of information about this hidden world. A storehouse of mystical stories - a novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
The mystical novel has a complicated history. The loud and familiar name "Master and Margarita" was by no means the only and, moreover, not the first option. The birth of the first pages of the novel dates back to 1928-1929, and the end in the final chapter was put only 12 years later.
The legendary work has gone through several editions. It is worth noting that the main characters of the final version - the Master, Margarita - did not appear in the first of them. By the will of fate, it was destroyed by the hands of the author. The second version of the novel gave life to the already mentioned heroes and gave Woland devoted assistants. And in the third edition, the names of these characters came to the fore, namely in the title of the novel.
The plot lines of the work were constantly changing, Bulgakov did not stop making adjustments and changing the fate of his heroes until his death. The novel was published only in 1966, the last wife of Bulgakov, Elena, is responsible for the gift to the world of this sensational work. The author sought to perpetuate her features in the image of Margarita, and, apparently, the endless gratitude to her wife became the reason for the final name change, where it was the love storyline that came to the fore.
Genre, direction
Mikhail Bulgakov is considered a mystical writer, almost each of his works carries a riddle. The highlight of this work is the presence of a novel within a novel. The story described by Bulgakov is a mystical, modernist novel. But the novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua included in it, the author of which is the Master, does not contain a drop of mysticism.
Composition
As already mentioned by the Wise Litrecon, The Master and Margarita is a novel within a novel. This means that the plot is divided into two layers: the story that the reader discovers, and the work of the hero from this story, who introduces new characters, paints different landscapes, times and major events.
So, the main outline of the story is the author's story about Soviet Moscow and the arrival of the devil, who wants to hold a ball in the city. Along the way, he surveys the changes that have taken place in people, and allows his retinue to frolic enough, punishing Muscovites for their vices. But the path of the dark forces leads them to meet Margarita, who is the mistress of the Master - the writer who created the novel about Pontius Pilate. This is the second layer of the story: Yeshua is put on trial by the procurator and sentenced to death for bold sermons about the frailty of power. This line develops in parallel with what Woland's servants do in Moscow. Both plots merge when Satan shows the Master his hero - the Procurator, who is still waiting for forgiveness from Yeshua. The writer ends his torment and thus ends his story.
essence
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is so comprehensive that it does not let the reader get bored on any page. A huge number of storylines, interactions and events in which you can easily get confused keep the reader attentive throughout the work.
Already on the first pages of the novel, we are faced with the punishment of the unbelieving Berlioz, who entered into an argument with the personification of Satan. Further, as if on knurled, there were revelations and disappearances of sinful people, for example, the director of the Variety Theater - Styopa Likhodeev.
The reader's acquaintance with the Master took place in a psychiatric hospital, in which he was kept with Ivan Bezdomny, who ended up there after the death of his friend Berlioz. There the Master tells about his novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua. Outside the mental hospital, the Master is looking for his beloved Margarita. In order to save her lover, she makes a deal with the devil, namely, she becomes the queen of Satan's Great Ball. Woland fulfills his promise, and the lovers are reunited. At the end of the work, two novels are mixed - Bulgakov and the Master - Woland meets Levi Matvey, who gave the Master peace. On the last pages of the book, all the characters leave, dissolving into the expanse of heaven. Here's what the book is about.
Main characters and their characteristics
Perhaps the main characters are Woland, the Master and Margarita.
- Woland's mission in this novel - to reveal the vices of people and punish for their sins. His exposure of mere mortals knows no bounds. The main motive of Satan is to give everyone according to his faith. By the way, he does not act alone. The retinue is laid for the king - the demon Azazello, the devil Koroviev-Fagot, the jester cat Behemoth (a petty demon) beloved by everyone and their muse - Hella (vampire). The retinue is responsible for the humorous component of the novel: they laugh and mock their victims.
- Master- his name remains a mystery to the reader. Everything that Bulgakov told us about him - in the past he was a historian, worked in a museum and, having won a large sum in the lottery, took up literature. The author intentionally does not introduce additional information about the Master in order to focus on him as a writer, author of the novel about Pontius Pilate and, of course, the lover of the beautiful Margarita. By nature, this is an absent-minded and impressionable person not of this world, completely unaware of the life and customs of the people around him. He is very helpless and vulnerable, easily falls for deception. But at the same time, he has an extraordinary mind. He is well educated, knows ancient and modern languages, and has impressive erudition in many matters. To write a book, he studied an entire library.
- margarita- a real muse for his Master. This is a married lady, the wife of a wealthy official, but their marriage has long been a formality. Having met a truly loved one, the woman devoted all her feelings and thoughts to him. She supported him and instilled inspiration in him and even intended to leave the hateful house with her husband and housekeeper, exchange security and contentment for a half-starved life in a basement on the Arbat. But the Master suddenly disappeared, and the heroine began to look for him. The novel repeatedly emphasizes her selflessness, her willingness to do anything for the sake of love. For most of the novel, she fights to save the Master. According to Bulgakov, Margarita is "the ideal wife of a genius."
If you did not have enough description or characteristics of any hero, write about it in the comments - we will add it.
Themes
The novel "The Master and Margarita" is amazing in every sense. It has a place for philosophy, love and even satire.
- The main theme is the confrontation between good and evil. The philosophy of the struggle between these extremes and justice can be seen on almost every page of the novel.
- One cannot belittle the importance of the love theme personified by the Master and Margarita. Strength, struggle for feelings, selflessness - using their example, one can say that these are synonyms for the word “love”.
- On the pages of the novel there is also a place for human vices, vividly shown by Woland. This is greed, hypocrisy, cowardice, ignorance, selfishness, etc. He never ceases to mock sinful people and arrange for them a kind of repentance.
If you are particularly interested in any topic that we have not voiced, let us know in the comments - we will add it.
Problems
The novel raises many problems: philosophical, social and even political. We will analyze only the main ones, but if it seems to you that something is missing, write in the comments, and this “something” will appear in the article.
- The main problem is cowardice. Its author called the main vice. Pilate did not have the courage to stand up for the innocent, the Master did not have the courage to fight for his convictions, and only Margarita plucked up the courage and rescued her beloved man from trouble. The presence of cowardice, according to Bulgakov, changed the course of world history. It also doomed the inhabitants of the USSR to vegetate under the yoke of tyranny. Many did not like to live in anticipation of a black funnel, but fear won over common sense, and the people reconciled. In a word, this quality prevents us from living, loving and creating.
- The issue of love is also important: its influence on a person and the essence of this feeling. Bulgakov showed that love is not a fairy tale in which everything is fine, it is a constant struggle, a willingness to do anything for the sake of a loved one. The Master and Margarita turned their lives upside down after they met. Margarita had to give up wealth, stability and comfort for the sake of the Master, make a deal with the devil in order to save him, and not once did she doubt her actions. For overcoming difficult trials on the way to each other, the heroes are rewarded with eternal rest.
- The problem of faith also intertwines the entire novel, it lies in the message of Woland: "To each will be rewarded according to his faith." The author prompts the reader to think about what he believes in and why? From this follows the overarching problem of good and evil. It was most vividly reflected in the described image of Muscovites, so greedy, greedy and mercantile, who receive retribution for their vices from Satan himself.
the main idea
The main idea of the novel is the reader's definition of the concepts of good and evil, faith and love, courage and cowardice, vice and virtue. Bulgakov tried to show that everything is completely different from what we used to imagine. For many people, the meanings of these key concepts are confused and distorted due to the influence of a corrupting and stupefying ideology, due to complex life circumstances due to lack of intelligence and experience. For example, in Soviet society, even denunciation of family members and friends was considered a good deed, and yet it led to death, prolonged imprisonment and the destruction of a person's life. But citizens like Magarych willingly used this opportunity to solve their "housing problem". Or, for example, conformism and the desire to please the authorities are shameful qualities, but in the USSR and even now many people saw and still see benefits in this and do not hesitate to demonstrate them. Thus, the author encourages readers to think about the true state of things, about the meaning, motives and consequences of their own actions. With a strict analysis, it will become clear that we ourselves are responsible for those world troubles and upheavals that we do not like, that without Woland's stick and carrot, we ourselves do not want to change for the better.
The meaning of the book and the "moral of this fable" lies in the need to prioritize in life: to learn courage and true love, to rebel against obsession with the "housing issue". If in the novel Woland came to Moscow, then in life you need to let him into your head in order to conduct a diabolical audit of opportunities, guidelines and aspirations.
Criticism
Bulgakov could hardly count on the understanding of this novel by his contemporaries. But he knew one thing for sure - the novel would live. "The Master and Margarita" is still turning heads for more than the first generation of readers, which means it is the object of constant criticism.
V.Ya. Lakshin, for example, accuses Bulgakov of the absence religious consciousness but praises his morality. P.V. Palievsky notes the courage of Bulgakov, who was one of the first to break the stereotype of respect for the devil by ridiculing him. There are many such opinions, but they only confirm the idea laid down by the writer: "Manuscripts do not burn!".
"The Fantastic Novel", which was created by Bulgakov in the last twelve years of his life, is recognized as the best work of the writer, in which he, as if "to sum up what he lived", managed to comprehend with amazing depth and with deep artistic persuasiveness to embody his understanding of the fundamental issues existence: faith and unbelief, God and the Devil, man and his place in the universe, the soul of man and its responsibility before the Supreme Judge, death, immortality and the meaning of human existence, love, good and evil, the course of history and the place of man in it. that Bulgakov left readers a novel-testament, which not only "gives surprises", but also constantly raises questions, the answers to which each of the readers must find in correlating the work with their own ideas about what these "eternal problems" mean to him personally .
The composition of the novel "The Master and Margarita", which is rightly called a "double novel", is very interesting - after all, the "Romance of Pontius Pilate", created by the Master, is "inscribed" in the novel itself with jewelry, becoming an integral part of it, making this work unique in terms of genre: the opposition and unity of the two "novels" form a kind of fusion of outwardly incompatible methods of creating a narrative, which can be called "Bulgakov's style". Here, the image of the author acquires special significance, which occupies a significant place in each of the novels, but manifests itself in different ways. In the "Master's novel" about Yeshua and Pilate, the author deliberately withdraws himself, as if he is not in this almost chronologically accurate presentation of events, his "presence" is expressed in the author's view of the depicted, inherent in the epic, the expression of his moral position, as it were, "dissolves" in the artistic fabric works. In the "novel" itself, the author openly proclaims his presence ("Follow me, my reader!"), He is emphatically biased in depicting events and characters, but at the same time his author's position cannot be easily understood, it is in a special way "hidden" in buffoonery, mockery, irony, deliberate credulity and other artistic devices.
The philosophical basis of the moral position of the writer are the ideas of "good will" and "categorical imperative" as mandatory conditions for the existence of the human person and a rationally arranged society, and they serve as a "touchstone" for evaluating each of the characters and historical events depicted in both novels, which have a common moral situation: the era of Yeshua and the era of the Master is the time of choice that each of the characters and society as a whole has to make. In this regard, the opposition of these central images is obvious.
"Yeshua, nicknamed Ha-Nozri"in the novel" The Master and Margarita "is a person who initially carries goodness and light in himself, and his attitude to the world is based on the moral strength that is inherent in this weak, defenseless person, who is in the power of the procurator Pilate, but stands immeasurably higher They argue a lot about how close the image of Yeshua is to the gospel Christ, but, with their undoubted similarities, they are distinguished by the fact that Bulgakov’s heroes do not initially perceive themselves as the Messiah, he is primarily a man However, this happens only because, in fact, he is the highest force that determines everything that happens - and it is he who "decides the fate" of the heroes, it is with him that Woland argues in a special way, according to - restoring the justice trampled in the world of "Massolites" in his own way, in the end, it is to him that all the thoughts of the heroes of the novel are turned, whether they realize it or not. We can say that the image of Yeshua in the novel "M Aster and Margarita" - this is the spiritual center of the work, this is the moral principle that ensures the possibility of the existence of the world.
Image of the Master in the novel "The Master and Margarita" - this is a tragic image of a person who was given the "gift of the Word" from above, who managed to feel it, to fulfill the mission entrusted to him - but then he was unable to maintain himself at the moral height to which he was raised with his creativity. Unlike Yeshua, the bearer and embodiment of "good will", the Master is only temporarily imbued with the idea of serving goodness as the basis of life, but a real collision with this very "life" (denunciation of Aloisy Magarych, Professor Stravinsky's clinic) makes him betray himself, then the best thing in him was to renounce not only his novel, but, in fact, everything that was connected with the idea of \u200b\u200btransforming life. As a human being, one can understand a person who has been “well-finished” (in the words of Woland) and who admits his defeat: “I hated this novel and I’m afraid .. Now I’m nobody .. I don’t want anything else in life ... I have there are no more dreams and inspirations" However, each of the people in life has its own path, God's Providence determines the place of each of us in this world, and therefore the Master, who renounced his novel (and therefore, from himself), it turns out, "did not deserve light, he deserved peace", which, probably, can heal his tormented soul in order to ... but then where can he get away from the memories of his surrender to the world of everyday life and lack of spirituality? ..
The bearer of the highest justice in Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" is Woland, Satan, who arrived with his retinue in Moscow in order to "see Muscovites", in order to understand how much the "new system" has changed people who, as he knows very well, are not inclined to become better. And indeed, the "session" at which Muscovites are completely "unmasked" (and not only in the literal sense of the word), Styopa Likhodeev and other satirically depicted images seem to convince him that "these townspeople" "internally" have not changed, therefore he has every reason to draw his little optimistic conclusion: "... people are like people, ... ordinary people ...". However, the story of the Master and Margarita shows Satan that in this world of "ordinary" people there is something that goes back to completely different moral categories - there is selfless, devoted love, when "He who loves must share the fate of the one he loves."
Dedication margaritas, ready to cross the line separating Good from Evil for the sake of saving a loved one, is obvious, but here Bulgakov shows us not just love, but love that opposes generally accepted norms, elevating people who seem to violate these norms. After all, Margarita's relationship with the Master is a violation of her marital fidelity, she is married, and her husband treats her wonderfully. But this "marriage without love", which turned into torment, turns out to be untenable when the heroine finds herself in the grip of a real feeling that sweeps aside everything that prevents people from being happy.
Probably, Margarita's readiness to save her beloved at any cost is also due to the fact that she feels guilty for having delayed leaving her husband for too long, the punishment for which was the loss of the Master. But, having agreed to become the queen of Satan's ball, having gone through everything that was destined for her, at the very last moment the heroine is unable to do what she went to such trials for - she asks Woland not to return her beloved, but about the unfortunate Frida, who was promised help ... Probably, here we can talk about the complete triumph of "good will", and it is with this act of hers that Margarita proves that, in spite of everything, she is a truly moral person, because the words "cherished and cooked in the soul, "she could not pronounce ... And no matter how much she convinced herself that she was a "frivolous person," Woland was right after all: she was a "highly moral person." It's just not her fault that she lives in a world where true moral values are inaccessible to most people.
Of great importance in the novel "The Master and Margarita" is the image of the poet Ivan Bezdomny, who later became Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev. This person, a gifted poet ("pictorial ... power ... of talent"), after meeting with the Master understands his moral unpreparedness to be a servant of the Word, he is, as it were, a disciple of the Master, who consciously deviates from the chosen path, thereby repeating the fate of his teachers.
The satirical "layer" of the analyzed Bulgakov's novel is very convincing, here the writer uses a wide palette visual means- from humor to farce and grotesque, he draws a society of people busy with their petty affairs, settling in life at any cost, from flattery to denunciations and betrayal. Against the background of the truly moral relations of the main characters, such a “life” cannot but cause condemnation, but the writer pities most of his heroes rather than condemns them, although, of course, such images as Berlioz and the critic Latunsky are written out very clearly.
Back to the image of Woland. His "activities" in Moscow became a special form of restoring justice - in any case, he punished those who could not be punished, and helped those who had the right to count on the help of higher powers. Bulgakov shows that Woland fulfills the will of Yeshua, being, as it were, his messenger in this world. Of course, from the point of view of Christian ethics, this is unacceptable. God and Satan are antipodes, but what if everything in this world is so messed up that it’s hard to understand how you can make people remember that they are, after all, God’s creations? .. In this regard, the role of in the novel Pontius Pilate, the purpose of which was the condemnation to death of Yeshua, who tried to save him and then suffered from what he had done - after all, in fact, the procurator of Judea plays the same role on earth that Woland is assigned to in the universe (according to Bulgakov): to be a judge. Pilate internally feels the impossibility of sending the "wandering philosopher" to his death, but he does it. Woland, it seems, does not experience inner feelings and hesitation, but why then does he react so emotionally to Margarita's request? ..
The obvious inconsistency of the image of Woland, his strange relationship with Yeshua and Pilate make this image tragic in many respects: his seeming omnipotence in fact cannot change anything in this world, because it is not in his power to hasten the onset of the "kingdom of truth" - it is not from him depends... "Forever wanting evil" - and "forever doing good" - this is Woland's destiny, because this path is determined for him by the One who "hung the thread of life"...
The novel "The Master and Margarita", which we analyzed, belongs to those works in the history of mankind that have become an integral part of his spiritual life. "Eternal problems" and momentary "truths" disappearing with the sunset, high pathos and tragedy and obvious satire and grotesque, love and betrayal, faith and its loss, Good and Evil as a state of a person's soul - that's what this novel is about. Each appeal to him is a new introduction to the world of enduring moral values and true culture.
Analysis of the novel by M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
I.
"As the Father knows Me, so I know the Father" (John 10:15), the Savior testified before His disciples. "... I do not remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian ...", - says the wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri during interrogation by the fifth procurator of Judea, the horseman Pontius Pilate.
Already the first critics who responded to the journal publication of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita noticed, could not fail to notice Yeshua's remark about the notes of his student Levi Matvey: “In general, I begin to fear that this confusion will continue for a very long time. -because he incorrectly writes after me. /.../ He walks, walks alone with a goat parchment and writes continuously. But I once looked into this parchment and was horrified. I did not say absolutely anything from what was written there. I begged him: burn your parchment for God's sake! But he tore it out of my hands and ran away. Through the mouth of his hero, the author denied the truth of the Gospel.
And without this replica, the differences between Scripture and the novel are so significant that a choice is imposed on us against our will, because both texts cannot be combined in consciousness and soul. It must be admitted that the glamor of credibility, the illusion of authenticity, are extraordinarily strong in Bulgakov. Undoubtedly: the novel "The Master and Margarita" is a true literary masterpiece. And it always happens: the outstanding artistic merit of the work becomes the strongest argument in favor of what the artist is trying to inspire...
Let us focus on the main thing: before us is a different image of the Savior. It is significant that Bulgakov carries this character with a different sound of his name: Yeshua. But that is Jesus Christ. No wonder Woland, anticipating the story of Pilate, assures Berlioz and Ivanushka Bezdomny: "Keep in mind that Jesus existed." Yes, Yeshua is Christ, presented in the novel as the only true one, as opposed to the gospel, allegedly invented, generated by the absurdity of rumors and the stupidity of the disciple. The myth of Yeshua is happening before the eyes of the reader. So, the head of the secret guard, Aphranius, tells Pilate a real fiction about the behavior of a wandering philosopher during the execution: Yeshua did not at all say the words attributed to him about cowardice, did not refuse to drink. The credibility of the student's notes is undermined initially by the teacher himself. If there can be no faith in the testimonies of clear eyewitnesses, then what can be said about the later Scriptures? And where does the truth come from if there was only one disciple (the rest, therefore, impostors?), and even that can only be identified with the Evangelist Matthew with a big stretch. Therefore, all subsequent evidence is fiction. the purest water. So, placing milestones on the logical path, M. Bulgakov leads our thought. But Yeshua differs from Jesus not only in the name and events of his life - he is essentially different, different at all levels: sacred, theological, philosophical, psychological, physical. He is timid and weak, simple-minded, impractical, naive to the point of stupidity. He has such an incorrect idea of life that he is not able to recognize in the curious Judas of Kiriath an ordinary provocateur-informer. By the simplicity of his soul, Yeshua himself becomes a voluntary informer on the faithful disciple of Levi Matthew, blaming him for all misunderstandings with the interpretation of his own words and deeds. Indeed, simplicity is worse than theft. Only Pilate's indifference, deep and contemptuous, essentially saves Levi from possible persecution. And is he a sage, this Yeshua, ready at any moment to have a conversation with anyone and about anything?
His motto: "Telling the truth is easy and pleasant." No practical considerations will stop him on the path to which he considers himself called. He will not beware, even when his truth becomes a threat to his own life. But we would be deluded if we denied Yeshua any wisdom on this basis. He reaches a true spiritual height, proclaiming his truth contrary to the so-called "common sense": he preaches, as it were, over all concrete circumstances, over time - for eternity. Yeshua is tall, but tall by human standards. He is a human. There is nothing of the Son of God in him. The divinity of Yeshua is imposed on us by the correlation, in spite of everything, of his image with the Person of Christ. But we can only conditionally admit that we are not dealing with a God-man, but a man-god. This is the main new thing that Bulgakov introduces, in comparison with the New Testament, into his "gospel" about Christ.
Again: there would be nothing original in this if the author remained on the positivist level of Renan, Hegel or Tolstoy from beginning to end. But no, it was not for nothing that Bulgakov called himself a "mystical writer", his novel is oversaturated with heavy mystical energy, and only Yeshua knows nothing but the lonely earthly path - and at the end of it, a painful death awaits, but by no means Resurrection.
The Son of God showed us the highest example of humility, truly humbling His Divine power. He, who with one glance could destroy all oppressors and executioners, accepted from them reproach and death of his good will and in fulfillment of the will of His Heavenly Father. Yeshua has clearly left to chance and does not look far ahead. He does not know his father and does not carry humility in himself, for there is nothing for him to humble. He is weak, he is completely dependent on the last Roman soldier, unable, if he wanted to, to resist an external force. Yeshua sacrificially bears his truth, but his sacrifice is nothing more than a romantic impulse of a person who has a poor idea of his future.
Christ knew what awaited Him. Yeshua is deprived of such knowledge, he ingenuously asks Pilate: “Would you let me go, hegemon…” and he believes that it is possible. Pilate would really be ready to let the poor preacher go, and only a primitive provocation by Judas from Kiriath decides the outcome of the matter to the disadvantage of Yeshua. Therefore, according to the Truth, Yeshua lacks not only volitional humility, but also the feat of sacrifice.
Nor does he have the sober wisdom of Christ. According to the testimony of the evangelists, the Son of God was laconic in the face of His judges. Yeshua, on the other hand, is overly talkative. In his irresistible naivety, he is ready to reward everyone with the title of a good person and agrees in the end to the point of absurdity, arguing that the centurion Mark was mutilated precisely " kind people". Such ideas have nothing to do with the true wisdom of Christ, who forgave His executioners for their crime.
Yeshua, on the other hand, cannot forgive anyone or anything, for only guilt, sin can be forgiven, and he does not know about sin. He generally seems to be on the other side of good and evil. Here we can and should draw an important conclusion: Yeshua Ha-Nozri, even if he is a man, is not destined by fate to make a redemptive sacrifice, he is not capable of it. This is the central idea of Bulgakov's story about the wandering herald of truth, and this is the denial of the most important thing that the New Testament carries.
But even as a preacher, Yeshua is hopelessly weak, for he is not able to give people the main thing - faith, which can serve as their support in life. What can we say about others, if even a faithful disciple does not stand the first test, in despair sending curses to God at the sight of the execution of Yeshua.
Yes, and having already discarded human nature, almost two thousand years after the events in Yershalaim, Yeshua, who finally became Jesus, cannot overcome the same Pontius Pilate in a dispute, and their endless dialogue is lost somewhere in the depths of the boundless future - on the way woven from moonlight. Or is Christianity showing its failure here in general? Yeshua is weak because he does not know the Truth. That is the central moment of the whole scene between Yeshua and Pilate in the novel - a dialogue about Truth.
What is Truth? Pilate asks skeptically.
Christ was silent here. Everything has already been said, everything has been proclaimed. Yeshua is extraordinarily verbose: - The truth is, first of all, that your head hurts, and it hurts so much that you cowardly think about death. Not only are you unable to speak to me, but it is even difficult for you to look at me. And now I am unwittingly your executioner, which saddens me. You can't even think of anything and only dream of your dog coming, apparently the only creature to which you are attached. But your torment will now end, your head will pass.
Christ was silent - and this should be seen as a deep meaning. But if he has spoken, we are waiting for an answer to the greatest question that a person can ask God; for the answer must sound for eternity, and not only the procurator of Judea will heed it. But it all comes down to an ordinary session of psychotherapy. The sage-preacher turned out to be an average psychic (let's put it in a modern way). And there is no hidden depth behind those words, no hidden meaning. Truth has been reduced to the simple fact that someone is having a headache at the moment. No, this is not a belittling of the Truth to the level of ordinary consciousness. Everything is much more serious. Truth, in fact, is denied here at all, it is declared only a reflection of the fast-flowing time, subtle changes in reality. Yeshua is still a philosopher. The Word of the Savior has always gathered minds in the unity of Truth. The word of Yeshua encourages the rejection of such unity, the fragmentation of consciousness, the dissolution of the Truth in the chaos of petty misunderstandings, like a headache. He's still a philosopher, Yeshua. But his philosophy, outwardly opposed as if to the vanity of worldly wisdom, is immersed in the element of "the wisdom of this world."
"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God, as it is written: It catches the wise in their craftiness. And again: The Lord knows the minds of the wise that they are vain" (1 Cor. 3, 19-20). That is why the beggarly philosopher, in the end, reduces all the sophistication not to insights into the mystery of being, but to dubious ideas of the earthly arrangement of people.
“Among other things, I said,” says the prisoner, “that all power is violence against people and that the time will come when there will be no power of either Caesars or any other power. Man will pass into the realm of truth and justice, where there will be no no power is needed." Realm of truth? "But what is truth?" - only one can ask after Pilate, having heard enough of such speeches. "What is truth? - Headache?" There is nothing original in this interpretation of the teachings of Christ. Yeshe Belinsky, in a notorious letter to Gogol, asserted about Christ: "He was the first to proclaim to people the doctrine of freedom, equality and fraternity, and sealed with martyrdom, approved the truth of his teaching." The idea, as Belinsky himself pointed out, goes back to the materialism of the Enlightenment, that is, to the very era when the "wisdom of this world" was deified and raised to the absolute. Was it worth it to fence the garden in order to return to the same thing?
At the same time, one can guess the objections of the fans of the novel: the main goal of the author was an artistic interpretation of the character of Pilate as a psychological and social type, his aesthetic study. Undoubtedly, Pilate attracts the novelist in that long story. Pilate is generally one of the central figures of the novel. He is larger, more significant as a person than Yeshua. His image is distinguished by greater integrity and artistic completeness. It's like that. But why was it blasphemous to distort the Gospel for that? There was some meaning...
But that is perceived by the majority of our reading public as insignificant. The literary merits of the novel, as it were, atone for any blasphemy, make it even invisible - especially since the public is usually set up, if not strictly atheistically, then in the spirit of religious liberalism, in which every point of view on anything is recognized as having a legitimate right to exist and be listed in the category of truth. . Yeshua, who raised the headache of the fifth procurator of Judea to the rank of Truth, thereby provided a kind of ideological justification for the possibility of an arbitrarily large number of ideas-truths of this level. In addition, Bulgakov's Yeshua provides anyone who only wishes with a tickling opportunity to look down on the One before Whom the Church bows as before the Son of God. The ease of free treatment of the Savior Himself, which is provided by the novel "Master and Margarita" (a refined spiritual perversion of aesthetically jaded snobs), we must agree, is also worth something! For a relativistically tuned consciousness, there is no blasphemy here.
The impression of the reliability of the story about the events of two thousand years ago is provided in Bulgakov's novel by the truthfulness of the critical coverage of modern reality, with all the grotesqueness of the author's techniques. The revealing pathos of the novel is recognized as its undoubted moral and artistic value. But here it should be noted that (no matter how offensive and even insulting it may seem to the later researchers of Bulgakov), this topic itself, one might say, was opened and closed at the same time by the first critical reviews of the novel, and above all by the detailed articles by V. Lakshin (Roman M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" // Novy Mir. 1968. No. 6) and I. Vinogradov (Testament of the Master // Questions of Literature. 1968. No. 6). It will hardly be possible to say anything new: Bulgakov in his novel gave a murderous critique of the world of improper existence, exposed, ridiculed, incinerated with the fire of caustic indignation to nec plus ultra (extreme limits - ed.) the vanity and insignificance of the new Soviet cultural philistinism.
The spirit of the novel, which is opposed to the official culture, as well as the tragic fate of its author, as well as the tragic initial fate of the work itself, helped to raise the height created by M. Bulgakov's pen to a height that is difficult to reach for any critical judgment. Everything was curiously complicated by the fact that for a significant part of our semi-educated readers the novel "The Master and Margarita" for a long time remained almost the only source from which it was possible to draw information about the events of the Gospel. The authenticity of Bulgakov's narration was checked by him himself - the situation is sad. The encroachment on the holiness of Christ itself turned into a kind of intellectual shrine. The thought of Archbishop John (Shakhovsky) helps to understand the phenomenon of Bulgakov’s masterpiece: “One of the tricks of spiritual evil is to mix concepts, tangle the threads of different spiritual fortresses into one ball and thereby create the impression of spiritual organicity of what is not organic and even anti-organic in relation to the human spirit ". The truth of the denunciation of social evil and the truth of one's own suffering created a protective armor for the blasphemous untruth of The Master and Margarita. For the untruth that declared itself the only Truth. “Everything is untrue there,” the author seems to say, understanding the Holy Scriptures. "In general, I begin to fear that this confusion will continue for a very long time." The truth, however, reveals itself through the inspired insights of the Master, to which Satan testifies with certainty, claiming our unconditional trust. (They will say: this is a convention. Let us object: every convention has its limits, beyond which it unconditionally reflects a certain idea, a very definite one).
Bulgakov's novel is not dedicated to Yeshua at all, and not even primarily to the Master himself with his Margarita, but to Satan. Woland is undoubted main character works, its image is a kind of energy node of the entire complex compositional structure of the novel. Woland's supremacy is initially affirmed by the epigraph to the first part: "I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good."
Satan acts in the world only insofar as he is allowed to do so by the permission of the Almighty. But everything that happens according to the will of the Creator cannot be evil, directed to the good of His creation, it is, by whatever measure you measure, an expression of the supreme justice of the Lord. "The Lord is good to all, and His mercy is in all His works" (Ps. 144:9). This is the meaning and content of the Christian faith. Therefore, the evil that comes from the devil is transformed into good for man, thanks precisely to God's allowance. Lord's will. But by its very nature, by its diabolical original intention, it continues to be evil. God turns him for good - not Satan. Therefore, claiming: "I do good," the servant of hell is lying. The demon lies, but that is in his nature, that's why he is a demon. Man is given the ability to recognize demonic lies. But the satanic claim to come from God is perceived by the author of The Master and Margarita as an absolute truth, and on the basis of faith in the devilish deception of Bulgakov, he builds the entire moral-philosophical and aesthetic system of his creation.
The idea of Woland is equated in the philosophy of the novel with the idea of Christ. “Would you be so kind to think about the question,” the spirit of darkness of the stupid evangelist teaches from above, “what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are obtained from objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But there are shadows from trees and living beings. Do you want to tear off the whole globe, taking away all the trees and all living things from it because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light? You are stupid. " Without speaking directly, Bulgakov pushes the reader to the conjecture that Woland and Yeshua are two equal entities, ruling the world. In the same system artistic images novel Woland and completely surpasses Yeshua - that for everyone literary work very significant.
But at the same time, a strange paradox awaits the reader in the novel: despite all the talk about evil, Satan acts rather contrary to his own nature. Woland here is the unconditional guarantor of justice, the creator of goodness, the righteous judge for people, which attracts the reader's ardent sympathy. Woland is the most charming character in the novel, much more sympathetic than the weak-willed Yeshua. He actively intervenes in all events and always acts for the good - from instructive exhortations to the thieving Annushka to saving the Master's manuscript from oblivion. Not from God - from Woland justice pours out on the world. The incapacitated Yeshua can give people nothing but abstract, spiritually relaxing arguments about not entirely intelligible good, and except for vague promises of the coming kingdom of truth. Woland with a firm will directs the actions of people, guided by the concepts of very specific justice and at the same time experiencing genuine sympathy for people, even sympathy.
And here it is important: even the direct envoy of Christ, Levi Matthew, "beseechingly turns" to Woland. The consciousness of his rightness allows Satan to treat with a measure of arrogance the failed evangelist disciple, as if undeservedly arrogating to himself the right to be near Christ. Woland persistently emphasizes from the very beginning: it was he who was next to Jesus at the time of the most important events, "unrighteously" reflected in the Gospel. But why does he insist on his testimony so insistently? And was it not he who directed the inspired insight of the Master, even if he did not suspect it? And he saved the manuscript that had been put on fire. "Manuscripts do not burn" - this diabolical lie once delighted admirers of Bulgakov's novel (after all, I so wanted to believe in it!). They are burning. But what saved this one? Why did Satan recreate a burnt manuscript from oblivion? Why is the distorted story of the Savior included in the novel at all?
It has long been said that it is especially desirable for the devil that everyone should think that he does not exist. This is what the novel asserts. That is, he does not exist at all, but he does not act as a seducer, a sower of evil. The champion of justice - who is not flattered to appear in people's opinion? Devilish lies become a hundred times more dangerous.
Discussing this feature of Woland, the critic I. Vinogradov made an unusually important conclusion regarding the "strange" behavior of Satan: he does not lead anyone into temptation, does not plant evil, does not actively affirm untruth (which seems to be characteristic of the devil), because there is no no need. According to Bulgakov's concept, evil acts in the world without demonic efforts, it is immanent in the world, which is why Woland can only observe the natural course of things. It is difficult to say whether the critic (following the writer) was consciously guided by religious dogma, but objectively (albeit vaguely) he revealed something important: Bulgakov's understanding of the world, at best, is based on the Catholic teaching about the imperfection of the primordial nature of man, which requires active external influence to correct it. . In fact, Woland is engaged in such external influence, punishing guilty sinners. The introduction of temptation into the world is not required of him at all: the world is already tempted from the very beginning. Or is it imperfect from the start? By whom is he tempted, if not by Satan? Who made the mistake of making the world imperfect? Or was it not a mistake, but a conscious initial calculation? Bulgakov's novel openly provokes these questions, although he does not answer them. The reader must make up his own mind.
V. Lakshin drew attention to the other side of the same problem: “In the beautiful and human truth of Yeshua, there was no place for the punishment of evil, for the idea of retribution. It is difficult for Bulgakov to come to terms with this, and that is why he so needs Woland, removed from evil and, as it were, having received a punishing sword in return from the forces of good. Critics noticed right away: Yeshua took from his gospel Prototype only a word, but not a deed. The matter is Woland's prerogative. But then... let's make a conclusion on our own... Are Yeshua and Woland nothing but two peculiar incarnations of Christ? Yes, in the novel "The Master and Margarita" Woland and Yeshua are the personification of Bulgakov's understanding of the two essential principles that determined the earthly path of Christ. What is this - a kind of shadow of Manichaeism?
But be that as it may, the paradox of the system of artistic images of the novel was expressed in the fact that it was Woland-Satan who embodied at least some religious idea of being, while Yeshua - and all critics and researchers agreed on this - is an exclusively social character, partly philosophical, but no more. One can only repeat after Lakshin: "We see here a human drama and a drama of ideas. /.../ In the extraordinary and legendary, what is humanly understandable, real and accessible, but no less essential: not faith, but truth and beauty" .
Of course, at the end of the 60s it was very tempting: as if abstractly discussing the events of the Gospel, to touch upon the painful and acute issues of our time, to conduct a risky, nerve-wracking debate about the vital. Bulgakov's Pilate provided rich material for formidable philippines about cowardice, opportunism, indulgence of evil and untruth - that sounds topical to this day. (By the way: didn’t Bulgakov slyly laugh at his future critics: after all, Yeshua did not at all utter those words denouncing cowardice - they were invented by Aphranius and Levi Matthew, who did not understand anything in his teaching). The pathos of a critic seeking retribution is understandable. But the malice of the day remains only malice. "The wisdom of this world" was not able to rise to the level of Christ. His word is understood on a different level, on the level of faith.
However, "not faith, but the truth" attracts critics in the story of Yeshua. Significant is the very opposition of the two most important spiritual principles, which are indistinguishable at the religious level. But at the lower levels, the meaning of the "gospel" chapters of the novel cannot be understood, the work remains incomprehensible.
Of course, critics and researchers who take positivist-pragmatic positions should not be embarrassed. There is no religious level for them at all. I. Vinogradov’s reasoning is indicative: for him, “Bulgakov’s Yeshua is an extremely accurate reading of this legend (i.e., the“ legend ”about Christ. - M.D.), its meaning is a reading, in something much deeper and more accurate than the gospel presentation of it ".
Yes, from the standpoint of everyday consciousness, by human standards - ignorance informs Yeshua's behavior with the pathos of heroic fearlessness, a romantic impulse to "truth", contempt for danger. Christ's "knowledge" of His fate, as it were (according to the critic), devalues His feat (what kind of feat is there, if you want it - you don't want it, but what is destined will come true). But the lofty religious meaning of what happened thus eludes our understanding. The incomprehensible mystery of Divine self-sacrifice is the highest example of humility, the acceptance of earthly death not for the sake of abstract truth, but for the salvation of mankind - of course, for an atheistic consciousness, these are just empty "religious fictions", but one must at least admit that even as a pure idea these values much more important and significant than any romantic impulse.
Woland's true goal is easily seen: the desacralization of the earthly path of God the Son - which, judging by the very first reviews of critics, he succeeds in completely. But not just an ordinary deception of critics and readers was conceived by Satan, creating a novel about Yeshua - and it is Woland, by no means the Master, who is the true author of the literary opus about Yeshua and Pilate. In vain the Master is self-absorbedly amazed at how accurately he "guessed" the ancient events. Such books are "unguessed" - they are inspired from outside. And if the Holy Scripture is God-inspired, then the source of inspiration for the novel about Yeshua is also easily visible. However, the main part of the story and without any camouflage belongs to Woland, the Master's text becomes only a continuation of the satanic fabrication. The narrative of Satan is included by Bulgakov in the complex mystical system of the entire novel The Master and Margarita. Actually, the name obscures the true meaning of the work. Each of these two does special role in the action for which Woland arrives in Moscow. If you take an unbiased look, then the content of the novel, it is easy to see, is not the history of the Master, not his literary misadventures, not even the relationship with Margarita (all that is secondary), but the story of one of Satan's visits to earth: with the beginning of it, the novel begins, and its end also ends. The master appears to the reader only in chapter 13, Margarita, and even later, as Woland needs them. For what purpose does Woland visit Moscow? To give here your next "great ball". But Satan did not just plan to dance.
N. K. Gavryushin, who studied the "liturgical motives" of Bulgakov's novel, convincingly substantiated the most important conclusion: the "great ball" and all the preparations for it constitute nothing more than a satanic anti-liturgy, a "black mass."
Under the piercing cry of "Hallelujah!" Woland's associates rage at that ball. All the events of The Master and Margarita are drawn to this semantic center of the work. Already in the opening scene - on the Patriarch's Ponds - preparations for the "ball", a kind of "black proskomidia" begin. The death of Berlioz turns out to be not at all absurdly accidental, but is included in the magical circle of the satanic mystery: his severed head, then stolen from the coffin, turns into a chalice, from which, at the end of the ball, the transformed Woland and Margarita "commune" (here is one of the manifestations of anti-liturgy - the transubstantiation of blood into wine, sacrament inside out). The bloodless sacrifice of the Divine Liturgy is replaced here by a bloody sacrifice (the murder of Baron Meigel).
The gospel is read at the Liturgy in the church. For the "black mass" a different text is needed. The novel created by the Master becomes nothing more than a "gospel from Satan", skillfully included in the compositional structure of the work on anti-liturgy. That's what the Master's manuscript was saved for. That is why the image of the Savior is slandered and distorted. The master fulfilled what Satan intended for him.
Margarita, the beloved of the Master, has a different role: due to some special inherent in her magical properties it becomes the source of that energy that turns out to be necessary for the entire demonic world at a certain moment of its existence – for the sake of which that “ball” is started. If the meaning of the Divine Liturgy is in the Eucharistic union with Christ, in the strengthening of the spiritual forces of man, then the anti-liturgy gives strength to the inhabitants of the underworld. Not only an innumerable gathering of sinners, but Woland-Satan himself, as it were, acquires new power here, a symbol of which is the change in his appearance at the moment of "communion", and then the complete "transformation" of Satan and his retinue in the night, "when all come together abacus".
Thus, a certain mystical action takes place before the reader: the completion of one and the beginning of a new cycle in the development of the transcendental foundations of the universe, about which a person can only be given a hint - nothing more.
Bulgakov's novel becomes such a "hint". Many sources for such a "hint" have already been identified: here are Masonic teachings, and theosophy, and Gnosticism, and Judaic motives ... The worldview of the author of The Master and Margarita turned out to be very eclectic. But the main thing - its anti-Christian orientation - is beyond doubt. No wonder Bulgakov so carefully disguised the true content, the deep meaning of his novel, entertaining the reader's attention with side details. The dark mysticism of the work, in addition to the will and consciousness, penetrates into the soul of a person - and who will undertake to calculate the possible destruction that can be produced in it by that?
M. M. Dunaev
NOTES
1) Mikhail Bulgakov. Novels. / 1., 1978. S. 438.
2) There. S. 439.
3) there. P.435.
4) There. S. 446.
5) There. S. 448.
6) There. S. 441.
7) There. S. 447.
8) V. G. Belinsky. Collected Works: In 3 vols. T.Z. M., 1948. S. 709.
9) Moscow Church Bulletin. 1991. No. 1. S. 14.
10) Bulgakov. Cit. op. S. 776.
11) V. Lakshin. Journal paths. M. 1990. S. 242.
12) Ibid. P. 223. 13) Questions of Literature. 1968. No. 6. S. 68.
14) Ibid.
15) N.K. Gavryushin. Litostroton, or Master without Margarita // Symbol. 1990. No. 23.
The Master and Margarita is a phantasmagoric novel by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov, which occupies an ambiguous position in Russian literature. "Master and Margarita" - a book written in the original language, destinies intertwined here ordinary people, mystical forces, sharp satire and a genuine atmosphere of atheism.
It is precisely because of this "piling up" of various literary devices and a kaleidoscope of events that it is difficult for the reader to grasp the deep political and moral meaning that lies in this great work. Everyone finds their own meaning in this novel, and this is its versatility. Someone will say that the meaning of "The Master and Margarita" lies in the exaltation of love, which conquers even death, someone will object: no, this is a novel about the eternal confrontation between good and evil, about the promotion of Christian values. What is the truth?
There are two storylines in the novel, each of which takes place at a different time and in a different place. At first, events unfold in Moscow in the 1930s. On a quiet evening, as if from nowhere, a strange company appeared, headed by Woland, who turned out to be Satan himself. They do things that radically change the lives of some people (as an example, the fate of Margarita in the novel "The Master and Margarita"). The second line develops by analogy with the biblical plot: the action takes place in the Master's novel, the main characters are the prophet Yeshua (an analogy with Jesus) and the procurator of Judea. which the author originally invested in his work.
Yes, the meaning of The Master and Margarita can be interpreted in different ways: this novel is both about a big and pure love, and about devotion and self-sacrifice, and about the pursuit of truth and the struggle for it, and about human vices, which Woland examines from the stage at a glance. However, there is also a subtle political subtext in the novel, it simply could not be missing, especially if you take into account the time at which he did his own - cruel repressions, constant denunciations, total surveillance of the lives of citizens. "How can you live so calmly in such an atmosphere? How can you go to shows and find your life successful?" - as if the author asks. Pontius Pilate can be considered the personification of the merciless state machine.
Suffering from migraine and suspiciousness, not loving Jews and people in general, he, nevertheless, is imbued with interest, and then sympathy for Yeshua. But, despite this, he did not dare to go against the system and save the prophet, for which he was subsequently doomed to suffer doubts and repentance for all eternity, until the Master freed him. Thinking about the fate of the procurator, the reader begins to comprehend the moral meaning of The Master and Margarita: "What makes people compromise their principles? Cowardice? Indifference? Fear of responsibility for their actions?"
In the novel "The Master and Margarita" the author deliberately neglects the biblical canons and gives his own interpretation of the nature of good and evil, which often change places in the novel. Such a look helps to take a fresh look at familiar things and discover a lot of new things where, it would seem, there is nothing to look for - this is the meaning of The Master and Margarita.
"Symbol", No. 23/1990, pp. 265-278.
K. Gavryushin
LITOSTROTON, OR MASTER WITHOUT MARGARITA
Pilate wretchedly... brought Jesus out and
sit on the judge, the place of the verb-
meme Litostroton, Jewish
Gavvafa.
Gospel of John, ch. 19, art. 13
In summer from the creation of the world 7439th.
On a gloomy and resonant night, which shook the neighborhoods adjacent to Volkhonka with an avalanche of explosions, an absolutely incredible picture could be observed from the window of one of the Moscow mansions. Behind desk A middle-aged man was sitting with his head slightly drawn into his shoulders, and opposite him in a wide armchair was a huge black cat with a Havana cigar in its teeth. Clubs of tobacco smoke and scribbled sheets of paper testified to the fact that hard work was going on here.
A sudden roar and rattling of glass interrupted the writer's thoughts, and with an expression of fright on his face, he turned with a question to the Cat.
Did... did they... dare after all?
Yawning languidly, the Cat for some reason glanced at his wristwatch and replied indifferently:
Of course, they dared... miserable imitators... They fight with stones - and nothing will be built.
Here the Cat made a semblance of a smile and, getting up from his chair, patted his interlocutor reassuringly on the shoulder. What he said at the same time, we will inform the reader later, after the necessary preliminary clarifications.
Behind the disputes about the sources, motives and allusions of M. Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita", questions about the moral ideal of the work and the images in which it is embodied were quietly relegated to the background. The very fact that the protagonist - almost seriously - is proposed to be Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, who suffers from sleepwalking, is sufficient evidence of the extreme underdevelopment of the topic.
No matter how many plans stand out in the novel and no matter how they are called, there is no doubt that the author sought to show the reflection of eternal, transtemporal images and relationships on the shaky surface of historical existence. From this point of view, our attention is primarily stopped by Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan.
The image of Jesus Christ as an ideal of moral perfection has invariably attracted both writers and artists. Some of them adhered to the traditional, canonical interpretation of it, based on the four Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles, others gravitated towards apocryphal or simply heretical stories. As you know, M. Bulgakov took the second path. Was the choice made by the writer simply a literary device, or is it necessarily related to his worldview and the main idea of the novel?
It is important to make sure that M. Bulgakov's appeal to the apocrypha is due to a conscious and sharp rejection of the canonical New Testament tradition. About the apostle and evangelist Matthew, revered by all Christians as saints, the reader of the novel gets the first idea from the words of Yeshua Ha-Nozri himself: “... he walks, walks alone with goat parchment and continuously writes. But once I looked into this parchment and was horrified. Absolutely nothing of what is written there, I did not say. I begged him: burn your parchment for God's sake! But he snatched it out of my hands and ran away.” It turns out that Jesus himself rejects the authenticity of the testimonies of the Gospel of Matthew. It is worth noting that in this respect, too, he shows a striking unity of views with Woland-Satan: gospels, never actually happened...”
Levi Matthew, who makes a repulsive impression with his imbalance and mental limitations, first seeks to kill Yeshua-Jesus in order to save him from torment; then, instead of Joseph of Arimathea, and without the prior consent of the authorities, he removes the body of Jesus from the cross; after that, he is obsessed with the idea of killing the traitor Judas, but the servants of Pontius Pilate are ahead of him ...
It is important not only what is in the novel about Pontius Pilate, but also what is passed over in silence in comparison with the gospel narrative. It contains the trial, execution and burial of Yeshua-Jesus, but there is no resurrection. There is no Virgin Mary - the Mother of God in the novel. Ga-Notsri does not know his origin: “... I do not remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian…” Therefore, Jesus is not even from God’s chosen tribe, and in vain the Apostle Matthew scrupulously enumerates all the tribes of kinship of “the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
The earthly rootlessness of Yeshua-Jesus is logically connected with the heavenly. There is a "god" in the novel, but there is no God the Father and God the Son. Yeshua is not the Only Begotten Son of God, he... Who is he?
At first glance, in his interpretation of the image of Jesus, M. Bulgakov is close to Leo Tolstoy ("The Connection and Translation of the Four Gospels", "The Study of Dogmatic Theology"). However, Yeshua Ga-Notsri is still not a simple person, a teacher of righteousness, for Woland-Satan thinks of himself with him in the "cosmic hierarchy" approximately on an equal footing. They are also comparable in the eyes of the author of the novel, who in the end forces Levi Matthew to appear as a messenger from Yeshua-Jesus to Woland and ask the latter to reward the Master with peace.
It is noteworthy that M. Bulgakov approached this idea of equality between Yeshua and Woland gradually, in deep thought. The early, third edition of the novel captures the attitude of the characters, in which Yeshua orders Woland.
Thus, the direction of M. Bulgakov's creative evolution is obvious.
However, the equality achieved as a result is only formally speculative. From the point of view of artistic expressiveness and strength, Yeshua is undoubtedly inferior to Woland. As the narrative unfolds, his face turns pale, blurs and fades into the background. And it is quite natural that in the final analysis, the earthly heroes of the book, the Master and Margarita, do not come to Yeshua-Jesus; only in vague full-moon dreams (and, moreover, with a “disfigured face”) does he appear before Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (involuntarily, “People of the Moonlight” by V. V. Rozanov are recalled). Throughout the two millennium space of historical existence - as far as it is affected by the events of the novel - the image of Yeshua is simply invisible.
But the omnipresence of Woland-Satan is emphasized with all indisputability - he was in the garden when Pilate was talking with Caiaphas, he talked with Immanuel Kant, his retinue keeps memories of medieval exploits ... And Yeshua-Jesus has only one, completely dull-witted disciple, he does not have apostles who would announce his Resurrection - because there was no Resurrection (and maybe an execution? - “Well, of course there wasn’t,” the companion (Yeshua himself) answers in a “hoarse voice” in the vision of Ivan Ponyrev) , there is no Church that would keep the tradition and act in history in his name ...
With such weak forces, it is difficult to imagine the possibility of a real confrontation between Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan. But, as has been noted more than once, this confrontation is not even in sight! Yeshua and Woland have the same attitude towards the canonical Gospels, they are completely unanimous in preparing an eternal shelter for the Master and Margarita. In the novel about Pontius Pilate, Satan does not tempt Ga-Nozri, and the latter does not exorcise demons and in general does not clearly infringe on the Prince of Darkness in any way.
Moreover, Woland-Satan admonishes and punishes obvious atheists, his henchmen make rogues, deceivers and other scoundrels pay their bills ... The only squabble between Yeshua's envoy Levi Matthew and Satan puts the "apostle" in a very unfavorable light. And perhaps the main meaning of this episode is to show that, due to his limitations, Matthew Levi is simply not initiated into the deep unity and mysterious connection of Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan.
“Would you be kind enough to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” Woland asks the unanswered Levi. And in the epigraph to the novel, Mephistopheles informs Faust: "I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good." The assumption that the author of the novel was influenced by the teachings of Augustine cannot fully explain these motives...
So, to clarify the moral ideal of the novel, the opposition of Yeshua-Jesus and Woland-Satan does not give anything. Obviously, M. Bulgakov is carried away by some kind of theosophical "ecumenism".
The teachings are also known, according to which Jesus was one of the "eons", honored along with the "angel of light" - Dennitsa, Lucifer (that is, the "Lightbringer").
If Matthew Levi did not understand his teacher, then Woland-Satan fully understands Yeshua, maybe even sympathizes with him, but does not believe in the possibility of a firm conversion of human hearts to goodness. Although Woland and his entourage are not very attractive in appearance, throughout the novel they do “righteous judgment” and even “good” more than once. By the whole logic of the novel, the reader is led to the idea not to judge the heroes by their appearance - and as a confirmation of the correctness of involuntarily arising guesses, the final scene of the "transformation" of evil spirits looks like: Azazello's ugly fang and squint have disappeared, Koroviev-Fagot has become a purple knight, a thin young man, a demon- page - cat Behemoth. "And, finally, Woland also flew in his real guise." What? Not a word was said about this. But, judging by the metamorphoses of the retinue, the true face of Woland-Satan should not cause disgust ...
Undoubtedly, in this way, not only Jesus, but also Satan is presented in the novel by no means in the New Testament interpretation. Therefore, attempts to connect the image of Woland with the Old Testament Satan, who tempts the righteous Job with the consent of the Lord himself (A.K. Wright), are quite understandable.
Judaic and Kabbalistic motifs in the novel are generally quite noticeable. This, for example, almost from the very first pages, is an astrological theme (“Mercury in the second house”, etc.) or a gem-colored pool of blood, in which Margarita is washed before the ball with Satan. How here, again, not to recall the Judophile sighs of V. V. Rozanov about the mikvah ...
The theme of blood is occult-sacred in the novel. "Blood questions are the most difficult questions in the world!" - Koroviev proclaims, accompanying Margarita to Woland's room and along the way hinting at her royal origin. The latter turns out to be extremely important for the entire satanic ball, saturated with liturgical symbolism.
The "liturgical" motifs of the novel, exposed in the scenes of Satan's ball, have not yet been clearly read, and this gap left by criticism hides many significant plot and semantic connections. The fact is that the theme of blood begins (ablution in the pool) and ends (communion from the cup) the description of the satanic liturgy, which is a mirror rethinking of the Christian liturgy. The modern reader needs to be reminded of the main content and external features of this sacred rite.
In the sacrament of the Eucharist, which takes place during the liturgy, there is a “transubstantiation”, that is, a change, of the “essence” of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, which the faithful partake with reverence. The sacramental liturgy is based on the symbolic reproduction of the expiatory sacrifice that was brought by Christ in his sufferings on the Cross for the sins of the entire human race. Cutting with a sharp knife (“spear”) on the proskomedia a large prosphora, signifying Christ, the priest pronounces the words: “The Lamb of God is eaten, take away the sin of the world, for the life of the world and salvation.” Unlike the Old Testament and pagan sacrifices, this is an emphatically bloodless sacrifice.
Besides bread and wine, sharp knife(copy) and chalices (chalice) the necessary material realities of the liturgy include, in particular, an altar with a seven-candlestick and an altar. We just meet with them at Woland-Satan's apartment. An oak table (“throne”) on carved legs stood right in front of the host’s bed, and wax candles (as it should be according to the church charter) burned in the seven-candlestick (!) The second table “with some kind of golden cup” (chalice) and also with a candelabra stood in the distance - a transparent hint at the altar, located in the altar in the northeastern part, a few steps from the throne. The smell of sulfur and resin, noticed by Margarita, is a direct consequence of burning with "damn incense". Woland reclined at the table (throne) - that is, on the so-called "high place", where the chair of the bishop is located, symbolically representing the Lord himself in certain moments worship...
Since there must be contrasting differences from the Christian liturgy in the Satanic liturgy, they are initially emphasized by the devil's garment - a long nightgown, dirty and patched on the left shoulder. This is a contrast to the bishop's robe with an omophorion fastened on the left shoulder and descending from it. Another motive for the profanation of the shrine is the attitude towards the throne: there is a game of chess on it...
But the main motives of the liturgical action are sacrifice, transubstantiation, communion. Let us note right away that in the novel, the death of Yeshua-Jesus on the cross is by no means regarded as an expiatory sacrifice - and for this reason alone it cannot be a prototype of the liturgy taking place here. All the same motif of inversion leads to the idea that if in the Christian liturgy the voluntary self-sacrifice of the God-Man forms the sacramental basis, then in the satanic it is violent murder; if in the Christian one especially carefully selected pure substances are offered for transubstantiation - bread and wine, then in the satanic "offer" should be unclean; if in the Christian liturgy wine turns into the blood (of God), then in the satanic liturgy it turns the blood (of traitors) into wine...
The newly appeared "Judas" - Baron Meigel - served as the victim, whose blood ended up in Woland's liturgical cup. The owner of the ball is instantly transformed (“the patched shirt and worn-out shoes disappeared. Woland turned out to be in some kind of black mantle with a steel sword on his hip”), and the blood “existed” in the wine, which Margarita took communion ...
Of course, if Christians partake of the blood of their God, why shouldn't Satan drink the blood of the worst sinners? But the beloved of the Master...
Her role in the satanic liturgy is a special theme. As the reader guesses from the replicas of Woland's henchmen, some qualities of Margarita make her absolutely necessary for the ball ceremony. One motive lies on the surface - a "queen" is needed. But is it only as an addition to the "king"?
From a ritual point of view, as soon as the satanic liturgy is opposed to the Christian one, the motive of desecration must play an important role in it. Of course, Margarita is not an innocent girl, but by the standards of this century she is almost sinless, and much should be forgiven her, because she loved a lot. Absolutely unambiguously, Margarita is ready to give her soul for her beloved. In addition, and no less important, a special - royal - blood flows in it, mystically associated with God-established and church-sanctified power. It is for these reasons that Margarita is a quite suitable object for ritual desecration by an evil spirit seeking to establish its power in the world.
Before a ball at Satan's, a person of royal birth is bathed in a pool of less noble blood. The allusion to the Jewish mikvah is ambiguous here...
In the next scene, Margarita's knee is alternately covered with kisses by all the invited guests of the satanic ball. Here it is no longer only a matter of desecration: at the same time, each of them takes away a part of Margarita's life force. Evil can only exist at the expense of others. It is not by chance that Koroviev warns: guests can “fail” from the queen’s inattention. It is clear that after a while, Margarita almost collapses in exhaustion, and only a second bath in the bloody pool gives her the strength to hold out until the end of the action.
The finale of the satanic liturgy is significant, but for a correct understanding it is necessary to know about the features of the Masonic ritual of initiation into the degree of the “knight of Kadosh”.
In the symbolic actions of this rite, the Masonic revenge on the murderer of Hiram (the builder of Solomon's temple) is reproduced - he is stabbed with a knife, his head is cut off (on the altar), then it is transferred to the throne and the blood of the sacrificial lamb (symbolizing the murderer) is consecrated from a human skull. There is evidence that during the consecration of the most noble persons, the skull was decorated with a golden crown...
The atheist Berlioz was quite suitable for the role of the “killer of Hiram”, since Freemasonry, at certain stages, defends Christianity in its own way (Christ is called the “first Freemason” or, along with Buddha, Zarathustra, etc., is referred to as the “great initiates "). That is why the severed head of Berlioz appears - as an important motif - at the climax of the satanic liturgy and, after hearing his sentence, turns into a cup on a golden leg, into which the blood of the scammer, Baron Meigel, will pour.
It is difficult to establish with accuracy which source M. Bulgakov used when studying this rite. We will point out one, quite old. The authors of later works could also rely on it. This is an anonymous book, The Tomb of Jacques Molay, published in Paris in 1797. Its frontispiece and text on p. 135 are quite eloquent ...
It is significant to note that along with Berlioz’s twelve “godless apostles”, whirling in an infernal dance in the MASSOLIT restaurant (its details, especially jazz with cries of “Hallelujah”, emphatically echo the satanic liturgy that will follow), the visiting writer Johann from Kronstadt also dances. That the name of his character M. Bulgakov gave, intending to evoke in the memory of readers the image of Father John of Kronstadt, a preacher who used at the beginning of the 20th century. love of all Russia, - there is no doubt. But what was the meaning of this somewhat crude allusion? Is it not to once again oppose the teaching of Christ and the representative of church tradition!
Other details of Masonic symbolism and ritual are of secondary interest.
Valuable material for understanding the role of Margarita in the satanic liturgy and the novel as a whole is provided by the observations of I. L. Galinskaya, who draws attention to the logic of the development of this image under the direct or indirect influence of the views of Vl. S. Solovyova. At the beginning of the novel, the heroine is a “common Aphrodite” (the concept of “two Aphrodites” - earthly and heavenly - goes back to Plato’s “Feast”, the ideas of which are developed by Vl. Solovyov), but then she transforms to “exorbitant beauty” and turns out to be able to save the Master and his creation, bring the beloved to the abode of "eternal rest." The culminating moment of Margarita's "transubstantiation" is precisely the rite of "initiation", culminating in communion from the chalice.
The assumptions about the connection between the image of Margaret and Soloviev's theologeme of Sophia-Wisdom, which goes back to the teachings of the Gnostics and can be traced in the speculative constructions of masonic writers of the 18th century, as well as P. A. Florensky and S. N. Bulgakov, are not without foundation. According to Gnostic ideas, the “created” Sophia-Wisdom is the first helper of God in the act of creation, and Woland-Satan, who depicts the Creator himself in the meaning of the liturgy, it should logically be a necessary addition.
The parallels between the images of Margarita and Soloviev's Sophia are reinforced by another circumstance - the love of the Master and his childless girlfriend. A detailed theoretical substantiation of the childless ideal was given by Vl. Solovyov in the article "The Meaning of Love". From the point of view of Vl. Solovyov, "legitimate family union", as well as physical passion, "performs the work, while necessary, although of mediocre dignity." Namely: “it produces a bad infinity of the physical reproduction of organisms”, while the true “progress” consists in the “turning inwards” of the creative force, overcoming the inert patriarchal and family foundations and establishing the “true syzygy image” (syzygy is a Gnostic term meaning “combination ”) of “universal unity”. It is curious that even the self-sacrifice of Vl. Solovyov considers it inappropriate to the "syzygical ideal". “Sacrifice your life to the people or humanity,” he writes, “of course, it is possible, but to create a new person out of yourself, to manifest and realize true human individuality on the basis of this extensive [!] love is impossible.” What about that age-old image of the Cross, on which a sacrifice was made for the entire human race? Is it not with him, just in the memory of Vl. Solovyov, did the Russian people lay down their heads “for their friends” in the Balkans?
But Vl. Solovyov is alien to the idea of self-sacrifice and firmly stands for a childless idyll. "The true poetic flair for reality forced both Ovid and Gogol to deprive Philemon and Baucis, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna of their offspring."
The same idyll is offered as a reward to both the Master and Margarita. Let us recall how Woland describes it: “... don't you want to walk with your girlfriend under the cherries that are beginning to bloom during the day, and listen to Schubert's music in the evening? Wouldn't you like to write by candlelight with a quill pen? Don't you want, like Faust, to sit over a retort in the hope that you will be able to fashion a new homunculus?
With the complete indifference of the childless Almighty, at the direct request of the relationship of not remembering Yeshua-Jesus, Woland-Satan offers the Master and his girlfriend the ideal of childless love, the only fruit of Kabbalistic pleasures of which can be an artificial little man - a homunculus ... This ideal is most necessaryly connected with the "theological "the concept of the novel, because its author did not even think of himself in the hypostases of "father" and "son" ...
It is no coincidence that there are practically no children's images in the novel. Only in her Walpurgis flight Margarita lingers for a moment near the baby left by the adults, and then asks Satan for mercy on Frida, who strangled her own child. Accordingly, there are no images of parents. In the minds of the characters and the narrator there is no father-son relationship, no history, no future.
One can sneer as much as one likes at a man who has entered the historical mind, who understands himself simultaneously and inseparably as a “son” and as a “father”, blame him, at the prompt of the notorious German philosopher, that he erects his heavenly, transtemporal ideal in the likeness of an earthly family. But at the same time, it is impossible not to admit that it is a person of such a cast and way of thinking that is least of all convenient for control from the outside, while even a small hint is enough for the adherents of “cosmic consciousness” and “great evolution” ...
The longed-for “peace” achieved by the Master and Margarita is a reward for severe trials and an acquittal of the “last judgment”.
The theme of judgment and retribution in the novel is extremely diverse. Yeshua and thieves are judged and killed, the traitor Judas is condemned and slaughtered, the atheist Berlioz and informer Meigel are sentenced to death, the intimate secrets of crooks and libertines are revealed, etc. reproofs and punishments perpetrated by the servants of Satan, he is quite sure. But who would think of pitying the millionaire barman, Uncle Berlioz, who arrived from Kyiv, or the critic Latunsky? With a multitude of artistic details, the reader is fully prepared to almost independently establish himself in the thought that the just and inevitable is happening: “this is how they should be” ...
There are “mystical” confirmations of this: the blood of Baron Meigel turns into boiling wine, the murdered Judas becomes especially beautiful, as if freed from sin.
The version of the death of Judas chosen by Bulgakov is especially significant for the composition of the novel, since it is necessarily connected with the satanic liturgy; Let us recall that Judas, with the help of a woman, is lured into the Garden of Gethsemane and killed, like Azazello Baron Meigel, with sharp knives.
A valuable explanation for this scene was made by I. L. Galinskaya, who connected it with the story of the murder of the papal legate Peter de Castelnau on the orders of the head of the Albigensian sect, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. In the eyes of the Albigensians, the legate was undoubtedly equivalent to the traitor Judas, since he announced the excommunication of the count from the Church and the closure of all Catholic churches in his possessions. M. Bulgakov’s acquaintance with the “Song of the Albigensian Crusade” does not raise serious doubts, and the pairing of Albigensian reminiscences with the Manichaean heresy dating back to Gnosticism, the philosophical dreams of G.S.
But the motifs of the satanic liturgy must also be an essential link in this chain. We cannot now be concerned with the question of how just were those who accused the Albigensians as "servants of Satan", as well as whether the historical continuity between the representatives of this movement and the Knights Templar is reliable. It is only important that information about the satanic liturgy, allegedly practiced by the templars, as well as about the reproduction of their rites in later freemasonry, could well have come to the attention of M. Bulgakov. And it was they who allowed the writer to connect in a liturgical theme with a single knot the motives of the bloody Masonic revenge for the disclosure of secrets and the Masonic mythology of the “construction sacrifice”.
M. Jovanovich rightly believes that M. Bulgakov could have at his disposal a very wide range of sources on the history of Freemasonry, including foreign ones (of course, it is difficult to talk about oral tradition, since Freemasonry was officially banned in Russia in 1822). Emphasizing that the "Gospel according to Woland" turns out to be at the same time the "Gospel according to Bulgakov", the critic comes to the conclusion that "Bulgakov wrote his novel from Woland's positions", being inspired, "like Goethe and many other artists of different times, by a deep acquaintance with Masonic doctrine and its history” (Jovanović M. Utopija Mihaila Bulgakova. Beograd, 1975. S. 165).
But, if we have no doubts that M. Bulgakov confessed the "Gospel of Woland", we must admit that in this case the whole novel turns out to be a trial of Jesus of the canonical Gospels, carried out jointly by Pilate, the Master and the satanic army. Litostroton mystically identified with Moscow, which was once the "third Rome" - and became the second Golgotha.
It is indisputable that the author of The Master and Margarita was a victim of persecution and malicious criticism. But, striving to restore historical justice and paying due tribute to his literary talent, it is a sin to forget that Bulgakov was in no way a “sufferer for the faith”, that the “poison” with which his language was “saturated” (from autocharacteristics), black the cap with the letter “M” and the epigone-theatrical burning of fragments of the manuscript a la Gogol occupied a much more important place in his mind than the promises written down by the former tax collector, the apostle Matthew ...
It is quite legitimate to compare the artistic methods of both Bulgakov and Gogol, and Bulgakov and Hoffmann. But to consider the writer a successor of the same spiritual tradition to which F. M. Dostoevsky, N. S. Leskov and the author of the Discourse on the Divine Liturgy belonged can only be due to a misunderstanding or due to complete ideological color blindness. Thoroughly bogged down in the nets of Gnostic constructions, exhausted from literary harassment and hardships of everyday life, the Master was quite ready to lend a hand to Satan - and see the Savior in him.
Having opposed the revolutionary process of the “beloved and Great Evolution” in his appeal to the supreme power, our “mystical writer” (as he calls himself) unwittingly betrayed a secret of his heart - a trusting enthusiasm for the “Secret Doctrine” of H. P. Blavatsky, the theosophical suggestions of A. Besant and other "esoteric" bookishness of this kind. And, as is often the case with neophytes, he completely lost sight of the fact that it was the ardent preachers of universal evolutionism in freemason's aprons that made up anti-monarchist conspiracies - in Catherine's time in France, and a little later - in Russia ...
If we talk about the worldview system of M. Bulgakov, as it is reflected in his main novel, we can attribute it to one of the numerous and lifeless variations of the old gnostic theme in its spirit. The master without Margarita hardly deserved serious attention. And his girlfriend, if she were just another incarnation of Sophia-Achamoth, who with equal success seduced the Valentinians, John Pordage and Vl. Solovyov, would be of little interest to us.
But behind the image of Margarita was not only an abstract concept, but, first of all, a living human face. And it is precisely with its vital force that in some places it breaks the deadly network of Gnostic speculations. In a short conversation with a four-year-old baby, Margarita suddenly begins to see clearly to the revelations of the grace of motherhood:
“I’ll tell you a fairy tale,” Margarita spoke and put her hot hand on her cropped head, “there was one aunt in the world. And she had no children, and there was no happiness at all either. And here she was at first crying for a long time, and then she became angry ... "
But malice cannot take root in Margarita's soul, for in this temple there is a lamp of compassion and love. Having passed all the painful trials of the satanic ball, Margarita turns her first request to the Prince of Darkness for the outwardly alien, child-killer Frida, understandable only by the affinity of pain.
Sometimes repulsively authentically fawns and fawns Margarita before Satan, she is too visually psychological for an ideal model. And yet, in the involuntary words and decisive actions of the heroine, the ideal of love, compassion and self-sacrifice, which is not even plainly outlined in the image of Yeshua, at times takes on perceptible contours. But then it melts again in the lunatic visions of Professor Ponyrev.
Patting his interlocutor on the shoulder, the Cat pompously said: - The temple that we are building with you, Master, no one will be able to destroy.
With these words, he straightened the black greasy cap with the letter “M” on the head of the writer, who was looking at the wall with a detached look, and, as highly educated cats like to do, he disappeared into the chimney with his tail up. A small pinned paper icon wobbled slightly on the wall. It depicted the Apostle and Evangelist Matthew with an angel standing behind him. For a moment it seemed to the master that the angel had turned away from him.
N.K. Gavryushin (Moscow)
