"As the Father knows Me, so I know the Father" (John 10:15), the Savior testified before His disciples. "... I don't remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian...", asserts the wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri during interrogation by the fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontic 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 down 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 anything of what was written there. I begged him: burn your parchment for God's sake! But he snatched it from 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 verisimilitude, the illusion of certainty, 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, as opposed to the gospel, supposedly 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 of 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 an ordinary provocateur-informer in the curious Judas of Kiriath. 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’s not for nothing that Bulgakov called himself a “mystical writer”, his novel is oversaturated with heavy mystical energy, and only Yeshua knows nothing but a lonely earthly path - and at the end of it, a painful death awaits him, 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, in the end, agrees to the point of absurdity, arguing that it was precisely “good people” who mutilated the centurion Mark. 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 a support for them 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 spoke, 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 has 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 his notorious letter to Gogol, asserted about Christ: "He was the first to proclaim to people the doctrine of freedom, equality and fraternity, and by martyrdom sealed, affirmed the truth of his doctrine." 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, if not strictly atheistically, then in the spirit of religious liberalism, in which any point of view on anything is recognized as having a legitimate right to exist and be listed according to 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 ticklish 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 offensive 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 one could draw information about the gospel events. 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 that which 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 not true 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, as evidenced by the certainty that lays claim to our unconditional trust - Satan. (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 dedicated not to Yeshua at all, and not even primarily to the Master himself with his Margarita, but to Satan. Woland is the undoubted protagonist of the work, his 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). (...)
The idea of ​​Woland is equated in the philosophy of the novel with the idea of ​​Christ. “Would you be so kind as to think about the question,” the spirit of darkness instructs the stupid evangelist 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, blowing away all the trees and all life 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 system of artistic images of the novel, Woland completely surpasses Yeshua - which is very important for any literary work.
But at the same time, a strange paradox awaits the reader in the novel: despite all the talk of 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 the admirers of Bulgakov's novel (after all, one 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 is stated in the novel. That is, he does not exist at all, but he does not act as a seducer, a sower of evil. A 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 needs Woland so evil and, as it were, received in return from the forces of good a punishing sword in his hands. 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 ... Yeshua and Woland - nothing more than two peculiar hypostases 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 arguing about 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 philippics about cowardice, opportunism, indulgence of evil and untruth - that sounds topical even 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. The reasoning of I. Vinogradov 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 some ways 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 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 only 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 the Son (the son of God) - 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 "not guessed" - they are inspired from outside. And if the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God, 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 plays a 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 his 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 - at the Patriarch's Ponds - preparations for the "ball" begin, a kind of "black proskomidia". 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 magical properties inherent in her, she becomes a source of that energy that turns out to be necessary for the entire demonic world at a certain moment of its existence - for 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. It is not for nothing that 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

Help people!! ! How does the work of M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" begin? Why? and got the best answer

Answer from Asian[guru]
The events in The Master and Margarita begin "one day in the spring, at the hour of an unprecedentedly hot sunset, in Moscow, on the Patriarch's Ponds." Satan and his retinue appear in the capital.
Diaboliad, one of the author's favorite motifs, plays a completely realistic role here in The Master and Margarita and can serve as brilliant examples of grotesque-fantastic, satirical exposure of the contradictions of living reality. Woland sweeps over Bulgakov's Moscow like a thunderstorm, punishing mockery and dishonesty.
The very idea of ​​placing in Moscow in the thirties the prince of darkness and his retinue, personifying those forces that defy any laws of logic, was profoundly innovative. Woland appears in Moscow to "test" the heroes of the novel, to pay tribute to the Master and Margarita, who remained faithful to each other and love, to punish
bribe-takers, covetous, traitors. Judgment on them is not carried out according to the laws of good, they will appear before the underworld. According to Bulgakov, in the current situation, evil should be fought with the forces of evil in order to restore justice. This is the tragic grotesque of the novel. Woland returns to the Master his novel about Pontius Pilate, which the Master burned in a fit of fear and cowardice. The myth of Pilate and Yeshua, recreated in the Master's book, takes the reader to the initial era of the spiritual civilization of mankind, affirming the idea that the confrontation between good and evil is eternal, it lies in the very circumstances of life, in the human soul, capable of lofty impulses and enslaved by false , the transient interests of today.
A fantastic turn of events allows the writer to unfold before us a whole gallery of characters of a very unsightly appearance, drawing an analogy with life itself. A sudden encounter with evil spirits turns inside out all these Berlioz, Brass, Maigel, Ivanovich Nikanorov and others. The session of black magic, which Woland and his assistants gives in the capital's variety show, literally and
figuratively "undresses" some citizens from the audience. It is not the devil who is afraid of the author and his favorite characters. The devil, perhaps, for Bulgakov really does not exist, just as there is no god-man. In his novel lives a different, deep faith in the historical
man and into immutable moral laws. For Bulgakov, the moral law is contained within a person and should not depend on religious horror before the coming retribution, the manifestation of which can be easily seen in the inglorious death of a well-read, but unscrupulous atheist who headed MASSOLIT.
And the Master, the protagonist of Bulgakov's book, who created the novel about Christ and Pilate, is also far from being religious in the Christian sense of the word. He wrote a book of great psychological expressiveness based on historical material. This novel about the novel, as it were, focuses in itself the contradictions that must be resolved by their own
life of all subsequent generations of people, every thinking and suffering person.
The master in the novel could not win. By making him a winner, Bulgakov would have violated the laws of artistic truth, would have betrayed his sense of realism. But does the final pages of the book exude pessimism? Let's not forget: on earth, the Master left a student, his sight Ivan Ponyrev, the former Homeless; on earth, the Master has left a novel that is destined for a long life.
The Master and Margarita is a complex work. Much has already been said about the novel, and more will be said. There are many interpretations of the famous novel. Much more will be thought about and written about The Master and Margarita.

Answer from Lady Blues[guru]
there are good essays on the subject

Answer from Sturka re[guru]
the words of Goethe from Faust (it seems that Faust never mastered it to the end)
- So who are you finally?
-I am part of that force that always wants evil
and always do good!
Why? Well, here you can philosophize ... Volond gave peace to the Master and Margarita, they remained together.

Answer from Natalya Bereza[guru]
...So who are you, finally?
I am part of that power
what you always want
evil and always doing good.
Goethe. "Faust"
This is the most mysterious of the novels in the entire history of Russian literature of the 20th century. This is a novel that is almost officially called The Gospel of Satan. This is The Master and Margarita. A book that can be read and re-read dozens, hundreds of times, but most importantly, which is still impossible to understand. So, which pages of The Master and Margarita were dictated by the Forces of Light? And what - on the contrary - are written "from the words" of the Forces of Darkness? So far, no one knows this. But the clue, perhaps, is in these first lines of the novel?

The Master and Margarita is a phantasmagoric novel by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov, which occupies an ambiguous position in Russian literature. "The Master and Margarita" is a book written in an original language, the fates of ordinary people, mystical powers, sharp satire and a genuine atmosphere of atheism are intertwined here.

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 about great and pure love, and about devotion and self-sacrifice, and about striving for truth and fighting for it, and about human vices, which Woland examines at a glance from the stage. 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.

Foreword

Mikhail Bulgakov took away from this world the secret of the creative concept of his last and, probably, the main work, The Master and Margarita.

The author's worldview turned out to be very eclectic: when writing the novel, Judaic teachings, Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Masonic motifs were used. "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 for its correction." It follows from this that the novel allows for a lot of interpretations in the Christian, atheistic, and occult traditions, the choice of which largely depends on the point of view of the researcher...

“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 the undoubted protagonist of the work, his image is a kind of energy node of the entire complex compositional structure of the novel.

The very title "Master and Margarita" "obscures the true meaning of the work: the reader's attention is focused on the two characters of the novel as the main ones, while in terms of the meaning of the events they are only henchmen of the protagonist. The content of the novel is not the history of the Master, not his literary misadventures, not even his relationship with Margarita (all this is secondary), but the story of one of Satan's visits to earth: with the beginning of it, the novel begins, and ends with its end. The master appears to the reader only in the thirteenth chapter, Margarita, and even later - as Woland needs them.

“The anti-Christian orientation of the novel leaves no doubt... It is not for nothing that Bulgakov so carefully disguised the true content, the deep meaning of his novel, entertaining the reader's attention with side details. But 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? .. "

The above description of the novel by the teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy, candidate of philological sciences Mikhail Mikhailovich Dunaev indicates a serious problem that Orthodox parents and teachers face in connection with the fact that the novel The Master and Margarita is included in the literature curriculum of state secondary educational institutions. How to protect religiously indifferent, and therefore defenseless against occult influences, students from the influence of that satanic mysticism, which is saturated in the novel?

One of the main holidays of the Orthodox Church is the Transfiguration of the Lord. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was transfigured before His disciples (, ), the souls of Christians are now transfigured through life in Christ. This transformation can be extended to the outside world - Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is no exception.

Era portrait

It is known from biographical information that Bulgakov himself perceived his novel as a kind of warning, as a superliterary text. Already dying, he asked his wife to bring the manuscript of the novel, pressed it to his chest and gave it away with the words: “Let them know!”

Accordingly, if our goal is not just to get aesthetic and emotional satisfaction from reading, but to understand the author’s idea, to understand why a person spent the last twelve years of his life, in fact, his whole life, we should treat this work not only from the point of view of literary criticism. To understand the author's idea, one must at least know something about the author's life - often its episodes are reflected in his creations.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) - the grandson of an Orthodox priest, the son of an Orthodox priest, professor, teacher of history at the Kyiv Theological Academy, a relative of the famous Orthodox theologian Fr. Sergei Bulgakov. This suggests that Mikhail Bulgakov was at least partially familiar with the Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world.

Now for many it is a wonder that there is some kind of Orthodox tradition of perceiving the world, but nevertheless it is so. The Orthodox worldview is actually very deep, it has been formed over more than seven and a half thousand years and has absolutely nothing to do with the caricature drawn on it by essentially ignorant people in the very era in which the novel “The Master and Margarita.

In the 1920s, Bulgakov became interested in the study of Kabbalism and occult literature. In the novel The Master and Margarita, the names of demons, the description of the satanic black mass (in the novel it is called “Satan’s ball”) and so on speak of a good knowledge of this literature ...

Already at the end of 1912, Bulgakov (he was then 21 years old) quite definitely declared to his sister Nadezhda: "You'll see, I'll be a writer." And he became one. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that Bulgakov is a Russian writer. And what has Russian literature always been primarily concerned with? Exploration of the human soul. Any episode of the life of a literary character is described exactly as much as is necessary to understand what impact he had on the human soul.

Bulgakov took the Western popular form and filled it with Russian content, said in a popular form about the most serious things. But!..

For a religiously ignorant reader, the novel, in a favorable case, remains a bestseller, since it does not have the foundation that is necessary to perceive the fullness of the idea invested in the novel. In the worst case, this very ignorance leads to the fact that the reader sees in The Master and Margarita and includes in his worldview such ideas of religious content that Mikhail Bulgakov himself would hardly have come up with. In particular, in a certain environment, this book is valued as a "hymn to Satan." The situation with the perception of the novel is similar to the delivery of potatoes to Russia under Peter I: the product is wonderful, but due to the fact that no one knew what to do with it and what part of it is edible, people were poisoned and died by entire villages.

In general, it must be said that the novel was written at a time when a kind of epidemic of "poisoning" on religious grounds was spreading in the USSR. The point is this: the 1920s and 30s in the Soviet Union were the years when Western anti-Christian books were published in huge numbers, in which the authors either completely denied the historicity of Jesus Christ, or sought to present Him as a simple Jewish philosopher and nothing more. The recommendations of Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz to Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (Bezdomny) at the Patriarch's Ponds (275) are a summary of such books. It is worth talking about the atheistic worldview in more detail in order to understand what Bulgakov is making fun of in his novel.

Atheistic worldview

In fact, the question "Is there a God or not" in the young Land of the Soviets was purely political in nature. The answer “God exists” required the immediate sending of the aforementioned God “to Solovki for three years” (278), which would be problematic to implement. Logically, the second option was inevitably chosen: "There is no God." Once again it is worth mentioning that this answer was purely political in nature, nobody cared about the truth.

For educated people, the question of the existence of God, in fact, never existed - another matter, they differed in opinions about the nature, features of this existence. The atheistic perception of the world in its modern form was formed only in the last quarter of the 18th century and took root with difficulty, since its birth was accompanied by terrible social catastrophes such as the French Revolution. That is why Woland is extremely happy to find in Moscow the most outspoken atheists in the person of Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny (277).

According to Orthodox theology, atheism is a parody of religion. It is the belief that there is no God. The word "atheism" itself is translated from Greek as follows: "a" is the negative particle "not", and "theos" - "God", literally - "godlessness". Atheists do not want to hear about any faith and assure that they base their assertion on strictly scientific facts, and “in the realm of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God” (278). But such “strictly scientific facts” in the field of knowledge of God fundamentally do not exist and cannot exist ... Science considers the world to be infinite, which means that God can always hide behind some pebble in the backyard of the universe, and not a single criminal investigation department can find Him (search Woland in Moscow, which is quite limited in space, and show the absurdity of such searches like: “Gagarin flew into space, did not see God”). There is not a single scientific fact about the non-existence of God (as well as about being), but to assert that something does not exist according to the laws of logic is much more difficult than to assert that it is. To make sure that there is no God, atheists need to conduct a scientific experiment: to experimentally test the religious path that claims that He exists. This means that atheism calls everyone who seeks the meaning of life to religious practice, that is, to prayer, fasting, and other features of the spiritual life. It's clearly absurd...

It is this very absurdity (“God does not exist because He cannot exist”) that Bulgakov demonstrates to the Soviet citizen, who pathologically does not want to notice the Behemoth riding the tram and paying the fare, as well as the breathtaking appearance of Koroviev and Azazello. Much later, already in the mid-1980s, Soviet punks experimentally proved that, having a similar appearance, one could walk around Moscow only until the first meeting with a policeman. In Bulgakov, however, only those people who are ready to take into account the otherworldly factor of earthly events begin to notice all these glaring things, who agree that the events of our life do not occur by chance, but with the participation of certain specific personalities from the "otherworldly » peace.

Biblical characters in the novel

How, in fact, to explain the appeal of Mikhail Bulgakov to the plot of the Bible?

If you look closely, the range of issues that concern humanity throughout history is rather limited. All these questions (they are also called "eternal" or "damned", depending on their relation) concern the meaning of life, or, what is the same, the meaning of death. Bulgakov turns to the New Testament biblical story, reminding the Soviet reader of the very existence of this Book. In it, by the way, these questions are formulated with the utmost precision. In it, in fact, there are answers - for those who want to accept them ...

The “Master and Margarita” raises all the same “eternal” questions: why, throughout his earthly life, a person encounters evil and where does God look (if He exists at all), what awaits a person after death, and so on. Mikhail Bulgakov changed the language of the Bible to the slang of a religiously uneducated Soviet intellectual of the 1920s and 30s. For what? In particular, in order to talk about freedom in a country that was degenerating into a single concentration camp.

Human freedom

It is only at first glance that Woland and his company do what they want with a person. In fact, only under the condition of the voluntary aspiration of the human soul to evil does Woland have the power to mock him. And here it would be worth turning to the Bible: what does it say about the power and authority of the devil?

Book of Job

Chapter 1

6 And there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; Satan also came between them.

8 And the Lord said to Satan, Have you taken notice of my servant Job?

12 ... behold, all that he has is in your hand; but do not stretch out your hand on him.

Chapter 2

4 And Satan answered the Lord, and said, ... A man will give all that he has for his life;

5 but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, will he bless you?

6 And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand; save only his life.

Satan fulfills the command of God and annoys Job in every possible way. Who does Job see as the source of his sorrows?

Chapter 27

1 And ... Job ... said:

2 God lives ... and the Almighty, who grieved my soul ...

Chapter 31

2 What is my fate from God above? And what is the inheritance from the Almighty from heaven?

Even such the greatest evil in the atheistic understanding as the death of a person does not occur at the will of Satan, but at the will of God - in a conversation with Job, one of his friends says the following words:

Chapter 32

6 And Elihu the son of Barahiel answered:

21 ... I will not flatter any person,

22 because I do not know how to flatter: now kill me, my Creator.

So, the Bible clearly shows: Satan can do only what God, who cares first of all about the eternal and priceless soul of every person, will allow him.

Satan can harm a person only with the consent of the person himself. This idea is persistently pursued in the novel: Woland first checks the disposition of a person’s soul, his readiness to commit a dishonest, sinful act, and, if any, gets the power to mock him.

Nikanor Ivanovich, the chairman of the housing association, agrees to a bribe (“Strictly persecuted,” the chairman whispered quietly, and looked around), gets hold of “a double mark for two people in the front row” (366) and thereby gives Koroviev the opportunity to do him nasty things.

Entertainer Georges of Bengal constantly lies, hypocrites, and in the end, by the way, at the request of the workers, Behemoth leaves him without a head (392).

The financial director of the variety show, Rimsky, suffered because he was going to "get the wrong guy, blame everything on Likhodeev, shield himself, and so on" (420).

Prokhor Petrovich, head of the Spectacular Commission, does nothing at the workplace and does not want to do it, while expressing a desire to be "damned". It is clear that Behemoth does not refuse such an offer (458).

Employees of the Spectacle branch are fawning and cowardly in front of the authorities, which allows Koroviev to organize an unceasing choir from them (462).

Maximilian Andreevich, Berlioz's uncle, wants one thing - to move to Moscow "at all costs", that is, at any cost. It is for this peculiarity of innocent desire that what happens to him happens (465).

Andrey Fokich Sokov, the manager of the Variety Theater buffet, stole two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles, placed them in five savings banks and hid two hundred gold ten under the floor at home, before suffering all kinds of damage in apartment No. 50 (478).

Nikolai Ivanovich, Margarita's neighbor, becomes a transport hog because of the specific attention given to the maid Natasha (512).

It is significant that it is precisely for the sake of determining the tendency of Muscovites to fall away from the voice of their own conscience of all kinds that a performance is arranged in the Variety: Woland receives an answer to the “important question” that worries him: have these townspeople changed internally? (389).

Margarita, as they say, classically sells her soul to the devil ... But this is a completely separate topic in the novel.

margarita

The high priestess of a satanic sect is usually a woman. She is referred to as the "prom queen" in the novel. Woland offers Margarita to become such a priestess. Why to her? But because with the aspirations of her soul, her heart, she herself had already prepared herself for such a service: “What did this woman need, in whose eyes some kind of incomprehensible light always burned, what did this witch, who adorned herself a little squinting in one eye, need? then in the spring mimosa? (485) - this quote from the novel is taken six pages before Margarita's first proposal to become a witch. And as soon as the aspiration of her soul becomes conscious ("... oh, really, I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to find out ..."), Azazello appears (491). Margarita becomes the “final” witch only after she expresses her full consent to “go to hell in the middle of nowhere” (497).

Having become a witch, Margarita fully feels that state, which, perhaps, she did not always consciously strive for all her life: she “felt free, free from everything” (499). "From everything" - including from duties, from responsibility, from conscience - that is, from one's human dignity. The fact of experiencing such a feeling, by the way, suggests that from now on Margarita could never love anyone else but herself: to love a person means to voluntarily give up part of your freedom in his favor, that is, from desires, aspirations and everything else. To love someone means to give the beloved the strength of your soul, as they say, "invest your soul." Margarita gives her soul not to the Master, but to Woland. And she does this not at all for the sake of love for the Master, but for herself, for the sake of her whim: “I would pawn my soul to the devil, just to [me] find out…” (491).

Love in this world is subject not to human fantasies, but to a higher law, whether a person wants it or not. This law says that love is won not at any cost, but only at one cost - self-denial, that is, the rejection of one's desires, passions, whims and the patience of the pain arising from this. “Explain: I love because it hurts, or does it hurt because I love? ..” The Apostle Paul in one of his epistles has these words about love: “... I am not looking for yours, but you” ().

So, Margarita is looking not for the Master, but for his novel. She belongs to those aesthetic persons for whom the author is only an appendix to his creation. It is not the Master that is truly dear to Margarita, but his novel, or rather, the spirit of this novel, more precisely, the source of this spirit. It is to him that her soul aspires, it is to him that she will subsequently be given. Further relations between Margarita and the Master are just a moment of inertia, a person is by nature inert.

The Responsibility of Freedom

Even becoming a witch, Margarita still does not lose her human freedom: the decision of whether she should be the “prom queen” depends on her will. And only when she gives her consent, a sentence is pronounced on her soul: “In short! cried Koroviev, “quite briefly: will you not refuse to take on this duty?” “I won’t refuse,” Margarita answered firmly. "Finished!" - said Koroviev "(521).

It was with her consent that Margaret made the Black Mass possible. A lot in this world depends on the free will of a person, much more than it seems to those who now talk from TV screens about “freedom of conscience” and “universal values” ...

Black mass

The Black Mass is a mystical rite dedicated to Satan, a mockery of the Christian liturgy. In The Master and Margarita, she is called "Satan's ball."

Woland comes to Moscow precisely to perform this rite - this is the main purpose of his visit and one of the central episodes of the novel. The question is pertinent: Woland's arrival in Moscow to perform a black mass - is it just part of a "world tour" or something exclusive? What event made such a visit possible? The answer to this question is given by the scene on the balcony of the Pashkovs' house, from which Woland shows the Master Moscow.

“In order to understand this scene, you need to visit Moscow now, imagine yourself on the roof of the Pashkovs’ house and try to understand: what did a person see or not see from the roof of this house in Moscow in the second half of the 1930s? Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Bulgakov describes the gap between the explosion of the Temple and the beginning of the construction of the Palace of Soviets. At that time, the Temple had already been blown up and the area was built up by the "Shanghai". Therefore, there were visible huts, which are mentioned in the novel. Given the knowledge of the landscape of that time, this scene acquires a striking symbolic meaning: Woland turns out to be the master in the city in which the temple was blown up. There is a Russian proverb: "A holy place is never empty." Its meaning is this: demons settle in the place of the desecrated shrine. The place of the destroyed iconostases was taken by the "icons" of the Politburo. So it is here: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up and naturally a “noble foreigner” appears (275).

And this foreigner, right from the epigraph, reveals who he is: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” But this is Woland's autocharacteristic and this is a lie. The first part is just, and the second ... It's true: Satan wants evil for people, but good comes out of his temptations. But it is not Satan who does good, but God, for the sake of saving the human soul, turns his intrigues to good. This means that when Satan says that “desiring evil without end, he does only good,” he ascribes to himself the mystery of divine Providence. And this is a godless declaration.”

In fact, everything that has to do with Woland bears the stamp of imperfection and inferiority (the Orthodox understanding of the number "666" is just that). At a performance in a variety show, we see “a red-haired girl, good to everyone, if only the scar on her neck did not spoil her” (394), before the start of the “ball”, Koroviev says that “there will be no shortage of electric light, even, perhaps, it would be good, if it were smaller" (519). And the very appearance of Woland is far from perfect: “Woland’s face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was pulled down, deep wrinkles parallel to sharp eyebrows were cut on his high bald forehead. The skin on Woland's face seemed to be burned forever by a tan" (523). If we take into account the teeth and eyes of different colors, the crooked mouth and the slanted eyebrows (275), then it is clear that we are not a model of beauty.

But let us return to the purpose of Woland's stay in Moscow, to the black mass. One of the main, central moments of Christian worship is the reading of the Gospel. And, since the Black Mass is just a blasphemous parody of Christian worship, it is necessary to mock this part of it as well. But what to read instead of the hated Gospel???

And here the question arises: "Pilat's chapters" in the novel - who is their author? Who writes this novel based on the plot of the Master and Margarita novel itself? Woland.

Where did the Master's novel come from

“The fact is that Bulgakov left eight major editions of The Master and Margarita, which are very interesting and useful to compare. The unpublished scenes are by no means inferior to the final version of the text in their depth, artistic power and, importantly, semantic load, and sometimes they clarify and supplement it. So, if we focus on these editions, then the Master constantly says that he writes from dictation, performs someone's task. By the way, in the official version, the Master is also lamented by the misfortune that fell on him in the form of an ill-fated novel.

Woland reads burned and even unwritten chapters to Margarita.

Finally, in the recently published drafts, the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, when there is a conversation about whether Jesus was or not, is as follows. After Woland finished his story, Bezdomny says: “How well you talk about it, as if you yourself saw it! Maybe you should write a gospel too!” And then comes Woland's wonderful remark: “The Gospel from me??? Ha ha ha, interesting idea, though!”

What the Master writes is the “gospel of Satan,” which shows Christ the way Satan would like Him to be. Bulgakov hints at the censored Soviet times, tries to explain to the readers of anti-Christian pamphlets: "Look, here's who would like to see in Christ only a man, a philosopher - Woland."

In vain, the Master is self-absorbedly amazed at how accurately he “guessed” the ancient events (401). Such books are not "guessed" - they are inspired from outside. The Bible, according to Christians, is a God-inspired book, that is, at the time of its writing, the authors were in a state of special spiritual enlightenment, influence from God. And if the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God, then the source of inspiration for the novel about Yeshua is also easily visible. As a matter of fact, it is Woland who begins the story of the events in Yershalaim in the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, and the Master's text is only a continuation of this story. The master, accordingly, in the process of working on the novel about Pilate was under a special diabolical influence. Bulgakov shows the consequences of such an impact on a person.

The price of inspiration and the mystery of the name

While working on the novel, the Master notices changes in himself, which he himself regards as symptoms of a mental illness. But he is wrong. "His mind is in order, his soul is going crazy." The master begins to be afraid of the dark, it seems to him that at night some “octopus with very long and cold tentacles” climbs through the window (413), fear takes possession of “every cell” of his body (417), the novel becomes “hated” to him (563 ) and then, according to the Master, "the last thing happens": he "takes out of the drawer the heavy lists of the novel and draft notebooks" and begins to "burn them" (414).

In fact, in this case, Bulgakov somewhat idealized the situation: the artist, indeed, having drawn inspiration from the source of all evil and decay, begins to feel hatred towards his creation and sooner or later destroys it. But this is not “the last”, according to the Master ... The fact is that the artist begins to be afraid of creativity itself, afraid of inspiration, expecting fear and despair to return behind them: “nothing around interests me, they broke me, I’m bored, I want to go to the basement "- says Woland the Master (563). And what is an artist without inspiration?.. Sooner or later, following his work, he destroys himself. What is a Master for?

In the Master's worldview, the reality of Satan is obvious and beyond any doubt - it is not for nothing that he immediately recognizes him in a foreigner who talked with Berlioz and Ivan at the Patriarch's Ponds (402). But there is no place for God in the Master's worldview — the master's Yeshua has nothing in common with the real, historical God-Man Jesus Christ. Here the secret of this name itself is revealed - the Master. He is not just a writer, he is precisely a creator, a master of a new world, a new reality in which, in a fit of suicidal pride, he puts himself in the role of Master and Creator.

Before the beginning of the construction of the era of “universal happiness” in our country, this era was first described by individuals on paper, the idea of ​​its construction first appeared, the idea of ​​this era itself. The master created the idea of ​​a new world in which only one spiritual entity is real - Satan. The real Woland, the authentic one, is described by Bulgakov (the same one “slanted forever tanned”). And the transformed, magnificent and majestic horseman with his retinue, whom we see on the last pages of The Master and Margarita, is Woland, as the soul of the Master sees him. About the disease of this soul has already been said ...

Hell out of brackets

The end of the novel is marked by a kind of Happy End. It looks like it, but it does. It would seem: the Master is with Margarita, Pilate finds a certain state of peace, a bewitching picture of horsemen retreating, - only the titles and the word “end” are missing. But the fact is that during his last conversation with the Master, even before his death, Woland utters words that bring the real end of the novel beyond its cover: “I’ll tell you,” Woland turned to the Master with a smile, “that your novel will bring you more surprises.” » (563). And with these "surprises" the Master will be destined to meet in the very idealistic house to which he and Margarita are sent on the last pages of the novel (656). It is there that Margarita will stop “loving” him, it is there that he will never again experience creative inspiration, it is there that he will never be able to turn to God in despair because there is no God in the world created by the Master, it is there that the Master will not be able to do the last thing that the life of a desperate person who has not found God ends on earth - he will not be able to arbitrarily end his life by suicide: he is already dead and is in the world of eternity, in a world whose owner is the devil. In the language of Orthodox theology, this place is called hell...

Where does the novel take the reader?

Does the novel lead the reader to God? Dare to say "Yes!" The novel, as well as the “satanic bible,” leads a person honest to himself to God. If, thanks to The Master and Margarita, one believes in the reality of Satan as a person, then one will inevitably have to believe in God as a Person: after all, Woland categorically stated that “Jesus really existed” (284). And the fact that Bulgakov's Yeshua is not God, while Bulgakov's Satan in the "gospel from himself" is trying to show and prove by all means. But is Mikhail Bulgakov correctly described the events that took place in Palestine two thousand years ago from a scientific (that is, an atheistic) point of view? Perhaps there is some reason to believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth is Yeshua Ha-Notsri, not described by Bulgakov at all? But then, who is he?

So, it follows from here that the reader is logically and inevitably obliged before his own conscience to embark on the path of searching for God, on the path of knowing God.

Alexander Bashlachev. Staff.

Sakharov V. I. Mikhail Bulgakov: lessons of fate. // Bulgakov M. White Guard. Master and Margarita. Minsk, 1988, p. 12.

Andrey Kuraev, deacon. The answer to the question about the novel "The Master and Margarita" // Audio recording of the lecture "On the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ."

Dunaev M. M. Manuscripts do not burn? Perm, 1999, p. 24.

Frank Coppola. Apocalypse now. Hood. Movie.

On May 23, 1938, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov completed his novel The Master and Margarita. We offer readers of the Tabloid to get acquainted with interesting facts, as well as illustrations for the legendary novel, made by the Samara artist Nikolai Korolev. Let's begin with that…

... the time when work on The Master and Margarita began, Bulgakov in various manuscripts dated either 1928 or 1929. In the first edition, the novel had variants of the names "Black Magician", "Engineer's Hoof", "Juggler with a Hoof", "V.'s Son", "Tour". The first edition of The Master and Margarita was destroyed by the author on March 18, 1930, after receiving news of the ban on the play The Cabal of Saints. Bulgakov reported this in a letter to the government: “And personally, with my own hands, I threw a draft of a novel about the devil into the stove ...”.

Work on The Master and Margarita resumed in 1931. Rough sketches were made for the novel, and Margarita and her then nameless companion, the future Master, already appeared here, and Woland acquired his violent retinue. The second edition, created before 1936, had the subtitle "Fantastic novel" and variants of the titles "The Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I am", "The Black Magician", "The Hoof of the Engineer".

And finally, the third edition, begun in the second half of 1936, was originally called "Prince of Darkness", but already in 1937 the title "Master and Margarita" appeared. On June 25, 1938, the full text was reprinted for the first time (printed by O. S. Bokshanskaya, sister of E. S. Bulgakova). The author's editing continued almost until the death of the writer, Bulgakov stopped it at the phrase of Margarita: “So this, then, is the writers going after the coffin?” ...

Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita for a total of more than 10 years.

There is also one interesting meteorological correspondence that confirms the internal chronology of The Master and Margarita. Judging by press reports, on May 1, 1929, there was a sharp warming in Moscow, unusual for this time of year, as a result of which the temperature rose from zero to thirty degrees in one day. In the following days, an equally sharp cooling was observed, culminating in rains and thunderstorms. In Bulgakov's novel, the evening of May 1 turns out to be unusually hot, and on the eve of the last flight, as once over Yershalaim, a strong thunderstorm with a downpour sweeps over Moscow.

Hidden dating is also contained in the indication of the age of the Master - the most autobiographical of all the characters in the novel. A master is “a man of about thirty-eight years of age.” Bulgakov himself turned the same age on May 15, 1929. 1929 is also the time when Bulgakov began work on The Master and Margarita.

If we talk about predecessors, then the first impetus for the idea of ​​the image of Satan, as A. Zerkalov suggests in his work, was music - an opera by Charles Gounod, written on the plot of I.V. Goethe and struck Bulgakov in childhood for life. Woland's idea was taken from a poem by I.V. Goethe's "Faust", where she is mentioned only once and is omitted in Russian translations.

It is believed that Bulgakov's apartment was repeatedly searched by the NKVD, and they were aware of the existence and content of the draft version of The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov also had a telephone conversation with Stalin in 1937 (the contents of which are unknown to anyone). Despite the mass repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor any of his family members were arrested.

In the novel, at the time of the death of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, unlike the Gospel, he pronounces the name not of God, but of Pontius Pilate. According to deacon Andrei Kuraev, for this reason (and not only for it), the Yershalaim story (a novel in a novel) from the point of view of Christianity should be perceived as blasphemous, but this, according to him, does not mean that the entire novel should also be considered blasphemous "Master and Margarita".

Woland in the early editions of the novel was called Astaroth. However, this name was later replaced, apparently due to the fact that the name "Astaroth" is associated with a specific demon of the same name, other than Satan.

The Variety Theater does not exist in Moscow and has never existed. But now several theaters sometimes compete for the title at once.

In the penultimate edition of the novel, Woland says the words “He has a courageous face, he does his job right, and in general, everything is over here. We've got to go!" referring to the pilot, a character later omitted from the novel.

According to the writer's widow, Elena Sergeevna, Bulgakov's last words about the novel "The Master and Margarita" before his death were: "To know ... To know."

In Moscow there is a house-museum "Bulgakov's House". It is located at st. Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10. In apartment number 50 there is a museum that tells about the life and work of the writer. There are also theatrical performances, original improvisations on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov.

Some oddities begin even during the creation of the novel. An interesting fact is that Bulgakov was prompted to write The Master and Margarita by the novel presented to him by Chayanov A.V. titled "Venediktov or Memorable Events of My Life". The protagonist of the novel is Bulgakov, who is faced with diabolical forces. M.A.'s wife Bulgakova, Elena Belozerova, in her memoirs, wrote about the strong impact of the coincidence of surnames on the writer.

Bulgakov wrote his novel in the atmosphere of Moscow in the 1930s: the destruction of religion and religious institutions and, as a result, the fall of spiritual and moral life. Naturally, in such years, the novel with biblical motifs was not accepted for publication, and Bulgakov tried to burn his creation. The resumption of work on the novel is attributed to the writer's clash with the forces of the devil, namely the conversation between Mikhail Afanasyevich and Stalin on the phone. After that, during the mass repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor his family members were arrested.

The novel by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" was not completed and was not published during the author's lifetime. It was first published only in 1966, 26 years after Bulgakov's death, and then in an abbreviated journal version. The fact that this greatest literary work has reached the reader, we owe to the writer's wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, who managed to save the manuscript of the novel in difficult Stalinist times.

In 2005, director Vladimir Bortko made an attempt to film Bulgakov's artistic canvas. The ten-episode series was shown on the Rossiya TV channel and was viewed by 40 million viewers. Here are some interesting facts about the movie.

Valentin Gaft, who played several minor roles in the television series, played Woland himself in the unreleased Kara film. In turn, Alexander Filippenko, who played the role of Azazello in that film, was another representative of the dark forces - Koroviev.

The man in the jacket wears the uniform of a major of state security (the rank corresponded to the rank of brigade commander of the Red Army) during the main action of the film and the uniform of a senior major of state security (corresponds to the commander of the Red Army) in the finale. This uniform was worn by employees of the NKVD GUGB in 1937-1943. The man in the jacket is not mentioned in the novel; all the episodes with his participation are a godsend of the authors.

During the main action of the film, the investigator wears the uniform of a junior lieutenant of state security (corresponding to a senior lieutenant of the Red Army). In the final, he has insignia - four cubes in buttonholes - which have never been in either the Red Army or the NKVD GUGB in the entire history of their existence.

Sergei Bezrukov, who played Yeshua, voiced the role of the Master, so the actor Alexander Galibin does not speak in his own voice throughout the entire film.

Oleg Basilashvili, who played Woland, voiced the role of the head of the secret guard of the procurator of Judea Aphranius, played by Lubomiras Laucevičius.

Despite the rather wide running time, some episodes from the original novel were missed in the film, for example, the announcement of the death sentence by Pontius Pilate in front of a crowd of people, the dream of Nikanor Ivanovich, the barman’s consultation with the doctor after visiting the “bad apartment”, the episode with Margarita in a trolley bus on the way to Alexander Garden, Margarita's collision with the illuminated disk during the flight, Margarita's conversation with the boy after the destruction of Latunsky's apartment (most of the details of Margarita's flight from Latunsky's apartment to the lake were also missed, except for the meeting with Natasha on the hog), a conversation with Goat-foot over a glass of champagne. The details of the Sabbath scene were modestly presented, for example, there were no fat-faced frogs, luminous rotten, Margarita's flight to the other side.

There is no episode of Margarita's initiation into a witch in the novel, this is a find by the authors of the film, Woland and the Cat Behemoth play chess (chess pieces, according to Bulgakov's novel, are alive), an episode of Woland and Margarita's observation of what is happening in the globe, a forest with parrots and Margarita's flight at the Ball Satan, episodes with Abaddonna, an enthusiastic conversation between Behemoth, Gella and Woland after the ball, the meeting of Aphranius with Niza, the conversation between Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth after the fire in Griboedovo.

Woland in the novel is no more than 50 years old, and Oleg Basilashvili is ~75. Azazello's hair color is red, while Alexander Filippenko in this role is dark. Woland's eyes are of different colors and one of them always looks straight, Basilashvili's eyes in this role are healthy and of the same color.

Some minor edits have been made to the text. In the 9th episode, Pilate is talking to Matthew: “And now I need parchment…”, “And do you want to take away the last one?”, “I didn’t say give it back, I said show it.”. In the scene of Sempliyarov's interrogation, he talks about a magician in a mask (as it was in the novel), although in the film Woland appears in the theater without it.

In the interrogation scene of Yeshua, he introduces himself as Ga Nozri, not Ga Nozri.

In episode 8, Koroviev gives the Master a clearly metal goblet (according to the text - a glass cup), the Master drops it on the carpet, Koroviev remarks: "fortunately, fortunately ...", although nothing was broken.