Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita is as relevant today as it was when he first concieved of the idea. Insightful both in its satire of the specific time and place of its creation and as an illustration of the degradation and suffocation of the human spirit and intellect under an overarching thechnocratic tyranny.
One can see the influence of Bulgakov’s writing in the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and the magic(k)al surrealism of Giger.
From http://www.masterandmargarita.eu:
The punitive expedition of the devil throughout Moscow, Margarita’s search for her lover and excerpts from the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate are the most important materials for The Master and Margarita. The book is not only a funny and sometimes caustic criticism on the soviet society between 1920 and 1940 but also a touching love story… And the devil, after all, does not at all appear a bad chap. The book shows the large creative phantasy of Bulgakov. His work is part of a Russian tradition of satire that started with Gogol and continued with authors as Zostchenko, Ilf and Petrov..
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The Master and Margarita is a satire. In order to understand it completely one should know its context. Bulgakov, born in 1891, was youngster and adolescent in the last years of the regime of czar Nicolas II. During the civil war following the revolution he took the Whites’ side.
When Stalin came to power he had a very difficult time. His stories, novels and plays were very popular among the public, but unanimously abused by the state critics and banned by the authorities. Though Stalin said that he loved Bulgakov’s plays, he was prohibited to publish them.
From Wikipedia:
The novel alternates between three settings. The first is 1930s Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of Woland or Voland (Воланд), a mysterious gentleman “magician” of uncertain origin, who arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed “ex-choirmaster” valet Koroviev (Fagotto) (Фагот, the name means “bassoon” in Russian and some other languages), a mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth (Бегемот, a subversive Puss in Boots, the name referring at once to the Biblical monster and the Russian word for Hippopotamus), the fanged hitman Azazello (Азазелло, hinting of Azazel), the pale-faced Abadonna (Абадонна, a reference to Abbadon) with a death-inflicting stare, and the witch Hella (Гелла). The havoc wreaked by this group targets the literary elite, along with its trade union, MASSOLIT (a Soviet-style abbreviation for “Moscow Society of Literature”, but possibly interpretable as “Literature for the Masses”; one translation of the book also mentions that this could be a play on words in Russian, which could be translated into English as something like “LOTTALIT”), its privileged HQ-cum-restaurant Griboyedov’s House, corrupt social-climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike) – bureaucrats and profiteers – and, more generally, skeptical unbelievers in the human spirit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bulgakov
http://www.masterimargarita.eu/
Original Russian txt | English txt
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