The Master and Margarita in The Alternative Worlds

Nov 22, 2011 Terry rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 3 - 3.5 stars

I find myself a little conflicted about this book. On the one hand it is full of scenes and ideas that are unquestionably intriguing and thought-provoking, on the other there were significant parts of it that I found, not bad, but certainly less than compelling and these latter segments made up the bulk of the first part of the novel. It wasn't until the commencement of Part Two that I felt as though things were beginning to gel and the ultimate story began to show its head. Prior t 3 - 3.5 stars

I find myself a little conflicted about this book. On the one hand it is full of scenes and ideas that are unquestionably intriguing and thought-provoking, on the other there were significant parts of it that I found, not bad, but certainly less than compelling and these latter segments made up the bulk of the first part of the novel. It wasn't until the commencement of Part Two that I felt as though things were beginning to gel and the ultimate story began to show its head. Prior to that we have three excellent introductory chapters that set up the context of the ‘main’ story: the arrival of the mysterious “Professor, Magician, and Consultant” Woland and his retinue of oddballs in 1930’s Moscow; this then shifts to an intriguing excerpt from a historical novel (written, we discover, by the titular ‘Master’) about Pontius Pilate and a decidedly un-biblical Christ. These introductory chapters are followed by a return to Moscow and, for me at least, things started to fall apart a bit as the bulk of Part One ended up being a litany of 'set-up' segments wherein Soviet intelligentsia get their comeuppances at the hands of Woland’s demonic entourage. I think my main problems with these scenes lay in the fact that I didn’t find the concentration on the internal politics of the early Soviet literary world compelling, not to mention the fact that the humour that pervades these scenes is strongly in the realm of farce, an area of comedy that really isn’t my cuppa. That being said I don’t want to knock on Bulgakov too much given that this was an unfinished novel that he apparently didn’t even expect to ever reach publication. There’s a heck of a lot going on in this book and it is a shame that we are unable to see what Bulgakov might have produced as a finished and fully polished work. What we do have is still very compelling as three main plotlines interweave and ultimately come together: the depredations made against Moscow and its tyrannical regime by Woland, who is also a very interesting version of the devil; the continuing story of Pontius Pilate, a man convinced of the evil of both himself and the world yet who desperately wants to believe in its goodness and who finds the turning point, and apparent tragedy, of his life in his meeting with the strange Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus); finally we have the love story of the titular Master and Margarita, the former a writer languishing in an insane asylum after his great work is rejected and denounced by the bureaucracy of Soviet Russia and the latter his bereaved lover whose only hope is to save him.

Woland and his retinue are easily the most colourful characters in the story and include a giant talking black cat, a checker-suited comic sorcerer, a red-haired and fanged assassin-butler, and a sultry vampiress-witch. One of the most intriguing aspects of this devil as presented by Bulgakov is that in many ways he is analogous to the totalitarian State, for who else can make people vanish without a trace, plant 'evidence' to frame the innocent (and not so innocent), and instill in all and sundry an instinctual hatred mingled with terror? At the same time, though, Woland undermines everything the State does and stands for, his victims are the petty members of its bureaucracy and he ends up doing good even if he is willing evil (see the epigram from Goethe’s _Faust_ that begins the book). Ultimately Woland comes across much more as a force of chaos than of pure evil and he even seems to have some kind of relationship with the powers of light that goes beyond the adversarial. This duality continues into Bulgakov’s presentation of the Christ-figure Yeshua Ha-Notsri: on the one hand he at first appears to be what one might expect from a novel written under the anti-religious Soviet regime: at best just a well-meaning random man from first century Palestine who was killed by the powers that be for offending the wrong people…certainly not a messiah. Yet enough hints are dropped to imply that there really is something to this strange man, though we are never told exactly what that is. In the end the only supernatural force evident in the story is the diabolic (or at least chaotic) and one is left wondering where is God? No easy answer is provided, though Bulgakov does not seem to imply a nihilistic answer to this and goes so far as to provide Woland with some distinctly un-Satanic things to say about the world that are meant to provide hope even in the face of suffering and adversity: "But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves." and "But in this case, Margarita, you need not upset yourself. Everything will be made right, that is what the world is built on."

I found the ‘main’ characters of the Master and Margarita to be a mixed bag. The unnamed Master is interesting in the way he displays both elements of power (he is very self-possessed and knowledgeable as opposed to his asylum-mate Ivan's almost manic temperament and complete lack of understanding), but he also seems strangely passive at the same time. I like him, but I'm not quite sure why and I felt that he more or less remained something of a cipher throughout the novel. Margarita, on the other hand, is vivid and full of life. Her main concern may be to find her lover, but she is very active in pursuing this end and lets nothing stand in her way. She also displays a touching humanity in the face of the suffering of others. Still at times it felt like the novel should have been entitled _Woland and his Retinue_ as opposed to _The Master & Margarita_ especially since we see little enough of the Master himself throughout the book (and what we do see ends up being quite passive) and Margarita does not gain a significant presence until the second half of the book. One other character, the poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyryov, seems poised to play a major role in the story when we first meet him and shares many thematic commonalities with other characters in the text, but little seems to come of this, though this may again have been the result of the unfinished nature of the text.

As I mentioned most of the segments of satire worked less well, or were less interesting, for me than the moments of pathos and romance that characterized the stories of Pilate and M&M (with the notable exception of the cat Behemoth's ludicrous battle with the police in Apt. 50 which was great) and thus I found myself gravitating towards the Pilate chapters and the second half of the novel where the M&M romance story began to merge with that of Woland and his retinue. In the end I was left with a heck of a lot of questions. Why did Woland really come to Moscow in the first place? Why did he gravitate to the personal story of the Master and Margarita? How is first century Jerusalem like early 20th century Moscow? How is Woland like Pilate? What is Woland’s relationship to Yeshua Ha-Notsri? What is the meaning behind the ultimate fate of the Master and Margarita, the fact that they have "not earned light, [they have] earned peace”? Some of these questions get answers of a kind, while others are left purely to our imagination. In the end this novel certainly leaves one with much food for thought.
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Jul 25, 2008 Lori rated it it was amazing

A wild ride of a book! The devil comes to Stalin Moscow and wreaks utter havoc, most of which is extremely amusing. Yet this is not the evil Satan we normally encounter. He's actually a necessary aspect of what is necessary in our universe. What is Light if there is no Shadow? In more Christian terms (which you definitely don't need to be in order to get the point here) if you don't believe in the devil, then Christ also does not exist. So, in a roundabout way, the devil does good. And this Sata ...more

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Nov 22, 2008 Terence rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Rating: 2.6667; "The Master and Margarita" thread: 3+

I originally thought to begin this review with "meh" as an initial reaction to this book but in composing this review I realized that that was inadequate to my reaction. "Meh" implies that there's no reason to read the novel, but I don't regret the days I spent with it and there's some really fine writing to be found here but I was left dissatisfied and wanting more.

Much of the novel is a satire on life in Stalin's Russia during the '20s and ' Rating: 2.6667; "The Master and Margarita" thread: 3+

I originally thought to begin this review with "meh" as an initial reaction to this book but in composing this review I realized that that was inadequate to my reaction. "Meh" implies that there's no reason to read the novel, but I don't regret the days I spent with it and there's some really fine writing to be found here but I was left dissatisfied and wanting more.

Much of the novel is a satire on life in Stalin's Russia during the '20s and '30s and as such isn't all that different or much better (IMO) than similar literature from other authors (though still good and often funny). Mr. Woland (Satan) and his entourage - Korovyov; Behemoth, a black cat (sort of); Azazello; and Hella, a red-haired vampire witch - come to Moscow one fine day and proceed to upset the orderly, mediocre and atheistic lives of the bureaucrats who control society and the literary hacks who glorify it. There are two parallel stories. The first is Margarita's quest to save the Master, who has been institutionalized because of his literary proclivities. The latter forms the third thread as the Master's latest and worst "sin" has been the writing of a novel whose central character is a sympathetic Pontius Pilate.

Reflecting upon the book, there's a lot going on here, probably more than the book can bear. On one level, there's the satirization of Soviet Russia. This is the most obvious and easiest aspect of the novel to understand; readers don't need an appreciably deep knowledge of the era to "get" why totalitarianism is wrong or to enjoy the tweaking of the soulless bureaucrat. The scenes where Woland hypnotizes several hundred women into thinking they're wearing the latest Western fashions or when he teleports a self-important bureaucrat to Yalta and others are amusing and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but like a Johnny Carson monolog they don't make much of an impact. It's the weakest part of the novel and it's unfortunate that it takes up its bulk.

Of greater, if undeveloped, interest are the other two plotlines. I'll begin with Pontius Pilate: The Master's greatest work is a fictional biography of Pontius Pilate that presents him as a tormented soul who doesn't want to crucify Jesus (Ha-Notsri) but is forced to by the contingencies of politics. For two thousand years, he's tormented by his weakness until freed by the Master. I don't think Bulgakov successfully integrates this (or the Margarita plot) very well into the book. The tone is too somber and introspective to gel, particularly with the absurdist satire. It's only in the last few chapters, as Woland and company prepare to leave Moscow, that the reader begins to see how this story does mesh with the other two.

It's the second thread - the story of the Master and Margarita's love for him - that most affected me; alone it deserves a solid 3+ rating, if not a 4. It's an Orphic tale of Margarita braving Hell to save the Master (with better luck than poor Orpheus and his Euridice). It's an homage to the power of authentic feeling (love) and unfettered imagination (the Master's work); and the scenes of Margarita flying naked and invisible over Moscow, trashing the apartments of the Master's fiercest critic, are some of the best realized in the novel. There's a scene in chapter 29 that hints at the profundities Bulgakov could have explored but didn't (at least in this work). Levi Matvei (Matthew the Evangelist) comes to Woland to say that "He" has read the Master's book and wants him (Woland) to grant the Master peace:

"Nothing is difficult for me to do," replied Woland, "as you well know." He was silent for a moment and then added, "But why aren't you taking him with you to the light?"

"He has not earned light, he has earned peace," said Levi in a sad voice.

"Tell him that it shall be done," replied Woland. (p. 305)

Here we have an intimation of the complexities of Good and Evil, and why it's not a simple matter of being "for" or "against" anything.

In the end, I couldn't connect in any significant way with the rest of the book, which made it a chore to read and enjoy at times (and I don't blame that on the translators - Dianna Burgin & Katherine O'Connor - who appear to have done a fine job of rendering the Russian). ...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: unfinished, russian-lit, speculative, mieville50

My three star rating is a tentative one because I hope to finish this book someday. There were portions of The Master and Margarita that I was quite enjoying, but the book never fully captured my attention. I think some of the blame must fall on the book, but I accept the fat-older-brother's portion of the cake. Maybe it was the distraction of class prep, maybe it was that I was too busy reading O'Brian, maybe it was just my mood, but it was probably a little bit of all these things. Suffice to ...more

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Oct 10, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: from-library, 2009-read, fantasy, religion-fiction, historical-fiction, russian-literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Honestly, I'm a little intimidated.

I didn't realize that The Master and Margarita is an "unfinished" masterpiece, complete in its narrative but still unpolished prior to Bulgakov's death. As with any published unfinished work, there's a certain amount of third-party editing that will alter the interpretation of the text. To compound this problem, I'm an Anglophone reading a translation from Russia. I'm not as familiar with Russian literature or Russian history as I could be. As a result, a great ...more

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May 03, 2007 Wealhtheow rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, fantasy

I read a lot of Russian literature back in the day, but I no longer find any pleasure in the long-winded, nonsensical speeches that lard the story. This book, which was recommended to me by several very intelligent people, is like the unholy love child of Kafka and Dostoyevsky. The plot is surreal and the characters mere mouthpieces—there was nothing in it I could care about.

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Sep 06, 2017 Meg rated it liked it

Shelves: subgenre-magical-realism-fabulism, translation, element-gods-demons-etc, literary, 20th-century, classics, attr-weird, i-laughed, character-dogs, character-favorite-supporting

For some reason, I liked The Master and Margarita but didn't love it. Sometimes perfectly good books which speak to others profoundly don't hit the mark with you, for reasons not easily explainable.

I suppose I should still try to figure out why. Normally I enjoy strange books, but perhaps the peculiar mishmash of elements in this novel is the reason I couldn't fully connect with it. Don't get me wrong, Bulgakov is impressively acrobatic in his ability to combine all these unlikely elements, but ...more

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