The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

we strove, first of all, to produce what has been lacking so far: a translation of the complete text of Bulgakov’s masterpiece into contemporary standard American English. At the same time, our translation aims to be as literal a rendering of the original Russian as possible. Challenged by the third of Goethe’s well-known ideas on translation (as articulated in his notes to the West-Ostlicher Divan), we have “associated ourselves closely with our original.” We have made every effort to retain the rhythm, syntactic structure, and verbal texture of Bulgakov’s prose. We have often eschewed synonyms in favor of repeating the words that Bulgakov repeats, and we have tried, as far as possible without sacrificing clarity, not to break up Bulgakov’s long sentences and to adhere to his word order. In sum, we strove for an accurate, readable American English translation of The Master and Margarita that would convey the specifically Bulgakovian flavor of the original Russian text. —Diana Burgin and Katherine O’Connor

Bezdomny.

Which most anglicize as "Homeless"

The high priest’s face had become covered with blotches, his eyes burned. Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied, “Procurator, do you yourself believe what you just said? No, you do not! It was not peace that that rabble-rouser brought to Yershalaim, and you, Knight, know that very well. You wanted to release him so that he would stir the people up, do violence to their religion, and subject them to Roman swords! But I, High Priest of Judea, shall not, so long as I live, allow the faith to be profaned, and I shall protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?” And here Kaifa raised his hand threateningly, “Take heed, Procurator!” Kaifa fell silent, and again the procurator heard what sounded like the sea rolling up to the walls of the garden of Herod the Great. This noise rose from below up to the procurator’s feet and into his face. And behind him, beyond the wings of the palace was heard the anxious blaring of trumpets, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, and the clanking of iron. The procurator now realized that the Roman infantry was already moving out, in accordance with his orders, heading toward the pre-execution parade that was so terrifying to outlaws and insurgents. “Can you hear, Procurator?” quietly repeated the high priest. “Are you really telling me that all this,”—here the high priest raised both his hands, and the dark hood fell from his head—“was caused by that miserable outlaw Bar-rabban?”

“No need for envy, comrades. There are twenty-two dachas in all, and only seven more are being built, and there are 3,000 of us in MASSOLIT.” “3,111,” interjected someone from the corner. “Well, there you have it,” continued the Bosun, “what’s to be done? It’s natural that the most talented people got dachas . . .” “The generals!” cut in the dramatist Glukharyov, joining the fray.

Ryukhin was sitting all by himself, hunched over a plate of carp, downing glass after glass. He was coming to realize and to acknowledge that he could not rectify anything in his life, he could only forget. The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now he realized it could never be brought back. He had only to raise his head from the table lamp up to the sky to realize that the night was gone forever. The waiters were hurriedly pulling the tablecoths off the tables. The cats nosing about the veranda had a morning look about them. Day was bearing down on the poet with full force.

“It’s all clear now. And, really, what sense is there in keeping a sane man in the hospital? So, I’ll release you immediately if you tell me you’re normal. You don’t have to prove it, just say it. So, then, are you normal?” There was complete silence. The fat woman who had taken care of Ivan that morning looked at the professor with pious respect, and again Ivan thought, “Very clever.” The professor’s offer was very attractive, but before answering, Ivan thought very hard, wrinkled his brow, and finally said firmly, “Yes, I am normal.” “Well, that’s splendid,” Stravinsky exclaimed with relief, “and if you are, let’s reason this out logically. Take yesterday, for example,” at this point he turned and was immediately handed Ivan’s sheet, “while trying to find a stranger, who told you he was an acquaintance of Pontius Pilate, you did the following,” here Stravinsky began bending his long fingers, looking first at the chart, then at Ivan. “You hung an icon on your chest. Is that right?” “Yes,” Ivan agreed sullenly. “You fell off a fence and hurt your face. Right? Appeared at a restaurant with a lighted candle in your hand, wearing only underwear, and then hit one of the people in the restaurant. You were tied up and brought here. Once you got here, you called the police and asked them to send machine guns. Then you tried to throw yourself out the window. Is that right? Now I ask you: is it possible to catch anyone or arrest them by acting that way? And if you’re a normal perso...

She said that I should give everything up and spend what remained of the 100,000 on a trip south to the Black Sea. “She was very insistent, and so as to avoid a quarrel with her (something told me that I wouldn’t make it to the Black Sea), I promised to do it right away. But she said she would get me the ticket herself. Then I took out all my money, that is, around 10,000 rubles, and gave it to her. “ ‘Why so much?’ she asked me in amazement. “I told her something about my being afraid of thieves and wanting her to take care of the money for me until my departure. She took it, put it in her bag, and began kissing me, saying that she would rather die than leave me alone in the condition I was in, but that she was expected at home, was bowing to necessity, and would be back the next day. She begged me not to be afraid of anything.

To be frank, I don’t like listening to the news on the radio. The announcers are usually young women who can’t pronounce place names properly. And, what’s more, at least a third of them seem to have speech defects, as if that were a job requirement. My globe is much more convenient, especially since I have to know exactly what’s going on. For instance, look here. Do you see that piece of land washed on one side by the ocean? Look how it’s bursting into flame. A war has broken out there. If you look closer, you’ll see it in detail.” Margarita bent toward the globe and saw that a square of earth had grown wider, had assumed vivid colors and had turned into a kind of relief map. And then she saw a strip of river and next to it a village. A house the size of a pea got as big as a matchbox. Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of the house blew off into the air with a puff of black smoke, the walls of the house caved in, so that nothing was left of the two-storey matchbox except piles of rubble spewing black smoke. When she looked even closer, Margarita could see a tiny female figure lying on the ground, and next to her was a baby, lying in a pool of blood with its arms stretched out. “So that’s that,” said Woland, smiling. “He had no time to sin. Abaddon’s work is flawless.”

Who would have an interest in Judas’s death? Vagrant dreamers, a group of them, a group, first of all, that doesn’t include any women. One needs money to get married, Procurator, money is also necessary to bring someone into the world, but to murder someone with a woman’s help, one needs a great deal of money, and vagrants don’t have money.

“Well! So this is the writers’ house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard many good and flattering things about this house. Take a look at it, my friend! How nice to think that a veritable multitude of talent is sheltered and ripening under this roof.” “Like pineapples in a hothouse,” said Behemoth, and in order to get a better view of the cream-colored house and its columns, he crawled up onto the cement base of the iron railing. “Quite true,” chimed in Korovyov, agreeing with his inseparable companion, “And a sweet terror clutches your heart when you think that at this very minute the author of a future Don Quixote, or Faust, or, the devil take me, Dead Souls may be ripening inside that house! Huh?” “A terrifying thought,” confirmed Behemoth. “Yes,” continued Korovyov, “one can expect astonishing things from the seedbeds of this house, under whose roof have gathered thousands of devotees selflessly resolved to dedicate their lives to serving Melpomene, Polyhymnia, and Thalia. Just imagine what a sensation it will be when, for starters, one of them presents the reading public with an Inspector General, or, at the very least, a Eugene Onegin!” “I can easily imagine that,” again confirmed Behemoth. “Yes,” continued Korovyov, and raised a cautionary finger, “but! But—I say and I repeat it—but! Only if some microorganism doesn’t attack these tender hothouse plants and eat away at their roots, only if they don’t rot! And that can happen with pineapples! Oh, yes, indeed it can!”

“No sooner do you appear on the roof than you blab nonsense, and I’ll tell you what it is—it’s in your intonation. You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.” “I won’t argue with you, old sophist,” replied Levi Matvei. “You can’t argue with me because of what I just said—you’re stupid,” replied Woland, and asked, “Well, tell me briefly, without tiring me, why have you appeared?” “He sent me.” “What did he order you to tell me, slave?” “I am not a slave,” replied Levi Matvei, becoming more enraged, “I am his disciple.” “We are speaking different languages, as always,” rejoined Woland, “but that doesn’t change the things we talk about. So? . . .” “He has read the Master’s work,” began Levi Matvei, “and asks that you take the Master with you and grant him peace. Is that so difficult for you to do, Spirit of Evil?” “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 li...

“They have read your novel,” began Woland, turning to the Master, “and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So I wanted to show you your hero. He has been sitting here for about two thousand years, sleeping, but, when the moon is full, he is tormented, as you see, by insomnia. And it torments not only him, but his faithful guardian, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it. The only thing that brave creature ever feared was thunderstorms. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”

what happens when an entire culture is forced to deny belief in God—but meets up with the devil in the flesh.

Lit the candles . . .—according to Jewish law, a trap for criminals had to be well-lit, to avoid mistaken identity. By this Bulgakov is indicating an entire subtext in Pilate’s understanding of who Judas really is, and who has employed him.

The threesome—Woland, the choirmaster, and the cat are an unholy trinity, and Ivan is about to have a baptism in the Moscow River (at the very location where the Church of Christ the Redeemer had earlier stood), followed by his version of the Stations of the Cross. There are many details here which are allusions to events of the New Testament—events which are not described in the Pilate chapters, but which are given in parodic form in the Moscow chapters, a pattern which will continue throughout.