Why should you read The Master and Margarita Alex Gendler
The Devil has come to town.
But don’t worry –
all he wants to do is stage a magic show.
This absurd premise
forms the central plot
of Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece,
“The Master and Margarita.”
Written in Moscow during the 1930s,
this surreal blend
of political satire, historical fiction,
and occult mysticism
has earned a legacy as one
of the 20th century’s greatest novels–
and one of its strangest.
The story begins
when a meeting between two members
of Moscow’s literary elite
is interrupted by a strange gentleman
named Woland,
who presents himself as a foreign scholar
invited to give a presentation
on black magic.
As the stranger engages the two companions
in a philosophical debate
and makes ominous predictions
about their fates,
the reader is suddenly transported
to 1st century Jerusalem.
There a tormented Pontius Pilate
reluctantly sentences
Jesus of Nazareth to death.
With the narrative
shifting between the two settings,
Woland and his entourage–
Azazello, Koroviev, Hella,
and a giant cat named Behemoth–
are seen to have uncanny magical powers,
which they use to stage their performance
while leaving a trail
of havoc and confusion in their wake.
Much of the novel’s dark humor
comes not only from this demonic mischief,
but also the backdrop
against which it occurs.
Bulgakov’s story takes place
in the same setting where it was written–
the USSR
at the height of the Stalinist period.
There, artists and authors
worked under strict censorship,
subject to imprisonment,
exile, or execution
if they were seen
as undermining state ideology.
Even when approved, their work–
along with housing, travel,
and everything else–
was governed by a convoluted bureaucracy.
In the novel,
Woland manipulates this system
along with the fabric of reality,
to hilarious results.
As heads are separated from bodies
and money rains from the sky,
the citizens of Moscow
react with petty-self interest,
illustrating how Soviet society
bred greed and cynicism
despite its ideals.
And the matter-of-fact narration
deliberately blends
the strangeness of the supernatural events
with the everyday absurdity
of Soviet life.
So how did Bulgakov
manage to publish such a subversive novel
under an oppressive regime?
Well… he didn’t.
He worked on “The Master and Margarita”
for over ten years.
But while Stalin’s personal favor
may have kept Bulgakov
safe from severe persecution,
many of his plays and writings
were kept from production,
leaving him safe but effectively silenced.
Upon the author’s death in 1940,
the manuscript remained unpublished.
A censored version
was eventually printed in the 1960s,
while copies of the unabridged manuscript
continued to circulate
among underground literary circles.
The full text was only published in 1973,
over 30 years after its completion.
Bulgakov’s experiences
with censorship and artistic frustration
lend an autobiographical air
to the second part of the novel,
when we are finally
introduced to its namesake.
“The Master” is a nameless author
who’s worked for years on a novel
but burned the manuscript
after it was rejected by publishers–
just as Bulgakov
had done with his own work.
Yet the true protagonist
is the Master’s mistress Margarita.
Her devotion
to her lover’s abandoned dream
bears a strange connection
to the diabolical company’s escapades–
and carries the story
to its surreal climax.
Despite its dark humor
and complex structure,
“The Master and Margarita”
is, at its heart,
a meditation on art, love, and redemption,
that never loses itself in cynicism.
And the book’s long overdue publication
and survival against the odds
is a testament
to what Woland tells the Master:
“Manuscripts don’t burn.”