Reviews with content warning for Cancer - The Master and Margarita

Ever since I read Vita Nostra I’ve been chasing that high, looking for another book that’s a similar combination of incomprehensible and enthralling – or even a book that’s equally enthralling as that masterpiece. I picked up this book because I hoped that maybe another Russian novel about Satan’s hijinks in Moscow would be what I’ve been searching for.

It really wasn’t. It was well-written, to be sure, and interesting enough to finish, but it didn’t hold a candle to Vita Nostra. I’m not entirely sure anything will.

There isn’t a main cast in this story, unless you count Woland (the alias Satan took for his time in Moscow) and his entourage. The story follows many different characters showing all the different ways Woland and company mess with the people Moscow – usually by getting them arrested or sent to an insane asylum. It’s not entirely clear to me if Woland has a reason for being there or if he’s just there to cause chaos. I did enjoy his companions, especially the cat. They were all unique, well-drawn, and entertaining personalities.

This book wasn’t published in the author’s lifetime because the censors didn’t like its portrayal of life under the Stalinist regime. I don’t know enough about Russia, Russian culture and attitudes, and what Russia was like under Stalin to pick up on any of that. In fact, I felt like I didn’t really pick up on anything this book was trying to say. It’s one of those where I wish I had an English teacher telling me what I’m supposed to be seeing, like those magic eye pictures where it’s easier to find the hidden image if someone tells me what I’m looking for.

The plot itself is fairly comprehensible on a surface level. (The hardest part was keeping track of the names, because many of the characters had nicknames that did not at all relate to their names. There were several times where I was confused at the introduction of a new character only to realize later that I’d already met him under a different name.) I understood the what, but not the why. I can tell that there’s some other layer of meaning behind Woland tormenting Moscow, the story of the Master and his lover Margarita, and whatever Pontius Pilate had to do with anything, but I couldn’t figure out what. It was a good story, but I finished it feeling like I’d figured out what it was about but was completely missed what it means.

I enjoyed the story for itself. Once I figured out that the guy the story started with was not the actual protagonist, it was a lot of fun. But I wish I had read this in an English class or with a friend who was really into Russian literature or something, because there’s a lot more underneath the surface here that I just can’t grasp.

Content Warnings

autisticmisabel's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Content Warnings

sherbertwells's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“‘And there’s no devil either?’ the sick man suddenly inquired merrily of Ivan Nikolaevich,

‘No devil…’

‘Well now that is positively interesting!’ the professor said, shaking with laughter. ‘What is it with you—no matter what one asks for, there isn’t any!” (41)

The Master and Margarita is a wonderful book, thanks to the efforts of five storytellers. Bulgakov is only the first.

He’s probably the most important, too. The 20th-century Russian author has a wicked talent for atmosphere; his 1937 novel transports the reader to a Moscow that almost existed. The tense, wild summers of the Stalin-era city propel the story like hot air filling up a balloon. From high up in its basket, the reader is free to behold a thousand tragedies, which, at such a distance, become comedies. Jerusalem appears on the horizon for a few moments, then a moonlit world beyond time and space. Naked witches glide past on brooms. Smoke fills the air. It is a fantastic voyage, but escaping the terror that grips the city below means taking a ride with the devil himself.

Satan, adorned in a checkered sport coat and trailed by a fiendish retinue, is the second entity that guides the story. He’s not strictly a hero or villain; as the magician Professor Woland, he captivates crowds, but as the latest in a long line of Russian trickster-protagonists he stupefies the bumbling artists and corrupt bureaucrats in the upper echelons of communist society. Most of the time, they deserve it. At Woland’s magic show, materialistic women fight one another to trade in their rags for conjured French fashions, only to emerge in their underwear. An unscrupulous landlord accepts a bribe that turns into illegal foreign currency. Other times, Satan’s victims are ordinary people thrust into the path of the scheming interpreter Koroviev or the gluttonous talking cat Behemoth.

Vignettes detailing his encounters, which make up the first half of the story, are initially disturbing but slowly morph into cathartic fun as Bulgakov sinks deeper into the climate of fear and suspicion which the ‘good’ characters—a relative term here applied to the Master, Margarita and the poet Ivan Homeless—endure daily. The only people to which Satan is resolutely loyal are Margarita, an unhappy housewife, and the Master, the disgraced author of a novel about Pontius Pilate.

The latter, who is also Margarita’s lover, is the third storyteller. Master is not only an author-insert for Bulgakov himself, but a foil to Woland. This is most evident in their use of monogram: the magician distributes business cards marked with a W, while the Master demonstrates his profession by donning “a completely greasy black cap with the letter ‘M’ embroidered on it,” an inversion which (I think) also works in the original Cyrillic alphabet (135). He and Woland take turns telling the story, whose chapters, inserted sporadically into the longer narrative, create a commentary on the eternal use and abuse of power. Its depiction of the life and death of Jesus, here called Yeshua Ha-Nozri to distance the story from the biblical Greek, is not necessarily accurate but is an intriguing look at religious history in a country where most people, according to one literary critic, “long ago ceased believing in fairy tales about God” (8). Here, the biblical messiah becomes a ragged philosopher with a single wandering disciple, who is executed by Pilate out of cowardice and a sense of obligation. Their dialogues, as well as the descriptions of 1st-century Jerusalem, are some of the most beautiful in the whole book. But the credit for these passages must go to the fourth and fifth storytellers: the translators.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did a great job translating The Master and Margarita from Russian to English for the Penguin Classics 50th anniversary Edition. Pevear and Volokhonksy’s prose is readable and image driven, and their cultural annotations help reveal the novel’s hidden depths. As far as I can tell, they represent the best of modern classic translation. They have translated at least 50 works of classic Russian literature together and won the PEN translation prize. While The Master and Margarita is the first book translated by them that I’ve read, my great-aunt claims that they produced “the only decent [English] copy” of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. They deserve at least as much real-world credit as Bulgakov for creating an enjoyable version of the story.

Because The Master and Margarita is such a good story, I find it much more difficult to share my opinion of it. Whenever I think about how much I love it, another amusing detail or message occurs to me. I want to reread it, to annotate it and discuss it with friends, to buy my own copy and treasure it. I’m really grateful that this book exists.

I just wish I knew who to thank.

Content Warnings

allimoose37's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I finished this book weeks ago and I still don't really know how I feel about it.

It's definitely Russian Literature and may be a difficult read. It is certainly slow paced in one sense and extremely fast in another. Part One of the novel feels very disjointed and each chapter is essentially a vignette, Part Two is more cohesive in the narrative, and I'm not certain Part One is edited down to it's best ability. This is a book about The Devil so be sure to check out any content warnings.

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