The story of the relationship between Christ and Pilate, witnessed by Woland and recounted by the Master, returns at intervals throughout the novel and, eventually, both stories tie in together. In the asylum, he meets the Master, a writer who has been locked away for writing a novel about Jesus Christ and, yes, Pontius Pilate. (This “Procurator of Judaea” narrative is interspersed between the “Moscow” chapters.) Bezdomny attempts to chase Woland and his gang but ends up in a lunatic asylum, ranting about an evil professor who is obsessed with Pontius Pilate. All this happens within the first few pages.Ī young poet, Ivan Bezdomny (his surname means “Homeless”), has witnessed this incident and heard Woland telling a bizarre story about Pontius Pilate. Woland predicts Berlioz’s death, which almost instantly comes to pass when the editor is decapitated in a freak accident involving a tram and a spillage of sunflower oil. (Berlioz has been drinking the hiccup-inducing apricot juice.) Berlioz believes Woland to be some kind of German professor. Woland meets Berlioz, influential magazine editor and chairman of the biggest Soviet writers’ club. They appear to be targeting Moscow’s literary elite. The devil, Woland, comes to Moscow with a retinue of terrifying henchmen, including, of course, the giant talking cat (literally “the size of a pig”), a witch and a wall-eyed assassin with one yellow fang. Written in the 1930s but not published until the 1960s, The Master and Margarita is the most breathtakingly original piece of work. But with Bulgakov, all you need to understand him is a sense of humor. I might have kidded myself that you need to be a bit Russian to understand Tolstoy. It is a book that takes your breath away and makes you laugh out loud, sometimes at its cleverness, sometimes because it’s just so funny and ridiculous. When I was feeling low about not being able to pretend to be Russian any more, I would read bits of it to cheer myself up and remind myself that, whatever the truth about where I come from, I had succeeded in understanding some important things about another culture. It’s the most entertaining and comforting novel. So, if you are unmarried, and you love it and you meet someone else who loves it, you should definitely marry them. But, in this case, it’s a very special book. I would normally say that it’s not a great idea to found a lifelong relationship on the basis of liking one particular book. I have a friend who married her husband almost exclusively because he told her he had read it. I’ve formed friendships with people purely on the strength of the knowledge that they have read and enjoyed this novel. Otherwise you’d cry.”įor those who already know and love The Master and Margarita, there is something of a cult-like “circle of trust” thing going on. Not only is this a possibility at any time occasionally, it’s an absolute necessity: “You’ve got to laugh. The Master and Margarita is a reminder that, ultimately, everything is better if you can inject a note of silliness and of the absurd. It’s a novel that encourages you not to take yourself too seriously, no matter how bad things have got. Most of all, it is the book that saved me when I felt like I had wasted my life. It is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and as a masterpiece of magical realism, but it’s very common even for people who are very well read not to have heard of it, although among Russians you have only to mention a cat the size of a pig and apricot juice that makes you hiccup and everyone will know what you are talking about. In some ways, the book has an odd reputation. It’s funny, it’s profound and it has to be read to be believed. Of all the Russian classics, The Master and Margarita is undoubtedly the most cheering. If many Russian classics are dark and deep and full of the horrors of the blackness of the human soul (or, indeed, are about the Gulag), then this is the one book to buck the trend. ‘“And what is your particular field of work?” asked Berlioz.
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