The Master and Margarita

My favourite translation of my favourite novel of all; at least its final two-thirds are. Admittedly, its first third, the early Moscow sequence, is a bit more of a slog. Once the reader reaches the Master's novel of Pontius Pilate and its aftermath it is exquisite; a fever-dream of wonderfulness.This edition includes an attached, handy ribbon bookmark.

This is not my first reading of this novel, which may have lost some of its bite with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but which still deserves to be read, just in case anyone is inclined to forget. Written in the 1930s and doomed to roughly the same fate as the novel within the novel, Bulgakov still paints an acerbic and hilariously funny picture of Soviet society including intellectuals who care only for recognition and don't give a dam n about truth, and all sorts of people who know how to manipulate the system to their benefit. The frequent mention of police, arrests, and mental institutions reflects a frightening reality, and the flashbacks to the crucifixion of Christ are a hint at the outcome of a person who sees good in all others and feels only love.....in this respect it has lost none of its topicality!

This is a hardcover book, well designed and not 1966 edition that is based on censored material. This edition is based on the illegal, TRUE copy that was circulated, illegally in the Soviet Union. The other version of the Ginzburg translation is still censored. I wonder why it is on the market in the United States?

There are four translations of "The Master and Margarita" presently available Two of them, those by Mirra Ginsburg and Michael Glenny, are based upon a 1966 censored Russian version of the novel, while the later, Burgin/O'Connor and Pevear/ Volokhonsky translations are based upon the final uncensored version. Additionally, the latter two translations contain useful endnotes (footnotes would have been preferable) that explain references to people, places and things in the Moscow of the Thirties.Despite these shortcomings, after reading all four translations, I found that I enjoyed the Ginsburg translation the most. Since I do not read Russian, I based that opinion on the facts that (1) for me, it read the most smoothly, and (2) the comic passages were simply funnier in her translation (Russians, justifiably consider the novel to be a comic masterpiece). I attribute these characteristics to the Ms. Ginsburg having been born and raised in the country of Byelorussia and her being a successful writer (in English!) in her own right.Based upon those criteria, I rank the translations as follows:1. Mirra Ginsburg (1967) [ISBN 0802130119]. Simply the most readable. Read also her translation of "Life of a Dog."2. Diana Burgin and Katherine O'Connor [ISBN: 0679760806]. Conveys a wonderful sense of mood, especially in the Pontius Pilate chapters.3. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997) [ISBN: 0141180145]. I had the sense that this is the most accurate translation, but it is less literary than the two preceding choices. The comic passages simply do not come across. Pevear and Volokhonsky, a husband and wife team, are prolific translators of Russian literature. I have enjoyed several of their other translations, but this one just does not seem to work.4. Michael Glenny (1967) [ISBN: 0679410465]. No reason to buy this one.Having read all four, would I do it again? Absolutely! I'm convinced that this is one of the great novels of the 20th century, and with each reading I picked up subtleties that I had not noticed before.

I have mixed feelings about the Michael Glenny translation. The book itself (the original Russian) is a masterpiece. I have read it dozens of times and enjoyed every time tremendously. I finally got curious about the English translations and, having done some basic research, settled on the Glenny translation. For the most part, the flow of the language is excellent and the translation is accurate and fluent. However, there are some bizarre mistranslations that make no sense whatsoever and make me doubt the translator's command of the Russian language and culture - both necessary for a successful translation.Some mistranslations are irksome, but relatively inconsequential (i.e. mistranslating the Russian word "vanna" for "bath" as a personal name Vanna; mistranslating "apricot soda" as "apricot juice," "orderly" as "nanny," etc.). Others are outright nonsensical such as mistranslating Bozhedomka - a neighborhood in Moscow, written with the capital B because it is a proper name - as "an orphanage" (with the lower-case "o" and the indefinite article, indicating a non-specific common noun). This leads to the sentence stating that a somewhat influential wheeler-dealer pulled some strings to obtain a room for his estranged wife in an orphanage instead of stating that he pulled some strings to get her an apartment (or a room in a communal apartment - typical of the 1930s Moscow) in a neighborhood far away from where he lived. The latter makes sense. The former - placing an adult woman in an orphanage - is complete gibberish. One might wonder that it didn't strike the translator that it couldn't have possibly been what Bukgakov meant.Some mistranslations are not bizarre, but they lead to the loss of a deeper meaning. "The daughter of a businessman" is quite different from the "daughter of a small-time merchant," which is what it says in Russian about one of the minor characters. The difference had significant social and political implications in the 1930s Russia. And a psychiatric nurse dealing with a major character is described as having an "easy and friendly manner," when in Russian she is described as having an "amusingly impudent" manner. In Russian, her patronizing behavior stuns the patient into speechlessness. In the English version, her friendliness disarms the patient and puts him at ease, and that is a distortion of what's really going on with the character.My recommendations to those who choose the Glenny translation is to take some of the bizarreness with a grain of salt and not hold the occasional inadequacy of the translation against the book itself. For the most part, though, the translation is fluent and eloquent and is worth your time if you are interested in the brilliant Russian literature of the early 20th century.

In the decades following the publication of The Master and Margarita, myriad critics have attempted to find a key to unlock the meaning of Bulgakov’s unfinished masterwork. Some viewed the novel as a political roman à clef, laboriously substituting historical figures from Stalinist Moscow for Bulgakov’s characters. Others posited a religious formula to understand the relationships between good and evil in the novel.After giving myself time to think, I believe that any attempts to reduce the novel to a formula reflect some readers’ desire for neat, safe boxes to contain the world. This approach is at odds with the fear-ridden, desperate, and yet transcendent reality of Bulgakov’s experience in writing, revising, destroying, reconstructing, and then revising the novel, up to his death in Moscow on March 10, 1940. The Master and Margarita shows evidence of Bulgakov’s struggles to complete it, especially in part two, which illness prevented him from revising. I believe that the novel’s profound humanity stems from these imperfections, these facets not quite fitting neatly together, these jarring movements from scene to scene. In the end, The Master and Margarita is, by virtue of its own existence, a testament to the necessity of art in times of repression, and to the urgent need for artists to veer from cowardice and hold firmly to their commitment to living a true human life, with fantasy and reality combined, with history and invention feeding into each other, with good and evil providing the shadows and depth that make life meaningful and real.One approach to The Master and Margarita that appeals to me is understanding it, in part, as a fairy tale. In the novel, Bulgakov threads together three different storylines, which intertwine, especially at the novel’s conclusion: the often slapstick depiction of life in Stalinist Moscow, seen in part through the antics of the devil Woland and his demonic helpers; the story of Pilate, with names and details transformed from the familiar Biblical versions; and the story of the Master and Margarita. The action takes place in a compressed time frame, so readers looking for character development will be disappointed. Instead, Bulgakov develops an extended allegory where flight equals freedom, where greed and small-mindedness are punished, and where weary artists are afforded some mercy and peace.The Master and Margarita provided Bulgakov with a lifeline to the imagination in the midst of the stultifying culture of Stalinist Russia. There are healthy doses of wish fulfilment in the novel, especially in those sections in which Woland’s minions, Azazello, Behemoth, and Koroviev, wreak retribution for the petty-mindedness and greed inherent in this political and social system. There also is a desperate attempt to resist the Stalinist bent towards monotony and flatness, and instead to weave dizzying strands of magic, fantasy, and power into life in Moscow.These attempts to use a story as wish fulfillment, criticizing a social order by turning it upside down in fiction, and recognizing how to use an audience’s sense of wonder as a fulcrum for change, resonate with the historical and cultural functions of fairy tales as described by scholars including Jack Zipes in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition and Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers. Magic and wonder force the reader to acknowledge other possibilities outside of a reality of political repression, poverty, and war. When fairy tales reveal challenges to misplaced authority, whether, in the guise of an evil queen or a greedy government official, they may take on one of two roles: a subversive threat to authority, or a valve to release the pressure of living under severe constraints. Perhaps most important, fairy tales remind their readers that life is miraculous and that certain freedoms, such as the freedom to imagine and dream, can be nurtured and honoured even under the most restrictive regimes.For Bulgakov, the blend of the fantastical and the everyday in The Master and Margarita serves as his manifesto. Throughout his life, he fought to preserve the full human experience, not the two-dimensional totalitarianism in the Stalinist USSR, where human life was flattened of any sense of wonder, creativity, exuberance. Instead, he advocated for human life with all its shadows and colours, with a foundation in imagination and wonder. The freedom he sought was not simply freedom from communal housing or repressive government policies. Instead, he sought the freedom to imagine, to dream, to infuse his life with wonder, and to share his vision. For this reason, any attempt to read The Master and Margarita as a simple satire of Stalinist totalitarianism is misguided. Instead, Bulgakov sought to fly free along with his characters, and in doing so to tap into the universal human need for imagination, wonder, and freedom of the intellect and spirit.Although Bulgakov universalized his quest for artistic freedom in The Master and Margarita, he drew inspiration and a sense of urgency from his experiences. A playwright, he faced censorship as his plays were banned and productions cancelled. He saw his fellow writers imprisoned for following their calling. (In response to one of these cases, Bulgakov destroyed one version of The Master and Margarita, which he later reconstructed.)In desperation, between 1929 and 1930 Bulgakov wrote three letters to Soviet government officials, including Stalin, to protest his censorship and beg for a chance to practice his art, if not within Russia, outside it. In the final letter, dated March 28, 1930, Bulgakov movingly describes his ordeal, arguing that his duty as a writer is to defend artistic freedom, and pleading that being silenced is tantamount to death.Although the letters provided Bulgakov with employment after receiving a favourable response and saved him from arrest or execution, he still faced his works’ being banned and suppressed. He devoted the last years of his life to revising The Master and Margarita, knowing he would not live to see it published, and sometimes despairing it would ever be read outside of his family circle. His widow, Yelena Shilovskaya, worked tirelessly after his death for decades, preserving his manuscript and finally seeing it published, in a censored version, in 1966 and 1967.Some criticism of The Master and Margarita comes from the abrupt transitions and changes in mood among the three storylines: the actions of Woland and his minions in Moscow; the transformed story of Pontius Pilate, with some striking changes to the names of characters and the sequence of events which simultaneously make the narrative seem more historical and keep readers off-balance; and the story of the Master and Margarita, which includes Bulgakov’s central concerns about cowardice, artistry, duty, loyalty and love. I believe that Bulgakov purposefully constructed his novel so that the reader would be pulled from dimension to dimension. The effect, although jarring, is one of constant instability and surprise. The reader is immersed in a world where a Biblical past seems more historically based and less fantastic than 20th-century Moscow, where characters who are petty and greedy are meted out fantastic public punishments, at times literally on a stage, and wherein the end characters with the most substance and loyalty have their lives transformed through magic.By carefully building this multifaceted world, with all the seams showing, Bulgakov forces us as readers to consider the intersections among these worlds. Bulgakov reveals how we cut ourselves off from the wellsprings of magic and wonder and invites us to join him in mounting a broomstick and riding off into the night sky, free from the constraints of our everyday lives.Just as Bulgakov confounds his readers’ expectations of a unified and seamless world, so he also makes us question our assumptions about good and evil. A key character is Woland, the devil at the centre of the magical action. From his appearance in the first chapter, Woland presents an arresting and disconcerting figure. Woland immediately inserts himself into a conversation with Berlioz, the editor of a literary magazine and chair of MASSOLIT, a prestigious literary association, and Ivan, a poet also known by his pen name Bezdomny, engaging in a debate with them about the existence of God. Berlioz parrots many of the current arguments against the existence of God, but Woland deftly counters his arguments in a manner that veers between the charming and the sinister.This debate introduces a theme that runs throughout The Master and Margarita: a cosmos in which good and evil each have their jurisdiction, but work together to ensure that people get the rewards or punishments that they deserve. In a famous passage later in the novel, Woland provides the following cogent description:“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."Throughout The Master and Margarita, Woland metes out justice to wrongdoers. However, he does not simply punish -- instead, he also rewards Margarita for her devotion, intelligence, loyalty, and bravery. He rescues the Master from his exile in the asylum and ultimately grants him and Margarita a destiny of peace and rest together. In doing so, Woland overturns our expectations. Bulgakov describes a world where good and evil powers work together to provide some justice and balance in our lives, in spite of the thoughtless and cruel ways that humans behave. As Woland tells Margarita at one point, “Everything will be made right, that is what the world is built on.” The true evil in The Master and Margarita does not rise from Hell but instead comes from the pettiness and greed of flawed, small-minded humans.The Master makes his appearance relatively late in the novel, in chapter 13, “Enter the Hero.” However, he is not the traditional hero. He is a broken man, living in an asylum, remembering his love for Margarita, while at the same time turning his back on the art that Margarita loved, protected, and honoured: his novel about Pontius Pilate.In a lengthy conversation with Ivan, the Master paints an idyllic portrait of his life with Margarita, who creates a cosy sanctuary full of roses and love, in which the written word is treasured and respected:“Running her slender fingers and pointed nails through her hair, she endlessly reread what he had written, and then she sewed the very cap he had shown Ivan. Sometimes she would squat down next to the lower shelves or stand up on a chair next to the upper ones and dust the hundreds of books. She predicted fame, urged him on, and started calling him Master. She waited eagerly for the promised final words about the fifth procurator of Judea, recited the parts she especially liked in a loud sing-song voice and said that the novel was her life.”However, this idyll comes to a crashing end when the Master completes the manuscript and looks for a publisher. He provides harrowing descriptions of his brutal treatment by the literary world in Moscow, as editors, publishers, and fellow writers publicly criticized him for his novel. These descriptions bear the pain of Bulgakov’s personal experience with censorship and rejection, culminating in the Master’s paralyzing fear of everything around him.Finally, in a scene inspired by events in Bulgakov’s life, the Master attempts to destroy his manuscript. Although Margarita salvages some pages, this scene marks the end of her life with the Master, who turns his back on Margarita and his art. He describes himself as a man without a name or a future, marking time in the asylum. Bulgakov depicts the Master as a broken man, whose loss of spirit and cowardice in the face of adversity led him to lose everything of value in his life.Margarita poses a stark contrast to the Master. When we finally meet her in part two, she is grieving over losing the Master, but she also shows herself to be intelligent, energetic, and fearless in her determination to find him and rebuild their life together. In doing so, Margarita is not taking an easy path. She is married to a successful husband who adores her. The two live in a large apartment with a great deal of privacy, a true luxury in Stalinist Moscow. She is beautiful, but she cannot put behind her deep dissatisfaction with her life, apparently perfect on the surface, but with no depth. She is living a lie. Her despair starts to break when she has a dream about the Master, which she views as a portent that her torment will soon come to an end. After rushing from her home, she has a fateful conversation with Azazello, whom Woland has tasked with inviting her to officiate as his queen at his ball. Margarita handles the interaction with spirit and courage, agreeing to follow Azazello’s mysterious instructions in hopes of learning the Master’s fate.Margarita is transformed and embarks on a night ride, flying naked on a broomstick over Moscow. After wreaking havoc at the apartment of a publisher who had tormented the Master, and comforting a small boy who awakened, terrified by the destruction, she participates in a moonlight gathering of other magical creatures. Afterwards, she returns to Moscow in a magical car, “After all that evening's marvels and enchantments, she had already guessed who they were taking her to visit, but that didn't frighten her. The hope that there she would succeed in regaining her happiness made her fearless.” The night ride is a symbol of Margarita’s freedom and power.Her fearlessness propels Margarita through her meeting with Woland and his minions, and a surreal evening as the queen of Woland’s midnight ball. Her devotion is rewarded by Woland, in scenes full of magic and moonlight. Although the Master crumbles in the face of adversity, Margarita becomes the ultimate hero and saviour through her courage and commitment to the Master and his art.Throughout The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov uses key symbols to tie together the different chapters and storylines. Perhaps the most important symbol is the moon, which appears frequently in practically every chapter. The moon conveys a kind of otherworldly truth. Characters are bathed in moonlight at critical points in the novel, especially when making entrances, as when the Master first appears in Ivan’s hospital room. Moonlight imparts insight and truth even to the most delusional of characters. The moon lights the night rides of Woland, his companions, Margarita and the Master.The moonlight also features prominently in the Pilate chapters, serving as a lynchpin between them and the rest of the novel. Pilate looks up at the moon for solace in the face of his agony from his migraines and his cowardice, with his faithful dog Banga as his sole companion. Bulgakov uses the moon to illuminate Pilate’s torment and his final peace, granted to him by the Master, his creator:"[Pilate] 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 gravest 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."In response to Woland’s prompting, the Master stands and shouts the words that complete his novel, and end Pilate’s torture:“The path of moonlight long awaited by the procurator led right up to the garden, and the dog with the pointed ears was the first to rush out on it. The man in the white cloak with the blood-red lining got up from his chair and shouted something in a hoarse, broken voice. It was impossible to make out whether he was laughing or crying, or what he was shouting, but he could be seen running down the path of moonlight, after his faithful guardian.”Bulgakov follows this transformative scene with Woland’s gift of peace to the Master. As she did throughout the novel, Margarita remains by the Master’s side, his loyal companion through eternity. Bulgakov cannot give salvation to the Master, perhaps because of the enormity of his cowardice against art, perhaps because he has been so damaged by a hostile society. In these final passages, Margarita gives the Master, and the reader, a soothing picture of a peaceful life, perhaps one Bulgakov himself longed for:"Listen to the silence," Margarita was saying to the Master, the sand crunching under her bare feet. "Listen and take pleasure in what you were not given in life—quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you've been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grape-vine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evening's​ people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and who will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep."

I loved Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ for its procession of surreal characters. Perhaps, none so amusing as those concerning Behemoth: an enormous, black, talking cat. From his first appearance when he hops on a tram and insists on paying his fare, to all his vodka drinking and gun wielding shenanigans, he is delightful! There are other wonderful, characters in the demonic entourage, like Azazello and Koroviev whose antics are well worth checking out. And of course, there is the devil himself – if you loved Dr Faustus then you will love his understated guise as the foreign professor, Woland.There is too much to say about the book in one review, but I think what I liked the most (aside from the devilry) is how creativity and imagination dissolve the bland and superficial. God and the devil, bureaucrats and higher culture fall by the wayside, but the human spirit comes shining through.

My all time favourite book ....had a bit of a sticky start years ago when first trying to read but persevered and have now bought and given to countless people in the hope they love it as much as I do...personally read it every couple of years but had to read quickly again after reading a terrible (as in harrowing) book...needed the utterly positive vibe from Master & Margarita ...maybe read now 10+ times....JUST LOVE IT and see a new wee bit more every read.

The Master and Margarita is a truly unusual, abstract and devilishly creative satire, that is difficult to compare with anything else. The closest comparison may in fact be a non literary comparison, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. If Master and Margarita warrants literary comparison, then several other novels may spring to mind, such as any novel by Kafka, or The Stranger by Camus. However, The Master and Margarita is a satire unlike no other.While not a lengthy novel, it is nonetheless a daunting undertaking, not least due to the allegorical nature.If reading The Master and Margarita, it may be better to do so as a group experience. If one has book loving friends, it may be worth suggesting it as a read for a book club or such events, as it is a novel that is best enjoyed in company, thereby allowing one to bounce ideas around and draw comparisons.On it's own, The Master and Margarita is a worthy read, but the enjoyment will be much greater if one has fellow readers with whom one can share thoughts and perceptions, and perhaps, if such a thing is possible, unlock the novel's hidden meaning.

I absolutely loved this book! It’s like a cross between ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, but slightly more devilish and written in a more ‘adult’ way. The book is very playful, funny, adventurous and serious when it needs to be. The reading flows, although I was a little confused at first when I realised that there was a second story working parallel to the first. A book within a book - Book-ception.