The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

The novel alternates between two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds in the guise of "Professor Woland", a mysterious gentleman and "magician" of uncertain origin. He arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed valet Koroviev; the mischievous, trigger-happy, fast-talking black cat Behemoth; the fanged hitman Azazello; and the female vampire Hella. They wreak havoc by targeting the literary elite and their trade union MASSOLIT.[note 1] Its privileged HQ is Griboyedov House. The association is made up of corrupt social climbers and their women (wives and mistresses alike), bureaucrats, profiteers, and, more generally, skeptics of the human spirit. The second setting is the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate, described by Woland in his conversations with Berlioz and later reflected in the Master's novel. This part of the novel concerns Pontius Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth), his recognition of an affinity with, and spiritual need for, Yeshua, and his reluctant but resigned submission to Yeshua's execution. Part one of the novel opens with a direct confrontation between Berlioz, the atheistic head of the literary bureaucracy, and an urbane foreign gentleman (Woland), who defends belief and reveals his prophetic powers in a deadpan prediction that Berlioz will die later that evening. Berlioz brushes off the prophecy of his death as the ravings of a madman, but dies pages later in the novel, in the exact manner described by Professor Woland. The fulfillment of the death prophecy is witnessed by Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, a young and enthusiastically modern poet. He writes poems under the alias Bezdomny ("homeless"). This alias is an allusion to soviet aliases like Maxim Gorky (Maxim the "bitter"), Demyan Bedny (Demyan the "poor"), Michail Golodny (Michail the "hungry"). His futile attempts to capture the "gang" (referring to Woland and his entourage, which consists of Behemoth, Koroviev, and Azazello) while warning of their evil and mysterious nature, lands Ivan in a lunatic asylum. There, he's introduced to the Master, an embittered author. The rejection of his historical novel about Pontius Pilate and Christ has led the Master to despair and to burn his manuscript, turning his back on the world (including his devoted lover, Margarita). © M. Bulgakov; ©&℗ IE Vorobev V.A.; ©&℗ Publishing House Soyuz