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A review by gothhotel
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4.0
"Manuscripts don't burn."
"Everything will turn out right. That's what the world was built on."
"He has not earned light, only peace."
70% amusing satire of Soviet society with a light comic tone, 30% aching reflection on art and the human experience. Some passages that made me stop and appreciate, though sadly not the kind of thing one can capture in a quote. The story of Pilate defies simple summary and can't be taken apart in brief, at least not by me. It's subtle and very clever, what Bulgakov does with agency, tense, detail. And the story echoes beyond itself a bit, especially towards the end, when Bulgakov was dying and knew his novel would never be published without significant censorship; the exhaustion, the quiet acceptance, the determination that it mattered - the manuscript can burn because "I remember it by heart", and "I shall never forget anything again."
Anyway, minus a star for gender politics that are tiresome and predictable, if not malicious. The restrained style doesn't lend itself to rich internality, but Margarita's almost comic-book - she's beautiful and intelligent, but frivolous, and she's utterly devoted to the Master. She's a wife, then a witch, then a wife again, and that's all women are throughout the novel. Margarita gets an intriguing moment at the ball - the episode with Frieda - where she's almost something else, resonating with Yeshua, but it goes away, and in the end she's little more than a dog.
"Everything will turn out right. That's what the world was built on."
"He has not earned light, only peace."
70% amusing satire of Soviet society with a light comic tone, 30% aching reflection on art and the human experience. Some passages that made me stop and appreciate, though sadly not the kind of thing one can capture in a quote. The story of Pilate defies simple summary and can't be taken apart in brief, at least not by me. It's subtle and very clever, what Bulgakov does with agency, tense, detail. And the story echoes beyond itself a bit, especially towards the end, when Bulgakov was dying and knew his novel would never be published without significant censorship; the exhaustion, the quiet acceptance, the determination that it mattered - the manuscript can burn because "I remember it by heart", and "I shall never forget anything again."
Anyway, minus a star for gender politics that are tiresome and predictable, if not malicious. The restrained style doesn't lend itself to rich internality, but Margarita's almost comic-book - she's beautiful and intelligent, but frivolous, and she's utterly devoted to the Master. She's a wife, then a witch, then a wife again, and that's all women are throughout the novel. Margarita gets an intriguing moment at the ball - the episode with Frieda - where she's almost something else, resonating with Yeshua, but it goes away, and in the end she's little more than a dog.