The Master and Margarita
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| Penguin Classics |
Mikhail Bulgakov
1969
“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 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.”
Though I usually enjoy picking up novels emanating from different parts of the world, the vast expanse of critically acclaimed Russian literature has (until now, I suppose) always remained an unexplored mystery to me; aside from the multitude of positive references in popular culture. Despite having the opportunity to buy any number of books by famous Russians from the various shops I frequent, I'd intentionally put-off doing so because I recognise that I'm very ambitious/obsessive compulsive when it comes to exploring new genres, and as soon as I started I'd have to really get into it when there are already enough bibliographies I'm trying to get through. Plus I needed the right book. I wasn't going to just dive into War and Peace, I wanted something that appealed to me through a subject with a certain hook, whatever that might be. To be honest, I wanted a comfortable gateway novel. When I found a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, I was sure it was the book I wanted.
In it's simplest form, and as I first interpreted it from reading the back cover blurb, this is a book about the devil and his minions wandering through mid-20th century Moscow, causing mischief and mayhem. As an unrepentant modern day pop-culture fan, that's a pretty fantastic hook, appealing in relation to both a modern, perhaps Vonnegut-esque satirical sense and a classical gothic horror piece like Faust. My real problem with reading about Russia, you see, is that I really do not know much about it, so the idea of a horror genre-tinged satire heavily based around Moscow seemed like a great introduction. When I began reading, the opening pages seemed promising; introducing the devil in the form of a mysterious 'foreign' gentlemen, who engages in a seemingly-random conversation with an important author named Berlioz and successfully predicts his imminent death. The scene is witnessed by a young poet, Ivan Homeless, who tries to warn his literary contemporaries and is sentenced to an insane asylum for his troubles.
While the plot seemed interesting, I couldn't help finding the prose to be rather dry. The sentence-structure is impeccable, Bulgakov obviously being a technically-gifted author, but his style of omniscient narration dragged, with the author's voice intercepting with a force I found jarring to the flow of the story. On top of that, and probably more importantly going forward, I just didn't anticipate how in-depth The Master and Margarita would be. From start to finish it's filled with a variety of characters and locations, and incorporates an important parallel side-story at the same time, a biblical tale about Pontius Pilate. The first installment of that story was an interesting curio, but I soon started to really dislike these boring, pretentious segments and the disruption made it harder to follow the main story. That itself also lost my interest more and more as it went on, mostly because the satire just didn't register with me. Much of it is seemingly regarding the Russian literary and political elite of the novels' time, and I of course haven't got a clue about any of that.
So then, The Master and the Margarita was pretty much the opposite of what I was looking for in terms of a gentle introduction to Russian literature. As a result it took me a long time to read, especially since I kept taking extended breaks to read other books, and that kind of approach to it probably made things worse, to be honest. I wonder if, had I a moderate amount of knowledge about the Russian institutes being represented and made fun of, would I have eventually accepted the particular style of prose more? Probably so, yes, since it seemed clear that Bulgakov was a smart, biting author. Further research into the book (that I ideally would've done before buying it, had it not been an impulse buy) makes it clearer that this was an important book specifically relevant to its time of publication- Bulgakov spent years writing and re-writing this novel, in the knowledge that its topics and targets would've made him a very unpopular figure, politically, and so it wasn't published until over twenty-five years after Bulgakov's death. My reading of it would be comparable to someone with no knowledge of modern Western culture reading Naked Lunch and being expected to understand its poignancy. Probably makes me a bad choice for a reviewer, to be honest.
I am glad I finished the book, even though I decidedly didn't enjoy it. Finally finishing a piece of Russian fiction gets the proverbial Soviet monkey off my back, and might hopefully help me choose a better option the next time I go back to that country.
Though I usually enjoy picking up novels emanating from different parts of the world, the vast expanse of critically acclaimed Russian literature has (until now, I suppose) always remained an unexplored mystery to me; aside from the multitude of positive references in popular culture. Despite having the opportunity to buy any number of books by famous Russians from the various shops I frequent, I'd intentionally put-off doing so because I recognise that I'm very ambitious/obsessive compulsive when it comes to exploring new genres, and as soon as I started I'd have to really get into it when there are already enough bibliographies I'm trying to get through. Plus I needed the right book. I wasn't going to just dive into War and Peace, I wanted something that appealed to me through a subject with a certain hook, whatever that might be. To be honest, I wanted a comfortable gateway novel. When I found a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, I was sure it was the book I wanted.
In it's simplest form, and as I first interpreted it from reading the back cover blurb, this is a book about the devil and his minions wandering through mid-20th century Moscow, causing mischief and mayhem. As an unrepentant modern day pop-culture fan, that's a pretty fantastic hook, appealing in relation to both a modern, perhaps Vonnegut-esque satirical sense and a classical gothic horror piece like Faust. My real problem with reading about Russia, you see, is that I really do not know much about it, so the idea of a horror genre-tinged satire heavily based around Moscow seemed like a great introduction. When I began reading, the opening pages seemed promising; introducing the devil in the form of a mysterious 'foreign' gentlemen, who engages in a seemingly-random conversation with an important author named Berlioz and successfully predicts his imminent death. The scene is witnessed by a young poet, Ivan Homeless, who tries to warn his literary contemporaries and is sentenced to an insane asylum for his troubles.
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| Authors should always be pictured smoking |
So then, The Master and the Margarita was pretty much the opposite of what I was looking for in terms of a gentle introduction to Russian literature. As a result it took me a long time to read, especially since I kept taking extended breaks to read other books, and that kind of approach to it probably made things worse, to be honest. I wonder if, had I a moderate amount of knowledge about the Russian institutes being represented and made fun of, would I have eventually accepted the particular style of prose more? Probably so, yes, since it seemed clear that Bulgakov was a smart, biting author. Further research into the book (that I ideally would've done before buying it, had it not been an impulse buy) makes it clearer that this was an important book specifically relevant to its time of publication- Bulgakov spent years writing and re-writing this novel, in the knowledge that its topics and targets would've made him a very unpopular figure, politically, and so it wasn't published until over twenty-five years after Bulgakov's death. My reading of it would be comparable to someone with no knowledge of modern Western culture reading Naked Lunch and being expected to understand its poignancy. Probably makes me a bad choice for a reviewer, to be honest.
I am glad I finished the book, even though I decidedly didn't enjoy it. Finally finishing a piece of Russian fiction gets the proverbial Soviet monkey off my back, and might hopefully help me choose a better option the next time I go back to that country.
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