The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bugakov translated by Mirra Ginsburg Layton Green
1967 Grove Press; copyright renewed in 1995

Imagine that you are a writer in the Soviet Union of the late 1920s and 1930s. You had remained in your home land after the Russian Revolution when others fled. You had a free mind and pen, but your work was squelched by the censors of the state. Barred from publication and the theatre, Mikhail Bulgakov had a life of dramatizing the work of others. But he persisted with his own writing.

With a vast range of skill and knowledge in a closed society, Bulgakov became a satirist. He sense of humor and irony are all reflected in his masterwork, The Master and Margarita, written between 1928 and 1940 in many drafts and versions At once a story of life in the Soviet Union in those times, this beautiful story resounds with vivid imagery of the triumph of Jesus, the shame of Pontius Pilate, and the ever-presence of the devil. Like other treasures of literature, The Master and Margarita exists on several levels: then contemporary Moscow, the ever present visitors, the story of the master and Margarita, and the events in Yershalayin.

Perhaps, fittingly, I read this wonderful story over Easter. As I read his translated words, I wondered about a conversation with Bulgakov to ask him the questions that occurred to me. What was the basis of the symbolism of the toms or the cream? What would they translate into in today’s world?

If you are in the mood for a serious read, taking you along way away from where you are and into a world of satirical imagery, then put this great novel on your list. Over the years, I have read Alice in Wonderland many times. On each visit, I find new meanings and thoughts that obviously evolved from Lewis Carroll’s real life. When I re-read The Master and Margarita one day, I am sure that I will find the same to be true. Maybe the author will appear and answer my questions.

Warms, Cym