Comments on: Scroguely Works: The Master and Margarita

By: Jan Vanhellemont

Jan Vanhellemont — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:00:58 +0000

May I be so bald to introduce to you a new website, solely devoted to this masterpiece:

http://www.masterandmargarita.eu

By: Ludwig

Ludwig — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:23:19 +0000

Bulgakov’s novel is a wonderful spirited retelling. Thanks for writing about it. The Faust myth, which was already old when Marlowe staged his version, keeps getting retold in wonderful way, layers of art on art, Faust dying in misery (Marlowe) or overcoming and attaining glory (Goethe 2) or simply freeing spirits of witchcraft and greatly fear and repressed womanly powers into the night via Bulgakov. If you don’t have a lusty sense of humor then don’t go near B.’s retelling. Honestly, Jay, lighten up. As Cheever once said: it’s just a summer day.

By: Russ Wellen

Russ Wellen — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:41:45 +0000

Thanks for turning us on to Bulgakov. I love Satan books. Started Norman Mailer’s latest book, “The House in the Forest,” about Satan and Hitler’s childhood. While I couldn’t believe he writes as well, or better, than ever in his eighties, the world he created was just too dismal for me to finishe the book.

Will take “The Master and Margarita” out of the library.

By: whythawk

whythawk — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:31:53 +0000

Jay, I’m not entirely sure that we’re reading the same book here. You sound like our ex-mate threebells.

Far from being “sex objects”, the female characters are alive with sexuality and comfortable in their assertiveness. Margarita dominates the Master. Natasha, her servant, turns a male neighbour who is shocked by her into a flying pig and rides him through Moscow.

Bulgakov uses fantasy to attack an ideology he could not attack directly – rather than encouraging “nostalgia for religious mysticism”. He is in good company through a long line of writers in despotic times who have performed similar feats.

The novel didn’t get published easily. It had to wait 26 years and slip in during the confused power struggles in the politburo during the mid-1960s before it could realise publication. And it was soon banned, but not before copies and Bulgakov’s notes had been smuggled out.

By: Jay Raskin

Jay Raskin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:31:47 +0000

The book is a one-dimensional mess, disjointed, virtually unreadable and a disappointment to all fans of literature.

The female characters are nothing but sex objects, even less developed than the one-dimensional characters that populate the rest of the thin, witless novel. At best one could consider it a failed attempt to imitate Gogol.

The whole point of the book is to attack on rationalism and to encourage nostalgia for religious mysticism. But the author is unable to do it in an original or even interesting fashion. I It is obnoxiously obvious and very boring after the first chapters.

The interesting thing is that the novel proves that the Soviet Union was such an open and free place at this time that a novelist could hope to get even the most insipid anti-Soviet works published. It thus works to counter the lurid poliitical fantasies of the bourgoisie.

By: wailin

wailin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:27:18 +0000

Wow. I have to check this out now. Thank you for the review.

By: whythawk

whythawk — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:13:42 +0000

It’s a mystery to me why it is not as well known. Bulgakov wasn’t exactly a Stalin sympathiser – perhaps it’s just that he died long before publication, wasn’t in exile and didn’t mix in the right (literary) circles. And he’s only peripherally known elsewhere in the world as well. None of his books are available in South Africa.

But I do treasure the fact that I have been fortunate enough to read it. There is the enjoyment of a master at the height of his craft, and there is the compassion and admiration for what he overcame to complete it.

And his bravery! To write it without any certainty that it would ever be read. One can only be humbled by such faith.

By: Jim Booth

Jim Booth — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:03:53 +0000

Thanks for this, Gavin. It has always been a puzzle to me why “Dr. Zhivago” is such a celebrated work in the West when it seems like sentimental drivel (of epic proportions, of course) next to Bulgakov’s work. Why he’s not as well known as Gogol and Dostoyevsky is a testament to – I’m guessing Western, particularly American, political propaganda….