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The
Master and Margarita:
When you browse through Borders or Amazon or the local used-book shanty, perhaps you notice a provocative title or two. Or an oddly appealing cover. Or an exotic-sounding author who comes highly recommended by Zeke and his manager Zelda. In these aisles, chances are you've seen The Master and Margarita. Were you hoping this was a novel about S&M, or life in Tijuana, or both? Reader, press on - this may just be the funniest, strangest book you find this year. So it's not exactly new. Master was written by Mikhail Bulgakov during the early 1930s in Moscow, although its publishing was stymied until 1967 in Russia. Why the censorship? For one thing, there's a documented history of Stalin phoning the major writers of the day and dicking with them - Bulgakov's diaries from the '30s reveal a state of barely repressed panic. But The Master and Margarita was kept from the presses because of its bitingly satirical take on Stalinist Moscow and the city's cannibalized literary circles. The book is blasphemous, hilarious, challenging, devastating. It's the story of how the Devil comes to the big city, shakes up the status quo and throws a fantastic gala for the dead. The book is also tremendously inventive - every third chapter is part of a larger metatext, a story within the story, on the trial of Yeshua (Jesus) in a backwater town called Jerusalem. Here he's just a guy with a self-appointed apostle who keeps misrepresenting Yeshua's words - it's disconcerting to say the least, it's the sort of thing that gets a prophet killed. A third storyline unites the other two, featuring an insane young writer called the Master and the bargain struck by his lover Margarita to restore his lost novel and their former happiness. In exchange, all Margarita has to do is become a sexually liberated Faerie Queen and make a deal with the Devil. He turns out to be a pretty decent fellow anyway - wise and judicious with a naughty smile. The Master and Margarita celebrates sensuality, satirizes the politics behind making art and maintains a blend of wonder and cynicism. Satan says to Margarita, "All of this will turn out right in the end. It's what mankind was built on." And he's right - men may change into monsters during the novel, and the Devil may be an active yin to God's slumbering yang, but in the midst of a city in upheaval, everything ends up as it should. In the tradition of European allegorical folk tales, and as a precursor to magical realism, Bulgakov places his bet on humanity's power to literally reinvent himself in a modern age. When asked to name the one novel that has influenced their work, Russian writers consistently cite The Master and Margarita. Trust them, and me - buy the book at your local bookshop. Ask for Zeke, he'll tell you all about it. Oh, and the cat on the cover? He's a six-foot tall tomcat named Behemoth. He struts and jokes and shoots his tommy-gun like a gangster as the writers' cafe is torched. Never let it be said that Bulgakov is dull ... --Ryan Sloan |
