The novel “The Master and Margarita” is not only a great literary phenomenon of the early twentieth century, but also a historical source of life in the USSR in the 20-30s. According to some critics, this novel is both a hymn to the devil and an anti-religious mission, while according to others, this “hymn” opens the eyes of the “lost.”
Let's start with the fact that the novel itself is a delight, and in a slightly different sense of the word.
“Prelest” - from Slavic it is pronounced as deception, flattery. Why is “The Master and Margarita” so wonderful? The fact is that the Master and Margot themselves are not, by and large, the main characters. It sounds paradoxical, but the work is about a demon, about Woland, and only about him.
So why is Woland the main character of the novel? Before the first chapter there is an epigraph: “... so who are you, finally? “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good...” (Goethe J.-W. Faust)
The power of the devil, which “eternally wants evil”!!! Woland is one of the 96 names of the devil, none other than Lucifer, whom God drove into a darker, gloomier and more empty world - hell. The demon is deprived of flesh, he is a spirit, he cannot create. Unlike man, who is created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, since man is created in the image of God, is he a creator? Let us turn to the Bible, where it is indicated that Adam gave names and titles to everything created by God; Adam was, to some extent, the creator. From the Gospel we find: “...Man has freedom of choice...” Nothing other than free will, the ability to create. The devil, being a spirit, cannot be a creator and is terribly jealous of people; he needs a Master to write a kind of “book of Satan.” Not being a creator, he cannot predict the future, he can build it as a path to his goal.
Throughout the entire novel, we observe precisely the action of mysticism, the participation of evil spirits, which is Satan.
The author, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, is a religiously educated person. His father is an associate professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy. Mikhail himself studied the Old and New Testaments and the Law of God while still at the gymnasium. In 1910, when Bulgakov came of age, he took off his pectoral cross forever, as if abandoning God. Since the 20s, he began to write a work about the devil, which bore various names “Prince of Darkness”, “Black Magician”, “Consultant with a Hoof”, etc.
It is believed that the demon's toes turned into hooves. At that time, a rumor circulating in Moscow that Joseph Stalin's toes were fused together forced Bulgakov to tear out the consultant's description from the novel. What’s most interesting is that Mikhail Afanasyevich destroyed 2/3 of the pages of the novel, and 1/3 was preserved, so from the initial phrases it was possible to restore the novel, as Woland said: “manuscripts don’t burn.”
Watching the Master and his author, we find a lot in common, for example, the Master burned his novel about Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov also had his own Margarita, Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya. The Master said that when he looked at the icon of the Guardian Angel, the angel turned away from him, because the Master himself refused the Guardian, apparently that is why he renounced the name given at baptism. Don’t we find the same thing in Mikhail Afanasyevich?
Speaking of the novel written by the Master. His novel is the opposite of the Gospel, where Yeshua Ha-Nozri is the complete opposite of Jesus Christ. Let's make a comparison:
1. When Pilate asked who he was by birth and where he was from, Yeshua replied that he was originally from Gamala and did not remember his parents. Christ said: “As the Father knows me, so I know the Father.”
2. The procurator asked the tramp: “What is truth?”, to which Ha-Nozri replied: “The truth is, hegemon, that you have a headache...” here Yeshua showed himself to be a doctor and a psychic. Jesus was silent on this question, giving the procurator the opportunity to understand for himself that the Truth was standing before him.
3. The defendant was extremely talkative in the Master’s novel; the hegemon felt sorry for the innocent vagabond doctor, who was also a wonderful conversationalist, who did not want to go to his death. The Son of God, relying on the Gospel, was silent and modest, as befits one who deliberately went to death for the salvation of mankind.
There are many contradictions in this. Let me turn to the above mentioned: “Woland is one of the 96 names of Lucifer.” We noticed that 96 is an inverted number. A strange property, because the author’s name begins with the same letter as the “name” of his hero. Mikhail and Master. In turn, the letter “M” is a reflection of the letter “W”, and this is the initial letter of the name Woland on the business card.

On May 23, 1938, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov completed his novel “The Master and Margarita.” We invite Tabloid readers to familiarize themselves with interesting facts, as well as illustrations for the legendary novel made by Samara artist Nikolai Korolev. Let's start with the fact that...

...Bulgakov dated the start of work on “The Master and Margarita” in different manuscripts as either 1928 or 1929. In the first edition, the novel had variant titles: “Black Magician”, “Engineer’s Hoof”, “Juggler with a Hoof”, “Son of V.”, “Tour”. The first edition of “The Master and Margarita” was destroyed by the author on March 18, 1930, after receiving news of the ban on the play “The Cabal of the Holy One.” Bulgakov reported this in a letter to the government: “And I personally, with my own hands, threw a draft of a novel about the devil into the stove...”.

Work on The Master and Margarita resumed in 1931. Rough sketches were made for the novel, and Margarita and her then nameless companion, the future Master, already appeared here, and Woland acquired his own riotous retinue. The second edition, created before 1936, had the subtitle “Fantastic Novel” and variant titles “Great Chancellor”, “Satan”, “Here I am”, “Black Magician”, “Engineer’s Hoof”.

And finally, the third edition, begun in the second half of 1936, was originally called “The Prince of Darkness,” but already in 1937 the title “The Master and Margarita” appeared. On June 25, 1938, the full text was reprinted for the first time (it was printed by O. S. Bokshanskaya, sister of E. S. Bulgakova). The author’s edits continued almost until the writer’s death; Bulgakov stopped it with Margarita’s phrase: “So this means that the writers are going after the coffin?”...

Bulgakov wrote “The Master and Margarita” for a total of more than 10 years.

There is also one interesting meteorological correspondence that confirms the internal chronology of “The Master and Margarita”. Judging by press reports, on May 1, 1929, Moscow experienced a sharp warming, unusual for this time of year, as a result of which the temperature rose from zero to thirty degrees in one day. In the following days, an equally sharp cold snap was observed, ending with rain and thunderstorms. In Bulgakov's novel, the evening of May 1 turns out to be unusually hot, and on the eve of the last flight, as once over Yershalaim, a severe thunderstorm with rain sweeps over Moscow.

Hidden dating is also contained in the indication of the age of the Master, the most autobiographical of all the characters in the novel. The master is “a man about thirty-eight years old.” Bulgakov himself turned the same age on May 15, 1929. 1929 is also the year when Bulgakov began working on “The Master and Margarita.”

If we talk about predecessors, then the first impetus for the idea of ​​​​the image of Satan, as A. Zerkalov suggests in his work, was music - an opera by Charles Gounod, written on the plot of I.V. Goethe and amazed Bulgakov in childhood for the rest of his life. Woland's idea was taken from the poem by I.V. Goethe's Faust, where it is mentioned only once and is omitted in Russian translations.

It is believed that Bulgakov's apartment was searched many times by NKVD officers, and they were aware of the existence and contents of the draft version of The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov also had a telephone conversation with Stalin in 1937 (the contents of which are unknown to anyone). Despite the massive repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor any of his family members were arrested.

In the novel, during the death of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, unlike the Gospel, he pronounces the name not of God, but of Pontius Pilate. According to Deacon Andrei Kuraev, for this reason (and not only for it), the Yershalaim story (a novel within a novel) should be perceived as blasphemous from the point of view of Christianity - but this, according to him, does not mean that the entire novel should also be considered blasphemous "The Master and Margarita".

Woland's name in the early editions of the novel was Astaroth. However, this name was later replaced, apparently due to the fact that the name “Astaroth” is associated with a specific demon of the same name, different from Satan.

The Variety Theater does not exist in Moscow and never has existed. But now several theaters sometimes compete for the title.

In the penultimate edition of the novel, Woland utters the words “He has a courageous face, he does his job correctly, and in general, it’s all over here. It's time for us!”, referring to the pilot, a character later excluded from the novel.

According to the writer’s widow, Elena Sergeevna, Bulgakov’s last words about the novel “The Master and Margarita” before his death were: “So that they know... So that they know.”

In Moscow there is a house-museum “Bulgakov House”. It is located at st. Bolshaya Sadovaya, 10. In apartment No. 50 there is a museum telling about the life and work of the writer. There are also theatrical performances and original improvisations based on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov.

Some oddities begin even when creating a novel. An interesting fact is that Bulgakov was prompted to write “The Master and Margarita” by A.V. Chayanov’s novel, which was given to him. entitled “Venediktov or memorable events of my life.” The main character of the novel is Bulgakov, who faces devilish forces. M.A.'s wife Bulgakova, Elena Belozerova, wrote in her memoirs about the strong impact of the coincidence of surnames on the writer.

Bulgakov wrote his novel in the atmosphere of Moscow in the 1930s: the destruction of religion and religious institutions and, as a consequence, the decline of spiritual and moral life. Naturally, in such years, the novel with biblical motifs was not accepted for publication, and Bulgakov tried to burn his creation. The resumption of work on the novel is attributed to the writer’s clash with devilish forces, namely a conversation between Mikhail Afanasyevich and Stalin on the phone. After which, during the mass repressions of 1937-1938, neither Bulgakov nor his family members were arrested.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” was not completed and was not published during the author’s lifetime. It was first published only in 1966, 26 years after Bulgakov’s death, and then in an abridged magazine version. We owe the fact that this greatest literary work has reached the reader to the writer’s wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, who managed to preserve the manuscript of the novel during the difficult Stalinist times.

In 2005, director Vladimir Bortko made an attempt to film Bulgakov's work. The ten-episode series was shown on the Rossiya TV channel and was viewed by 40 million viewers. Here are some interesting facts about the film.

Valentin Gaft, who played several minor roles in the television series, played Woland himself in Kara’s unreleased film. In turn, Alexander Filippenko, who played the role of Azazello in that film, was another representative of the dark forces - Koroviev.

The man in the jacket wears the uniform of a state security major (the rank corresponding to the rank of the Red Army brigade commander) during the main action of the film and the uniform of a senior state security major (corresponding to the Red Army division commander) in the finale. This uniform was worn by employees of the GUGB NKVD in 1937-1943. The man in the jacket is not mentioned in the novel; all episodes with his participation are the authors' find.

During the main action of the film, the investigator wears the uniform of a junior lieutenant of state security (corresponding to a senior lieutenant of the Red Army). In the finale, he has insignia - four cubes in his buttonholes - which have never been seen either in the Red Army or in the GUGB NKVD in the entire history of their existence.

Sergei Bezrukov, who played Yeshua, voiced the role of the Master, so that actor Alexander Galibin does not speak in his own voice throughout the entire film.

Oleg Basilashvili, who played Woland, voiced the role of the head of the secret guard of the Procurator of Judea Afranius, played by Lyubomiras Lautsevičius.

Despite the fairly wide timing, the film omitted some episodes from the original novel, for example, the announcement of the death sentence by Pontius Pilate in front of a crowd of people, Nikanor Ivanovich’s dream, the barman’s consultation with the doctor after visiting the “bad apartment”, the episode with Margarita in the trolleybus on the way to Alexander Garden, Margarita’s collision with an illuminated disk during the flight, Margarita’s conversation with the boy after the destruction of Latunsky’s apartment (most of the details of Margarita’s flight from Latunsky’s apartment to the lake were also missed, except for the meeting with Natasha on the hog), conversation with Kozlonogy over a glass of champagne. The details of the Sabbath scene were modestly presented, for example, there were no fat-faced frogs, glowing rotten mushrooms, or Margarita’s flight to the other side.

There is no episode of Margarita’s initiation into a witch in the novel, this is a discovery of the film’s authors, Woland and the Cat Behemoth playing chess (the chess pieces, according to Bulgakov’s novel, are alive), an episode of Woland and Margarita observing what is happening in the globe, a forest with parrots and Margarita’s flight at the Ball Satan, episodes with Abadonna, an enthusiastic conversation between Behemoth, Gella and Woland after the ball, Afranius’s meeting with Nisa, a conversation between Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth after the fire in Griboedov.

Woland in the novel is no more than 50 years old, and Oleg Basilashvili is ~75. Azazello's hair color is red, and Alexander Filippenko's hair color in this role is dark. Woland's eyes are different colors and one of them always looks straight; Basilashvili's eyes in this role are healthy and of the same color.

In some places, illogical edits have been made to the text. In episode 9, Pilate is having a conversation with Matvey: “And now I need a parchment...”, “And do you want to take away the last one?”, “I didn’t say give it back, I said show me.” In the interrogation scene of Sempliyarov, he talks about a magician in a mask (as was the case in the novel), although in the film Woland appears in the theater without it.

In the interrogation scene of Yeshua, he introduces himself as Ga Nozri, and not Ga Nozri.

In episode 8, Koroviev hands the Master an obviously metal cup (according to the text - a glass glass), the Master drops it on the carpet, Koroviev remarks: “fortunately, fortunately...”, although nothing broke.

The history of writing Bulgakov's work "The Master and Margarita"

An outstanding Russian prose writer and playwright who called himself a “mystical writer.” In his original work, along with “magical realism,” a powerful satirical charge plays an extremely important role. Bulgakov's heroes are always concerned with global problems that are of a universal human nature. As a satirist writer, Bulgakov was one of the first who had the courage to show the degradation of a totalitarian society and the tragedy of the thinking person in it.
The novel “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Afanasovich Bulgakov (1891-1940), coming to the reader a quarter of a century after the author’s death, immediately after its publication became famous not only in Russian literature but also in the world. In this we find a new artistic version of the Gospel legend, and satirical sketches of Moscow life in the late 20s, but above all, this novel is about good and evil, about betrayal, heroism, art and the power of love...
“The Master and Margarita,” first published in the Moscow magazine with a foreword by K. Simonov, was immediately noticed by critics.
Some authors of the articles did not approve of the novel; they despised the writer for the lack of a class approach.
This point of view was not supported in the following literary works.
In the following articles, the novel was examined primarily as a work dedicated to the “eternal” question of good and evil, taken in the broadest cultural and philosophical context, as a kind of “urban” novel. Writers and critics noted the main problems presented in the novel: freedom of creativity, a person’s moral responsibility for his actions; much attention was paid when analyzing the text to the main characters - Yeshua, Pilate, the Master, Margarita. There is a well-known article by V. Lakshin, which not only was a relevant critical response to the publication, but also represents the first serious literary study of the work. A lot of research work appeared in this direction in the 70s and 80s.
On October 4, 1939, having become convinced of his fatal illness, Bulgakov began dictating amendments to the novel to his wife and continued this work until the last day of his life.
Back in 1928, the writer began work on his famous novel “The Master and Margarita”. The first complete version of The Master and Margarita was completed in 1934, and the last in 1938. Already on his deathbed, the blinded Bulgakov dictated the proofs of his main work, but did not have time to complete the work. The writer died on March 10, 1940, and the first magazine publication of “The Master and Margarita” in his homeland became possible only 26 years later.
The first full text of the book was published as a separate edition in 1967 in Paris, and in the USSR in 1973. The novel is today one of the most popular works of Russian prose, a “cult” book of several generations of readers.
The novel develops schemes that are quite common in world literature: the adventures of the devil in the human world, the sale of the soul, variations on Gospel themes, etc.
Using the compositional technique of “text within text,” Bulgakov connected within the framework of space (“Moscow” and “Yershalaim” lines of the plot), which are inextricably linked. The action of the two plots takes place in 29 and 1929 from the Nativity of Christ and thus they develop as if simultaneously.
“The interpenetration of these texts, the collision of their” points of view “forms a very important collision” of the mythologized and “real” images of a specific person.
Bulgakov's principle of using the Gospel plot is that the Master's novel is polemically correlated with it; the historical Gospel takes on the features of an unreliable version.

Bulgakov's devil Woland differs from the traditional Satan primarily in that he does not create purposeful evil. The essence of Woland is that the living world does not know good and evil.
Woland's only evaluative criterion is “from the point of view of eternity.”
Bulgakov emphasizes the gap between creative titanism and human “ordinariness.” In fact, the only creative incentive for the Master is the desire to escape from modernity, to find an illusory existence in another time. Having created a brilliant book, restoring historical reality in its living pristine state, the Master as a cultural hero and as an artist, “ruler of souls”, turned out to be weaker than Matthew Levi, who, blindly believing in his truth, made it the flag of faith for centuries.

Despite the fact that the novel was written a long time ago and is a classic work, it is still very popular among the younger generation. Thanks to the school curriculum, almost everyone knows this novel and who wrote it. “The Master and Margarita” is a novel created by the greatest author, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov.

Indifference to the novel

In relation to this work it practically does not exist. In fact, readers are divided into two camps: those who love the novel and admire it, and those who simply hate it and do not recognize Bulgakov’s genius. But there is a third, the smallest, category. This can probably only include small children. These are those who have not heard of the novel and do not know who the author is.

“The Master and Margarita” is one of the most extraordinary and mysterious. Many writers and literary scholars have tried to unravel the mystery of its popularity and success among the reader. No one has yet succeeded in this.

It is not possible to recall and name many works that would generate so much controversy around them. They don’t stop talking about Bulgakov’s novel to this day. They talk about the biblical component of the plot, about the prototypes of the main characters, about the philosophical and aesthetic roots of the novel, about who the main character is, and even about the genre in which the work is written.

Three stages of writing a novel, according to B.V. Sokolov

The opinions of literary scholars regarding the history of writing “The Master and Margarita,” as well as the essence of this work, differ. For example, Sokolov, the author of the book “Bulgakov Encyclopedia,” divides the editions of the novel into three stages. He says that work on the work began back in 1928. Presumably, it was then that the author of the novel “The Master and Margarita” conceived it, and began writing individual chapters only in the winter of 1929. Already in the spring of the same year, the first complete edition was submitted. But then it was not yet directly said who the author of the book was, who wrote it. “The Master and Margarita” did not appear as the title of the work even then. The manuscript entitled “Furibunda” was submitted to the publishing house “Nedra” under the pseudonym K. Tugai. And on March 18, 1930, it was destroyed by the author himself. This is how the first stage of editions of the work, highlighted by Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, ends.

The second stage began in the fall of 1936. And at that time no one knew that the novel would be called as we are now accustomed to. Bulgakov himself, the one who wrote it, thought differently. “The Master and Margarita” is a work that received different names from its author: “He Appeared” and “He Appeared”, “The Advent”, “The Great Chancellor”, “Here I Am”, “The Black Magician”, “The Hat with a Feather” , “The Consultant’s Hoof” and “The Foreigner’s Horseshoe”, “The Black Theologian”, and even “Satan”. Only one subtitle remained unchanged - “Fantastic Novel”.

And finally, the third stage - from the second half of 1936 to the end of 1938. At first the novel was called “Prince of Darkness”, but then it acquired such a familiar name for us. And at the beginning of summer, in 1938, it was completely reprinted for the first time.

Nine editions, according to Losev

V.I. Losev studied the biography and work of Mikhail Afanasyevich for more than twenty years. He divides the story of writing the novel into nine parts, just like the author himself.

• The first edition is “Black Magician”. These are drafts of the novel, the first notebook, written in 1928-1929. It does not yet contain The Master and Margarita and there are only four chapters.
• The second is “Engineer’s Hoof”. This is the second draft notebook from the same years. This is like a continuation, the second part of the first edition of the work. There are only three chapters in it, but here the idea of ​​one of the most important parts of the novel has already appeared - this is the section called “The Gospel of Woland.”
• The third is “The Evening of Terrible Saturday.” Drafts, outlines for the novel, written in 1929-1931. There are also three chapters. And only the case in Griboedov reached the final version.
• The fourth is “Grand Chancellor”. The first complete handwritten edition. Margarita and her lover already appear here. But his name is not yet Master, but Poet.
• Fifth - “Fantastic novel”. These are chapters rewritten and completed in 1934-1936. New details appear, but there are no significant modifications.
• Sixth - “Golden Spear”. This is an unfinished manuscript, torn off at the chapter “Magic Money”.
• Seventh - “Prince of Darkness”. The first thirteen chapters of the novel. not here, and in general everything ends with the appearance of the main character. And Berlioz is called Mirtsev here.
• The eighth part is “The Master and Margarita”. Complete and mature handwritten edition of 1928-1937. And it was this version that was published by Elena Bulgakova’s sister Olga Bokshanskaya.
• The ninth is also “The Master and Margarita”. The latest and final edition, including all the latest additions and comments by Mikhail Afanasyevich. It was published after the death of the writer by Elena Sergeevna, his wife, in 1966.

Variant of the story of Belobrovtseva and Kuljus

In many ways, their version is similar to Losev’s, since they completely agree with the critic regarding the first edition. However, they call the second edition the chapters of the novel “The Engineer’s Hoof”, submitted to the Nedra publishing house. It is here that the Master, also called Fesey, appears for the first time. He plays the role of Faust even without Margarita. The third version, according to Belobrovtseva and Kuljus, is the “Fantastic Novel” written by Bulgakov in 1932, where the Master turns from Fesi into the Poet and Margarita already appears. They consider the fourth edition to be the 1936 edition, the one that was completed for the first time with the word “end.” Next comes a work from 1937 - the unfinished novel “Prince of Darkness”. And then the manuscript printed by O. S. Bokshanskaya. Already its editing by the authors is considered the seventh edition. And the eighth and last is the one that was edited by Bulgakov’s wife before his death and was published after his death.

The novel was published in the form in which we know it for the first time in the Moscow magazine in 1966. The work immediately gained popularity, and Bulgakov’s name never left the lips of his contemporaries. Then no one really had any questions about who the author of the work was, who wrote it. “The Master and Margarita” is a novel that made a great impression. And he still holds the brand.

I decided to rummage not yet in the editions of “The Master and Margarita” (of which, as we know, there are eight), but in the complete editions (there are only two options).

Word from I. Belobrovtseva and S. Kulyus: “The full text of MiM first appeared before the Soviet reader in 1973, but in this publication the dying will of Bulgakov was violated, who transferred all copyright and editorial rights to the novel to E.S. Bulgakova. Editor of the publication 1973 A. Sahakyants created a new text, in which, as researchers (G. Lesskis) note, there are over three thousand discrepancies in comparison with the text prepared by the writer’s widow.<...>By the time the 1973 edition was published, one of the two notebooks with dying edits was not at the editor’s disposal" [B-K, 30-31]. And V. Losev notes that the text of the novel prepared by E. S. Bulgakova in 1940 g. (“immediately, following fresh traces of collaboration with the writer” [L, 999]), “researchers discovered only in the late 80s” [L, 1000].

“The 1989 edition (Bulgakov M. Selected works in two volumes. Volume 2. Kyiv: Dnipro, 1989) gave another version of the text of the novel, subsequently published also in the five-volume collected works of the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura”. It connects the editorship of E.S. Bulgakova with the edition of 1973 and still leaves a lot
questions" [B-K, 31].

Which edition is in front of us (1973 or 1989) can be determined immediately by the first phrase.

1973:
“One day in the spring, at the hour of an unprecedentedly hot sunset, in Moscow, on the Patriarch’s Ponds, two citizens".

1989:
"At the hour of a hot spring sunset, a two citizens".

It is curious that the Internet mainly contains an earlier version of the novel (1973), and what is today considered the final edition (1989), there is, for example, .

At the same time, it turned out that there is Losev’s brick on the Internet (a complete collection of editions and versions of the novel in PDF and DjVu; by the way, there is no 1973 version in it) and a commentary by Belobrovtseva and Kuljus in DjVu, which I’m talking about. By the way, TXT is perfectly extracted from déjà vu, so you can pull quotes from the text and upload them to a book.

One of the differences that catches the eye is that in the 1989 edition, Margarita’s walks (“She began to go for a walk”) and the master’s friendship with Aloysius are missing.

V. Losev, including referring to B. Sokolov (oh!), suggests that the exclusion of the fragment about Aloysius is due to the fact that M. Bulgakov abandoned suspicions against the person who is considered the prototype of Aloysius, but did not have time to write a new version of the episode . Mogarych was left without a biography [L, 1005].

But why not assume that the matter is not only about Mogarych (anti-Bombardov)? The public is invariably interested in why Margarita “started going for a walk” and how this is consistent with “true, faithful and eternal love.” Perhaps, for the integrity of the image of this love, M. Bulgakov removed from the text the mention of the only disagreement between the title characters.