Important details of the novel "The Master and Margarita" that most readers simply do not notice

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"The Master and Margarita" is Bulgakov's cult book, which gained immense popularity among schoolchildren of the nineties. In a way, by the amount of controversy surrounding her, she was the "Harry Potter" of that generation. But, after rereading it to adults, you will find that many important details were previously overlooked.

This is more of a pro-Christian than an anti-Christian book

For many, The Master and Margarita has become a symbol of protest against Christian dogma and a manifesto of the right to pride. For example, the phrase: “Never ask for anything! Never and nothing, and especially with those who are stronger than you. They themselves will offer and they themselves will give everything! " became winged and is perceived by many as a guide to action. This phrase is an inversion of the phrase of Christ: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened for you; for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. " In general, many passages from the speeches of Woland and his company can be understood only by knowing the Gospel.

Both Woland and his retinue are registered very charmingly, so one cannot help believing them. But it seems that the author's position is on the side of Christianity: for example, the messengers of the devil harm those who on Holy Week (by all indications, the action takes place just then) do not pray and remember the Gospel events, but went to watch the performance "with revelations" - and this the message can hardly be called anything other than moralistic.

By the way, about Holy Week

In "Faust" by Goethe, to which Bulgakov's novel constantly refers, the action takes place on Easter days. If you read carefully The Master and Margarita, you will notice that the week before Easter is also described. The epilogue mentions "the spring holiday full moon." As you know, in Orthodoxy, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after one of the spring nights of the full moon.

The events of the novel are constantly parallel to the evangelical events, but they parody them, like the Satanists - the Christian mass. They start on Wednesday. On Holy Wednesday, fragrant oil is poured over the head of Christ - myrrh. On Wednesday, Annushka pours oil on the pavement at Bulgakov's. The show at the variety show takes place on Maundy Thursday, when Christians gather in churches and listen to the story of the sufferings of Christ. Obviously, in a variety show on such an evening to go, from the point of view of Christianity, is blasphemous.

On the night of Great Saturday, in the old days, they were baptized by plunging into the baptismal font. Margarita is present at Woland's ball that night and bathes in blood. But we don't see a parody on Sunday. The devil and his retinue are in a hurry to get away from the holiness of Easter Sunday: “Messire! Saturday. The sun is going down. It's time.

Woland suffers from syphilis

It seems that in his human, earthly incarnation, Woland suffers from a disease that was previously associated with sin by Christians. Here are just a few signs. He has different-looking eyes - very often in syphilitics, one eye, with a paralyzed wide-open pupil, seemed much darker than the other. According to the characteristics of Bulgakov himself, Woland's eye is "empty, black and dead" - such an impression is produced by an eye with a wide open, unresponsive pupil.

Also, the voice of syphilitics could be, depending on the stage of the disease, with hoarseness (the cartilage of the larynx is affected) or nasal (the nose began to collapse). Woland is hoarse.

Finally, when he asks Margarita to lubricate a sore knee with ointment, he comments on it this way: “The close ones claim that it is rheumatism, but I strongly suspect that this pain in the knee was left to me in memory by a charming witch whom I became closely acquainted with in fifteen hundred 71st year in the Brocken Mountains, in the goddamn pulpit. The Brocken Mountains are believed to be the place where witches held sabbaths, copulating with the devil. By the way, different eyes and lameness in European beliefs is a sign of the devil, regardless of syphilis. It seems that Bulgakov, as a venereologist by profession, simply beat them.

All the names in the novel are speaking

The author took the name “Woland” from the play “Faust”, where Mephistopheles, that is, the devil, is once presented. In general, there are a lot of references to this play in the novel, for example, at some point, Woland has a sword (Mephistopheles had it), and when Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny meet him, Woland leans on a cane with a handle in the form of a poodle's head - in the play, Mephistopheles returns to the poodle.

The names of all those close to Woland can be deciphered when referring to Hebrew and Hebrew beliefs. So, Koroviev, most likely, refers to the word "karov", that is, "close, close"; Azazello is Azazel, one of the demons who is believed to have invented weapons and mirrors (by the way, in the novel he comes out of the mirror), Behemoth is literally an “animal” (or, more precisely, “animals”). By the way, in the Christian tradition, they began to call the demon indulging carnal desires "hippopotamus"; he could incarnate not only in a cat, but also in a dog, a wolf and an elephant. Also, according to legends, he was in charge of the devil's feasts.

The surname of the Homeless can refer to the words of Jesus about the merchants in the temple: “My house will be called the house of prayer” - after all, a Homeless is an atheist, he does not visit the temple, that is, the house of God. Gella is the word used on the island of Lesvos in ancient times to call forcibly deceased girls. After death, they became vampires, like Bulgakov's character.

Marguerite in the novel is frankly compared to Queen Margaux, a representative of the Valois dynasty, who during her lifetime was called the main harlot of France and whom Catholics reproached for betraying her faith for saving her Huguenot husband. This name of the heroine is also a reference to the beloved Faust. Margarita evokes sympathy for her emotionality and ability to love, but in the end it is her incontinence, her unwillingness to ponder and her readiness to put love (by the way, sinful, because she is married) above all else leads to the fact that she finds herself in the power of the devil.

For women, this has traditionally been a mystical role: Which of the actresses played Bulgakov's Margarita in the movie, and how it affected their lives.