Bulgakov the master and margarita full content. Reading experience: “The Master and Margarita” is sacred

The novel “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov (1928-1940) is a book within a book. The story about Satan’s visit to Moscow at the beginning of the twentieth century includes a short story based on the New Testament, which was allegedly written by one of Bulgakov’s characters, the master. At the end, the two works are united: the master meets his main character - the procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate - and mercifully decides his fate.

Death prevented Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov from completing work on the novel. The first magazine publications of “The Master and Margarita” date back to 1966-1967; in 1969, the book with a large number of abbreviations was published in Germany, and in the writer’s homeland, the full text of the novel was published only in 1973. You can get acquainted with its plot and main ideas by reading online a summary of “The Master and Margarita” chapter by chapter.

Main characters

Master- anonymous writer, author of a novel about Pontius Pilate. Unable to bear the persecution from Soviet criticism, he goes crazy.

Margarita- his beloved. Having lost the master, she yearns for him and, in the hope of seeing him again, agrees to become queen at the annual Satan's ball.

Woland- a mysterious black magician who ultimately turns into Satan himself.

Azazello- a member of Woland’s retinue, a short, red-haired, fanged subject.

Koroviev- Woland’s companion, a tall, thin guy in a checkered jacket and pince-nez with one broken glass.

Hippopotamus- Woland’s jester, transforming from a huge talking black cat into a short fat man “with a cat’s face” and back.

Pontius Pilate- the fifth procurator of Judea, in which human feelings struggle with official duty.

Yeshua Ha-Nozri- a wandering philosopher, condemned to crucifixion for his ideas.

Other characters

Mikhail Berlioz- Chairman of MASSOLIT, the trade union of writers. He believes that a person determines his own destiny, but dies as a result of an accident.

Ivan Bezdomny- poet, member of MASSOLIT, after meeting Woland and the tragic death of Berlioz, he goes crazy.

Gella– Woland’s maid, an attractive red-haired vampire.

Styopa Likhodeev- director of the Variety Theater, Berlioz's neighbor. Mysteriously moves from Moscow to Yalta to free up an apartment for Woland and his retinue.

Ivan Varenukha- administrator of Variety. As an edification for his impoliteness and addiction to lies, Woland's retinue turns him into a vampire.

Grigory Rimsky- financial director of Variety, who almost fell victim to an attack by the vampire Varenukha and Gella.

Andrey Sokov- Variety bartender.

Vasily Lastochkin- accountant at Variety.

Natasha– Margarita’s housekeeper, a young attractive girl, follows her mistress and turns into a witch.

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy- Chairman of the housing association in the building where the “damned apartment” No. 50 is located, bribe-taker.

Aloisy Mogarych- a traitor to the master, pretending to be a friend.

Levi Matvey- Yershalaim tax collector, who is so captivated by the speeches of Yeshua that he becomes his follower.

Judah of Kiriath- a young man who betrayed Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who trusted him, being flattered by the reward. He was stabbed to death as punishment for this.

High Priest Caiaphas- an ideological opponent of Pilate, destroying the last hope for the salvation of the condemned Yeshua: in exchange for him, the robber Bar-Rabban will be released.

Afranius- Head of the Procurator's Secret Service.

Part one

Chapter 1. Never talk to strangers

At the Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow, the chairman of the MASSOLIT writers' trade union, Mikhail Berlioz, and the poet Ivan Bezdomny are talking about Jesus Christ. Berlioz reproaches Ivan for creating a negative image of this character in his poem instead of refuting the very fact of his existence, and gives many arguments to prove the non-existence of Christ.

A stranger who looks like a foreigner intervenes in the conversation of the writers. He asks the question, who, since there is no God, controls human life. Disputing the answer that “man himself controls,” he predicts Berlioz’s death: his head will be cut off by a “Russian woman, a Komsomol member” - and very soon, because a certain Annushka has already spilled sunflower oil.

Berlioz and Bezdomny suspect the stranger to be a spy, but he shows them documents and says that he has been invited to Moscow as a specialist consultant on black magic, after which he declares that Jesus did exist. Berlioz demands evidence, and the foreigner begins to talk about Pontius Pilate.

Chapter 2. Pontius Pilate

A beaten and poorly dressed man of about twenty-seven is brought to the trial of the procurator Pontius Pilate. Migraine-stricken Pilate must approve the death sentence pronounced by the Holy Sanhedrin: the accused Yeshua Ha-Nozri allegedly called for the destruction of the temple. However, after a conversation with Yeshua, Pilate begins to sympathize with the intelligent and educated prisoner, who, as if by magic, saved him from a headache and considers all people to be kind. The procurator is trying to get Yeshua to renounce the words that are attributed to him. But he, as if not sensing danger, easily confirms the information contained in the denunciation of a certain Judas from Kiriath - that he opposed all authority, and therefore the authority of the great Caesar. After this, Pilate is obliged to confirm the verdict.
But he makes another attempt to save Yeshua. In a private conversation with the high priest Caiaphas, he petitions that of the two prisoners under the authority of the Sanhedrin, Yeshua should be pardoned. However, Kaifa refuses, preferring to give life to the rebel and murderer Bar-Rabban.

Chapter 3. Seventh proof

Berlioz tells the consultant that it is impossible to prove the reality of his story. The foreigner claims that he was personally present at these events. The head of MASSOLIT suspects that this is a madman, especially since the consultant intends to live in Berlioz’s apartment. Having entrusted the strange subject to Bezdomny, Berlioz goes to a pay phone to call the foreigners' bureau. The consultant then asks him to at least believe in the devil and promises some reliable proof.

Berlioz is about to cross the tram tracks, but slips on spilled sunflower oil and falls onto the tracks. Berlioz's head is cut off by a tram wheel driven by a female tram driver wearing a Komsomol red scarf.

Chapter 4. The Chase

The poet, struck by the tragedy, hears that the oil on which Berlioz slipped was spilled by a certain Annushka and Sadovaya. Ivan compares these words with those spoken by the mysterious foreigner and decides to call him to account. However, the consultant, who previously spoke excellent Russian, pretends that he does not understand the poet. A cheeky guy in a checkered jacket comes to his defense, and a little later Ivan sees the two of them in the distance and, moreover, accompanied by a huge black cat. Despite all the poet’s efforts to catch up with them, they are hiding.

Ivan's further actions look strange. He invades an unfamiliar apartment, being sure that the evil professor is hiding there. Having stolen an icon and a candle from there, Bezdomny continues the chase and moves to the Moscow River. There he decides to take a swim, after which he discovers that his clothes have been stolen. Having dressed in what he has - a torn sweatshirt and long johns - Ivan decides to look for a foreigner “at Griboedov’s” - in the MASSOLIT restaurant.

Chapter 5. There was an affair in Griboedov

"Griboyedov's House" - MASSOLIT building. Being a writer - a member of a trade union is very profitable: you can apply for housing in Moscow and dachas in a prestigious village, go on sabbaticals, eat tasty and cheap food in a luxurious restaurant “for your own people”.

12 writers who gathered for the MASSOLIT meeting are waiting for Chairman Berlioz, and without waiting, they go down to the restaurant. Having learned about the tragic death of Berlioz, they mourn, but not for long: “Yes, he died, he died... But we are alive!” - and continue to eat.

Ivan Bezdomny appears in the restaurant - barefoot, in long johns, with an icon and a candle - and begins to look under the tables for the consultant whom he accuses of Berlioz's death. Colleagues try to calm him down, but Ivan becomes furious, starts a fight, the waiters tie him up with towels, and the poet is taken to a psychiatric hospital.

Chapter 6. Schizophrenia, as was said

The doctor is talking to Ivan Bezdomny. The poet is very glad that they are finally ready to listen to him, and tells him his fantastic story about a consultant who is familiar with evil spirits, “placed” Berlioz under a tram and is personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate.

In the middle of the story, Bezdomny remembers that he needs to call the police, but they won’t listen to the poet from the insane asylum. Ivan tries to escape from the hospital by breaking out a window, but the special glass holds out, and Bezdomny is placed in a ward with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Chapter 7. Bad apartment

The director of the Moscow Variety Theater Styopa Likhodeev wakes up with a hangover in his apartment, which he shares with the late Berlioz. The apartment has a bad reputation - there are rumors that its previous residents disappeared without a trace and evil spirits are allegedly involved in this.

Styopa sees a stranger in black, who claims that Likhodeev has made an appointment with him. He calls himself professor of black magic Woland and wants to clarify the details of the concluded and already paid contract for performances at the Variety Show, about which Styopa remembers nothing. Having called the theater and confirmed the guest’s words, Likhodeev finds him no longer alone, but with a checkered guy in a pince-nez and a huge talking black cat who drinks vodka. Woland announces to Styopa that he is unnecessary in the apartment, and a short, red-haired, fanged individual named Azazello, who emerges from the mirror, offers to “throw him the hell out of Moscow.”

Styopa finds himself on the seashore in an unfamiliar city and learns from a passerby that this is Yalta.

Chapter 8. The duel between the professor and the poet

Doctors led by Dr. Stravinsky come to see Ivan Bezdomny in the hospital. He asks Ivan to repeat his story again and wonders what he will do if he is released from the hospital now. The homeless man replies that he will go straight to the police to report about the damned consultant. Stravinsky convinces the poet that he is too upset by the death of Berlioz to behave adequately, and therefore they will not believe him and will immediately return him to the hospital. The doctor suggests that Ivan rest in a comfortable room and formulate a statement to the police in writing. The poet agrees.

Chapter 9. Koroviev's things

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosogo, chairman of the housing association in the house on Sadovaya where Berlioz lived, is besieged by applicants for the deceased’s vacated space. Barefoot, he visits the apartment himself. In Berlioz’s sealed office sits a subject who introduces himself as Koroviev, the translator of the foreign artist Woland, who lives with Likhodeev with the permission of his owner, who has left for Yalta. He invites Bosom to rent out Berlioz’s apartment to the artist and immediately hands him the rent and a bribe.

Nikanor Ivanovich leaves, and Woland expresses his wish that he should not appear again. Koroviev calls on the phone and reports that the chairman of the housing association illegally keeps currency at home. They come to Bosom with a search and instead of the rubles that Koroviev gave him, they find dollars. Barefoot is arrested.

Chapter 10. News from Yalta

In the office of the financial director of Variety Rimsky, he and the administrator Varenukha are sitting. They wonder where Likhodeev disappeared to. At this time, an urgent telegram from Yalta arrives in the name of Varenukha - someone has appeared at the local criminal investigation department claiming to be Stepan Likhodeev, and confirmation of his identity is needed. The administrator and financial director decide that this is a joke: Likhodeev called four hours ago from his apartment, promising to come to the theater soon, and since then he has not been able to move from Moscow to Crimea.

Varenukha calls Styopa's apartment, where he is informed that he has gone out of town for a ride in a car. New version: “Yalta” is a cheburek house where Likhodeev got drunk with a local telegraph operator and amuses himself by sending telegrams to work.

Rimsky tells Varenukha to take the telegrams to the police. An unfamiliar nasal voice on the phone orders the administrator not to carry the telegrams anywhere, but he still goes to the department. Along the way, he is attacked by a fat man who looks like a cat and a short fanged individual. They deliver their victim to Likhodeev's apartment. The last thing Varenukha sees is a naked red-haired girl with burning eyes who is approaching him.

Chapter 11. Ivan's split

Ivan Bezdomny is in the hospital trying to make a statement to the police, but he can’t clearly explain what happened. In addition to this, he is worried about the thunderstorm outside the window. After a calming injection, the poet lies and talks “in his mind” to himself. One of the internal “interlocutors” continues to worry about the tragedy with Berlioz, the other is sure that instead of panic and pursuit, it was necessary to politely ask the consultant more about Pilate and find out the continuation of the story.

Suddenly, a stranger appears on the balcony outside the window of Homeless’s room.

Chapter 12. Black magic and its exposure

The financial director of Variety Rimsky wonders where Varenukha disappeared to. He wants to call the police about this, but all the phones in the theater are broken. Woland arrives at Variety, accompanied by Koroviev and a cat.

Entertainer Bengalsky introduces Woland to the public, declaring that, of course, no black magic exists, and the artist is only a virtuoso magician. Woland begins the “exposure session” with a philosophical conversation with Koroviev, whom he calls Fagot, about how Moscow and its inhabitants have changed a lot externally, but the more important question is whether they have become different internally. Bengalsky explains to the audience that the foreign artist admires Moscow and Muscovites, but the artists immediately object that they didn’t say anything like that.

Koroviev-Fagot performs a trick with a deck of cards, which is found in the wallet of one of the spectators. The skeptic, who decides that this spectator is in cahoots with the magician, finds a wad of money in his own pocket. After this, chervonets begin to fall from the ceiling, and people catch them. The entertainer calls what is happening “mass hypnosis” and assures the audience that the pieces of paper are not real, but the artists again deny his words. Fagot declares that he is tired of Bengalsky and asks the audience what to do with this liar. A proposal can be heard from the audience: “Tear off his head!” – and the cat tears off Bengal’s head. The audience feels sorry for the entertainer, Woland argues out loud that people, in general, remain the same, “the housing issue has only spoiled them,” and orders him to put his head back. Bengalsky leaves the stage and is taken away by ambulance.

“Tapericha, when this annoying thing is sold out, let’s open a ladies’ store!” - says Koroviev. Showcases, mirrors and rows of clothes appear on the stage, and the exchange of old dresses of spectators for new ones begins. As the store disappears, a voice from the audience demands the promised revelation. In response, Fagot exposes its owner - that yesterday he was not at work at all, but with his mistress. The session ends with a scandal.

Chapter 13. The appearance of a hero

A stranger from the balcony enters Ivan's room. This is also a patient. He has with him a bunch of keys stolen from a paramedic, but when asked why he won’t run away from the hospital with them, the guest replies that he has nowhere to run away. He informs Bezdomny about a new patient who keeps talking about currency in the ventilation, and asks the poet how he himself got here. Having learned that “because of Pontius Pilate,” he demands details and tells Ivan that he met with Satan at the Patriarch’s Ponds.

Pontius Pilate also brought the stranger to the hospital - Ivan’s guest wrote a novel about him. He introduces himself to Bezdomny as a “master” and, as proof, presents a hat with the letter M, which a certain “she” sewed for him. Next, the master tells the poet his story - how he once won a hundred thousand rubles, quit his job at the museum, rented an apartment in the basement and began writing a novel, and soon met his beloved: “Love jumped out in front of us, like a killer jumps out of the ground in an alley, and amazed us both at once! That’s how lightning strikes, that’s how a Finnish knife strikes!” . Just like the master himself, his secret wife fell in love with his novel, saying that her whole life was in it. However, the book was not accepted for publication, and when the excerpt was published, the reviews in the newspapers turned out to be disastrous - critics called the novel “Pilatchina”, and the author was branded a “Bogomaz” and a “militant Old Believer”. Particularly zealous was a certain Latunsky, whom the master’s beloved promised to kill. Soon after this, the master became friends with a literature fan named Aloysius Mogarych, who his beloved did not like very much. Meanwhile, reviews continued to come out, and the master began to go crazy. He burned his novel in the oven - the woman who entered managed to save only a few burnt sheets - and that same night he was evicted and ended up in a hospital. The master has not seen his beloved since then.
A patient is placed in the next ward and complains of his head being allegedly torn off. When the noise subsides, Ivan asks his interlocutor why he did not let his beloved know about himself, and he replies that he does not want to make her unhappy: “Poor woman. However, I have hope that she has forgotten me!” .

Chapter 14. Glory to the Rooster!

From the window, the financial director of Variety Rimsky sees several ladies whose clothes suddenly disappeared in the middle of the street - these are the unlucky clients of the Fagot store. He has to make some calls about today's scandals, but is prevented from doing so by a "lewd female voice" on the phone.

By midnight, Rimsky is left alone in the theater, and then Varenukha appears with a story about Likhodeev. According to him, Styopa really got drunk in the Yalta cheburek with a telegraph operator and staged a prank with telegrams, and also committed many outrageous pranks, eventually ending up in a sobering-up station. Rimsky begins to notice that the administrator is behaving suspiciously - he is covering himself from the lamp with a newspaper, has acquired the habit of smacking his lips, has turned strangely pale, and has a scarf around his neck, despite the heat. And finally the findirector sees that Varenukha is not casting a shadow.

The unmasked vampire closes the office door from the inside, and a red-haired naked girl comes through the window. However, these two do not have time to deal with Rimsky - a rooster crows. The financial director, who miraculously escaped and turned gray overnight, hastily leaves for Leningrad.

Chapter 15. Nikanor Ivanovich's dream

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, in response to all questions from law enforcement officers about currency, repeats about evil spirits, a scoundrel translator and his complete innocence to the dollars found in his ventilation system. He admits: “I took it, but I took it with our Soviets!” . He is transferred to psychiatrists. A squad is sent to apartment No. 50 to check Bosy’s words about the translator, but finds it empty and the seals on the doors intact.

In the hospital, Nikanor Ivanovich has a dream - he is again interrogated about dollars, but this happens in the premises of some strange theater, in which, in parallel with the concert program, the audience is required to hand over currency. He screams in his sleep, the paramedic calms him down.

Bosogo's screams woke up his neighbors in the hospital. When Ivan Bezdomny falls asleep again, he begins to dream about the continuation of the story about Pilate.

Chapter 16. Execution

Those sentenced to death, including Yeshua, are taken to Bald Mountain. The place of the crucifixion is cordoned off: the procurator fears that they will try to recapture the convicts from the servants of the law.

Soon after the crucifixion, the spectators leave the mountain, unable to withstand the heat. The soldiers stay behind and suffer from the heat. But there was one more person lurking on the mountain - this is Yeshua’s disciple, the former Yershalaim tax collector Levi Matvey. When the death row prisoners were being taken to the place of execution, he wanted to get to Ga-Notsri and stab him with a knife stolen from a bread shop, saving him from a painful death, but he failed. He blames himself for what happened to Yeshua - he left the teacher alone, he fell ill at the wrong time - and asks the Lord to grant Ga-Nozri death. However, the Almighty is in no hurry to fulfill the request, and then Matthew Levi begins to grumble and curse him. As if in response to the blasphemy, a thunderstorm gathers, the soldiers leave the hill, and the commander of the cohort in a crimson mantle rises up the mountain to meet them. By his order, the sufferers on the pillars are killed with a spear thrust into the heart, ordering them to praise the magnanimous procurator.

A thunderstorm begins and the hill becomes empty. Levi Matthew approaches the pillars and removes all three corpses from them, after which he steals the body of Yeshua.

Chapter 17. Restless day

Variety accountant Lastochkin, who remained in charge of the theater, has no idea how to react to the rumors that are filling Moscow, and what to do with the incessant phone calls and investigators with a dog who came to look for the missing Rimsky. The dog, by the way, behaves strangely - at the same time it is angry, afraid and howls as if at an evil spirit - and does not bring any benefit to the search. It turns out that all the documents about Woland in Variety have disappeared - not even the posters remain.

Lastochkin goes with a report to the commission of spectacles and entertainment. There he discovers that in the chairman's office, instead of a man, an empty suit is sitting and signing papers. According to the tearful secretary, her boss visited a fat man who looked like a cat. The accountant decides to visit the branch of the commission - but there a certain checkered guy in a broken pince-nez organized a choral singing circle, disappeared, and the singers still can’t shut up.

Finally, Lastochkin arrives at the financial entertainment sector, wanting to donate the proceeds from yesterday's performance. However, instead of rubles, his portfolio turns out to be foreign currency. The accountant is arrested.

Chapter 18. Unlucky Visitors

The uncle of the late Berlioz, Maxim Poplavsky, arrives in Moscow from Kyiv. He received a strange telegram about the death of a relative, signed with the name of Berlioz himself. Poplavsky wants to claim his inheritance - housing in the capital.

In his nephew’s apartment, Poplavsky meets with Koroviev, who sobs and describes in vivid colors the death of Berlioz. The cat speaks to Poplavsky, says that it was he who gave the telegram, and demands the guest’s passport, and then informs him that his presence at the funeral is cancelled. Azazello throws Poplavsky out, telling him not to dream of an apartment in Moscow.

Immediately after Poplavsky, the barman Variety Sokov comes to the “bad” apartment. Woland voices to him a number of complaints about his work - green cheese, sturgeon is “second freshest,” tea “looks like slop.” Sokov, in turn, complains that the chervonets at the cash register have turned into cut paper. Woland and his retinue sympathize with him and, at the same time, predict death from liver cancer in nine months, and when Sokov wants to show them the former money, the paper again turns out to be in chervonets.

The barman rushes to the doctor and begs him to cure the disease. He pays for the visit with the same chervonets, and after he leaves they turn into wine labels.

Part two

Chapter 19. Margarita

The master’s beloved, Margarita Nikolaevna, has not forgotten him at all, and the wealthy life in her husband’s mansion is not pleasant to her. On the day of strange events with the barman and Poplavsky, she wakes up with the feeling that something will happen. For the first time during their separation, she dreamed of the master, and she goes to sort through the relics associated with him - this is his photograph, dried rose petals, a passbook with the remains of his winnings and the burnt pages of a novel.

Walking around Moscow, Margarita sees Berlioz's funeral. A small, red-haired citizen with a protruding fang sits down next to her and tells her about the head of a dead man stolen by someone, after which, calling her by name, he invites her to visit “a very noble foreigner.” Margarita wants to leave, but Azazello quotes lines from the master’s novel after her and hints that by agreeing, she can find out about her lover. The woman agrees, and Azazello hands her a certain magic cream and gives instructions.

Chapter 20. Azazello cream

After smearing herself with cream, Margarita becomes younger, prettier and gains the ability to fly. “Forgive me and forget me as soon as possible. I'm leaving you forever. Don't look for me, it's useless. I became a witch because of the grief and disasters that struck me. I have to go. Goodbye,” she writes to her husband. Her maid Natasha comes in, sees her and finds out about the magic cream. Azazello calls Margarita and says that it’s time to fly out - and a revived floor brush bursts into the room. Having saddled her, Margarita flies out the window in front of Natasha and her downstairs neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich.

Chapter 21. Flight

Margarita becomes invisible and, flying through Moscow at night, entertains herself with petty pranks, scaring people. But then she sees a luxurious house in which writers live, and among them is the critic Latunsky, who killed the master. Margarita enters his apartment through the window and causes a pogrom there.

As she continues her flight, Natasha, riding a hog, catches up with her. It turns out that the housekeeper rubbed herself with the remains of the magic cream and smeared it on her neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich, as a result of which she became a witch, and he became a boar. After swimming in the night river, Margarita sets off back to Moscow in the flying car given to her.

Chapter 22. By candlelight

In Moscow, Koroviev accompanies Margarita to a “bad” apartment and talks about Satan’s annual ball, where she will be queen, mentioning that Margarita herself has royal blood flowing through her. Inexplicably, ballrooms are placed inside the apartment, and Koroviev explains this by using the fifth dimension.

Woland lies in the bedroom, playing chess with the cat Behemoth, and Gella rubs ointment on his sore knee. Margarita replaces Gella, Woland asks the guest if she too is suffering from something: “Perhaps you have some kind of sadness that poisons your soul, melancholy?” , but Margarita answers negatively. There is not much left until midnight, and she is taken away to prepare for the ball.

Chapter 23. Satan's Great Ball

Margarita is bathed in blood and rose oil, they put on the queen's regalia and lead her to the stairs to meet the guests - long dead, but for the sake of the ball, criminals resurrected for one night: poisoners, pimps, counterfeiters, murderers, traitors. Among them is a young woman named Frida, whose story Koroviev tells Margarita: “When she was working in a cafe, the owner once called her into the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth to a boy, took him into the forest and put a handkerchief in his mouth, and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial, she said that she had nothing to feed her child.” Since then, for 30 years, Frida has been brought that same scarf every morning.

The reception ends, and Margarita must fly around the halls and pay attention to the guests. Woland comes out and Azazello brings Berlioz's head to him on a platter. Woland releases Berlioz into oblivion, and his skull turns into a cup. This vessel is filled with the blood of Baron Meigel, a Moscow official who was shot by Azazello, the only living guest at the ball, in which Woland identified a spy. The cup is brought to Margarita, and she drinks. The ball ends, everything disappears, and in the place of the huge hall there appears a modest living room and the slightly open door to Woland’s bedroom.

Chapter 24. Extracting the Master

Margarita has more and more fears that there will be no reward for Satan’s presence at the ball, but the woman herself does not want to remind about it out of pride, and even to Woland’s direct question she answers that she does not need anything. “Never ask for anything! Never and nothing, and especially among those who are stronger than you. They will offer and give everything themselves!” - says Woland, pleased with her, and offers to fulfill any wish of Margarita. However, instead of solving her problem, she demands that Frida stop giving the handkerchief. Woland says that the queen can do such a small thing herself, and his offer remains in force - and then Margarita finally wants her “her lover, the master, to be returned to her this very second.”

The master appears in front of her. Woland, having heard about the novel about Pilate, becomes interested in it. The manuscript that the master burned turns out to be completely intact in Woland’s hands - “manuscripts don’t burn.”
Margarita asks to return her and her lover to his basement, and for everything to return as it was. The master is skeptical: others have been living in his apartment for a long time, he has no documents, they will look for him for escaping from a hospital. Woland solves all these problems, and it turns out that the master’s living space was occupied by his “friend” Mogarych, who wrote a denunciation against him that the master kept illegal literature.

Natasha, at the request of her and Margarita, is left as a witch. Neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich, who has been restored to his appearance, demands a certificate for the police and his wife that he spent the night at Satan’s ball, and the cat immediately composes one for him. Administrator Varenukha appears and begs to be released from the vampires because he is not bloodthirsty.

In parting, Woland promises the master that his work will still bring him surprises. The lovers are taken to their basement apartment. There the master falls asleep, and happy Margarita rereads his novel.

Chapter 25. How the procurator tried to save Judas

A thunderstorm is raging over Yershalaim. The head of the secret service, Afranius, comes to the procurator and reports that the execution has been completed, there are no riots in the city and the mood is generally quite satisfactory. In addition, he talks about the last hours of Yeshua’s life, citing the words of Ha-Nozri that “among human vices, he considers cowardice to be one of the most important.”

Pilate orders Afranius to urgently and secretly bury the bodies of all three executed and take care of the safety of Judas from Kiriath, whom, as he allegedly heard, the “secret friends of Ha-Nozri” were to be slaughtered that night. In fact, the procurator himself is right now allegorically ordering this murder to the head of the secret guard.

Chapter 26. Burial

The procurator understands that he missed something very important today and no orders will bring it back. He finds some consolation only in communication with his beloved dog Bunga.

Afranius, meanwhile, visits a young woman named Nisa. Soon she meets in the city with Judas from Kiriath, who is in love with her, who has just received payment from Caiaphas for betraying Yeshua. She makes an appointment for the young man in a garden near Yershalaim. Instead of the girl, Judas is met there by three men, who kill him with a knife and take away his wallet with thirty pieces of silver. One of these three - Afranius - returns to the city, where the procurator, waiting for the report, fell asleep. In his dreams, Yeshua is alive and walks next to him along the lunar road, both of them happily argue about necessary and important things, and the procurator understands that, indeed, there is no vice worse than cowardice - and it was precisely cowardice that he showed by being afraid to justify the freethinking philosopher to the detriment of your career.

Afranius says that Judas is dead, and a package with silver and a note “I am returning the damned money” was planted on the high priest Caiaphas. Pilate tells Afranius to spread the rumor that Judas committed suicide. Further, the head of the secret service reports that Yeshua’s body was found not far from the place of execution from a certain Levi Matthew, who did not want to give it up, but upon learning that Ha-Nozri would be buried, he resigned himself.

Levi Matthew is brought to the procurator, who asks him to show a parchment with the words of Yeshua. Levi reproaches Pilate for the death of Ha-Nozri, to which he notes that Yeshua himself did not blame anyone. The former tax collector warns that he is going to kill Judas, but the procurator informs him that the traitor is already dead and it was he, Pilate, who did it.

Chapter 27. The end of apartment No. 50

In Moscow, the investigation into Woland’s case continues, and the police once again go to the “bad” apartment, where all ends lead. A talking cat with a primus stove is found there. He provokes a shootout, which, however, leaves no casualties. The voices of Woland, Koroviev and Azazello are heard, saying that it is time to leave Moscow - and the cat, apologizing, disappears, spilling burning gasoline from the primus stove. The apartment is on fire, and four silhouettes fly out of its window - three men and one woman.

A man in a checkered jacket and a fat man with a primus in his hands, looking like a cat, come to a store selling foreign currency. The fat man eats tangerines, herring and chocolate from the window, and Koroviev calls on the people to protest against the fact that scarce goods are sold to foreigners for foreign currency, and not to their own - for rubles. When the police appear, the partners hide, having first started a fire, and move to Griboyedov’s restaurant. Soon it will light up too.

Chapter 29. The fate of the master and Margarita is determined

Woland and Azazello are talking on the terrace of one of the Moscow buildings, looking at the city. Levi Matvey appears to them and conveys that “he” - meaning Yeshua - has read the master’s novel and asks Woland to give the author and his beloved the well-deserved peace. Woland tells Azazello to “go to them and arrange everything.”

Chapter 30. It's time! It's time!

Azazello visits the master and Margarita in their basement. Before this, they are talking about the events of last night - the master is still trying to comprehend them and convince Margarita to leave him and not ruin herself with him, she absolutely believes Woland.

Azazello sets the apartment on fire, and all three, riding black horses, fly off into the sky.

Along the way, the master says goodbye to Homeless, whom he calls a student, and bequeaths him to write a continuation of the story about Pilate.

Chapter 31. On the Sparrow Hills

Azazello, the master and Margarita are reunited with Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth. The master says goodbye to the city. “In the first moments, a painful sadness crept into my heart, but very quickly it was replaced by a sweetish anxiety, a wandering gypsy excitement. […] His excitement turned, as it seemed to him, into a feeling of bitter resentment. But she was unstable, disappeared and for some reason was replaced by proud indifference, and this was replaced by a premonition of constant peace.”

Chapter 32. Farewell and eternal shelter

Night comes, and in the light of the moon the horsemen flying across the sky change their appearance. Koroviev turns into a gloomy knight in purple armor, Azazello into a desert demon killer, Behemoth into a slender young page, “the best jester that has ever existed in the world.” Margarita does not see her transformation, but before her eyes the master acquires a gray braid and spurs. Woland explains that today is the night when all scores are settled. In addition, he informs the master that Yeshua read his novel and noted that, unfortunately, it is not finished.

A man sitting in a chair and a dog next to him appear before the eyes of the riders. Pontius Pilate has been seeing the same dream for two thousand years - a lunar road that he cannot follow. “Free! Free! He is waiting for you!" - the master shouts, releasing his hero and completing the novel, and Pilate finally leaves with his dog along the lunar road to where Yeshua is waiting for him.

Peace awaits the master himself and his beloved, as promised. “Don’t you really want to walk with your girlfriend during the day under the cherry trees that are beginning to bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert’s music? Wouldn't it be nice for you to write by candlelight with a quill pen? Don't you really want to, like Faust, sit over the retort in the hope that you will be able to fashion a new homunculus? There, there. There is already a house and an old servant waiting for you, the candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will immediately meet the dawn,” is how Woland describes him. “Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which was given to you as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the climbing grapes, it rises to the very roof. I know that in the evening those whom you love, whom you are interested in and who will not alarm you will come to you. They will play for you, they will sing to you, you will see the light in the room when the candles are burning. You will fall asleep, putting on your greasy and eternal cap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you won’t be able to drive me away. I will take care of your sleep,” Margarita picks up. The master himself feels that someone is setting him free, just as he himself had just set Pilate free.

Epilogue

The investigation into Woland's case reached a dead end, and as a result, all the oddities in Moscow were explained by the machinations of a gang of hypnotists. Varenukha stopped lying and being rude, Bengalsky gave up the entertainer, preferring to live on savings, Rimsky refused the post of financial director of the Variety Show, and his place was taken by the enterprising Aloisy Mogarych. Ivan Bezdomny left the hospital and became a professor of philosophy, and only on full moons is he bothered by dreams about Pilate and Yeshua, the master and Margarita.

Conclusion

Bulgakov originally conceived the novel “The Master and Margarita” as a satire about the devil called “The Black Magician” or “The Great Chancellor.” But after six editions, one of which Bulgakov burned with his own hand, the book turned out to be not so much satirical as philosophical, in which the devil in the form of the mysterious black magician Woland became only one of the characters. The motives of eternal love, mercy, the search for truth and the triumph of justice came to the fore.

A brief retelling of “The Master and Margarita” chapter by chapter is enough only for a rough understanding of the plot and main ideas of the work - we recommend that you read the full text of the novel.

Novel test

Do you remember well the summary of Bulgakov’s work? Take the test!

Retelling rating

Average rating: 4.5. Total ratings received: 26742.

Still from the film “The Master and Margarita” (2005)

The work contains two storylines, each of which develops independently. The action of the first takes place in Moscow over several May days (days of the spring full moon) in the 30s. XX century, the action of the second also takes place in May, but in the city of Yershalaim (Jerusalem) almost two thousand years ago - at the very beginning of the new era. The novel is structured in such a way that the chapters of the main storyline are interspersed with chapters that make up the second storyline, and these inserted chapters are either chapters from the master’s novel or an eyewitness account of Woland’s events.

On one hot May day, a certain Woland appears in Moscow, posing as a specialist in black magic, but in reality he is Satan. He is accompanied by a strange retinue: the pretty witch-vampire Gella, the cheeky type Koroviev, also known as Fagot, the gloomy and sinister Azazello and the cheerful fat man Behemoth, who for the most part appears before the reader in the guise of a black cat of incredible size.

The first to meet Woland at Patriarch's Ponds are the editor of a thick art magazine, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, and the poet Ivan Bezdomny, who wrote an anti-religious poem about Jesus Christ. Woland intervenes in their conversation, claiming that Christ really existed. As proof that there is something beyond man's control, Woland predicts that Berlioz's head will be cut off by a Russian Komsomol girl. In front of the shocked Ivan, Berlioz immediately falls under a tram driven by a Komsomol girl, and his head is cut off. Ivan unsuccessfully tries to pursue Woland, and then, having appeared at Massolit (Moscow Literary Association), he sets out the sequence of events so confusingly that he is taken to the country psychiatric clinic of Professor Stravinsky, where he meets the main character of the novel - the master.

Woland, having appeared at apartment No. 50 of building 302 bis on Sadovaya Street, which the late Berlioz occupied together with the director of the Variety Theater Stepan Likhodeev, and finding the latter in a state of severe hangover, presented him with a contract signed by him, Likhodeev, for Woland’s performance in the theater, and then kicks him out of the apartment, and Styopa inexplicably ends up in Yalta.

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the housing association of building No. 302 bis, comes to apartment No. 50 and finds Koroviev there, who asks to rent this apartment to Woland, since Berlioz died and Likhodeev is in Yalta. Nikanor Ivanovich, after much persuasion, agrees and receives from Koroviev, in addition to the payment stipulated by the contract, 400 rubles, which he hides in the ventilation. On the same day, they come to Nikanor Ivanovich with an arrest warrant for possession of currency, since these rubles have turned into dollars. The stunned Nikanor Ivanovich ends up in the same clinic of Professor Stravinsky.

At this time, the financial director of the Variety Rimsky and the administrator Varenukha are unsuccessfully trying to find the disappeared Likhodeev by phone and are perplexed when they receive telegrams from him one after another from Yalta asking him to send money and confirm his identity, since he was abandoned in Yalta by the hypnotist Woland. Deciding that this is Likhodeev’s stupid joke, Rimsky, having collected the telegrams, sends Varenukha to take them “where they need to go,” but Varenukha fails to do this: Azazello and the cat Behemoth, taking him by the arms, deliver Varenukha to apartment No. 50, and from the kiss The naked witch Gella Varenukha faints.

In the evening, a performance with the participation of the great magician Woland and his retinue begins on the stage of the Variety Theater. With a pistol shot, the bassoon causes money to rain in the theater, and the entire audience catches the falling chervonets. Then a “ladies’ shop” opens on stage, where any woman sitting in the audience can dress from head to toe for free. A line immediately forms at the store, but at the end of the performance the chervonets turn into pieces of paper, and everything purchased in the “ladies’ store” disappears without a trace, forcing gullible women to rush through the streets in their underwear.

After the performance, Rimsky lingers in his office, and Varenukha, transformed by Gella’s kiss into a vampire, appears to him. Seeing that he does not cast a shadow, Rimsky is mortally frightened and tries to run away, but the vampire Gella comes to Varenukha’s aid. With a hand covered with corpse spots, she tries to open the window bolt, and Varenukha stands guard at the door. Meanwhile, morning comes, the first rooster crow is heard, and the vampires disappear. Without wasting a minute, the instantly gray-haired Rimsky rushes to the station by taxi and leaves for Leningrad by courier train.

Meanwhile, Ivan Bezdomny, having met the Master, tells him about how he met a strange foreigner who killed Misha Berlioz. The master explains to Ivan that he met Satan at the Patriarch's, and tells Ivan about himself. His beloved Margarita called him a master. Being a historian by training, he was working in one of the museums, when he suddenly unexpectedly won a huge sum - one hundred thousand rubles. He left his job at the museum, rented two rooms in the basement of a small house in one of the Arbat alleys and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate. The novel was almost over when he accidentally met Margarita on the street, and love struck them both instantly. Margarita was married to a worthy man, lived with him in a mansion on Arbat, but did not love him. Every day she came to the master. The romance was coming to an end and they were happy. Finally, the novel was completed, and the master took it to the magazine, but they refused to publish it. Nevertheless, an excerpt from the novel was published, and soon several devastating articles about the novel appeared in newspapers, signed by critics Ariman, Latunsky and Lavrovich. And then the master felt that he was getting sick. One night he threw the novel into the oven, but the alarmed Margarita came running and snatched the last bundle of sheets from the fire. She left, taking the manuscript with her in order to say goodbye to her husband with dignity and return to her beloved forever in the morning, but a quarter of an hour after she left, there was a knock on his window - telling Ivan her story, at this point the Master lowers his voice to a whisper - and so A few months later, on a winter night, he came to his home, found his rooms occupied and went to a new country clinic, where he has been living for the fourth month, without a name or surname, just a patient from room No. 118.

This morning Margarita wakes up with the feeling that something is about to happen. Wiping away tears, she sorts through the sheets of the burnt manuscript, looks at the master’s photograph, and then goes for a walk in the Alexander Garden. Here Azazello sits down with her and tells her that a certain noble foreigner invites her to visit. Margarita accepts the invitation because she hopes to learn at least something about the Master. In the evening of the same day, Margarita, stripping naked, rubs her body with the cream that Azazello gave her, becomes invisible and flies out the window. Flying past the writer's house, Margarita causes destruction in the apartment of the critic Latunsky, who, in her opinion, killed the master. Then Margarita is met by Azazello and takes her to apartment No. 50, where she meets Woland and the rest of his retinue. Woland asks Margarita to be the queen at his ball. As a reward, he promises to fulfill her wish.

At midnight, the spring full moon ball begins - Satan's great ball, to which informers, executioners, molesters, murderers - criminals of all times and peoples are invited; men appear in tailcoats, women appear naked. For several hours, naked Margarita greets guests, exposing her hand and knee for a kiss. Finally, the ball is over, and Woland asks Margarita what she wants as a reward for being his ball hostess. And Margarita asks to immediately return the master to her. The master immediately appears in a hospital robe, and Margarita, after consulting with him, asks Woland to return them to the small house on Arbat, where they were happy.

Meanwhile, one Moscow institution begins to become interested in the strange events taking place in the city, and they all line up into a logically clear whole: the mysterious foreigner of Ivan Bezdomny, and a session of black magic at the Variety Show, and Nikanor Ivanovich’s dollars, and the disappearance of Rimsky and Likhodeev. It becomes clear that all this is the work of the same gang, led by a mysterious magician, and all traces of this gang lead to apartment No. 50.

Let us now turn to the second plot line of the novel. In the palace of Herod the Great, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, interrogates the arrested Yeshua Ha-Nozri, to whom the Sanhedrin sentenced him to death for insulting the authority of Caesar, and this sentence is sent for approval to Pilate. Interrogating the arrested man, Pilate understands that this is not a robber who incited the people to disobedience, but a wandering philosopher preaching the kingdom of truth and justice. However, the Roman procurator cannot release a man accused of a crime against Caesar, and approves the death sentence. Then he turns to the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who, in honor of the upcoming Passover holiday, can release one of the four criminals sentenced to death; Pilate asks that it be Ha-Nozri. However, Kaifa refuses him and releases the robber Bar-Rabban. At the top of Bald Mountain there are three crosses on which the condemned were crucified. After the crowd of onlookers who accompanied the procession to the place of execution returned to the city, only Yeshua’s disciple Levi Matvey, a former tax collector, remains on Bald Mountain. The executioner stabs the exhausted convicts to death, and a sudden downpour falls on the mountain.

The procurator calls Afranius, the head of his secret service, and instructs him to kill Judas from Kiriath, who received money from the Sanhedrin for allowing Yeshua Ha-Nozri to be arrested in his house. Soon, a young woman named Nisa allegedly accidentally meets Judas in the city and makes an appointment for him outside the city in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he is attacked by unknown assailants, stabbed to death and robbed of his wallet with money. After some time, Afranius reports to Pilate that Judas was stabbed to death, and a bag of money - thirty tetradrachms - was thrown into the high priest's house.

Levi Matthew is brought to Pilate, who shows the procurator a parchment with the sermons of Ha-Nozri recorded by him. “The most serious vice is cowardice,” the procurator reads.

But let's return to Moscow. At sunset, on the terrace of one of the Moscow buildings, Woland and his retinue say goodbye to the city. Suddenly Matvey Levi appears, who invites Woland to take the master to himself and reward him with peace. “Why don’t you take him into the world?” - Woland asks. “He did not deserve light, he deserved peace,” answers Matvey Levi. After some time, Azazello appears in the house of Margarita and the master and brings a bottle of wine - a gift from Woland. After drinking wine, the master and Margarita fall unconscious; at the same moment, turmoil begins in the house of grief: the patient from room No. 118 died; and at that very moment, in a mansion on the Arbat, a young woman suddenly turns pale, clutching her heart, and falls to the floor.

Magic black horses carry away Woland, his retinue, Margarita and the Master. “Your novel has been read,” Woland says to the Master, “and I would like to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he has been sitting on this platform and sees a lunar road in a dream and wants to walk along it and talk with a wandering philosopher. You can now end the novel with one sentence.” “Free! He is waiting for you!" - the master shouts, and over the black abyss an immense city with a garden lights up, to which a lunar road stretches, and the procurator quickly runs along this road.

"Farewell!" - Woland shouts; Margarita and the master walk across the bridge over the stream, and Margarita says: “Here is your eternal home, in the evening those you love will come to you, and at night I will take care of your sleep.”

And in Moscow, after Woland left her, the investigation into the criminal gang continues for a long time, but the measures taken to capture it do not yield results. Experienced psychiatrists come to the conclusion that the gang members were hypnotists of unprecedented power. Several years pass, the events of those May days begin to be forgotten, and only Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, the former poet Bezdomny, every year, as soon as the spring holiday full moon comes, appears on the Patriarch's Ponds and sits on the same bench where he first met Woland, and then, walking along the Arbat, he returns home and sees the same dream, in which Margarita, the master, Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, horseman Pontius Pilate, come to him.

Retold

The Master and Margarita is Bulgakov’s legendary work, a novel that became his ticket to immortality. He thought about, planned and wrote the novel for 12 years, and it went through many changes that are now difficult to imagine, because the book acquired an amazing compositional unity. Alas, Mikhail Afanasyevich never had time to finish his life’s work; no final edits were made. He himself assessed his brainchild as the main message to humanity, as a testament to descendants. What did Bulgakov want to tell us?

The novel opens up to us the world of Moscow in the 30s. The master, together with his beloved Margarita, writes a brilliant novel about Pontius Pilate. It is not allowed to be published, and the author himself is overwhelmed by an impossible mountain of criticism. In a fit of despair, the hero burns his novel and ends up in a psychiatric hospital, leaving Margarita alone. At the same time, Woland, the devil, arrives in Moscow along with his retinue. They cause disturbances in the city, such as black magic sessions, performances at Variety and Griboyedov, etc. The heroine, meanwhile, is looking for a way to return her Master; subsequently makes a deal with Satan, becomes a witch and attends a ball among the dead. Woland is delighted with Margarita's love and devotion and decides to return her beloved. The novel about Pontius Pilate also rises from the ashes. And the reunited couple retires to a world of peace and tranquility.

The text contains chapters from the Master's novel itself, telling about events in the world of Yershalaim. This is a story about the wandering philosopher Ha-Nozri, the interrogation of Yeshua by Pilate, and the subsequent execution of the latter. The insert chapters are of direct importance to the novel, since their understanding is the key to revealing the author's ideas. All parts form a single whole, closely intertwined.

Topics and issues

Bulgakov reflected his thoughts about creativity on the pages of the work. He understood that the artist is not free, he cannot create only at the behest of his soul. Society fetters him and ascribes certain boundaries to him. Literature in the 30s was subject to the strictest censorship, books were often written to order from the authorities, a reflection of which we will see in MASSOLIT. The master was unable to obtain permission to publish his novel about Pontius Pilate and spoke of his stay among the literary society of that time as a living hell. The hero, inspired and talented, could not understand its members, corrupt and absorbed in petty material concerns, and they, in turn, could not understand him. Therefore, the Master found himself outside this bohemian circle with the work of his entire life, which was not permitted for publication.

The second aspect of the problem of creativity in a novel is the author’s responsibility for his work, its fate. The master, disappointed and completely desperate, burns the manuscript. The writer, according to Bulgakov, must achieve the truth through his creativity, it must benefit society and act for the good. The hero, on the contrary, acted cowardly.

The problem of choice is reflected in the chapters devoted to Pilate and Yeshua. Pontius Pilate, understanding the unusualness and value of such a person as Yeshua, sends him to execution. Cowardice is the most terrible vice. The prosecutor was afraid of responsibility, afraid of punishment. This fear completely drowned out his sympathy for the preacher, and the voice of reason speaking about the uniqueness and purity of Yeshua’s intentions, and his conscience. The latter tormented him for the rest of his life, as well as after his death. Only at the end of the novel was Pilate allowed to talk to Him and be freed.

Composition

In his novel, Bulgakov used such a compositional technique as a novel within a novel. The “Moscow” chapters are combined with the “Pilatorian” ones, that is, with the work of the Master himself. The author draws a parallel between them, showing that it is not time that changes a person, but only he himself is capable of changing himself. Constantly working on oneself is a titanic task, which Pilate failed to cope with, for which he was doomed to eternal mental suffering. The motives of both novels are the search for freedom, truth, the struggle between good and evil in the soul. Everyone can make mistakes, but a person must constantly reach for the light; only this can make him truly free.

Main characters: characteristics

1. Yeshua Ha-Nozri (Jesus Christ) is a wandering philosopher who believes that all people are good in themselves and that the time will come when truth will be the main human value, and institutions of power will no longer be necessary. He preached, therefore he was accused of an attempt on the power of Caesar and was put to death. Before his death, the hero forgives his executioners; he dies without betraying his convictions, he dies for people, atonement for their sins, for which he was awarded the Light. Yeshua appears before us as a real person of flesh and blood, capable of feeling both fear and pain; he is not shrouded in an aura of mysticism.
2. Pontius Pilate is the procurator of Judea, a truly historical figure. In the Bible he judged Christ. Using his example, the author reveals the theme of choice and responsibility for one’s actions. Interrogating the prisoner, the hero understands that he is innocent, and even feels personal sympathy for him. He invites the preacher to lie to save his life, but Yeshua is not bowed down and is not going to give up his words. The official's cowardice prevents him from defending the accused; he is afraid of losing power. This does not allow him to act according to his conscience, as his heart tells him. The procurator condemns Yeshua to death, and himself to mental torment, which, of course, is in many ways worse than physical torment. At the end of the novel, the master frees his hero, and he, together with the wandering philosopher, rises along a ray of light.
3. The master is a creator who wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua. This hero embodied the image of an ideal writer who lives by his creativity, not looking for fame, rewards, or money. He won large sums in the lottery and decided to devote himself to creativity - and this is how his only, but certainly brilliant, work was born. At the same time, he met love - Margarita, who became his support and support. Unable to withstand criticism from Moscow's highest literary society, the Master burns the manuscript and is forcibly committed to a psychiatric clinic. Then he was released from there by Margarita with the help of Woland, who was very interested in the novel. After death, the hero deserves peace. It is peace, and not light, like Yeshua, because the writer betrayed his beliefs and renounced his creation.
4. Margarita is the creator’s beloved, ready to do anything for him, even attend Satan’s ball. Before meeting the main character, she was married to a wealthy man, whom, however, she did not love. She found her happiness only with the Master, whom she herself called after reading the first chapters of his future novel. She became his muse, inspiring him to continue creating. The heroine is associated with the theme of fidelity and devotion. The woman is faithful to both her Master and his work: she brutally deals with the critic Latunsky, who slandered them; thanks to her, the author himself returns from a psychiatric clinic and his seemingly irretrievably lost novel about Pilate. For her love and willingness to follow her chosen one to the end, Margarita was awarded by Woland. Satan gave her peace and unity with the Master, what the heroine most desired.

Woland's image

In many ways, this hero is similar to Goethe's Mephistopheles. His very name is taken from his poem, the scene of Walpurgis Night, where the devil was once called by that name. The image of Woland in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is very ambiguous: he is the embodiment of evil, and at the same time a defender of justice and a preacher of true moral values. Against the background of cruelty, greed and depravity of ordinary Muscovites, the hero looks rather like a positive character. He, seeing this historical paradox (he has something to compare with), concludes that people are like people, the most ordinary, the same, only the housing issue has spoiled them.

The devil's punishment comes only to those who deserve it. Thus, his retribution is very selective and based on the principle of justice. Bribe takers, incompetent scribblers who care only about their material wealth, catering workers who steal and sell expired food, insensitive relatives fighting for an inheritance after the death of a loved one - these are those whom Woland punishes. He does not push them to sin, he only exposes the vices of society. So the author, using satirical and phantasmagoric techniques, describes the customs and morals of Muscovites of the 30s.

The master is a truly talented writer who was not given the opportunity to realize himself; the novel was simply “strangled” by Massolitov officials. He was not like his fellow writers with a credential; lived through his creativity, giving it all of himself, and sincerely worrying about the fate of his work. The master retained a pure heart and soul, for which he was awarded by Woland. The destroyed manuscript was restored and returned to its author. For her boundless love, Margarita was forgiven for her weaknesses by the devil, to whom Satan even granted the right to ask him for the fulfillment of one of her desires.

Bulgakov expressed his attitude towards Woland in the epigraph: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good” (“Faust” by Goethe). Indeed, having unlimited capabilities, the hero punishes human vices, but this can be considered an instruction on the true path. He is a mirror in which everyone can see their sins and change. His most devilish feature is the corrosive irony with which he treats everything earthly. Using his example, we are convinced that maintaining one’s convictions along with self-control and not going crazy is possible only with the help of humor. We cannot take life too seriously, because what seems to us an unshakable stronghold so easily crumbles at the slightest criticism. Woland is indifferent to everything, and this separates him from people.

good and evil

Good and evil are inseparable; When people stop doing good, evil immediately appears in its place. It is the absence of light, the shadow that replaces it. In Bulgakov's novel, two opposing forces are embodied in the images of Woland and Yeshua. The author, in order to show that the participation of these abstract categories in life is always relevant and occupies important positions, places Yeshua in an era as distant as possible from us, on the pages of the Master’s novel, and Woland in modern times. Yeshua preaches, tells people about his ideas and understanding of the world, its creation. Later, for openly expressing his thoughts, he will be tried by the procurator of Judea. His death is not the triumph of evil over good, but rather a betrayal of good, because Pilate was unable to do the right thing, which means he opened the door to evil. Ha-Notsri dies unbroken and undefeated, his soul retains the light in itself, opposed to the darkness of the cowardly act of Pontius Pilate.

The devil, called to do evil, arrives in Moscow and sees that people's hearts are filled with darkness even without him. All he can do is denounce and mock them; Due to his dark essence, Woland cannot create justice otherwise. But it is not he who pushes people to sin, it is not he who makes the evil in them overcome the good. According to Bulgakov, the devil is not absolute darkness, he commits acts of justice, which is very difficult to consider a bad act. This is one of the main ideas of Bulgakov, embodied in “The Master and Margarita” - nothing except the person himself can force him to act one way or another, the choice of good or evil lies with him.

You can also talk about the relativity of good and evil. And good people act wrongly, cowardly, selfishly. So the Master gives up and burns his novel, and Margarita takes cruel revenge on the critic Latunsky. However, kindness does not lie in not making mistakes, but in constantly striving for the bright and correcting them. Therefore, forgiveness and peace await the loving couple.

The meaning of the novel

There are many interpretations of the meaning of this work. Of course, it is impossible to say definitively. At the center of the novel is the eternal struggle between good and evil. In the author’s understanding, these two components are on equal terms both in nature and in human hearts. This explains the appearance of Woland, as the concentration of evil by definition, and Yeshua, who believed in natural human kindness. Light and darkness are closely intertwined, constantly interacting with each other, and it is no longer possible to draw clear boundaries. Woland punishes people according to the laws of justice, but Yeshua forgives them in spite of them. This is the balance.

The struggle takes place not only directly for human souls. A person’s need to reach out to the light runs like a red thread throughout the entire narrative. True freedom can only be achieved through this. It is very important to understand that the author always punishes heroes shackled by everyday petty passions, either like Pilate - with eternal torment of conscience, or like Moscow inhabitants - through the tricks of the devil. He extols others; Gives Margarita and the Master peace; Yeshua deserves the Light for his devotion and faithfulness to his beliefs and words.

This novel is also about love. Margarita appears as an ideal woman who is able to love until the very end, despite all the obstacles and difficulties. The master and his beloved are collective images of a man devoted to his work and a woman faithful to her feelings.

Theme of creativity

The master lives in the capital of the 30s. During this period, socialism is being built, new orders are being established, and moral and moral standards are being sharply reset. New literature is also born here, with which on the pages of the novel we become acquainted through Berlioz, Ivan Bezdomny, and members of Massolit. The path of the protagonist is complex and thorny, like Bulgakov himself, but he retains a pure heart, kindness, honesty, the ability to love and writes a novel about Pontius Pilate, containing all those important problems that every person of the current or future generation must solve for himself . It is based on the moral law hidden within each individual; and only he, and not the fear of God's retribution, is able to determine the actions of people. The spiritual world of the Master is subtle and beautiful, because he is a true artist.

However, true creativity is persecuted and often becomes recognized only after the death of the author. The repressions affecting independent artists in the USSR are striking in their cruelty: from ideological persecution to the actual recognition of a person as crazy. This is how many of Bulgakov’s friends were silenced, and he himself had a hard time. Freedom of speech resulted in imprisonment, or even death, as in Judea. This parallel with the Ancient World emphasizes the backwardness and primitive savagery of the “new” society. The well-forgotten old became the basis of policy regarding art.

Two worlds of Bulgakov

The worlds of Yeshua and the Master are more closely connected than it seems at first glance. Both layers of the narrative touch on the same issues: freedom and responsibility, conscience and fidelity to one’s beliefs, understanding of good and evil. It’s not for nothing that there are so many heroes of doubles, parallels and antitheses here.

The Master and Margarita violates the urgent canon of the novel. This story is not about the fate of individuals or their groups, it is about all of humanity, its fate. Therefore, the author connects two eras that are as distant as possible from each other. People in the times of Yeshua and Pilate are not very different from the people of Moscow, the Master’s contemporaries. They are also concerned about personal problems, power and money. Master in Moscow, Yeshua in Judea. Both bring the truth to the masses, and both suffer for it; the first is persecuted by critics, crushed by society and doomed to end his life in a psychiatric hospital, the second is subjected to a more terrible punishment - a demonstrative execution.

The chapters dedicated to Pilate differ sharply from the Moscow chapters. The style of the inserted text is distinguished by its evenness and monotony, and only in the chapter of execution does it turn into a sublime tragedy. The description of Moscow is full of grotesque, phantasmagoric scenes, satire and ridicule of its inhabitants, lyrical moments dedicated to the Master and Margarita, which, of course, determines the presence of various storytelling styles. The vocabulary also varies: it can be low and primitive, filled even with swearing and jargon, or it can be sublime and poetic, filled with colorful metaphors.

Although both narratives are significantly different from each other, when reading the novel there is a feeling of integrity, so strong is the thread connecting the past with the present in Bulgakov.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Michael Bulgakov

Master and Margarita

Moscow 1984

The text is printed in the last lifetime edition (the manuscripts are stored in the manuscript department of the State Library of the USSR named after V.I. Lenin), as well as with corrections and additions made under the dictation of the writer by his wife, E.S. Bulgakova.

PART ONE

...So who are you, finally?
- I am part of that force,
what he always wants
evil and always does good.

Goethe. "Faust"

Never talk to strangers

One day in the spring, at an hour of unprecedentedly hot sunset, two citizens appeared in Moscow, on the Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them, dressed in a gray summer pair, was short, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat like a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were glasses of supernatural size in black horn-rimmed frames. The second, a broad-shouldered, reddish, curly-haired young man in a checkered cap pulled back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewy white trousers and black slippers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, abbreviated as MASSOLIT, and editor of a thick art magazine, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.

Finding themselves in the shade of slightly green linden trees, the writers first rushed to the colorfully painted booth with the inscription “Beer and water.”

Yes, the first strangeness of this terrible May evening should be noted. Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, fell in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty.

“Give me Narzan,” Berlioz asked.

“Narzan is gone,” answered the woman in the booth, and for some reason she was offended.

“The beer will be delivered in the evening,” the woman answered.

- What is there? asked Berlioz.

“Apricot, only warm,” the woman said.

- Well, come on, come on, come on!..

The apricot gave off a rich yellow foam, and the air smelled like a barbershop. Having drunk, the writers immediately began to hiccup, paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond and with their backs to Bronnaya.

Here a second strange thing happened, concerning only Berlioz. He suddenly stopped hiccupping, his heart pounded and for a moment sank somewhere, then returned, but with a dull needle stuck in it. In addition, Berlioz was gripped by an unreasonable, but so strong fear that he wanted to immediately flee from the Patriarch's without looking back. Berlioz looked around sadly, not understanding what frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and thought: “What’s wrong with me? This never happened... my heart is racing... I'm overtired. Perhaps it’s time to throw everything to hell and go to Kislovodsk...”

And then the sultry air thickened in front of him, and from this air a transparent citizen of a strange appearance was woven. On his small head is a jockey cap, a checkered, short, airy jacket... The citizen is a fathom tall, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and his face, please note, is mocking.

Berlioz's life developed in such a way that he was not accustomed to unusual phenomena. Turning even paler, he widened his eyes and thought in confusion: “This can’t be!..”

But this, alas, was there, and the long citizen, through which one could see, swayed in front of him, both left and right, without touching the ground.

Here horror took over Berlioz so much that he closed his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that it was all over, the haze dissolved, the checkered one disappeared, and at the same time the blunt needle jumped out of his heart.

- Fucking hell! - exclaimed the editor, - you know, Ivan, I almost had a stroke from the heat just now! There was even something like a hallucination,” he tried to grin, but his eyes were still jumping with anxiety, and his hands were shaking.

However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with a handkerchief and, saying quite cheerfully: “Well, so...”, he began his speech, interrupted by drinking apricot.

This speech, as we later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet to write a large anti-religious poem for the next book of the magazine. Ivan Nikolaevich composed this poem in a very short time, but, unfortunately, it did not satisfy the editor at all. Bezdomny outlined the main character of his poem, that is, Jesus, in very black colors, and nevertheless, in the opinion of the editor, the entire poem had to be written anew. And now the editor was giving the poet something like a lecture about Jesus in order to highlight the poet’s main mistake. It is difficult to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolayevich down - whether it was the graphic power of his talent or complete unfamiliarity with the issue on which he was going to write - but Jesus in his portrayal turned out to be completely like a living, although not an attractive character. Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing is not what Jesus was like, whether he was bad or good, but that this Jesus, as a person, did not exist in the world at all and that all the stories about him are simple inventions, the most common myth.

It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians, for example, the famous Philo of Alexandria, the brilliantly educated Josephus, who never mentioned the existence of Jesus. Revealing solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that the place in the 15th book, in the 44th chapter of the famous Tacitus “Annals”, which talks about the execution of Jesus, is nothing more than a later fake insert.

The poet, for whom everything reported by the editor was news, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his lively green eyes on him, and only hiccupped occasionally, cursing the apricot water in a whisper.

“There is not a single Eastern religion,” said Berlioz, “in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin would not give birth to a god.” And the Christians, without inventing anything new, created their own Jesus in the same way, who in fact was never alive. This is what you need to focus on...

Berlioz's high tenor resounded in the deserted alley, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich climbed into the jungle, into which only a very educated person can climb without risking breaking his neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris , the benevolent god and son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Fammuz, and about Marduk, and even about the lesser-known formidable god Vitzliputzli, who was once highly revered by the Aztecs in Mexico.

At the hour of a hot spring sunset At the hour of a hot spring sunset... - The action of the novel about the Master lasts a little more than three days: from sunset on some May Wednesday to complete darkness on the night from Saturday to Sunday, and from the meaning it is clear that this Sunday is the beginning of Orthodox Easter. These three days are carefully planned. However, it is impossible to identify this novel time with the historical one: in the period between 1917 and 1940. the latest Easter fell on May 5 (in 1929), and in this case the events at the Patriarch's Ponds would have to take place on May 1, which is completely excluded by all other conditions of action. If, to determine the time of action, we turn to some material facts and events described in the novel, then it is easy to see that in relation to time, the action of this novel is ambivalent: the author deliberately combines facts from different times - for example, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has not yet been blown up (1931), but passports have already been introduced (1932), trolleybuses are running (1934), food cards have been abolished (1935) and at the same time, torgsins are still functioning, etc. at the Patriarch's Ponds Patriarch's Ponds- Pioneer. In ancient times, this place was called Goat Swamp (a trace remains in the names of Kozikhinsky lanes); in the 17th century here was a settlement that belonged to Patriarch Filaret, hence the name of three ponds (cf. Trekhprudny Lane), of which only one remains today. Thus, the toponymy itself combines the themes of the Lord and the devil (Patriarch's Ponds - Goat Swamp). // Since 1918, there has been a massive renaming of cities, streets, etc. By 1972, only 693 names out of 1344 listed in the 1912 guidebook were preserved in Moscow. This was an erasure of the memory of the past. For Bulgakov's position and the style of his book, the use of old names is essential. These old names are given with new replacements, although some have been restored since 1987. two citizens appeared. The first of them - approximately forty years old, dressed in a gray summer pair - was short, dark-haired, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat like a pie in his hand, and his neatly shaven face was adorned with supernaturally sized glasses in black horn-rimmed frames. The second, a broad-shouldered, reddish, curly-haired young man in a checkered cap twisted at the back of his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewed white trousers and black slippers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, Berlioz. – In the image of Berlioz they find similarities with such prominent figures of those years as the head of RAPP and the editor of the magazine. “On duty” L. L. Averbakh, editor of the magazine. “Red New Year” F. F. Raskolnikov, prof. Reisner, editor of theater magazines V.I. Blum, D. Bedny and others. This list can be supplemented by the figure of the “People's Commissariat of Education” A.V. Lunacharsky (cf. his dispute with Metropolitan Vvedensky and Berlioz’s conversation with Bezdomny) and other ideologists of that time. It is not for nothing that, like Jesus Christ, Berlioz has twelve deputy apostles, members of the board of Massolit, who await his appearance at a kind of “evening” at Griboedov’s. The theme of Christ and the Devil is also introduced by the surname, reminiscent of the French romantic composer Hector Berlioz, the author of the Symphony Fantastique (1830), with its “Procession to Execution” and “Infernal Sabbath” (the names of the second and third parts of the symphony) (see. G a s p a r o v B. From observations on the motivic structure of M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” // Daugava, 1988. No. 10–12; 1989. No. 1). At the same time, the image of Berlioz emphasizes the spiritual emptiness and superficial education of a sworn official atheist, who did not even have the time and did not know how to think about the “extraordinary” (i.e., non-banal) “phenomena” of existence. editor of a thick art magazine and chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, abbreviated as Massolit, Massolit. – Abbreviations of all kinds (abbreviations) were in great fashion in 1914–1940 – it was a kind of “disease of the language.” The word Massolit, invented by Bulgakov, is on a par with such real abbreviations as VAPP or MAPP (All-Union and Moscow Associations of Proletarian Writers), MODPIK (Moscow Society of Dramatic Writers and Composers) and Mastkomdram (Workshop of Communist Drama), etc. and his young companion is the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny. Homeless. – Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing “monstrous” poems under the pseudonym Bezdomny (in early editions - Antosha Bezrodny, Ivanushka Popov, Ivanushka Bezrodny), is typical of the era, as is his pseudonym, formed according to a popular ideological template: Maxim Gorky (Alexei Peshkov), Demyan Bedny (Efim Pridvorov), Golodny (Epstein), Merciless (Ivanov), Pribludny (Ovcharenko), etc. They see the features of many people in him: D. Bedny, Bezymensky, Iv. Iv. Startseva and others. But the spiritual evolution of this hero is completely unusual and resembles the fate of another Bulgakov character - the poet Ivan Rusakov from The White Guard.

Finding themselves in the shade of slightly green linden trees, the writers first rushed to the colorfully painted booth with the inscription “Beer and water.”

Yes, the first strangeness of this terrible May evening should be noted. Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, fell in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty.

“Give me Narzan,” Berlioz asked.

“Narzan is gone,” answered the woman in the booth, and for some reason she was offended.

“The beer will be delivered in the evening,” the woman answered.

- What is there? asked Berlioz.

“Apricot, only warm,” the woman said.

- Well, come on, come on, come on!..

The apricot gave off a rich yellow foam, and the air smelled like a barbershop. Having drunk, the writers immediately began to hiccup, paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond and with their backs to Bronnaya.

Here a second strange thing happened, concerning only Berlioz. He suddenly stopped hiccupping, his heart pounded and for a moment sank somewhere, then returned, but with a dull needle stuck in it. In addition, Berlioz was gripped by an unreasonable, but so strong fear that he wanted to immediately flee from the Patriarch's without looking back.

Berlioz looked around sadly, not understanding what frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and thought: “What’s wrong with me? This has never happened... my heart is racing... I’m overtired... Perhaps it’s time to throw everything to hell and go to Kislovodsk...”

And then the sultry air thickened in front of him, and from this air a transparent citizen of a strange appearance was woven. On his small head is a jockey cap, a checkered, short, airy jacket... The citizen is a fathom tall, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and his face, please note, is mocking.

Berlioz's life developed in such a way that he was not accustomed to unusual phenomena. Turning even paler, he widened his eyes and thought in confusion: “This can’t be!..”

But this, alas, was there, and the long citizen, through which one could see, swayed in front of him, both left and right, without touching the ground.

Here horror took over Berlioz so much that he closed his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that it was all over, the haze dissolved, the checkered one disappeared, and at the same time the blunt needle jumped out of his heart.

- Fucking hell! - the editor exclaimed. “You know, Ivan, I almost had a stroke from the heat just now!” There was even something like a hallucination... - he tried to grin, but his eyes were still jumping with anxiety, and his hands were shaking. However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with a handkerchief and, saying quite cheerfully: “Well, so...”, he began his speech, interrupted by drinking apricot.

This speech, as we later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet to write a large anti-religious poem for the next book of the magazine. … anti-religious poem. – Anti-religious poems, verses, caricatures, etc. were then and later very widespread. A prominent place in the literature of this kind was occupied by the products of D. Bedny, who in 1925 published his “New Testament without Flaw of the Evangelist Demyan,” written, according to the author, during “Holy Week.” The association of such things with religious holidays was a common method of anti-religious propaganda. It was for the coming Easter that Berlioz commissioned a poem to the Homeless Man. The homeless man gave a negative portrait of Jesus Christ in the poem, as did D. Bedny: “a liar, a drunkard, a womanizer” (Bedny D. Complete collected works. T. VIII. M.; L., 1926. P. 232). Ivan Nikolaevich composed this poem in a very short time, but, unfortunately, it did not satisfy the editor at all. Bezdomny outlined the main character of his poem, that is, Jesus, in very black colors, and nevertheless, in the opinion of the editor, the entire poem had to be written anew. And now the editor was giving the poet something like a lecture about Jesus in order to highlight the poet’s main mistake.

It’s hard to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolayevich down - whether it was the visual power of his talent or complete unfamiliarity with the issue on which he wrote - but his Jesus turned out to be, well, a completely alive, once-existent Jesus, only, however, a Jesus equipped with all the negative features .

Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing is not what Jesus was like, whether he was bad or good, but that this Jesus, as a person, did not exist in the world at all and that all the stories about him are simple inventions, the most common myth.

It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians, for example, to the famous Philo of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria– philosopher and religious thinker (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD). He had a great influence on subsequent theology with his doctrine of logos. on the brilliantly educated Josephus, Josephus Flavius ​​(37 - after 100) - author of the books “The Jewish War”, “Jewish Antiquities”, “Life”. Whether out of ignorance or deliberately, Berlioz is telling a lie: Christ is mentioned in “Jewish Antiquities,” although this mention is so consistent with the spirit of Christian orthodoxy that this circumstance seemed to make it possible to consider this passage a later insertion. However, in the Arabic text of the “World Chronicle” by Bishop Agapius, this text was preserved in a different version, allowing it to be recognized as the authorship of I. Flavius. According to B.V. Sokolov (commentary in the book: Bulgakov M. Master and Margarita. Leningrad: Higher School, 1989), Bulgakov knew this option, other researchers (M. Ivanovich) this is rejected. never mentioned the existence of Jesus. Displaying solid erudition, Mikhail Aleksandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that the place in the fifteenth book, in chapter 44 of the famous Tacitus “Annals”, which talks about the execution of Jesus, is nothing more than a later fake insertion . Tacitus. – Berlioz’s assertion that the mention of Christ by the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55 - after 117) is a later insertion was a standard technique of atheistic propaganda (the so-called “hypercriticism”). Modern historical science does not adhere to this version.

The poet, for whom everything reported by the editor was news, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his lively green eyes on him, and only hiccupped occasionally, cursing the apricot water in a whisper.

“There is not a single Eastern religion,” said Berlioz, “in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin would not give birth to a god.” And the Christians, without inventing anything new, created their own Jesus in the same way, who in fact was never alive. This is what you need to focus on...

Berlioz's high tenor resounded in the deserted alley, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich climbed into the jungle, into which only a very educated person can climb without risking breaking his neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris , gracious god and son of Heaven and Earth, Osiris (e g and p. Usir) - son of the earth god Heb, brother and husband of Isis, father of Horus; the god of the productive forces of nature and the king of the underworld; personifies goodness and light; killed by the evil god Set, resurrected by Isis or Horus. and about the Phoenician god Fammuz, Fammuz (e in the river Tamuz) is the god of fertility among the peoples of Western Asia, the beloved and husband of the goddess Inanna; spends six months underground. and about Marduk, Marduk is the main deity of the Babylonian pantheon; god of healing, vegetation and water. and even about the lesser-known formidable god Vitzliputzli, who was once highly revered by the Aztecs in Mexico. Vitzliputzli (right. Huitzilopochtli) – “left-handed calibri”, the supreme deity of the Aztecs; human sacrifices were made to him.

And just at the time when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet about how the Aztecs sculpted a figurine of Vitzliputzli from dough, the first man appeared in the alley.

Subsequently, when, frankly speaking, it was too late, various institutions presented their reports describing this person. Comparing them cannot but cause amazement. So, in the first of them it is said that this man was short, had gold teeth and limped on his right leg. In the second - that the man was enormous in stature, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The third laconically reports that the person had no special signs.

We have to admit that none of these reports are any good.

First of all: the person described did not limp on any of his legs, and he was neither short nor huge, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold ones on the right. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and foreign-made shoes that matched the color of the suit. He cocked his gray beret jauntily over his ear and carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle's head under his arm. He looks to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaven clean. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word - a foreigner. ... a foreigner ... - Moscow people look at foreigners as special people, communication with whom is dangerous. This attitude is plausibly imitated by Koroviev: “He’ll come... and either spy like the last son of a bitch, or he’ll wear out all his nerves with his whims.” The house manager Bosom and the head of Moscow writers Berlioz are equally scared at the thought that a foreigner will live in a private apartment. Margarita assures Azazello that she never sees foreigners and does not want to communicate with them.

Passing by the bench on which the editor and the poet sat, the foreigner glanced sideways at them, stopped and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from his friends.

“German...” thought Berlioz.

“Englishman...” thought Homeless. “Look, he’s not hot in gloves.”

And the foreigner looked around at the tall houses bordering the pond in a square, and it became noticeable that he was seeing this place for the first time and that it interested him.

He fixed his gaze on the upper floors, dazzlingly reflecting in the glass the sun that was broken and leaving Mikhail Alexandrovich forever, then he turned his gaze downwards, where the glass began to darken in the late afternoon, smiled condescendingly at something, squinted, put his hands on the knob, and his chin on his hands.

“You, Ivan,” said Berlioz, “very well and satirically depicted, for example, the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the point is that even before Jesus a whole series of sons of God were born, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis , Attis (Greek m and f.) is a god of Phrygian origin (Phrygia is an ancient country in the northwestern part of Asia), associated with the orgiastic cult of the great mother of the gods Cybele. Persian Mithra. In short, none of them were born and no one existed, including Jesus, and it is necessary that you, instead of the birth or, suppose, the arrival of the Magi, Magi - sages, soothsayers, magicians. According to the Gospel, the Magi came from the east to worship the newborn Christ and brought him gifts: gold as a king, incense as God and myrrh as a mortal man (Matthew 2:1-11). would portray ridiculous rumors about this arrival. And it turns out from your story that he was really born!..

Here Bezdomny made an attempt to stop the hiccups that were tormenting him, holding his breath, which made the hiccups more painful and louder, and at the same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly stood up and headed towards the writers.

They looked at him in surprise.

“Excuse me, please,” the man who approached spoke with a foreign accent, but without distorting the words, “that I, not being familiar, allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that...”

Here he politely took off his beret, and the friends had no choice but to rise and bow.

“No, rather a Frenchman...” thought Berlioz.

“A Pole?..” thought Bezdomny.

It must be added that from the very first words the foreigner made a disgusting impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked it, that is, not that he liked it, but ... how to put it ... interested, or something.

- May I sit down? – the foreigner politely asked, and the friends somehow involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner deftly sat down between them and immediately entered into conversation:

– If I heard correctly, did you deign to say that Jesus was not in the world? – asked the foreigner, turning his left green eye to Berlioz.

“No, you heard right,” Berlioz answered politely, “that’s exactly what I said.”

- Oh, how interesting! - exclaimed the foreigner.

“What the hell does he want?” - thought Homeless and frowned.

– Did you agree with your interlocutor? – the unknown person inquired, turning to the right to Bezdomny.

- One hundred percent! – he confirmed, loving to express himself pretentiously and figuratively.

- Amazing! - exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, for some reason, looking around furtively and muffling his low voice, he said: - Forgive my intrusiveness, but I understand that, among other things, you also do not believe in God? “He made frightened eyes and added: “I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

“Yes, we don’t believe in God,” Berlioz answered, smiling slightly at the foreign tourist’s fright, “but we can talk about this completely freely.”

The foreigner leaned back on the bench and asked, even squealing with curiosity:

– Are you atheists?!

“Yes, we are atheists,” Berlioz answered smiling, and Bezdomny thought, angry: “Here he is, a foreign goose!”

- Oh, how lovely! - cried the amazing foreigner and turned his head, looking first at one writer and then at another.

“In our country, atheism does not surprise anyone,” Berlioz said diplomatically politely, “the majority of our population consciously and long ago stopped believing fairy tales about God.”

Then the foreigner pulled off this trick: he stood up and shook the amazed editor’s hand, while uttering the following words:

- Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart!

-What are you thanking him for? - Bezdomny inquired, blinking.

“For very important information, which is extremely interesting to me, as a traveler,” the foreign eccentric explained, raising his finger meaningfully.

The important information, apparently, really made a strong impression on the traveler, because he fearfully looked around the houses, as if afraid to see an atheist in each window.

“No, he’s not English...” thought Berlioz, and Bezdomny thought: “Where did he get so good at speaking Russian, that’s what’s interesting!” – and frowned again.

“But, let me ask you,” the foreign guest spoke after anxious thought, “what to do with the evidence of the existence of God, of which, as we know, there are exactly five?” … what to do with the evidence of the existence of God... – The question of the existence of God is one of the central problems of “The Master and Margarita” (as well as “The White Guard”). Not only Berlioz’s dispute with Woland is connected with it, but also the entire plot point of the work in both its parts – modern and ancient: Yeshua and the Master are bearers of divine truth, Pilate and Berlioz are pragmatists and relativists. In this place, Bulgakov used V.S. Solovyov’s article about Kant, published in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron. Instead of the four proofs listed there (cosmological, teleological, ontological and historical), Woland names five, and then the Kantian proof (moral) turns out to be the sixth. The “seventh proof” is nothing more than Woland’s joke, proving not the existence of God, but Woland’s ability to foresee events.

- Alas! – Berlioz answered with regret. “None of this evidence is worth anything, and humanity has long since archived it.” After all, you must agree that in the realm of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God.

- Bravo! - the foreigner cried. - Bravo! You completely repeated the thought of the restless old man Immanuel on this matter. But here’s the funny thing: he completely destroyed all five proofs, and then, as if to mock himself, he constructed his own sixth proof!

– Kant's proof, Kant's proof... - Immanuel Kant argued that “only three ways of proving the existence of God based on speculative reason are possible” (Kant Imm. Works in 6 volumes. T. 3. M., 1964. P. 516); rejecting them, he derived proof of the existence of God from the postulate of the existence of the moral law.- the educated editor objected with a subtle smile, - also unconvincing. And it was not for nothing that Schiller said that Kant’s reasoning on this issue could satisfy only slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at this evidence. Strauss. – David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), German theologian, in the book “The Life of Jesus” (1835–1836), used by Bulgakov (Russian edition - St. Petersburg, 1907), denied the authenticity of the Gospel, but not the personality of Christ himself.

Berlioz spoke, and at that time he himself thought: “But, still, who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?

- Take this Kant, but for such evidence he will be sent to Solovki for three years! Solovki is the common name for the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, where in the 15th century. a monastery was founded. Since the beginning of the 20s of the XX century. there were located the “Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps” (SLON), which received terrible fame among the people. In 1939, the last Solovetsky prisoners were loaded onto the barge “Klara”, which “went out into the open sea and disappeared” (see: Ogonyok. 1988. No. 50. P. 18).– Ivan Nikolaevich boomed completely unexpectedly.

- Ivan! – Berlioz whispered, embarrassed.

But the proposal to send Kant to Solovki not only did not strike the foreigner, but even delighted him.

“Exactly, exactly,” he shouted, and his left green eye, facing Berlioz, sparkled, “he belongs there!” After all, I told him then at breakfast: “You, professor, it’s your choice, you came up with something awkward! It may be smart, but it is painfully incomprehensible. They will make fun of you."

Berlioz's eyes widened. “At breakfast... Cantu?.. What is he weaving?” - he thought.

“But,” continued the foreigner, not embarrassed by Berlioz’s amazement and turning to the poet, “it is impossible to send him to Solovki for the reason that he has been in places much more remote than Solovki for over a hundred years, and there is no way to extract him from there.” , trust me!

- It's a pity! - responded the bully poet.

“And I’m sorry,” the unknown person confirmed, his eyes sparkling, and continued: “But here’s the question that worries me: if there is no God, then, the question arises, who controls human life and the entire order on earth in general?”

“It’s the man himself who controls,” Bezdomny hastened to angrily answer this, admittedly, not very clear question.

“Sorry,” the unknown person responded softly, “in order to manage, you need, after all, to have an accurate plan for some, at least somewhat decent, period.” Let me ask you, how can a person manage if he is not only deprived of the opportunity to draw up any plan for at least a ridiculously short period of time, well, say, a thousand years, but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact,” here the unknown person turned to Berlioz, “imagine that you, for example, begin to manage, to dispose of others and yourself, in general, so to speak, to get a taste for it, and suddenly you... cough... cough... lung sarcoma... - here the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the thought of lung sarcoma gave him pleasure, - yes, sarcoma, - he repeated the sonorous word, squinting like a cat, - and now your management is over! You are no longer interested in anyone's fate except your own. Your family starts lying to you. You, sensing something is wrong, rush to learned doctors, then to charlatans, and sometimes even to fortune-tellers. Both the first and second, and the third are completely meaningless, you yourself understand. And it all ends tragically: the one who until recently believed that he was in control of something suddenly finds himself lying motionless in a wooden box, and those around him, realizing that the person lying there is no longer of any use, burn him in the oven. And it can be even worse: a person has just decided to go to Kislovodsk,” here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz, “a seemingly trivial matter, but he cannot do this either, since for some unknown reason he suddenly slips and gets hit by a tram! Are you really going to say that he controlled himself this way? Isn’t it more correct to think that someone completely different dealt with him? – and here the stranger laughed with a strange laugh.

Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about sarcoma and the tram, and some disturbing thoughts began to torment him. “He’s not a foreigner... he’s not a foreigner...” he thought, “he’s a strange person... but excuse me, who is he?..”

– You want to smoke, as I see? – the unknown person unexpectedly turned to Homeless. – Which ones do you prefer?

- Do you have different ones? - the poet, who had run out of cigarettes, asked gloomily.

– Which ones do you prefer? – the unknown person repeated.

- Well, “Our brand”, "Our brand". – In the 20s, there were three types of cigarettes with this name: from the cheapest (9 kopeck pack) to the most expensive (45 kopecks) - with an image of the Mosselprom building on the box. Woland’s proposal to choose any brand of cigarettes is comparable to Goethe’s Mephistopheles’ proposal to name the type of wine you want (Yanovskaya L. The Creative Path of Mikhail Bulgakov. M., 1983. P. 270).- Homeless answered angrily.

The stranger immediately pulled out a cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to Homeless:

- “Our brand.”

Both the editor and the poet were not so much struck by the fact that “Our Brand” was found in the cigarette case, but by the cigarette case itself. It was enormous in size, made of red gold, and on its lid, when opened, a diamond triangle sparkled with blue and white fire. … diamond triangle. – The triangle is a very common symbol, and in different sign systems it has a wide variety of meanings. For example, it can be seen as a symbol of the Christian Trinity and as a symbol of pre-Christian culture; the angles of the triangle can symbolize will, thought, feeling; directed at an upward angle, it means good, at a downward angle, evil - thus, it indicates the connection between these moral concepts. In A. V. Chayanov’s story “Venediktov, or Memorable Events of My Life,” well known to Bulgakov, gold-platinum triangles symbolize the possession of human souls. Some researchers (B.V. Sokolov, E. Bazzarelli, M. Iovanovic) associate this sign in Bulgakov with Freemasonry, but there is no sufficient reason for this.

Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: “No, a foreigner!”, and Bezdomny: “Damn him, ah!..”

The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit a cigarette, but Berlioz, a non-smoker, refused.

“It will be necessary to object to him like this,” Berlioz decided, “yes, man is mortal, no one argues against this. But the fact is that...”

However, he did not have time to utter these words when the foreigner spoke:

– Yes, man is mortal, but that would not be so bad. The bad thing is that he is sometimes suddenly mortal, that's the trick! And he can’t say at all what he will do this evening.

“Some kind of ridiculous formulation of the question...” Berlioz thought and objected:

- Well, there is an exaggeration here. I know this evening more or less accurately. It goes without saying that if a brick falls on my head on Bronnaya...

“A brick for no reason at all,” the unknown man interrupted impressively, “will never fall on anyone’s head.” In particular, I assure you, he does not threaten you in any way. You will die a different death.

- Maybe you know which one? – Berlioz inquired with completely natural irony, getting involved in some truly ridiculous conversation. - And tell me?

“Willingly,” responded the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down, as if he was going to sew him a suit, and through his teeth muttered something like: “One, two... Mercury in the second house... the moon is gone... six - misfortune... evening - seven...” “One, two... Mercury...”– Woland pretends that he finds out Berlioz’s fate according to the rules of astrology (about these rules, see: S o k o l o v B. Op. cit.); but in fact he knew it and even told Berlioz before he asked him about it. Thus, his astrological calculations turn out to be a farce and a buffoonery.- and loudly and joyfully announced: “Your head will be cut off!”

The homeless man stared wildly and angrily at the cheeky stranger, and Berlioz asked with a wry smile:

– Who exactly? Enemies? Interventionists?

“No,” the interlocutor answered, “a Russian woman, a Komsomol member.”

“Hm...” Berlioz mumbled, irritated by the stranger’s joke, “well, this, excuse me, is unlikely.”

“I beg your pardon,” answered the foreigner, “but that’s how it is.” Yes, I would like to ask you, what will you do tonight if it's not a secret?

- There is no secret. Now I will go to my place on Sadovaya, and then at ten o’clock in the evening there will be a meeting in Massolit, and I will chair it.

“No, this can’t possibly be,” the foreigner objected firmly.

- Why?

“Because,” the foreigner answered and looked at the sky with narrowed eyes, where, anticipating the evening coolness, black birds were silently drawing, “Annushka has already bought sunflower oil, and not only bought it, but even spilled it.” Annushka... and spilled... - V. Levshin, who lived in the same apartment with Bulgakov in the 20s, believes that the prototype of the “Annushka plague” was their “housekeeper Annushka - a grumpy woman, always dropping and breaking something, most likely because the reason for his crooked eyes (Annushka’s left eye, covered with a cataract, is half-covered by a paresis eyelid)” (see: Memoirs of Mikhail Bulgakov. P. 173). So the meeting will not take place.

Here, as is quite understandable, there was silence under the linden trees.

“Excuse me,” Berlioz spoke after a pause, looking at the foreigner chattering nonsense, “what does sunflower oil have to do with it... and who is Annushka?”

“Sunflower oil has something to do with it,” Bezdomny suddenly spoke up, apparently deciding to declare war on his uninvited interlocutor, “have you, citizen, ever been to a mental hospital?”

“Ivan!..” Mikhail Alexandrovich quietly exclaimed.

But the foreigner was not at all offended and laughed joyfully.

- Happened, happened, and more than once! - he cried, laughing, but not taking his unlaughing eyes off the poet. – Where have I never been! It’s just a pity that I didn’t bother to ask the professor what schizophrenia is. So you yourself find out from him, Ivan Nikolaevich!

- How do you know my name?

- For mercy’s sake, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn’t know you? “Here the foreigner pulled yesterday’s issue of Literary Newspaper out of his pocket, and Ivan Nikolaevich saw his image on the first page, and under it his own poems. But yesterday, the joyful proof of fame and popularity this time did not please the poet at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his face darkened, “can you wait a minute?” I want to say a few words to my friend.

- Oh, with pleasure! – the unknown person exclaimed. “It’s so nice here under the linden trees, and by the way, I’m not in a hurry.”

“Here’s what, Misha,” the poet whispered, pulling Berlioz aside, “he’s not a foreign tourist, but a spy.” This is a Russian emigrant who moved to us. Ask him for documents, otherwise he will leave...

- You think? - Berlioz whispered alarmedly, and he himself thought: “But he’s right...”

“Believe me,” the poet hissed in his ear, “he’s pretending to be a fool in order to ask something out.” You hear him speaking in Russian,” the poet spoke and looked askance, making sure that the unknown person did not run away, “let’s go, we’ll detain him, otherwise he’ll leave...

And the poet pulled Berlioz by the hand to the bench.

The stranger did not sit, but stood next to her, holding in his hands some book in a dark gray cover, a thick envelope of good paper and a business card.

- Forgive me that in the heat of our argument I forgot to introduce myself to you. Here is my card, passport and invitation to come to Moscow for a consultation,” the unknown man said gravely, looking shrewdly at both writers.

They were embarrassed. “Damn, I heard everything...” thought Berlioz and with a polite gesture showed that there was no need to present documents. While the foreigner was pushing them to the editor, the poet managed to see on the card the word “professor” printed in foreign letters and the initial letter of the surname - double “B” - “W”. … double "B" – "W". – According to L. M. Yanovskaya, Bulgakov replaced the Latin letter “ve” with the letter “double ve” in order to graphically connect the name of this character with the names of the main character and heroine: the inverted letter “double ve” is similar to the Russian letter “em”.

“Very nice,” meanwhile, the editor muttered embarrassedly, and the foreigner hid the documents in his pocket.

Relations were thus restored, and all three sat down on the bench again.

– Are you invited to us as a consultant, professor? asked Berlioz.

- Yes, a consultant.

- Are you German? - asked Homeless.

“Me?..” the professor asked and suddenly became thoughtful. - Yes, perhaps a German... Yes, probably German... - These words of Woland are another detail that brings him closer to Goethe’s (i.e., German) Mephistopheles.- he said.

“You speak Russian very well,” noted Bezdomny.

“Oh, I’m generally a polyglot and I know a very large number of languages,” the professor answered.

– What is your specialty? - Berlioz inquired.

– I am a specialist in black magic. … black magic specialist- that is, sorcery associated with hellish forces, in contrast to white magic associated with heavenly forces.

“On you!..” – Mikhail Alexandrovich’s head rang.

– And... and you were invited to join us in this specialty? – he asked stuttering.

“Yes, that’s why they invited me,” the professor confirmed and explained: “Authentic manuscripts of the warlock Herbert of Avrilak, from the tenth century, were discovered here in the state library.” Herbert of Avrilak- a prominent representative of the mental movement of the 10th century. (938-1003), scientist and theologian, from 999 - Pope Sylvester II; was known as an alchemist and sorcerer. So I need to take them apart. I am the only specialist in the world.

- Ahh! Are you a historian? – Berlioz asked with great relief and respect.

And again both the editor and the poet were extremely surprised, and the professor beckoned both to him and, when they leaned towards him, whispered:

– Keep in mind that Jesus existed.

“You see, professor,” Berlioz responded with a forced smile, “we respect your great knowledge, but we ourselves hold a different point of view on this issue.”

“You don’t need any points of view,” answered the strange professor, “he just existed, and nothing more.”

“But some kind of proof is required...” Berlioz began.

“And no proof is required,” the professor answered and spoke quietly, and for some reason his accent disappeared: “It’s simple: in a white cloak with a bloody lining, a shuffling cavalry gait, early in the morning on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan...” Nissan is the first synagogue and seventh civil month of the lunar Jewish calendar; consists of 29 days and corresponds approximately to the end of March - April. The evening of this day (i.e., the 15th of Nisan) marks the beginning of the Jewish Passover (or Feast of Unleavened Bread), established in memory of the exodus from Egypt and lasting seven days.