All the characters are from the novel The Master and Margarita. “The Master and Margarita” - who is the main character of the novel? Heroes and prototypes

In the biography of M.A. Bulgakov is a certain center, a focus of ideas and quests, where everything ends, where all the threads converge. This is the novel “The Master and Margarita” - the main book of the writer.

Mikhail Afanasyevich worked on it for about 12 years. The novel “The Master and Margarita” was in the life of the playwright what “Requiem” was for Mozart - a long farewell and a creative testament. It was written as a piece of music. Bulgakov verified the melody of words and thoughts. He spent a very long time selecting words in each sentence, changing their places, re-reading them again and again to hear how the phrase sounded. This work was cut short by death, and yet the novel was completed.

The idea for the novel arose in 1923 - 1924, in the spring of 1929 the first version appeared - a satirical “novel about the devil”, which was destroyed by the author himself in March 1930.

In the early 30s. a new edition of the text is created. The novel received the title “The Master and Margarita” in 1937; the second edition was completed the following year, from May 1939 to February 1940. final edits are being made. The novel was published after the writer's death in 1967, and caused heated controversy in the press.

Thus, there were three editions of the novel, in which there were the following title options: “Black Magician”, “Engineer’s Hoof”, “Juggler with a Hoof”, “Son of V”, “Tour”; "The Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I Am", "The Hat with a Feather", "The Black Theologian", "He Appeared", "The Foreigner's Horseshoe", "He Appeared", "The Advent", "The Black Magician" and "Consultant's Hoof"; and, finally, the third edition was originally called “The Prince of Darkness,” and less than a year later, the now well-known title “The Master and Margarita” appeared.

It must be said that when writing the novel, Bulgakov used several philosophical theories: some compositional moments, as well as mystical episodes and episodes from the Yershalaim chapters, were based on them. The writer borrowed most of his ideas from the 18th century Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda, whose works he studied thoroughly.

Thus, in the novel there is an interaction between three worlds: human, biblical and cosmic.

Let’s compare: according to the theory of “three worlds” by Skovoroda, the most important world is the cosmic one, the Universe, the all-encompassing macrocosm. The other two worlds are private. One of them is human, a microcosm; the other is symbolic, i.e. biblical world.

Each of the three worlds has two “natures”: visible and invisible. All three worlds are woven from good and evil, and the biblical world appears in Skovoroda as a connecting link between the visible and invisible natures of the macrocosm and microcosm.

Man has two bodies and two hearts: corruptible and eternal, earthly and spiritual, and this means that man is “external” and “internal.”

And the latter never dies: by dying, he only loses his earthly body.

In the novel "The Master and Margarita" duality is expressed in the dialectical interaction and struggle of good and evil.

According to Skovoroda, good cannot exist without evil; people simply will not know that it is good. As Woland said to Levi Matthew: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared from it?”

There must be some kind of balance between good and evil, which was disrupted in Moscow: the scales tipped sharply towards the latter and Woland came as the chief punisher to restore it.

The three-world nature of “The Master and Margarita” can also be correlated with the views of the famous Russian religious philosopher, theologian and mathematician P.A. Florensky, who developed the idea that “trinity is the most general characteristic of being,” connecting it with the Christian Trinity. He also wrote: “...Truth is a single essence with three hypostases...”.

For Bulgakov, the composition of the novel really consists of three layers, which together lead us to understand the main idea of ​​the novel: about the moral responsibility of a person for his actions, that all people at all times should strive for truth. And finally, recent studies of Bulgakov’s work lead many scientists and literary critics to believe that the philosophical concept of the novel was influenced by the views of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, his work “I and IT” about the separation of the I, IT and the I-ideal in man.

The composition of the novel is formed by three intricately intertwined storylines, each of which uniquely refracts elements of Freud's idea of ​​the human psyche.

The biblical chapters of the novel tell the story of the life and death of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, personifying the I-ideal, while the Moscow chapters show the adventures of IT Woland and his retinue, exposing human base passions, vulgar lust, lust. Who represents? I?

The tragedy of the Master, called a hero by the author, lies in the loss of his Self. “Now I’m nobody... I don’t have any dreams and I don’t have any inspiration either... I was broken, I’m bored, and I want to go to the basement,” he says. Like a truly tragic hero, the Master is guilty and not guilty. Having entered into a deal with evil spirits through Margarita, “he did not deserve light, he deserved peace,” the desired balance between IT and the I-ideal.

Bulgakov's novel is small in volume, but great in the depth of the “eternal” problems posed in it: socio-historical, philosophical, ethical, aesthetic. What is good and evil, and what is the relationship between them? What is truth and what is the meaning of human existence? What is the most terrible crime, and what is the punishment for betrayal and cowardice? Man and power: what is the dialectic of their relationship? What determines the choice between freedom and unfreedom? What is the difference between mercy and forgiveness - this is not a complete range of questions raised by the author on the pages of the work.

The most amazing thing is that Bulgakov, who knew that during his lifetime he would not see his novel published, still foresaw that it would eventually be published, and bequeathed a fee to the first person who, after the release of The Master and Margarita, would put flowers on his grave. The book tells about the difficult life of a writer. But it was written by a cheerful, witty and sociable person who could laugh at the devil himself.

To finally understand the problems and idea of ​​the novel, you need to consider in more detail the characters, their role in the work and prototypes in history, literature or the life of the author.

Is it possible for a person, regardless of the time and place of his stay, the size of the shadow cast by him, to exist in the world as if the appearance and crucifixion of Jesus Christ had not taken place? In Bulgakov's last, “sunset” novel, there is an answer to this question; it unfolds from the first chapter to the epilogue as a negation of a negation.

Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita as a historically accurate book about Russia in the 30s of the twentieth century. The heroes of “Moscow history” are those after whom the novel is named - the Master and Margarita, but their fates are so firmly embedded in Moscow life of the 30s that it becomes not only the background for the development of the action, but also the object of the author’s close research.

At the beginning of the story, the indisputably authoritative word of the chairman of the “board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations” and the editor of the “thick art magazine” Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz sounds. In Moscow in the 1930s, on the Patriarch's Ponds, he inspired the young poet Ivan Bezdomny that even in an anti-religious poem, Jesus Christ cannot be a living character, because he, “as a person, did not exist at all in the world” and “in fact never existed.” alive".

The consequences of this “sort of lecture” were immediate. Opponent Woland appeared with his retinue, and with the help of refutations of all of the above, Berlioz lost his head, falling under a tram. The poor poet has gone crazy. The beginning and end of the novel are correlated with the answer to the question: “Did Jesus live and was he executed?”

In Berlioz’s reality, the living Jesus did not exist, “mere fiction, an ordinary myth,” he said.

Poor Ivanushka’s consciousness became stratified as soon as the abyss of disintegrating time opened up in front of him. Here, “one minute he was talking to Berlioz, and a minute later - his head...”. And a certain foreign consultant had just clearly said in Russian that Jesus existed, that there was the seventh, “most reliable” proof of the existence of the devil, had just announced to Berlioz: “Your head will be cut off!” - and disappeared. The lived-in world of the poor poet collapsed.

The pursuit of an elusive opponent leads him to a mental hospital. The meeting there with the Master, who knew everything about the life and execution of Jesus Christ in ancient Yershalaim, turned out to be beyond his consciousness. The times did not connect for him, the connection between the visible and the invisible was not comprehended. The figure of Ivan Bezdomny is extremely important simply because he remains on the earth. The trials he went through were not caused by a meeting with demonic forces, but by the chaos reigning in his soul and head, as in the heads and souls of most people of our century. And the “ancient Pilate’s sin” weighs heavily on him; he cannot make a direct choice between good and evil, and he is worthy of sympathy and mercy. Berlioz and Bezdomny, whose real name is Ponyrev, frame Bulgakov's novel, being the first and last figures in it.

Berlioz is an educated atheist and a skilled functionary.

Ponyrev has a living heart, but no knowledge and an undeveloped mind. These are the most characteristic figures for an age arguing with God. Between them, the writer placed all the other characters - the inhabitants of ancient Yershalaim and new Moscow, Woland and his retinue, the inhabitants of the other world of light and darkness.

All of them have in common the property indicated by the pseudonym of Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev - they are homeless from the very beginning, metaphysically. All are wanderers, all on the way, at some point of transition from one state to another, from familiar dimensions and meanings into a phantasmagoric, absurd world. No one has a home in the old sense. Only the Master and Margarita receive their eternal home as eternal rest, leaving the Earth and its temporary shelters forever.

None of the characters are related to each other by ties of kinship or warm family relationships.

Beggar, homeless, wandering, not remembering kinship, Ga-Notsri is like millions of people walking and passing on earth, deprived of family, shelter, “thrown to the surface.” He does not have a retinue of disciples, he does not declare himself the son of God, remaining a foundling, the son of unknown parents and a prophet from a remote province, ridiculed, despised, crucified.

Mikhail Bulgakov preferred the information from ancient sources that characterized Ga-Notsri as an outcast, a lonely beggar philosopher, despised by the authorities and the mob: “Crucify, crucify him!”

He knew how to cure headaches, but he strove to heal the spirit, because only he could overcome the complexes of spiritual orphanhood, moral abandonment, and homelessness. Resigned to his position in his country, Yeshua wanders, but has one thing to do - talk with “good people.” The master doesn't even remember his wife's name. Bulgakov creates an image of a crazy world living according to its own phantasmagoric laws: from

“bad apartments” people disappear here, the suit of a government official signs orders and imposes resolutions, which will then be fully approved by its returning owner. Everything here is bureaucratic, bribery, debauchery, opportunism, and denunciation flourish here (Aloziy Mogarych, Baron Maigel. The novel describes only two deaths: Berlioz and Baron Maigel. Maigel is killed because he is a spy and informer, and because, as Bulgakov puts it, “...it was impossible not to kill him.”

Why did such a kind person as Bulgakov, at the very beginning of the novel, prepare a painful death for Mikhail Berlioz? Why did he dislike him so much? Who is Berlioz?

Berlioz is for Bulgakov the personification of the sanctimonious approach and formalism in literature. He embodied the image of a literary editor hated by the writer. But in research works devoted to the novel, it is believed that Berlioz had a real prototype. This is a prominent literary critic Ya.M. Sverdlova and Maxim Gorky’s favorite Leopold Averbakh. Averbakh was the main persecutor of Bulgakov. In addition, Averbakh’s sister was the wife of the head of the OGPU, Genrikh Yagoda. It was Yagoda who was especially “attentive” to Bulgakov, reading his diaries, manuscripts and letters. He was in charge of the life and work of Mikhail Afanasyevich.), immorality in the broadest sense of the word. In this terrible world, base passions reign and mediocrity and opportunists flourish.

Literary critic-emigrant Vyacheslav Zavalishin wrote about Bulgakov: “I don’t know another satirist who would create such strong, truthful and expressive caricatures of Soviet people and of that atmosphere of the thirties, which flattened and disfigured life and the spiritual and moral appearance of a person.” . Bulgakov was expelled from theater and literature. But the writer could not be broken. And therefore he was able to tell the truth that was so dear to him about time and people.

The ideology of good and evil, embodied in the persons of Yeshua and Woland

In the novel “The Master and Margarita,” the two main forces of good and evil, which, according to Bulgakov, should be in balance on Earth, are embodied in the persons of Yeshua Ha-Notsri from Yershalaim, close in image to Christ, and Woland, Satan in human form.

Apparently, Bulgakov, in order to show that good and evil exist outside of time and that people have lived according to their laws for thousands of years, placed Yeshua at the beginning of modern times, in the fictional masterpiece of the Master, and Woland, as the arbiter of cruel justice, in Moscow in the 30s. 20th century.

The latter came to Earth to restore harmony where it had been broken in favor of evil, which included lies, stupidity, hypocrisy and, finally, the betrayal that filled Moscow. The earth was initially firmly established between hell and heaven, and there should be a balance of good and evil on it. And if its inhabitants try to disrupt this harmony, then heaven or hell will “suck in” the Earth, and it will cease to exist, merging with the kingdom that people earn through their actions.

Like good and evil, Yeshua and Woland are internally interconnected, and, opposing, cannot do without each other. It's like we wouldn't know what white is if black didn't exist, what day is if night didn't exist. This relationship in the novel is expressed in the descriptions of both characters.

The author focuses on the same things. Woland “appears to be over forty years old,” and Yeshua is twenty-seven; “The man had a big bruise under his left eye...”, and Woland’s “right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason”; Ga-Notsri “had an abrasion with dried blood in the corner of his mouth,” and Woland had “some kind of crooked mouth,” Woland “was in an expensive gray suit... He famously twisted his gray beret over his ear...”, Yeshua appears before the procurator dressed “ in an old and torn blue chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage with a strap around his forehead...” and, finally, Woland openly declared that he was a polyglot, and Yeshua, although he did not say this, knew Greek and Latin in addition to Aramaic. But the dialectical unity, the complementarity of good and evil are most fully revealed in Woland’s words addressed to Matthew Levi, who refused to wish health to the “spirit of evil and the lord of shadows”: “You said your words as if you do not recognize shadows, as well as evil. Would you be so kind as to think about the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows come from objects and people. This is the shadow of my sword. But there are shadows from trees and from living creatures. Don't you want to rip off the entire globe, sweeping away all the trees and all living things because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light? You are stupid".

How does Woland appear? At the Patriarch's Ponds he appears before M.A. Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny, representatives of Soviet literature, who, sitting on a bench, again, nineteen centuries later, judge Christ and reject his divinity and his very existence. Woland is trying to convince them of the existence of God and the devil. Again, a certain connection between them is revealed: the devil exists because Christ exists, and to deny him means to deny one’s existence. This is one side of the issue. The other is that Woland is actually “... part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” It is not for nothing that Bulgakov took the lines of Goethe’s “Faust” as the epigraph of the novel. Woland is the devil, Satan, “prince of darkness,” “spirit of evil and lord of shadows,” who is largely focused on Mephistopheles “Faust.”

In this work, the name Woland is mentioned only once and is usually omitted in Russian translations. This is what Mephistopheles calls himself in the Walpurgis Night scene, demanding that the evil spirits give way: “The nobleman Woland is coming!” Also, Woland, through literary sources, is associated with the image of a famous adventurer, occultist and alchemist of the 18th century. Count Alexandro Cagliostro; An important literary prototype of Woland was the Someone in Gray, called He, from Leonid Andreev’s play “The Life of a Man”; finally, many consider Stalin to be one of Woland’s prototypes.

It is absolutely clear that the novel Woland is the devil, Satan, the embodiment of evil. But why did he come to Moscow in the 1930s? The purpose of his mission was to identify the evil spirit in man. It must be said that Woland, unlike Yeshua Ha-Nozri, considers all people not good, but evil. And in Moscow, where he arrived to do evil, he sees that there is nothing left to do; evil has already filled the city, penetrated into all its corners. Woland could only laugh at people, at their naivety and stupidity, at their disbelief and vulgar attitude towards history, and Woland’s task was to extract from Moscow Margarita, the genius of the Master and his novel about Pontius Pilate. He and his retinue provoke Muscovites to commit unfaithful acts, convincing them of complete impunity, and then they themselves parodicly punish them. During a session of black magic in the Variety Hall, turned into a laboratory for the study of human weaknesses, the Magician exposes the greed of the public, shamelessness and impudent confidence in Sempleyarov's impunity. This, one might say, is the specialty of Woland and his retinue: to punish those who are unworthy of light and peace - and they go about their business from century to century. This is evidenced by Satan's great ball in apartment No. 50. Here the evil spirit demonstrates its undoubted achievements: poisoners, informers, traitors, madmen, libertines of all stripes pass in front of Margarita. And it is at this ball that the murder of Baron Meigel takes place. He had to be destroyed, since he threatened to destroy Woland’s entire world and acted as an extremely successful competitor of Satan in the devilish field. And then, this is punishment for the evil that destroyed Moscow in the first place, and which Meigel personified, namely: betrayal, espionage, denunciations.

What about Yeshua? He said that all people are good and that someday the kingdom of truth will come on Earth. Of course, in the novel he is the embodiment of the ideal to which one must strive. Yeshua haunts Pontius Pilate. The prosecutor of Judea tried to persuade the prisoner to lie in order to save him, but Yeshua insists that “it is easy and pleasant to tell the truth.” So, the procurator said: “I wash my hands of it” and condemned the innocent man to death, but he had the feeling that he had left something unsaid with the unusual, somehow attractive prisoner. Yeshua performed a feat of sacrifice in the name of truth and goodness, and Pilate suffered and was tormented for “twelve thousand moons” until the Master gave him forgiveness and the opportunity to come to an agreement with Ha-Nozri. Bulgakov's Yeshua, of course, goes back to Jesus Christ of the Gospels. Bulgakov met the name “Yeshua Ga-Notsri” in Sergei Chevkin’s play “Yeshua Ganotsri. An impartial discovery of truth,” and then checked it against the works of historians. The writer made Yeshua the hero of the Master’s masterpiece in order to say that art is divine and can persuade a person to search for truth and strive for good, which was so lacking for most residents of Moscow in the 30s. The Master turned out to be almost the only servant of true art, worthy, if not light , then peace. And this proved that Woland does not have the power to drag those who strive for truth, goodness and purity into the underworld.

Images of “Yershalaim history”. Pontius Pilate

The main character of the “Yershalaim story” is Pontius Pilate. It is no coincidence that when Woland asks “what the novel is about,” the author answers: “About Pontius Pilate.” The fifth procurator of Judea, the Horseman of the Golden Spear, a fearless warrior, a far-sighted politician with unheard-of power, condemns an innocent vagabond philosopher to martyrdom. He condemns, internally sympathizing with Yeshua, ready to admit that he was right. He condemns because he himself is not free in his likes and dislikes, not free in his choice: fear of Caesar, fear of denunciation, fear of ruining his career turn out to be higher than the truth. And so Yeshua is sent to the cross, and the name of Pontius Pilate will henceforth become in all centuries and times a symbol of pharisaism and cowardice and will be associated with the name of the philosopher he destroyed. “Now we will always be together,” the ragged Yeshua tells him in a dream, “if there is one, then that means there will be another!” They will remember me, and now they will remember you too!” And this immortality granted to him beyond his will is the most terrible torture for Pontius Pilate.

Most of the characters in the Yershalaim chapters of the novel “The Master and Margarita” go back to the Gospel ones. But this cannot be fully said about Pontius Pilate. He had a reputation as a "ferocious monster." But, nevertheless, Bulgakov’s Pontius Pilate is greatly improved in comparison with the prototype. In his image, the writer depicts a man tormented by the pangs of conscience for having sent an innocent person to death, and in the finale of the novel Pontius Pilate is granted forgiveness. It is very interesting to consider Pilate’s behavior from the point of view of S. Freud’s theory. We have already talked about Freud’s identification of the I, IT and I-ideal in a person. To better understand his views, the scientist proposed an allegory that explains the essence of his theory in a popular form. In the figurative picture drawn by Freud, IT is compared to a horse, the Ego to a rider sitting on it, who wants to move in the direction indicated by the Ego-ideal, but is practically subject to the unbridled impulses of the horse. “Just as a rider, if he does not want to part with the horse, often remains to lead it where it wants, so the I usually transforms the will of IT into action, as if it were its own will.” Separation from IT in the language of psychoanalysis means loss of mental health, neuroses, obsessive states; movement away from the I-ideal is accompanied by pangs of conscience. Let us now turn to the pages of the novel.

Pilate is faced with a dilemma: to save his career, and perhaps his life, over which the shadow of the decrepit empire of Tiberius hangs, or to save the philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri. Bulgakov persistently calls the procurator a horseman, apparently not only due to his belonging to a certain class, but also because the horseman has to choose between IT and the I-ideal. The horseman submits to the will of IT; Yeshua, who does not want to save his life at the cost of even the slightest lie, must die. Ha-Nozri never deviated from the Truth, from the ideal, and therefore deserved the light. He himself is the ideal, the personified conscience of humanity.

The tragedy of the hero is his physical death, but morally he wins. Pilate, who sent him to his death, suffers for almost two thousand years, “twelve thousand moons.” Conscience does not give the procurator peace... Pilate’s difficult decision, the macro-choice he made at the level of consciousness, is preceded by a micro-choice at the subconscious level. This unconscious choice anticipates the actions of the procurator, which influenced not only his subsequent life, but also the fate of all the heroes of the novel.

Coming out into the palace colonnade, the procurator feels that “the smell of leather and convoy is mixed with a damned pink stream,” a smell that the procurator “hated more than anything in the world.” Neither the smell of horses, nor the smell of bitter smoke wafting from the centuries irritates Pilate, does not cause him such suffering as the “fat pink spirit,” which also foretells a “bad day.”

What's behind this? Why does the procurator hate the scent of flowers, the smell of which the majority of humanity finds pleasant? It can be assumed that the matter is as follows. Since ancient times, roses have been considered one of the symbols of Christ and Christianity. For Bulgakov's generation, roses were associated with the teachings of Christ. And Blok in “The Twelve” has similar symbolism: “In a white crown of roses, Jesus Christ is ahead.” A person decides whether a certain smell is pleasant or not at the conscious level, but at the subconscious level.

What will the rider choose? Will he choose IT or the I-ideal, will he follow the direction of the horse smells, or will he head in the direction where the scent of roses comes from? Preferring the smell of “leather and convoy,” the pagan Pilate anticipates the fatal choice that he will make at the level of consciousness. M. Bulgakov also repeatedly mentions that the trial of Yeshua takes place near the “Yershalaim hippodrome”, “lists”. The closeness of the horses is constantly felt. Let’s compare two passages in which the breathing of IT and the I-ideal is alternately heard: “... the procurator looked at the arrested man, then at the sun steadily rising above the equestrian statues of the hippodrome, and suddenly, in some kind of sickening torment, he thought that the easiest way would be expel this strange robber from the balcony, saying only two words: “Hang him.” “...all those present moved down the wide marble staircase between the walls of roses, exuding the scent of flowers, the smell of which most of humanity finds pleasant, an intoxicating aroma, descending lower and lower to the palace wall, to the gate leading to a large, smoothly paved square, at the end which could be seen the columns and statues of the Yershalaim lists.” Simultaneously with the thought of Yeshua’s execution, equestrian statues appear before Pilate’s eyes; members of the Sanhedrin, having pronounced a death sentence, move past the rose bushes towards the same horses. Symbolic horses each time emphasize the choice that the heroes make. Moreover, the possible decision of the procurator corresponds only to a glance towards the place where passions are raging, and the actual decision of the Sanhedrin, which has just passed a death sentence, corresponds to the physical movement of its members in the same direction. In the gospel chapters of the novel, the struggle between IT and the I-ideal takes place in the darkness of Pilate’s soul. IT wins, but its triumph turns out to be not eternal. Pilate’s torment lasts twelve thousand moons, it is difficult for him with a sick conscience, and in the finale, forgiven, he quickly runs along the lunar road to “talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri.” The rider changes his mind and moves towards the I-ideal.

Supernatural negative characters. Woland's retinue

Woland did not come to earth alone. He was accompanied by creatures who, by and large, play the role of jesters in the novel, putting on all sorts of shows, disgusting and hateful to the indignant Moscow population. But their task was also to do all the “dirty” work for Woland, to serve him, incl. prepare Margarita for the Great Ball and for her and the Master’s journey to a world of peace. Woland's retinue consisted of the three "main" jesters Cat Behemoth, Koroviev-Fagot, Azazello and the vampire girl Gella. Where did such strange creatures come from in Woland’s retinue? And where did Bulgakov get their images and names from?

Let's start with Behemoth. This is a werecat and Woland's favorite jester. The name Behemoth is taken from the apocryphal Old Testament book of Enoch. Bulgakov apparently gleaned information about Behemoth from the research of I.Ya. Porfiryev “Apocryphal tales about Old Testament persons and events” and from the book by M.A. Orlov "The history of relations between man and the devil." In these works, Behemoth is a sea monster, as well as a demon, which “was depicted as a monster with an elephant head, a trunk and fangs. His hands were human-shaped, and his huge belly, short tail and thick hind legs, like those of a hippopotamus, reminded him of his name.” In Bulgakov, Behemoth became a huge werecat, and the real prototype of Behemoth was the domestic cat L.E. and M.A. Bulgakov Flyushka is a huge gray animal. In the novel he is black, because... represents evil spirits. During the last flight, Behemoth turns into a thin young page boy flying next to the purple knight. This probably reflected the comic “legend of a cruel knight” from the story of Bulgakov’s friend S.S. Zayaitsky "Biography of Stepan Aleksandrovich Lososinov." In this legend, along with the cruel knight, his page also appears. Zayaitsky’s knight had a passion for tearing off the heads of animals, and this function in “The Master...” is transferred to Behemoth, only in relation to people he tears off the head of Georges Bengalsky. In the demonological tradition, Behemoth is the demon of the desires of the stomach. Hence the extraordinary gluttony of Behemoth in Torgsin. This is how Bulgakov makes fun of the visitors of the currency store, including himself. The hippopotamus in the novel mostly jokes and fools around, which reveals Bulgakov’s truly sparkling humor, and also causes confusion and fear in many people with its unusual appearance.

Koroviev-Fagot is the eldest of the demons subordinate to Woland, his first assistant, a devil and a knight, who introduces himself to Muscovites as a translator for a foreign professor and a former regent of a church choir. There are many versions about the origin of the Koroviev surname and the nickname Fagot. Perhaps the surname is modeled after the surname of the character in the story by A.K. Tolstoy's "Ghoul" of the state councilor Telyaev, who turns out to be the knight Ambrose and a vampire. Koroviev is also associated with the images of the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. In the epilogue of “The Master and Margarita”, among those detained, “four Korovkins” are named due to the similarity of their surnames with Koroviev-Fagot. Here I immediately remember Dostoevsky’s story “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants,” where a certain Korovkin appears. And a number of knights from the works of authors of different times are considered prototypes of Koroviev-Fagot. It is possible that this character also had a real prototype among Bulgakov’s acquaintances, the plumber Ageich, a rare dirty tricker and drunkard, who more than once recalled that in his youth he was the regent of a church choir. And this influenced the hypostasis of Koroviev, posing as a former regent and appearing to the Patriarchs as a bitter drunkard. The nickname Bassoon, of course, echoes the name of the musical instrument. This, most likely, explains his joke with the employees of the branch of the Entertainment Commission, who, against their will, sang in a choir directed by Koroviev, “The Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal.” The bassoon was invented by the Italian monk Afranio. Thanks to this circumstance, the functional connection between Koroviev-Fagot and Afranius is more clearly defined. Koroviev belongs to the triad: Fedor Vasilyevich - Afrany Koroviev-Fagot. Koroviev-Faot even has some similarities with Fagot with a long thin tube folded in three. Bulgakov's character is thin, tall and in imaginary servility, it seems, ready to fold three times before his interlocutor. In the last flight, Koroviev-Fagot appears before us as a dark purple knight with a gloomy, never smiling face. He rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not interested in the earth beneath him, he was thinking about something of his own, flying next to Woland.

Azazello "demon of the waterless desert, demon-killer." The name Azazello was formed by Bulgakov from the Old Testament name Azazel. This is the name of the negative cultural hero of the Old Testament apocrypha of the book of Enoch, the fallen angel who taught people to make weapons and jewelry. Thanks to Azazel, women mastered the “lascivious art” of painting their faces. Therefore, it is Azazello who gives Margarita a cream that magically changes her appearance. Bulgakov was probably attracted by the combination of seduction and murder in one character. It is precisely for the insidious seducer that Margarita mistakes Azazello during their first meeting in the Alexander Garden. But Azazello's main function is related to violence. Here are the words that he said to Margarita: “Punching the administrator in the face, or kicking my uncle out of the house, or shooting someone, or some other trifle like that, this is my direct specialty...” Explaining these words, I will say that Azazello threw Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev out of Moscow to Yalta, kicked out Uncle M.A. from the Bad Apartment. Berlioz Poplavsky, killed Baron Meigel with a revolver.

Gella is the youngest member of Woland's retinue, a female vampire. Bulgakov took the name “Gella” from the article “Sorcery” in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, where it was noted that in Lesvos this name was used to call untimely dead girls who became vampires after death. Bulgakov may have borrowed the characteristic features of the behavior of vampires, clicking their teeth and smacking their lips, from A. K. Tolstoy’s story “The Ghoul,” where the main character is threatened with death by ghouls. Here, a vampire girl turns her lover into a vampire with a kiss, hence, obviously, Gella’s fatal kiss for Varenukha. She, the only one from Woland's retinue, is absent in the scene of the last flight. The third wife of the writer E.S. Bulgakova believed that this was the result of unfinished work on The Master and Margarita. However, it is possible that Bulgakov deliberately removed Gella from the scene of the last flight as the youngest member of the retinue, performing only auxiliary functions both at the Variety Theater, and in the Bad Apartment, and at Satan’s great ball. Vampires are traditionally the lowest category of evil spirits. In addition, Gella would have no one to turn into on the last flight; after all, like Varenukha, having turned into a vampire, she retained her original appearance. It is also possible that Gella’s absence means the immediate disappearance after the end of the mission of Woland and his companions in Moscow.

Bright images of the Master and Margarita

One of the most mysterious figures in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is certainly the Master, a historian who became a writer. The author himself called him a hero, but introduced him to the reader only in chapter 13. Many researchers do not consider the Master to be the main character of the novel. Another mystery is the prototype of the Master. There are many versions about this.

Here are three of the most common ones. The master is in many ways an autobiographical hero. His age at the time of the novel is exactly Bulgakov's age in May 1929.

The newspaper campaign against the Master and his novel about Pontius Pilate is reminiscent of the newspaper campaign against Bulgakov in connection with the story “Fatal Eggs”, the plays “Days of the Turbins”, “Running”, “Zoyka’s Apartment”, “Crimson Island” and the novel “The White Guard”.

The similarity between the Master and Bulgakov is also that the latter, despite literary persecution, did not abandon his creativity, did not become an “intimidated servant”, an opportunist, and served real art.

The master created his masterpiece about Pontius Pilate, “guessed” the truth, devoted his life to pure art, and was the only Moscow cultural figure who did not write to order about “what is possible.” At the same time, the Master has many other, most unexpected prototypes.

His portrait: “shaven, dark-haired, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes and a tuft of hair hanging over his forehead” shows an undeniable resemblance to N.V. Gogol. It must be said that Bulgakov considered him his main teacher. And the Master, like Gogol, was a historian by training and burned the manuscript of his novel. Finally, there is no doubt that Bulgakov’s work contains a number of stylistic parallels with Gogol. And, of course, it is impossible not to draw parallels between the Master and Yeshua Ha-Nozri, created by him. Yeshua is the bearer of universal truth, and the Master is the only person in Moscow who has chosen the right creative and life path. They are united by fellowship, messianism, for which there is no time frame.

But the Master is not worthy of the light that Yeshua personifies, because he abandoned his task of serving pure, divine art, showed weakness and burned the novel, and out of hopelessness he himself came to the house of sorrow.

But the world of the devil has no power over him either. The Master is worthy of peace, an eternal home. Only there, broken by mental suffering, can the Master rediscover romance and unite with his romantic beloved Margarita, who sets off with him on her final journey. She entered into a deal with the devil to save the Master and is therefore worthy of forgiveness.

The Master's love for Margarita is in many ways unearthly, eternal love. The master is indifferent to the joys of family life. He does not remember the name of his wife, does not strive to have children, and when he was married and worked as a historian in a museum, he, by his own admission, lived “lonely, having no relatives and almost no acquaintances in Moscow.” The master realized his calling as a writer, quit his service and sat down to write a novel about Pontius Pilate in an Arbat basement.

And Margarita was persistently next to him... The Master’s life partner in the novel is Margarita. Who is she? This young, intelligent and beautiful woman, who before meeting the Master lived in a lie and without love, goes through a difficult path of testing and rebirth. She gets rid of earthly sins through great trials, which she undergoes of her own free will in the name of love and faith. Margarita changes and moves along with the book: first to the Master, Woland, and then to Yeshua.

Bulgakov's heroine is a collective image, although many young, beautiful and intelligent women who knew the writer would like to be considered the prototype of Margarita. And yet, the woman most worthy of this honor is Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, the third and last wife of Mikhail Afanasyevich, to whom he dedicated his novel. But, since the novel unfolds as a Gospel, the origins of the image of Margarita should be sought there - in the Holy Scriptures. The path that Margarita takes in the novel is the path of the gospel Mary Magdalene. The path of a repentant and believing sinner, reborn to a new life. Mary Magdalene, who stood at the cross of the crucified Jesus, was later canonized as a Christian saint. And yet, brave, faithful, loving Margarita has long been separated from her numerous prototypes and lives in Bulgakov’s novel on her own, captivating, surprising and delighting. In literary terms, Margarita goes back to Margaret of “Fausta” by V. Goethe. The motif of mercy is associated with the image of Margarita in the novel. After the Great Ball, she asks Satan for the unfortunate Frida, while she is clearly hinted at asking for the release of the Master. She says: “I asked you for Frida only because I had the imprudence to give her firm hope. She is waiting, sir, she believes in my help. And if she remains deceived, I will be in a terrible position. I won't have peace all my life. It's nothing you can do! It just happened that way.” But Margarita’s mercy does not end there. Even being a witch, she does not lose the brightest human qualities. Dostoevsky’s idea, expressed in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” about a child’s tear as the highest measure of good and evil, is illustrated by the episode when Margarita, destroying the Dramlit house, sees a frightened four-year-old boy in one of the rooms and stops the destruction. Margarita is a symbol of that eternal femininity about which the Mystical Choir sings in the finale of Goethe’s “Faust”: Everything is fleeting. Symbol, comparison. The endless goal is within reach. Here is the commandment of all Truth. Eternal femininity draws us to her. Faust and Margarita are reunited in heaven, in the light. The eternal love of Goethe's Gretchen helps her lover to find a reward - the traditional light that blinds him, and therefore she must become his guide in the world of light. Bulgakov's Margarita also helps the new Master with her eternal love

Faust gets what he deserves. But the hero’s reward here is not light, but peace, and in the kingdom of peace, in Woland’s last refuge or even, more precisely, on the border of the two worlds of light and darkness, Margarita becomes the guide and guardian of her lover: “You will fall asleep, having put 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." This is what Margarita said, walking with the Master towards their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita’s words flowed in the same way as the stream left behind flowed and whispered, and the Master’s memory, a restless memory pricked with needles, began to fade.” These lines by E.S. Bulgakova took dictation from the terminally ill author of The Master and Margarita. Let us emphasize that the motive of mercy and love in the image of Margarita is resolved differently than in Goethe’s poem, where before the power of love “the nature of Satan surrendered... he did not bear her prick. Mercy prevailed,” and Faust was released into the world. In Bulgakov, it is Margarita who shows mercy towards Frida, and not Woland himself. Love does not in any way affect the nature of Satan, for in fact the fate of the brilliant Master is predetermined by Woland in advance. Satan’s plan coincides with what Master Yeshua plans to reward, and Margarita is part of this reward here.

Moscow 30s ...

Satan came to Moscow to bring justice, to rescue the Master, his masterpiece and Margarita. And what does he see? Moscow has turned into a kind of Great Ball: it is inhabited mostly by traitors, informers, sycophants, fraudsters, bribe takers, currency traders... Bulgakov presented them both as individual characters and as employees of the following institutions: MASSOLIT Variety Theater and the Entertainment Commission. Each person contains some kind of vices that Woland exposes. He does this en masse at the Variety Theater before, during and after a black magic session; at the same time, the director Stepa Likhodeev, a womanizer and drunkard, sent to Yalta, also gets it; and the mediocre entertainer Bengalsky, who has lost his head in every sense; and Varenukha, who became a vampire; and the financial director Rimsky, who was almost bitten by vampires; and the barman Sokov, who makes a lot of money from “second-fresh sturgeon.” But the vices exposed by Woland and his retinue at the Variety Theater are caused, rather, by stupidity and ignorance. A much more serious sin was committed by MASSOLIT workers who call themselves writers and scientists. People like the director of MASSOLIT, Berlioz, know a lot and at the same time deliberately lead people away from the search for truth, divide them and corrupt them with their false opportunistic writings, and make the brilliant Master unhappy. And for this, punishment comes to the Griboyedov House, where MASSOLIT is located. And Berlioz is doomed to death, because he arrogantly believed that his knowledge allows him to unconditionally deny both God and the devil, and the living foundations of life themselves, which do not fit into the framework of theories. Woland presented him with the “seventh proof” of the contrary: the writer was overtaken by fate in the form of Annushka the Plague, who inadvertently spilled sunflower oil on the rails, and the girl carriage driver, who therefore failed to slow down. And of all the literary brethren presented to us by Bulgakov, only the poet Ivan Bezdomny is “reborn,” who in the epilogue became Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev. This optimistic revival of the intelligentsia directly contradicts the situation described by B. Pasternak in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”, where the intellectual Yuri Zhivago is replaced by his daughter Tanka Bezchereva, who personifies the future of Russia according to Pasternak. Bulgakov, it seems to me, has a glimmer of hope in his heart that someday people will realize the horror that has consumed Russia for many years, as Ivan Bezdomny realized that his poems are terrible, and Russia will take the right path. But this did not happen during Bulgakov’s lifetime. Living in Russia, the writer experienced constant fear: at any moment a black “funnel” could drive up to his house and take him away in an unknown direction. Literary persecution and constant stress made him sick and nervous. He was afraid of denunciations and espionage, the most terrible Moscow evil, and this was reflected in the novel: the only person killed at the behest of Woland was Baron Meigel, a spy and earpiece, who, one might say, controls the destinies of other people, which is unacceptable for a person. On May 10, 1939, Mikhail Afanasyevich made a memorial inscription to his wife in his photograph: “This is what a person who has been busy with Aloysius Mogarych, Nikanor Ivanovich and others for several years can look like. In the hope that you will clear up this face, I give you, Elena, a card, a kiss and a hug.” Here we are talking not only about many years of work on “The Master and Margarita” to the point of exhaustion, but also a hint that the writer’s life was spent communicating with people like Mogarych and Bosom... And the essence of such a society lies in the empty suit of Prokhor Petrovich, which speaks for itself from the Entertainment Commission: the emptiness of consciousness, worldview, mental and spiritual emptiness of Muscovites. ...But despite everything, Bulgakov managed to write his main novel, “The Master and Margarita,” even in such a situation.

Literary world of Moscow

A particularly gloomy picture is presented by the literary world of Moscow, of which MASSOLIT, an easily recognizable hybrid of Rapa and the Writers' Union, becomes a unique model in the novel. And one of the three thousand and eleven members of MASSOLIT is not engaged in his immediate business - literary creativity. But MASSOLIT successfully solves apartment, country, food and other everyday problems. Berlioz, Latunsky, Lavrovich, Ryukhin and others firmly understood what and how to write in order to ensure a comfortable existence for themselves. Cynical, pragmatic, indifferent to everything except their career, they shape the literary atmosphere of the 30s. And when the Master appears in this world with his novel about Pontius Pilate, his fate and the fate of his work turn out to be a foregone conclusion.

The conflict between the Master and MASSOLIT is a conflict between two concepts of literary creativity, and it is resolved very easily: after spending three months in a “place” that can only be told “by ear”, by some miracle avoiding prison, driven “to a frenzy” by constant fear , the hero ends up in a mental hospital. It is impossible to bring him back to life: “he is incurable.” The master, recognizing himself as a “small”, mentally disabled person, voluntarily renounces creativity and strives for only one thing - peace.