Narrative Features Master and Margarita. The main interpretations of the genre form of the novel M

Ministry of Education and Science

Khabarovsk Territory

abstract on literature

for a course of general (complete) education

student of class 11A MOU secondary school No. 41

Komsomolsk-on-Amur

Mikhailov Nikolay Vitalievich

TOPIC A: Ideological and artistic originality of the novel by M. A. Bulgakov

"The Master and Margarita".

Supervisor: Yukhanov Elena Nikolaevna,

teacher of Russian language and literature

Plan:

1.Introduction……………………………………………………………………..2-3p. 2. Personality M.A. Bulgakov…………………………………………………..4-6pp.

3. The main problem in the novel by M.A.

4. Plot-compositional originality of the novel "Master and

Margarita”…………………………………………………………………...9-10p.

5. The system of images of the heroes of the novel……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

5.1.Master…………………………………………………………………...11-12p.

5.2. Margarita………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5.3.Historical and artistic characteristics of Woland and his

retinues…………………………………………………………………………...13-21str. 5.4. Woland's retinue……………………………………………………………...13p.

5. 5. Woland…………………………………………………………………...13-15str. 5.6. Azazello………………………………………………………………… 15-16p.

5.7. Bassoon…………………………………………………………………… 16-17p.

5.8.Cat Behemoth………………………………………………………………..17-18p.

5.9.Gella………………………………………………………………………...18p.

5.10.Abadonna……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

5.11. Satirical image of Moscow in the 30s of the XX century…………...19-21p.

6. The great ball at Satan's as the apotheosis of the novel……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

7.Conclusion... ...……………………………………………………………………... 24-26pp.

7.1 Personal axiom. The dream of Pontius Pilate as the personification of victory

man over himself…………………………………………………….24-26str.

Appendix No. 1…………………………………………………………….27-29p.

8.Bibliography……………………………………………........................... .30str.

So who are you, finally?

I am part of that force that always wants evil and

always doing good. W. Goethe. "Faust" .

1.Introduction. The purpose of the abstracted work-research consists in an attempt to consider and deepen knowledge on the work of Mikhail Afanasyevich

Bulgakov in the context of Russian literature, focusing on some features and aspects of his work:

To trace the ideological and artistic features of the novel "The Master and Margarita";

Reveal the specifics of Bulgakov's interpretation of the plot, outline the range of philosophical and ethical problems raised in the novel;

Reveal Bulgakov's understanding artistic creativity, the writer's view of the purpose of literature and the position of the artist in the world;

To comprehend the philosophical position of Bulgakov;

To reveal the principles of the plot-compositional structure of the novel, its most important aesthetic features. Subject of study became the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M.A.

Bulgakov, monographs, reference books, encyclopedias, scientific and

fiction, critical articles Russian literary critics

Practical value This work is determined, first of all, by the possibility of using the material in review lectures in high school and in extracurricular classes with gifted children.

Work structure subordinated to the realization of its goals. It consists of an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion based on a personal axiom, and a bibliography.

At work were applied structural, comparative, historical-literary and textual research methods.

Why did I turn specifically to the work of M.A. Bulgakov? For me personally, the writer is a paradoxical personality, like his work The Master and Margarita. Problems that worried many generations of mankind:

themes, compositional originality of the novel are unique. This is a source of enlightenment not only in the field of literature, but also in history, philosophy and all other natural sciences (which is only the question of measuring and changing space and time, described in one of the stories by the demon Fagot before the Margarita ball). The book became a synthesis of everything that was rethought and re-felt by M.A. Bulgakov. The novel absorbed the mature experience of the artist, brought together the motives of the entire work of the writer. Nothing remained superfluous: Moscow life of the 30s; satirical fantasy and mysticism; motives of knightly honor and troubled conscience; the theme of the fate of the persecuted artist; the theme of love, strong as death itself. Finally, everything is revealed, stated and proven. The author deduced axioms that do not require any proof. Our task is to be able to use them correctly, to understand the basic principles and positions that need to be guided in everyday life. The balance of good and evil, which existed outside the framework of time, is brilliantly, masterfully described in The Master and Margarita. These concepts are one complex element - an atom, consisting of other more complex particles that are currently not subject to every modern person, and, despite the fact that they are diametrically opposed in their meaning and meaning, they cannot be put in a different perspective.

Undoubtedly, the novel "The Master and Margarita" is the greatest work. Not everything that is written is understood and appreciated by people. No matter how many times I re-read it, more and more new ideas are revealed to me, embedded in it. In seemingly imperceptible details, a new meaning opens up. "Manuscripts do not burn" - this simple truth has been tested by time on Bulgakov's immortal novel. Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita summed up the vast range of human thought and anxious searches.

Starting the essay, I understood that the study of the immortal novel requires intense intellectual and moral work from me, and perhaps even a radical change in my worldview.

2. The personality of M. A. Bulgakov.

Bulgakov the writer and Bulgakov the man are still largely a mystery. Unclear it Political Views, attitude to religion, aesthetic program. His life consisted, as it were, of three parts, each of which is remarkable for something. Until 1919, he was a doctor, only occasionally trying himself in literature. In the 1920s, Bulgakov was already a professional writer and playwright, earning

to life by literary work and overshadowed by a loud, but notoriety"Days of Turbins". Finally, in the 30s, Mikhail

Afanasyevich is a theater employee, since he can no longer exist on the publication of prose and staging plays (at this time he writes his imperishable masterpiece “The Master and Margarita”). I must say that Bulgakov is a phenomenal phenomenon of the Soviet era. He hated to write for the "social order", while in the country fear destroyed talents and outstanding minds. Mikhail Afanasyevich himself was firmly convinced that he would never become "a helot, a panegyrist and a frightened servant." In his letter to the government in 1930, he admitted: “I did not even attempt to compose a communist play, knowing for sure that such a play would not come out of me.” This incredible courage was obviously due to the fact that Bulgakov never backed down from his creative positions, ideas and remained himself in the most difficult moments of his life. And he had a lot of them. He had a chance to fully experience the pressure of the powerful administrative-bureaucratic system of the Stalin era, the one that he later designated with the strong and capacious word “Kabala”. Many of his creative and life attitudes, realized in works of art and plays, met with a fierce rebuff. In Bulgakov's life there were periods of crises, when his works were not published, plays were not staged, and he was not allowed to work in his beloved Moscow Art Theater. About who was his main enemy, he expressed himself in a letter to V.V. Veresaev: “... And suddenly it dawned on me! I remembered the names! These are Turbin, Pantser, Rokk and Khludov (from "Running"). Here they are, my enemies! Not without reason, during insomnia, they come to me and say to me: “You gave birth to us, and we will block all your paths. Lie down, science fiction, with your mouth blocked.

Then it turns out that my main enemy– I myself”… But not censorship, not bureaucrats, not Stalin… Bulgakov had a special relationship with the latter. The leader criticized many of his works, directly alluding to anti-Soviet agitation in them. But, despite this, Mikhail Afanasyevich did not experience what was called terrible word GULAG. And he did not die on the bunk (although in those

times were taken away for much smaller sins), and in his own bed from nephrosclerosis inherited from his father. Bulgakov knew that in the Soviet Union he was unlikely to have a brilliant literary future (his works were constantly subjected to monstrous criticism), driven to a nervous breakdown, he openly wrote to Stalin (this letter became widely known): “... I appeal to you and ask for your petition before the Government of the USSR ON THE EXILE OF ME OUTSIDE THE USSR TOGETHER WITH MY WIFE E.S. BULGAKOVA 3 who joins this petition.” In fact, Bulgakov loved his Motherland in his own way, could not imagine life without Soviet theater, but... Once he said: “There is no such writer that he would shut up. If he was silent, then he was not real.

And if the real one is silent, he will die.” Why didn't the Leader eliminate

"anti-Soviet", "bourgeois writer" Bulgakov? They say that the writer “struck” him with his extraordinary charm and sense of humor. And Stalin also appreciated him as a playwright: he watched the play “Days of the Turbins” 15 times! His wife describes Bulgakov this way at the first meeting with him: “It was impossible not to pay attention to his unusually fresh language, masterful dialogue and such

unobtrusive humor ... Before me stood a man of 30-32 years old; blonde hair, neatly combed in a side parting. Blue eyes, facial features

irregular, nostrils roughly cut; when he speaks, he wrinkles his forehead. But the face, in general, is attractive, the face great opportunities. This means that it is able to express a wide variety of feelings. I suffered for a long time before I realized who Mikhail Bulgakov looked like after all. And suddenly it dawned on me - on Chaliapin! This was M. A. Bulgakov. A doctor, journalist, prose writer, playwright, director, he was a representative of that part of the intelligentsia, which, without leaving the country in difficult years, sought to preserve itself in the changed conditions. He had to go through an addiction to morphine while working as a zemstvo doctor, a civil war in his native city of Kyiv, cruel literary persecution and forced silence, and in these conditions he managed to create such masterpieces that are read all over the world.

Anna Akhmatova 4 called Bulgakov succinctly and simply - a genius, and dedicated a poem to his memory:

Here I am for you, instead of grave roses,

Instead of incense smoking; You lived so harshly and brought to the end Magnificent contempt.

You drank wine, you joked like no one else

And in stuffy the walls were suffocating,

And you yourself let the terrible guest in, And you were left alone with her.

And there is no you, and everything around is silent.

about mournful and high life,

Oh, who dared to believe that I was crazy,

To me, the mourner of days gone by,

To me, smoldering on a slow fire,

Lost all, forgotten all - We'll have to remember the one who, full of strength,

And bright ideas, and will, As if he spoke to me yesterday, Hiding the trembling of mortal pain.

Anna Akhmatova. Essay in 2 volumes. 1 vol. Moscow. Publishers about Pravda. 1990

3. THE MAIN PROBLEM IN BULGAKOV’S NOVEL “MASTER AND

MARGARET.

There are many problems raised in the novel, but let's focus on one of the most important and fundamental - the problem of choice and personal responsibility of a person for his actions.

In the first level, which is also an immortal book

Masters, both the "Gospel of Woland" and the dream of Ivan Bezdomny contain the greatest psychological meaning of the novel. It reflects such themes as the theme of choice, personal responsibility for one's choice, punishment by conscience. And, most importantly, here the gospel story about Jesus (Bulgakov's Ha-Notsri) is rethought. The protagonists in this story are the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, and the wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri. The powerful procurator Pontius Pilate, in whose hands the life of any of the inhabitants of Judea, judges the arrested Yeshua. So Pilate is faced with the problem of choice: the life of Yeshua depends on his word. And here we see that the powerful procurator Pontius Pilate is not free: he is the slave of Caesar, the slave of his own career. He is afraid that he may be reported to Caesar, that he may be in the place of Yeshua. Pontius Pilate hints to Yeshua how to answer, but Yeshua does not listen to him. And not at all because he is a "slave of honor." He simply does not understand Pilate's hints. Yeshua is morally, spiritually free. His conscience is clear, unlike the conscience of Pontius Pilate. The latter makes his own choice. He understands this and knows that Ha-Notsri is not guilty, he is tormented by his conscience for the sentence passed on the wandering philosopher. The procurator of Judea, after the execution, suffers, realizing that it was he, and not anyone else, who was to blame for the death of Yeshua. In this wandering philosopher, Pontius Pilate saw the light of truth, goodness, and this further increases his torment. A momentary weakness, as a result of which evil triumphs, turns for Pilate into two thousand years of torment of repentance. And at the end of the novel, forgiveness comes to him, given to him by the Master. He was also forgiven by the one whom he sent to execution, with whom he was so eager to talk for two thousand years of his captivity. Yeshua forgave him.

The theme of choice and personal responsibility for one's choice is developed by

Bulgakov and in the "Moscow" chapters of the novel. Woland and his retinue (Azazello, Koroviev, the cat Behemoth, Gella) are, as it were, a punishing sword of justice, exposing and punishing various manifestations of evil. Woland arrives with a kind of revision in a country that is declared a country of goodness, happiness. And what does Woland discover? Yes, the fact that people, as they were, remained so. At a performance in Variety, Woland tests people for greed, and people simply throw themselves at money and things. But no one forces them to catch money and go on stage! People make their own choice. And many are justly punished when their clothes disappear, and gold coins turn into stickers from narzan.

Man's choice is a choice within him between good and evil. A person makes his own choice: who he should be, what he should be, on whose side he should be ... In any case, a person has an inner elusive judge - conscience. Those people with whom it is unclean, who are guilty and do not want to admit it, Woland and his retinue “punishes”. After all, he does not punish everyone in a row, but only those who deserve it. Of all the heroes of the novel, only the Master and Margarita remained morally pure. Yes, at the end of the novel, Ivan Bezdomny comes to moral enlightenment.

4. Plot-compositional originality of BULGAKOV'S NOVEL "MASTER AND MARGARITA".

It is defined as a myth novel, a philosophical novel, a mystical novel,

lyrical novel, menippea novel. This is so because the novel combines all genres at once, even those that cannot exist together. The narrative of the novel is directed to the future, the content is both psychologically and philosophically reliable. The issues raised in the novel are eternal. The main idea of ​​the novel is the struggle between good and evil - concepts that are inseparable from each other. The composition of the novel is as original as the genre - "a novel within a novel". One is about the fate of the Master, the other is about Pontius Pilate. On the one hand, they are opposed to each other, on the other hand, they form a single whole. This "novel within a novel" collects global problems and contradictions. The masters are concerned with the same problems as Pontius Pilate. At the end of the novel, you can see how Moscow connects with Yershalaim, that is, one novel is combined with another, goes into one storyline. Reading the work, we are in two dimensions at once: the 30s of the 20th century and the 30s of the 1st century AD. We see that the events took place in the same month and a few days before Easter, only with an interval of 1900 years, which proves a deep connection between the Moscow and Yershalaim chapters. The actions of the novel, which are separated by almost two millennia, are in harmony with each other, and they are connected by the struggle against evil, the search for truth, and creativity. And yet the main character of the novel is love. Love is what captivates the reader. In general, the theme of love is the most beloved for the writer. According to the author, all the happiness that has fallen in a person's life comes from love. Love elevates a person above the world, comprehends the spiritual. Such is the feeling of the Master and Margarita. That is why the author included these names in the title. Margarita completely surrenders to love and for the sake of saving the Master, sells her soul to the devil, taking on a huge sin. However, the author takes her side. Using the example of Margarita, Bulgakov showed that each person should make his own personal choice, without asking for help from higher powers; do not expect favors from life; Man is the creator of his own destiny.

The novel contains three storylines: philosophical

(biblical) - Yeshua Ha-Notsri and Pontius Pilate, love (lyrical) - Master and Margarita, mystical (satirical) - Woland, all his retinue and Muscovites. The author reveals the relativity of human knowledge and at the same time affirms the responsibility of a person for his own destiny. The course of modern life lies in the Master's narration of Pontius Pilate. Another feature of this work is that it is autobiographical. In the image of the Master, we recognize Bulgakov himself, and in the image of Margarita - his beloved woman, his wife Elena Sergeevna. Therefore, we perceive the characters as real, tangible. We sympathize with them, we experience them, we put ourselves in their place, we improve together with the characters, moving up the artistic ladder of the work. The plot lines intersect, connecting at one point - in Eternity. Such a peculiar composition of the novel makes it interesting and fascinating for the reader.

To understand the problems and the idea of ​​the novel, one must consider in detail

character system.

5. The system of images of heroes.

5. Master and Margarita.

5.1. Master. One of the most enigmatic figures in The Master and Margarita is, of course, the Master, a historian turned writer. The author himself called him the main character, 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 largely an autobiographical hero. His age at the time of the novel (“a man of about thirty-eight” appears in the hospital before Ivan Bezdomny) 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. The similarity of the Master and Bulgakov also lies in the fact that the latter, despite literary persecution, did not abandon his work, he served real art. So the Master created his masterpiece about Pontius Pilate, "guessed" the truth, dedicated his life to pure art - the only Moscow cultural figure 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” gives out an undoubted resemblance to N.V. Gogol. I must say that Bulgakov considered him his main teacher. The master, like Gogol, burned the manuscript of his novel. Finally, there are a number of stylistic parallels with Gogol in Bulgakov's work.

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 human truth, and the Master is the only person in Moscow who has chosen the right creative and life path. They are united by companionship, messianism, for which there is no time frame. But the Master is not worthy of the light that Yeshua personifies, because he has retreated from his task to serve the pure, divine art, showed weakness and burned the novel, and from 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, the Master can again find a romance and unite with his romantic beloved Margarita, who sets off with him on his last journey. She made a deal with the devil to save the Master and therefore deserves 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 seek 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 vocation as a writer, left his service and sat down in the Arbat cellar to write a novel about Pontius Pilate. And next to him was Margarita relentlessly ...

5.2 Margarita. The motive of mercy is connected 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 the request for the release of the Master. She says: “I asked you for Frida only because I had the imprudence to give her a firm hope. She waits, sir, she believes in my power. And if she remains deceived, I will be in a terrible position. I won't have peace for the rest of my life. Nothing to do about! It just so happened.” But this is not limited to the mercy of Margarita. 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 an episode when Margarita, destroying Dramlit's house, sees a frightened four-year-old boy in one of the rooms and stops the rout. Marguerite 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 goal is endless.

Here in achievement.

Here is the commandment of the whole 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 find a reward - the traditional light that blinds him, and therefore she must become his guide in the world of light. Bulgakovskaya Margarita is also her own eternal love helps the Master - the new Faust - get what he deserves. But the hero’s reward here is not light, but peace, and in the realm of peace, in Woland’s last shelter or even, more precisely, on the border of two worlds - light and darkness, Margarita becomes the guide and guardian of her beloved: “You will fall asleep, putting on your greasy and an eternal cap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you won't be able to drive me away. I will take care of your sleep."

Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the Master towards their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita’s words flowed just as the stream left behind flowed and whispered, and the Master’s memory, restless memory pierced by needles, began to fade. E. S. Bulgakova wrote these lines under the dictation of the terminally ill author of The Master and Margarita.

We emphasize that the motive of mercy and love in the image of Margarita is solved differently than in Goethe's poem, where before the power of love “the nature of Satan surrendered ... he did not bear her injection. Mercy overcame, ”and Faust was released into the world. In Bulgakov, Margarita shows mercy to Frida, and not Woland himself.

Love does not affect the nature of Satan in any way, for in fact the fate of the ingenious Master is predetermined by Woland in advance. Satan's plan coincides with what he asks to reward Master Yeshua, and Margarita here is part of this award.

5.3 Historical and artistic characteristics of Woland and his retinue.

5.4. Woland's retinue.

Woland did not come to earth alone. He was accompanied by beings who, by and large, play the role of jesters in the novel, arrange all kinds of shows, disgusting and hated by the indignant Moscow population (they simply turned human vices and weaknesses inside out). But their task was also to do all the "dirty" work for Woland, to serve him, to prepare Margarita for the Great Ball and for her and the Master's journey into the world of peace. Woland's retinue consisted of four subordinates - Azazello, Koroviev-Fagot, the cat Behemoth and another vampire girl Gella. Abaddonna can also be attributed to all the others. They form a clear hierarchical ladder. Where did such strange creatures appear in Woland's retinue? And where did Bulgakov get their images and names from?

5.5. Woland. Woland is a character in the novel The Master and Margarita, who leads the world of otherworldly forces. Woland is the devil, Satan, “the prince of darkness”, “the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows” (all these definitions are found in the text of the novel). Woland is largely focused on Mephistopheles "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The name Woland itself is taken from a poem by Goethe, where it is mentioned only once and is usually omitted in Russian translations. In the edition of 1929 - 1930. Woland's name was reproduced entirely in Latin on his business card: "D-r Theodor Voland" . In the final text, Bulgakov abandoned the Latin alphabet. It should be noted that in early editions Bulgakov tried the names Azazello and Veliar for the future Woland.

The portrait of Woland is shown before the start of the Great Ball “Two eyes rested on Margarita's face. The right one with a golden spark at the bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of the soul, and the left one is empty and black, sort of like a narrow needle's eye, like an exit to a bottomless well of all darkness and shadows. Woland's face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was pulled down, deep wrinkles parallel to sharp eyebrows were cut on his high bald forehead. The skin on Woland’s face seemed to be burned forever by a tan.” Bulgakov hides Woland’s true face only at the very beginning of the novel in order to intrigue the reader, and then he directly declares through the lips of the Master and Woland himself that the devil has definitely arrived at the Patriarchs.

Woland gives different explanations of the goals of his stay in Moscow to different characters who are in contact with him. He tells Berlioz and Bezdomny that he has come to study the found manuscripts of Herbert Avrilaksky. Woland explains his visit to the employees of the Variety Theater with the intention to perform a session of black magic. After the scandalous session, Satan says to the barman that he simply wanted to “see the Muscovites en masse, and it was most convenient to do this in the theater.” Margarita Koroviev-Fagot, before the start of the Great Ball with Satan, informs that the purpose of the visit of Woland and his retinue to Moscow is to hold this ball, whose hostess should bear the name Margarita and be of royal blood.

Woland has many faces, as befits the devil, and in conversations with different people he puts on different masks. At the same time, Woland’s omniscience of Satan is completely preserved: he and his people are well aware of both the past and future lives of those with whom they come into contact, they also know the text of the Master’s novel, which literally coincides with the “Woland gospel”, thus what was told unlucky writers at the Patriarchs.

Woland's unconventionality is that, being a devil, he is endowed with some obvious attributes of God. The dialectical unity, the complementarity of good and evil is most clearly revealed in the words of Woland, addressed to Levi Matthew, who refused to wish health to the “spirit of evil and the lord of shadows: “You pronounced your words as if you do not recognize shadows, and also 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 are obtained from objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But there are shadows from trees and from living beings. Don't you want to rip off the whole Earth, blowing away all the trees and all living things from it, because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light? You're stupid".

In Bulgakov, Woland literally revives the burnt novel of the Master; the product of artistic creativity, preserved only in the head of the creator, materializes again, turns into a tangible thing.

Woland is the bearer of fate, this is connected with a long tradition in Russian literature, linking fate, fate, fate not with God, but with the devil. For Bulgakov, Woland personifies the fate that punishes Berlioz, the entertainer, the barman Fokich and others who violate the norms of Christian morality. Good and evil are eternal and inseparable concepts, and as long as the spirit and consciousness of a person are alive, they will fight with each other. Such a struggle was presented to us by M.A. Bulgakov in the novel The Master and Margarita, although, it seems to me, it is impossible to single out clear lines of good and evil, but on the whole the work is of a severely critical nature. Moreover, two novels pass before the reader: one novel “On Pontius Pilate”, the other novel about “The Master and Margarita”, connected with the life of Moscow in the thirties of the twentieth century. Both novels converge at one point - this is the position of Woland and his companions, both novels are united by one idea - the search for truth and the struggle for it. The characters described in both novels are different, but they are connected by the same essence. Enmity, distrust of dissident people, envy reign in the world that surrounds the Master and Yeshua. They are exposed before us by Woland and his retinue. Bulgakov gives Woland broad powers: throughout the novel he judges, decides fate, decides - life or death, and carries out retribution, distributing to everyone what they deserve. During their four-day tour in Moscow, Woland, the cat Behemoth, Koroviev, Azazello and Gella turn inside out the figures of the literary and theatrical environment, officials and townsfolk. Woland defines "who is who": Styopa Likhodeev is a loafer, a libertine, a drunkard; Nikanor Ivanovich Barefoot - a bribe taker; Fokich is a thief; Baron Meigel - informer; the poet Riukhin is an inveterate hypocrite. And at a session of black magic in the Woland variety theater in direct and in figuratively“undresses” some citizens, and sadly concludes: “They are people like ordinary people, in general - they resemble the former ones.” But the eternal desire of people for goodness is irresistible. Every generation of people must decide again moral issues. Some people are visited by an instant insight, an insight that should push a person to self-improvement. Ryukhin is aware of his mediocrity, and thus pays the bills. Others never. For Berlioz, the well-read but unscrupulous head of the MASSOLIT, it does not matter whether Jesus was or was not, but the important thing is that by denying him, he can afford everything. But retribution overtakes Berlioz - he dies under the wheels of a tram. Bulgakov puts the masters in a different philosophical concept: not all people can become kind and that they need to forgive insults. The master wrote a novel about Jesus Christ. But such a hero is not needed by MASSOLIT, where they accept poems about “fly up” and “fly up”. A pack of "literary" critics attacked the Master. He, like Yeshua, must pay for the right to proclaim his truth. The lunatic asylum is where the prophets find shelter. Kindness should not be punished, Woland returns to the Master the manuscript, burned by him in a moment of weakness. In parallel with the events taking place in Moscow, Bulgakov showed the events in Yershalaim, described in the Master's novel. Here Woland is present as an outside observer, not being evil or good, but as a mirror in which history is reflected.

5.3. Azazello.

This character is the eldest of Woland's subordinates. Woland gives most of the assignments to him: a conversation with Margarita in the Alexander Garden, arrival in the basement to prepare the Master and Margarita for the peace appointed by them by the forces of light.

The name Azazello was formed by Bulgakov from the Old Testament name Azazel. That's the name villain the Old Testament book of Enoch, the fallen angel who taught people how to make weapons and jewelry.

Probably, Bulgakov was attracted by the combination in one character of the ability to seduce and kill. It is for the insidious seducer that Azazello Margarita takes during their first meeting in the Alexander Garden: “This neighbor turned out to be short, fiery red, with a fang, in starched linen, in a solid striped suit, in patent leather shoes and with a bowler hat on his head. “Absolutely robber face!” - thought Margarita "But main function Azazello in the novel is associated with violence. He throws Styopa Likhodeev from Moscow to Yalta, expels Uncle Berlioz from the Bad Apartment, and kills the traitor Baron Meigel with a revolver.

Azazello also invented the cream, which he gives to Margherita. The magic cream not only makes the heroine invisible and able to fly, but also endows her with a new, witchy beauty.

In the epilogue of the novel, this fallen angel appears before us in a new guise: “Flying on the side of everyone, shining with the steel of armor, Azazello. The moon changed his face too. The ridiculous, ugly fang disappeared without a trace, and the squint turned out to be false. Both Azazello's eyes were the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello was flying in his real form, like a demon of a waterless desert, a demon-killer.

5.4. Bassoon.

Second in the hierarchy. Demon, devil, knight, magician, sorcerer, who appears to Muscovites as an interpreter with a foreign professor and former regent church choir- all this, in one person, Fagot.

The surname Koroviev is modeled after the surname of the character in the story A.N. Tolstoy 5 "Ghoul" (1841) by State Councilor Telyaev, who turns out to be a knight and a vampire. In addition, in the story of F. M. Dostoevsky

“The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” has a character by the name of Korovkin, who is very similar to our hero. His second name comes from the name of the musical instrument bassoon, invented by an Italian monk. Koroviev-Fagot has some resemblance to a bassoon - a long thin tube folded in three. Bulgakov's character is thin, tall and in imaginary subservience, it seems, is ready to triple in front of his interlocutor (in order to calmly harm him later).

Here is his portrait: “... a transparent citizen of a strange appearance, on a small head a jockey cap, a short checkered jacket ... a citizen a sazhen tall, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and a physiognomy,

5 A. N. Tolstoy (1882-1945) - Russian writer, count, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

6 F. M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) - Russian writer, member of revolutionary circles. Remarkable for his philosophical understanding of man, the search for truth, the vocation of the Russian people, war and peace, Christian morality.

please note, mocking”; “...his antennae are like chicken feathers, his eyes are small, ironic and half-drunk.”

Koroviev-Fagot is a devil that has arisen from the sultry Moscow air (an unprecedented heat for May at the time of its appearance is one of the traditional signs of the approach of evil spirits). Woland's henchman, only out of necessity, puts on various masks-masks: a drunken regent, a gaer, a clever swindler, a rogue translator with a famous foreigner, etc. Only in the last flight Koroviev-Fagot becomes who he really is - a gloomy demon, a knight Bassoon, no worse than his master, who knows the price of human weaknesses and virtues.

5.5. Behemoth cat.

This werewolf cat and Satan's favorite jester is perhaps the most amusing and memorable of Woland's retinue.

M. A. Orlova 7 “The History of Man's Relations with the Devil”, extracts from which have been preserved in the Bulgakov archive. There, in particular, the case of the French abbess, who lived in the 17th century and was possessed by seven devils, was described, and the fifth demon was Behemoth. This demon was depicted as a monster with an elephant's head, with a trunk and fangs. His hands were of a human style, and a huge belly, a short tail and thick hind legs, like a hippopotamus, reminded him of his name.

Bulgakov's Behemoth has become an enormous black werewolf cat, since it is black cats that are traditionally considered to be associated with evil spirit. This is how we see it for the first time: “... on a jeweler’s pouffe, in a cheeky pose, a third person fell apart, namely, a terrible black cat with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he managed to pry a pickled mushroom, in the other.”

Behemoth in the demonological tradition is the demon of the desires of the stomach.

Hence his extraordinary gluttony, especially in Torgsin, when he indiscriminately swallows everything edible.

Skirmish of Behemoth with detectives in apartment No. 50, his chess duel with

Woland, a shooting contest with Azazello - all these are purely humorous scenes, very funny and even to some extent removing the sharpness of those worldly, moral and philosophical problems that the novel poses to the reader.

7 M.A. Orlov is a modern researcher of Russian literature, the author of Apocryphal Tales of Old Testament Persons and Events. “The History of Man's Relations with the Devil” is an essay on the views on the nature of evil that prevailed in the Middle Ages and Modern times, up to the 19th century, and contains many legendary stories of the relationship between people and evil spirits; The book contains more and more eyewitness accounts of people's encounters with elves, gnomes, sorcerers.

On the last flight, the reincarnation of this jovial joker is very unusual (like most of the plot moves in this fantasy novel):

“The night tore off the fluffy tail of the Behemoth, tore off his hair and scattered its shreds over the swamps. The one who was the cat that entertained the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a thin young man, a page demon, the best jester that ever existed in the world.

5.6. Gella.

Gella is a member of Woland's retinue, a vampire woman: “I recommend my maid Gella. Quick, understanding and there is no such service that she would not be able to provide.

M. Bulgakov got the name “Gella” from the article “Sorcery” in the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, where it was noted that in Lesvos this name was used to call untimely dead girls who became vampires after death.

The green-eyed beauty Gella moves freely through the air, thereby gaining resemblance to a witch. Character traits behavior of vampires - clicking teeth and smacking, Bulgakov may have borrowed from the story of A. N. Tolstoy "Ghoul". There, a vampire girl with a kiss turns her lover into a vampire - hence, obviously, the kiss of Gella, fatal for Varenukha.

Hella, the only one from Woland's retinue, is absent from the scene of the last flight. Most likely, Bulgakov deliberately removed her as the youngest member of the retinue, performing only auxiliary functions in the Variety Theater, and in the Bad Apartment, and at the Great Ball with Satan. Vampires are traditionally the lowest category of evil spirits. In addition, Gella would have no one to turn into on the last flight, when the night “revealed all the deceptions”, she could only become a dead girl again. 5.7. Abaddon.

Abaddonna - the demon of war, approached by Woland, acts as a harbinger, the bearer of death. This is indicated last scene the life of Baron Meigel: “Abadonna appeared in front of the baron and took off his glasses for a second. At the same moment, something flashed in the hands of Azazello…”. The baron looked death in the eyes - in the eyes of Abaddonna, and carried out this death, murder, Azazello. Abaddonna is blind, he is always wearing black glasses and therefore cannot give preference to any of the participants in the war. But why did the demon take off his glasses in front of the baron, because Abaddon could not see? Apparently, the point here is in the very eyes of Abaddonna, and not in their blindness or sight. The name "Abadonna" comes from the Hebrew "Abaddon". That is the name of the angel of the Apocalypse. This is the fallen angel of the Old Testament, who led the angels' rebellion against God and, as a punishment, was thrown to earth and doomed to immortality. Maybe that's why Abaddonna is the demon of war, death in the novel. He brings death, shows people its “face”, but he cannot die himself. Abaddon (“death”), in Jewish mythology, the personification of the hiding and completely destroying pits of the grave and the abyss of the underworld; a figure close to the angel of death (Malach Ha-Mavet). Such is Abaddon in the Old Testament (Job 26:6; 28; 31,12; Proverbs 15:11, where it is spoken of as a deep mystery, permeable, however, to God). In Christian mythology, Abaddon, called in Greek Apollyon (“destroyer”, perhaps, correlates with the name of Apollo), leads against humanity at the end of time the punishing army of the monstrous “locust” (Rev. 9, 11). Despite the fact that Abadonna is one of Woland's close associates, he, like Gella, is not present in the scene of the last flight. Perhaps he belongs to a different kingdom or element than Woland, although he obeys him. The demon of war roams the earth, bringing death, while Satan is the lord of the cosmos, the abyss.

5.8. Moscow in the 30s

The work of the great Russian writer Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov fell on the first post-revolutionary years and the era of Stalinism. An atmosphere of fear, bloody terror, unbridled lawlessness reigned in the country. Genuine literature became a form of rejection of such reality, a way of morally overcoming it. Laughter was a faithful ally of the writer.

Mikhail Bulgakov had a brilliant gift as a satirist. However, the image of the hopeless "mud of trifles", all these apartment quarrels, petty squabbles, a mess of insignificant passions never became an end in itself. Not! Bulgakov surveys contemporary reality as if from the height of Margarita's fantastic flight over the night Arbat. The writer is interested and interested in the very question that Woland throws with his heavy bass into the enchanted hall of the Variety: “Have these townspeople changed internally?” The stage and auditorium change places. Several simple tricks of Fagot (an episode with chervonets, a ladies' shop, Bengalsky's torn off head, Sempleyarov's "exposing") testify with irrefutability that human nature has not changed over the centuries that have passed since the execution of Yeshua. Woland's conclusion is impartial. “Well, then,” he replied thoughtfully, “they are people like people. They love money, but it has always been... Mankind loves money, no matter what it is made of: leather, bronze or gold. Well, they are frivolous ... well, well, mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts ... ordinary people ... in general, they resemble the former ones ... housing problem just ruined them..."

Bright satirical colors are drawn in the novel "The Master and

Margarita” countless scammers and bureaucrats, literary habitues of the restaurant of the Griboyedov house and petty swindlers, opportunists and militant townsfolk ... But evil is not just shown. It is ridiculed, it is exposed, it is mockingly reduced. The writer widely uses various techniques of satirical depiction: hyperbole, grotesque, parody.

Parodic decline made it possible to psychologically overcome the fear of those phenomena of reality that in themselves did not evoke any “fun” associations among Bulgakov's contemporaries! We are talking, of course, about arrests, denunciations and interrogations in the “competent” bodies. In fact, the novel begins with a denunciation. Overwhelmed by spy mania, Berlioz and the poet Bezdomny try to timely expose the suspicious foreign tourist from Patriarch's Ponds, who they see as a criminal and a foreign agent. Alas! The venerable editor and head of MASSOLIT never reaches the nearest pay phone. Bezdomny's attempt to apprehend the criminal with the help of a "fixer-agent" also ends in failure.

The virus of denunciation, according to Bulgakov, has penetrated deeply into society, touched even children's souls. In the chapter “Flight”, a little boy unwittingly betrays his mischievous friend Sitnik.

Unfortunately, in most cases denunciations are quite conscious and lead to inevitable consequences. So the parodied denunciation of Timofey Kvastsov abruptly changes the fate of the bribe-taker Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy. The denunciation of Aloisy Mogarych against the Master does not pass without a trace...

Mikhail Bulgakov, with great ingenuity, finds ways to talk about mass arrests in his novel. This is the hint about mysterious disappearances tenants of a “bad apartment”, such is the unspoken guess of the clever Poplavsky about the arrest of members of the board of the housing association of house No. 302-bis: “Oh, what a complication! And it was necessary that all of them at once ... ". This is the message in the epilogue about the numerous arrests not only of people, but also of black cats. But as before, laughter remains a true ally of Bulgakov. Scary ceases to be scary. Let's remember the scene

Behemoth's arrest. In a collision with Woland's retinue, the knurled system

violence reveals its complete impotence, its absurdity, its absurdity - we note that they are trying to arrest not a person, not at all, but a cat!

An important role is played in Bulgakov's novel by the image of Professor Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic and the methods of conducting a criminal case by an investigator. The interrogations of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy and Chuma-Annushka are anecdotal precisely because those being interrogated speak the pure truth.

Bulgakov, as we can see, finds the strength to ridicule what inspired his contemporaries with almost mystical horror: denunciations, arrests, interrogations with passion. At the same time, the writer does not leave evil unpunished, but resorts to a peculiar method of fantastic retribution. Whenever a real overcoming of evil is not possible, Woland and his retinue appear. It is precisely this function of "evil spirits" in the novel that is indicated by the epigraph from Goethe's Faust. In fact, through the efforts of Satan, the pseudo-lingual administrator of the Variete Varenukha was kidnapped and turned into a vampire, the bureaucrat Nikolai Ivanovich was brought to a fantastic ball as a “transportation vehicle” (boar), the “earphone and spy” Baron Meigel was shot dead, painlessly replaced in his commanding chair with an empty suit Chairman of the Spectacular Commission Prokhor Petrovich ... And that's not all. Is it possible not to recall here the destruction of the "Drumlit House" by Margarita? Is it possible to forget the latest adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth? The fire in which Torgsin and Griboyedov's house are burned does not burn the reader with the bitterness of loss. On the contrary, we have before us, perhaps, the most witty and cheerful pages of the novel. And neither the regulars of the restaurant of the Griboedov house, nor the majestic Archibald Archibaldovich, nor the satirical gallery of the inhabitants of Torgsin cause much sympathy ...

Thus, Bulgakov's satire is a way to overcome fear of cruel and bloody reality. Unfortunately, the writer's work in our country began to return to the reader only at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century. At the same time, the novel The Master and Margarita was published, which played a role in the spiritual development of several generations of readers.

6. THE GREAT BALL AT SATAN AS THE APOTHEOIS OF THE NOVEL.

Satan's Great Ball is a ball given by Woland in the Bad Apartment in the novel The Master and Margarita on the endlessly lasting midnight of Friday, May 3, 1929.

In order to fit the Great Ball at Satan's into the Bad Apartment, it was necessary to expand it to supernatural dimensions. As Koroviev-Fagot explains, “For those who are well acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to push the room to the desired limits.” This brings to mind the novel "The Invisible Man" (1897) by HG Wells. Bulgakov goes further than the English science fiction writer, increasing the number of dimensions from the rather traditional four to five. In the fifth dimension, giant halls become visible, where the Great Ball is held by Satan, and the participants of the ball, on the contrary, are invisible to the people around them, including the OGPU agents on duty at the door of the Bad Apartment.

Having abundantly decorated the ballrooms with roses, Bulgakov took into account the complex and multifaceted symbolism associated with this flower. AT cultural tradition In many nations, roses are the personification of both mourning and love and purity. With this in mind, the roses at Satan's Great Ball can be seen both as a symbol of Margarita's love for the Master and as a harbinger of their imminent death. Roses here - and an allegory of Christ, the memory of the shed blood, they have long been included in the symbolism of the Catholic Church.

The election of Marguerite as the queen of the Great Ball by Satan and her assimilation to one of the French queens who lived in the 16th century. associated with encyclopedic dictionary Brockhaus and Efron. Bulgakov's extracts from the entries in this dictionary have been preserved, dedicated to two French queens who bore the name of Margaret - Navarre and Valois. Both historical Margaritas patronized writers and poets, and Bulgakov's Margarita

it turns out that she is connected with the brilliant Master, whose extraction from the hospital she seeks after the Great Ball with Satan.

Another source of Satan's Great Ball is the description of the ball in

Mikhailovsky Palace, given in the book of the Marquis Astolf de Custine “Russia in

1839.” (this work was used by Bulgakov when creating the screenplay “ Dead Souls”): “Grand Gallery, intended for dancing, was decorated with exceptional luxury. One and a half thousand tubs and pots with the rarest flowers formed a fragrant bosquet. At the end of the hall, in the dense shade of exotic plants, one could see a pool from which a stream of a fountain was constantly escaping. Splashes of water, illuminated by bright lights, sparkled like diamond dust particles and refreshed the air ... It is difficult to imagine the magnificence of this picture. Completely lost

idea of ​​where you are. All borders disappeared, everything was full of light, gold, colors, reflections and a bewitching, magical illusion.” Margarita sees a similar picture at Satan's Great Ball, feeling herself in a tropical forest, among hundreds of flowers and colorful fountains, and listening to the music of the best orchestras in the world.

Depicting the Great Ball at Satan's, Bulgakov also took into account the traditions of Russian symbolism, in particular the symphonies of the poet A. Bely and L. Andreev's play “The Life of a Man”.

The great ball with Satan can also be imagined as a figment of the imagination of Margarita, who is about to commit suicide. Many eminent noblemen-criminals approach her as the queen of the ball, but Margarita prefers the brilliant writer Master to everyone. Note that the ball is preceded by a session of black magic in the circus-like Variety Theater, where in the finale the musicians play a march (and in the works of this genre, the role of drums is always great).

Note that at the Great Ball, Satan also has musical geniuses who are not directly connected in their work with motives.

Satanism. Margarita meets here the "king of waltzes" the Austrian composer Johann Strauss, the Belgian violinist and composer Henri Vietana, and the best musicians of the world play in the orchestra. Thus, Bulgakov illustrates the idea that every talent is somehow from the devil.

The fact that a string of murderers, poisoners, executioners, harlots and procuresses passes in front of Margarita at the Great Ball at Satan's is not at all accidental. Bulgakov's heroine is tormented by betrayal of her husband and, albeit subconsciously, puts her act on a par with the greatest crimes of the past and present. The abundance of poisoners and poisoners, real and imaginary, is a reflection in Margarita's brain of the thought of a possible suicide with the Master using poison. At the same time, their subsequent poisoning, carried out by Azazello, can be considered imaginary, and not real, since historically all male poisoners at Satan's Great Ball are imaginary poisoners.

But Bulgakov also leaves an alternative possibility: the Great Ball with Satan and all the events connected with it occur only in the sick imagination of Margarita, tormented by the lack of news about the Master and guilt before her husband and subconsciously thinking about suicide. The author of The Master and Margarita offers a similar alternative explanation in relation to the Moscow adventures of Satan and his henchmen in the epilogue of the novel, making it clear that it is far from exhausting what is happening. Also, any rational explanation of Satan's Great Ball, according to the author's intention, can in no way be complete.

7. Conclusion.

7.1 Personal axiom.

The dream of Pontius Pilate as the personification of man's victory over himself.

There is an opinion among the people that dreams can indicate to us what will happen in the future. People believe that the things and events that we see in a dream will come true in our later life.

However, there is an opposite point of view, which is held by many psychologists. According to them, our dreams are echoes of events that have already happened to us. Let us recall the dream of Pontius Pilate, in which he talks with the saved Yeshua. In this dream, Bang's dog is next to Pilate. This dream is filled with a sense of calmness. And the presence of Bunga here is very symbolic, since for Pilate his dog was always the personification of peace and protection. In addition, Banga was, perhaps, the only creature for whom Pilate felt a feeling of love.

In the “Yershalaim chapters” of the novel, most of the characters have gospel roots. However, the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, does not fully fit into the gospel image. At the same time, the author, speaking of Yeshua, draws a direct parallel with Jesus Christ. They even have the same names, because in Syriac Yeshua and Jesus are one and the same.

But let us return to Pilate's dream. Here the procurator gives the impression of a completely different person, he is the opposite of his daily self. It is in the dream that Pilate agrees with Yeshua's thought that they will now always be together. The procurator in a dream ceases to experience the disgust that arose in him in relation to everything that was connected with the teachings of a wandering philosopher. Although the author does not speak openly about this, some parallels, nevertheless, are built in the minds of readers.

To see this, let's turn to the symbols that the author uses when describing Pilate's dream. So, the procurator enters the colonnade of the palace, and the first thing he feels is how the accursed pink stream is mixed with the “smell of leather and convoy”. Pilate hated this pink smell like nothing else. No other smell, be it the smoke from centurions or the smell of horses, arouses such hatred in him and causes so much suffering to Pilate as “fat pink spirit”. Moreover, for some reason, Pilate began to associate the smell of roses with a bad day.

Why is this happening? Why does Pontius Pilate hate the smell of roses when most people find it pleasant and use it as an incense? Perhaps the reason for this attitude to roses lies in the fact that they have long been considered a symbol of Christ and Christianity in general. And here Pontius Pilate chickened out. Pilate, a man who considered cowardice a terrible vice of mankind, Pilate, who was not afraid “in the Valley of Maidens, when the furious Germans almost killed the Ratslayer the Giant,” he was now afraid. Why? Bulgakov gives his own answer to this question.

As you know, a poor person has nothing to lose, so he is not afraid of anything that could make him live in poverty again, because he is already poor, there is nowhere else to go. But as soon as a person gains wealth, the fear immediately settles in his soul that at one fine moment he can lose everything and find himself on the street. Pontius Pilate found himself in a similar situation. After all, when that story happened with the rescue of the Ratslayer the Giant, then the usual tribune in the legion, Pilate, had practically nothing to risk. But now Pontius Pilate is no longer a simple tribune, but the fifth procurator of Judea, and losing power for him is the same as losing his life. That is why, in real life, Pilate will never do anything that could ruin his career.

However, the dream allows Pilate to do what he could not decide in life. Very symbolic is the moment that awakens Pontius Pilate the arrival of Aphranius, who to a certain extent acted as a prototype of Woland-Satan.

Bulgakov, finishing the book, forgives Pilate for his act. His role, like the role of the Master, has great importance in revealing the philosophical meaning of the novel. Indeed, often literary critics evaluate Pilate's dream, his walk along the "moon road" as the highest victory of man over himself.

Good and evil in Bulgakov's novel merge into one through the images of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua, who continue their dispute through the centuries. And Woland appears here as the personification of the unity of these two principles.

Bulgakov says that these concepts have their roots in a person who, having freedom of choice, constantly bears full responsibility for all his actions in this life.

For all his categoricalness, Bulgakov soberly saw reality as it is, in its actual complexity and inconsistency. And this is his strength and difference from others, even his great predecessors, who closed the consideration of the problem of "guilt" and "responsibility" only in the sphere of "internal" morality of a person.

M. Bulgakov is not a theoretician, and his novel is not a philosophical treatise. M.

Bulgakov did not pose the problem of theoretical substantiation of the objective value of humanism. But he always and invariably proceeded precisely from this understanding. His moral imperative of a person's fidelity to himself is not neutral: this is the main premise of his statement of the problem, the content of the moral position.

I believe that the novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" cannot be called either a novel of the past or a novel of the future, since the problems of good

and evil, freedom and lack of freedom of the human spirit are relevant for any era, including our modern XXI century.

Why is M.A. Bulgakov close to me?

The writer is close to me with his lofty and mournful life, lived courageously and with dignity in the most difficult, tragic times for Russia. He is close to me with his bright ideas, preserving not only national, but also universal significance, because the great world issues that tormented Bulgakov did not become less acute at the beginning of the 21st century.

He is close to me, finally, by the power of talent, the fullness of life and the brilliance of thought that fills all his works.

8. Bibliography.

1. Boborykin V. T. / Mikhail Bulgakov / Ed. /ENLIGHTENMENT/ Moscow 1991

2. Bulgakov M.A. The Master and Margarita. - M .: LLC /Publishing house AST /; /Publishing house /Olimp/, 2001

3. Galinskaya I. L. / Riddles famous books/ Ed. /SCIENCE/ Moscow 1986

4. Lakshin V. Ya. /M. A. Bulgakov Collected works in 5 volumes / Fiction / 1990

5. L. Ya. Shneiberg, I. V. Kondakov / From Gorky to Solzhenitsyn / Ed. / Higher School / Moscow 1995

6. / Russian language and literature in secondary educational institutions Ukrainian SSR / Ed.

7. Sokolov B. V. / Bulgakov Encyclopedia / Ed. /LOKID/ - /MIF/Moscow

8. Sokolov B. V. / Three lives of Mikhail Bulgakov / Ed. /ELLIS LUCK/Moscow

9. /Creativity of Mikhail Bulgakov: Research. Materials. Bibliography. Book. 1/ ed. N. A. Groznova and A. I. Pavlovsky. L., /Science/, 1991

Application No. 1.

M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" (1925-1940)

You will be with me on my last flight...

M.A. Bulgakov .

Omani: 1. master = master of gold;

2. ability to think creatively;

3. writer = master extraordinary, imaginative thinking; with the power of talent.Lyric Master and Margarita.

The theme of immortality;

The theme of creativity and the fate of the artist;

Theme of love;

thinking about a person human destiny and its choice.

What is the meaning of human existence?

What is truth?

What comes first: good or evil?

What is freedom?

moral

Does Jesus Christ exist?

The problem of guilt and redemption. The choice of a person and the measure of his responsibility for everything he does on Earth.

Man and power

VIII. a) Hero skin system Yeshua Ha-Nozri Pontius Pilate

"Everyone will be given

according to his faith." (wandering philosophy f) (Procurator of Judea)

(Ch. 23. Woland) Embodies power

Prototype of Jesus Christ

great weakness

personality (human

Denies power (human freedom of the spirit)

lack of freedom)

The bearer of the idea good will" Betrayal.

A selfless servant of good, who has reached the moral absolute.

Serves the word and the Light.

b ) The Devil and his retinue (a clear hierarchical ladder):IX . Conclusion

The Master and Margarita is a novel about responsibility

: a person for all the good and evil that are committed on Earth, for

own choice of life paths leading to truth or to freedom, or to slavery, betrayal and inhumanity.

Bulgakov's work is a work about creativity, writing duty and the all-conquering power of love.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1765-1832) - German writer, thinker, naturalist. In the final essay, "Faust" reveals the search for the meaning of being, the collisions of the contemplative and active attitude to life expand to the "fatal" question of the possibilities and limits of the human mind.

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich (1867-1945) - Russian writer. Tale about the searches of the intelligentsia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries: "Without a road", "Notes of a doctor". Critical-philosophical works about

F.M. Dostoevsky, L.A. Tolstoy. Documentary works about A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol. State Prize of the USSR (1943).

Herbert Wells (1866 - 1946) - English writer, science fiction. Author of "Micromegas", "Argonauts of Chronos", "Invisible Man", "Time Machine", "War of the Worlds" and many others. others

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" received universal recognition, although this happened after the death of its author. The history of the creation of the work covers several decades - after all, when Bulgakov died, his wife continued his work, and it was she who achieved the publication of the novel. An unusual composition, bright characters and their difficult fates - all this made the novel interesting for any time.

First drafts

In 1928, the writer first had the idea of ​​a novel, which later became known as The Master and Margarita. The genre of the work had not yet been determined, but the main idea was to write a work about the devil. Even the first titles of the book spoke about it: "Black Magician", "Satan", "Consultant with a Hoof". There were a large number of drafts and versions of the novel. Some of these papers were destroyed by the author, and the remaining documents were published in a general collection.

Bulgakov began work on his novel at a very difficult time. His plays were banned, the author himself was considered a "neo-bourgeois" writer, and his work was proclaimed hostile to the new system. The first text of the work was destroyed by Bulgakov - he burned his manuscripts on fire, after which he was left with only sketches of scattered chapters and a couple of draft notebooks.

Later, the writer tries to return to work on the novel, but poor physical and psychological condition, caused by severe overwork, do not allow him to do this.

Eternal love

Only in 1932 did Bulgakov return to work on the novel, after which the Master was created first, and then Margarita. Her appearance, as well as the emergence of the idea of ​​​​eternal and great love, is associated with the writer's marriage to Elena Shilovskaya.

Bulgakov no longer hopes to see his novel in print, but continues to work hard on it. Having devoted more than 8 years to the work, the writer prepares the sixth draft edition, complete in meaning. After that, the elaboration of the text continued, amendments took place, and the structure, genre and composition of the novel The Master and Margarita finally took shape. It was then that the writer finally decided on the title of the work.

Mikhail Bulgakov continued to edit the novel until his death. Even before his death, when the writer was almost blind, he corrected the book with the help of his wife.

Publication of the novel

After the death of the writer, his wife had a main goal in life - to achieve the publication of the novel. She independently edited the work and printed it. In 1966, the novel was published in the Moscow magazine. This was followed by its translation into European languages, as well as an edition in Paris.

Genre of the work

Bulgakov called his work “The Master and Margarita” a novel, the genre of which is so unique that the disputes of literary critics about the category of the book never subside. It is defined as a mythical novel, a philosophical novel, and a medieval drama on the themes of the Bible. Bulgakov's novel connects almost all areas of literature that exist in the world. What makes a work unique is its genre and composition. The Master and Margarita is a masterpiece with which it is impossible to draw parallels. After all, there are no such books in either domestic or foreign literature.

Composition of the novel

The composition of The Master and Margarita is a double novel. Two stories are told, one about the Master and the other about Pontius Pilate. Despite the opposition to each other, they create a single whole.

The two tenses are intertwined in The Master and Margarita. The genre of the work allows you to combine the biblical period and Bulgakov's Moscow.

The question of the fate of man in the novel

The opening of the book is a dispute between Berlioz, Bezdomny and a stranger on the subject of the existence of God. Homeless believes that man himself controls the order on earth and all destinies, but the development of the plot shows the incorrectness of his position. After all, the author says that human knowledge is relative, and his life path is predetermined in advance. But at the same time he claims that a person is responsible for his own destiny. Throughout the novel, such topics are raised by Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita, whose genre weaves even biblical chapters into the narrative, evokes questions: “What is truth? Are there eternal values ​​that remain unchanged?

Modern life merges with history The master did not stand against the injustice of life, but was able to obtain immortality in Eternity itself. The novel "The Master and Margarita" intertwines both plot lines in one place - Eternity, where the Master and Pilate were able to find forgiveness.

The issue of personal responsibility in the novel

In his own, he shows fate as a string of interrelated events. By chance, the Master and Margarita met, Berlioz died, and Yeshua's life became dependent on the Roman governor. The author emphasizes the mortality of a person and believes that when planning your life, you should not exaggerate your capabilities.

But the writer leaves the heroes a chance to change their lives and correct the direction of fate for a more favorable one. To do this, you need to violate your moral principles. So, Yeshua can lie, and then he will live. If the Master starts writing “like everyone else”, then he will be accepted into the circle of writers, and his works will be published. Margarita must commit murder, but she cannot agree to this, even if the victim is the person who ruined the life of her lover. Some heroes change their fates, but others do not use the chances given to them.

The image of Margarita

All characters have their counterparts, which are shown in the mythological world. But there are no people similar to Margarita in the work. This emphasizes the uniqueness of a woman who, in order to save her beloved, makes a deal with the devil. The heroine combines love for the Master and hatred for his persecutors. But even in the grip of madness, smashing the apartment of a literary critic and frightening all the tenants of the house, she remains merciful, calming the child.

Image of the Master

Modern literary scholars agree that the image of the Master is autobiographical, because there is much in common between the writer and the main character. This is a partial external resemblance - a figure, a yarmulke cap. But also this spiritual despair that covers both of them from the fact that creative work is put off "on the table" without any future.

The theme of creativity is very important for the writer, because he is convinced that only the author's complete sincerity and ability to convey the truth to the heart and mind can provide the work with eternal value. So, the Master, who puts his soul into manuscripts, is opposed by a whole crowd, so indifferent and blind. Literary critics they hound the Master, drive him to madness and abandon his own work.

The fates of the Master and Bulgakov are inextricably linked, because both of them considered it their creative duty to help people regain their faith that justice and goodness still remained in the world. And also to encourage readers to search for truth and loyalty to their ideals. After all, the novel says that love and creativity can overcome everything in its path.

Even after many years, Bulgakov's novel continues to appeal to readers, defending the theme true love- faithful and eternal.

Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" was published in 1966-1967 and immediately brought world fame to the writer. The author himself defines the genre of the work as a novel, but genre uniqueness still causes controversy among writers. It is defined as a myth novel, a philosophical novel, a mystical novel, and so on. This is because the novel combines all genres at once, even those that cannot exist together. The narrative of the novel is directed to the future, the content is both psychologically and philosophically reliable, the problems raised in the novel are eternal. The main idea of ​​the novel is the struggle between good and evil, the concepts of inseparable and eternal.

The composition of the novel is as original as the genre - a novel within a novel. One about the fate of the Master, the other about Pontius Pilate. On the one hand, they are opposed to each other, on the other hand, they seem to form a single whole. This novel in the novel collects global problems and contradictions. The masters are concerned with the same problems as Pontius Pilate. At the end of the novel, you can see how Moscow connects with Yershalaim, that is, one novel is combined with another and goes into one storyline. Reading the work, we are in two dimensions at once: the 30s of the 20th century and the 30s of the 1st century of the new era. We see that the events took place in the same month and a few days before Easter, only with an interval of 1900 years, which proves a deep connection between the Moscow and Yershalaim chapters. The action of the novel, which is separated by almost two thousand years, harmonizes with each other, and their fight against evil, the search for truth and creativity connect them. And yet the main character of the novel is love. Love is what captivates the reader. In general, the theme of love is the most beloved for the writer. According to the author, all the happiness that has fallen in a person's life comes from love. Love elevates a person above the world, comprehends the spiritual. Such is the feeling of the Master and Margarita. That is why the author included these names in the title. Margarita completely surrenders to love, and for the sake of saving the Master, she sells her soul to the devil, taking on a huge sin. Nevertheless, the author makes her the most positive heroine of the novel and takes her side himself. Using the example of Margarita Bulgakov, he showed that each person must make his own personal choice, not asking for help from higher powers, not waiting for favors from life, a person must make his own destiny.

There are three storylines in the novel: philosophical - Yeshua and Pontius Pilate, love - Master and Margarita, mystical and satirical - Woland, all his retinue and Muscovites. These lines are closely connected with Woland's image. He feels free both in the biblical and in modern writer time .

The plot of the novel is the scene at the Patriarch's Ponds, where Berlioz and Ivan Homeless argue with a stranger about the existence of God. To Woland’s question about “who governs human life and the whole order on earth,” if there is no God, Ivan Bezdomny answers: “The man himself governs.” The author reveals the relativity of human knowledge and at the same time affirms the responsibility of a person for his own destiny. What is true the author narrates in the biblical chapters that are the center of the novel. The course of modern life lies in the Master's story of Pontius Pilate. Another feature of this work is that it is autobiographical. In the image of the Master, we recognize Bulgakov himself, and in the image of Margarita - his beloved woman, his wife Elena Sergeevna. Maybe that's why we perceive heroes real personalities. We sympathize with them, we worry, we put ourselves in their place. The reader seems to move along the artistic ladder of the work, improving along with the characters.

The plot lines end, connecting at one point in Eternity. Such a peculiar composition of the novel makes it interesting for the reader, and most importantly, an immortal work. Few novels can be named that would generate as much controversy as The Master and Margarita. They argue about the prototypes of the characters, about the book sources of certain components of the plot, the philosophical and aesthetic roots of the novel and its moral and ethical principles, about who the main character of the work is: the Master, Woland, Yeshua or Ivan Bezdomny (despite the fact that the author quite clearly expressed his position, naming the 13th chapter, in which the Master first enters the stage, “The Appearance of the Hero”), about, finally, in what genre the novel was written. The latter cannot be unequivocally determined. This was very well noted by the American literary critic M. Kreps in his book “Bulgakov and Pasternak as novelists: An analysis of the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago” (1984): “Bulgakov’s novel for Russian literature is, indeed, highly innovative, and therefore not easily given in the hands. As soon as the critic approaches it with the old standard system of measures, it turns out that some things are right, and some things are not at all right. The dress of the Menippean satire (the founder of this genre is the ancient Greek poet Shv. , events, leaving almost the entire novel and its main characters overboard. Fiction comes up against pure realism, myth against scrupulous historical authenticity, theosophy against demonism, romance against clowning.” If we also add that the action of the Yershalaim scenes - the Master's novel about Pontius Pilate takes place within one day, which meets the requirements of classicism, then we can say that almost all genres and literary trends existing in the world are combined in Bulgakov's novel. Moreover, definitions of The Master and Margarita as a symbolist, post-symbolist or neo-romantic novel are quite common. In addition, it can well be called a post-realist novel, since with modernist and postmodernist, avant-garde literature"Masters ..." is related by the fact that Bulgakov builds novel reality, not excluding modern Moscow chapters, almost exclusively on the basis of literary sources, and infernal fantasy deeply penetrates into Soviet life. Perhaps the reason for such a multifaceted genre of the novel is that Bulgakov himself could not decide on its final plot and title for a long time. So, there were three editions of the novel, in which there were the following variants of names: “Black Magician”, “Engineer's Hoof”, “Juggler with a Hoof”, “Son of V (eliar?)”, “Tour (Woland?)” (1st edition); "The Grand Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I Am", "Hat with a Feather", "Black Theologian", "He Appeared", "Foreigner's Horseshoe", "He Appeared", "The Advent", "The Black Magician" and "Hoof of the Consultant" (2nd edition, which was subtitled "Fantastic novel" - maybe this is an allusion to how the author himself defined genre affiliation your work); 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 were based on them, as well as mystical episodes and episodes of Yershalaim chapters. The writer borrowed most of the ideas from the Ukrainian philosopher of the 18th century, Grigory Skovoroda, (whose works he studied thoroughly). So, in the novel there is an interaction of three worlds: human (all people in the novel), biblical (biblical characters) and cosmic (Woland and his retinue). Let's compare: according to the theory of "three worlds" of 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, microcosm; the other is symbolic, i.e. biblical world. Each of the three worlds has two "nature": visible and invisible. All three worlds are woven from good and evil, and the biblical world appears in Skovoroda as if in the role of a link between the visible and invisible natures of the macrocosm and microcosm. A person has two bodies and two hearts: perishable and eternal, earthly and spiritual, and this means that a person is “external” and “internal”. And the latter never perishes: dying, he only loses his earthly body. In The Master and Margarita, duality is expressed in the dialectical interaction and struggle between good and evil (this is the main problem of the novel). According to the same 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 shadows disappeared from it?”. There must be some kind of balance between good and evil, which was violated in Moscow: the scales tilted sharply towards the latter, and Woland came, as the main 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 (1882-1937), who developed the idea that "trinity is the most general characteristic of being", linking it with Christian trinity. He also wrote: "... Truth is a single entity about three hypostases ...". In Bulgakov, the composition of the novel really consists of three layers, which together lead us to an understanding of the main idea of ​​the novel: about moral responsibility a person for his actions, that all people at all times should strive for the truth.

And, finally, recent studies of Bulgakov's work lead many scientists, literary critics to the idea 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 allocation of I, IT and I-ideal in a person. The composition of the novel is formed by three intricately intertwined storylines, in each of which the elements of the Freudian idea of ​​the human psyche are refracted in a peculiar way: the biblical chapters of the novel tell about the life and death of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, personifying the I-ideal (strives for goodness, truth and speaks only the truth), the Moscow chapters show the adventures of IT - Woland and his retinue, denouncing human low passions, vulgar lust, lust. Who represents me? The tragedy of the Master, called a hero by the author, lies in the loss of his Self. “Now I am nobody ... I have no dreams and no 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 the light, he deserved peace,” the desired balance between IT and the I-ideal.

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

The novel is written in such a way, “as if the author, feeling in advance that this is his last work, wanted to put into it without a trace all the sharpness of his satirical eye, the unrestrained imagination, the power of psychological observation. Bulgakov pushed the boundaries of the genre of the novel, he managed to achieve an organic combination of historical-epic, philosophical and satirical principles. In terms of the depth of philosophical content and the level of artistic skill, The Master and Margarita rightfully ranks with Dante’s Divine Comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Goethe’s Faust, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and other “eternal companions of mankind” in his quest for the truth of "freedom".

The number of studies devoted to the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov is enormous. Even the publication of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia did not put an end to the work of researchers. The thing is that the novel is quite complex in genre and therefore difficult to analyze. According to the definition of the British researcher of creativity M. Bulgakov, J. Curtis, given in her book “The Last Bulgakov Decade: The Writer as a Hero”, “The Master and Margarita” has the property of a rich deposit, where yet undiscovered minerals lie together. Both the form of the novel and its content distinguish it as unique masterpiece: it is difficult to find parallels with him in both Russian and Western European cultural traditions.

The characters and plots of The Master and Margarita are projected simultaneously onto both the Gospel and the legend of Faust, onto specific historical figures of Bulgakov's contemporaries, which makes the novel paradoxical and sometimes controversial character. Holiness and demonism, miracle and magic, temptation and betrayal are inseparably combined in one field.

It is customary to talk about the three plans of the novel - ancient, Yershalaim, eternal otherworldly and modern Moscow, which surprisingly turn out to be interconnected, the role of this bundle is played by the world of evil spirits, headed by the majestic and regal Woland. But "no matter how many plans stand out in the novel and no matter how they are called, it is indisputable that the author had in mind to show the reflection of eternal, transtemporal images and relationships in the unsteady surface of historical existence."

The image of Jesus Christ as an ideal of moral perfection invariably attracts many writers and artists. Some of them adhered to the traditional, canonical interpretation of it, based on the four gospels and the apostolic letters, others gravitated towards apocryphal or simply heretical stories. As is well known, M. Bulgakov took the second path. Jesus himself, as he appears in the novel, rejects the authenticity of the testimonies of the "Gospel according to Matthew" (remember here the words of Yeshua about what he saw when he looked into the goat's parchment of Levi Matthew). And in this regard, he shows a striking unity of views with Woland-Satan: "... someone," Woland turns to Berlioz, "and you should know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the gospels, never really happened... Woland is the devil, Satan, the prince of darkness, the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows (all these definitions are found in the text of the novel). “It is indisputable ... that not only Jesus, but also Satan in the novel are not presented in the New Testament interpretation” Woland is largely focused on Mephistopheles, even the name Woland itself is taken from Goethe’s poem, where it is mentioned only once and is usually omitted in Russian translations. The epigraph of the novel also reminds of Goethe's poem. In addition, researchers find that when creating Woland, Bulgakov also remembered the opera by Charles Gounod, and Bulgakov's modern version of Faust, written by the writer and journalist E.L. Mindlin, the beginning of whose novel was published in 1923. Generally speaking, the images of evil spirits in the novel carry with them many allusions - literary, operatic, musical. It seems that none of the researchers remembered that the French composer Berlioz (1803-1869), whose last name is one of the characters in the novel, is the author of the opera The Condemnation of Doctor Faust.

And yet Woland is, first of all, Satan. For all that, the image of Satan in the novel is not traditional.

Woland's unconventionality is that, being a devil, he is endowed with some obvious attributes of God. Yes, and Woland-Satan himself thinks of himself with him in the "cosmic hierarchy" approximately on an equal footing. No wonder Woland remarks to Levi Matthew: "It's not difficult for me to do anything."

Traditionally, the image of the devil was drawn comically in literature. And in the edition of the novel 1929-1930. Woland had a number of debilitating traits: he giggled, spoke with a "picaresque smile", used colloquial expressions, calling, for example, Bezdomny "a pig liar", and pretendingly complaining to the barman Sokov: "Oh, the bastard people in Moscow!", And whiningly begging on his knees : "Do not destroy the orphan." However, in the final text of the novel, Woland became different, majestic and regal: “He was in an expensive gray suit, in foreign shoes, the color of the suit, he famously twisted his gray beret behind his ear, under his arm he carried a cane with a black knob in the form of a poodle's head. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaved smoothly. 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. “Two eyes rested on Margarita’s face. The right one with a golden spark at the bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of the soul, and the left one is empty and black, sort of like a narrow needle eye, like an exit to a bottomless well of all darkness and shadows. Woland's face was slanted to the side, the right corner of his mouth was drawn downwards, deep wrinkles parallel to sharp eyebrows were cut on his high bald forehead. The skin on Woland's face seemed to be burned forever by a tan.

Woland has many faces, as befits the devil, and in conversations with different people he puts on different masks. At the same time, Woland’s omniscience of Satan is completely preserved (he and his people are well aware of both the past and future lives of those with whom they come into contact, they also know the text of the Master’s novel, which literally coincides with the “Woland gospel”, thus what was told unlucky writers at the Patriarchs).

In addition, Woland comes to Moscow not alone, but surrounded by a retinue, which is also unusual for the traditional embodiment of the devil in literature. After all, Satan usually appears on his own - without accomplices. Bulgakov's devil has a retinue, and a retinue in which a strict hierarchy reigns, and each has its own function. The closest to the devil in position is Koroviev-Fagot, the first in rank among the demons, the main assistant to Satan. Bassoon obeys Azazello and Gella. A somewhat special position is occupied by the werecat Behemoth, a favorite jester and a kind of confidant of the “prince of darkness”.

And it seems that Koroviev, aka Fagot, the oldest of the demons subordinate to Woland, who appears to Muscovites as an interpreter with a foreign professor and a former regent of the church choir, has a lot in common with the traditional incarnation of a petty demon. By the whole logic of the novel, the reader is led to the idea not to judge the characters by their appearance, and the final scene of the "transformation" of evil spirits looks like a confirmation of the correctness of involuntarily arising guesses. Woland's henchman, only when necessary, puts on various masks-masks: a drunken regent, a gaer, a clever swindler. And only in the final chapters of the novel Koroviev throws off his disguise and appears before the reader as a dark purple knight with a face that never smiles.

The Behemoth cat also changes its appearance in the same way: “The one who was the cat that amused the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a thin young man, a page demon, the best jester that ever existed in the world.” These characters of the novel, it turns out, have their own history, not related to biblical history. So the purple knight, as it turns out, is paying for some kind of joke that turned out to be unsuccessful. The Behemoth cat was the purple knight's personal page. And only the transformation of another servant of Woland does not occur: the changes that occurred with Azazello did not turn him into a man, like other companions of Woland - on a farewell flight over Moscow we see a cold and impassive demon of death.

Interestingly, in the scene of the last flight there is no Gella, a female vampire, another member of Woland's retinue. “The third wife of the writer believed that this was the result of the unfinished work on The Master Margarita.

However, it is possible that Bulgakov deliberately removed Hella, as the youngest member of the retinue, performing only auxiliary functions. Vampires are traditionally the lowest category of evil spirits.

An interesting observation is made by one of the researchers: “And finally, Woland flew in his real guise.” Which one? Not a word was said about it."

The unconventionality of the images of evil spirits also lies in the fact that “usually the evil spirit in Bulgakov’s novel is not at all inclined to do what it traditionally happens to be, it is absorbed - by the temptation and temptation of people. On the contrary, Woland's gang defends integrity and purity of morals... In fact, what is he and his associates mostly doing in Moscow, for what purpose did the author let them go for four days to roam and misbehave in the capital?

Indeed, the forces of hell play a somewhat unusual role in The Master and Margarita. (Actually, only one scene in the novel - the scene of "mass hypnosis in the Variety Show - shows the devil in full in his original role as a tempter. But here Woland acts exactly as a corrector of morals, or, in other words, as a very into the hands of the author who invented it. "Woland, as it were, deliberately narrows his functions, he is inclined not so much to seduce as to punish." He exposes low desires and grows together only in order to brand them with contempt and laughter.) They do not so much lead the righteous people astray good and decent, how many bring to clean water and punish already established sinners.

The evil spirits are perpetrating in Moscow, at the behest of Bulgakov, many different outrages. It is not for nothing that a violent retinue is assigned to Woland. It brings together experts different profiles: the master of mischievous tricks and practical jokes - the cat Behemoth, the eloquent Koroviev, who owns all the dialects and jargons - from the semi-criminal to the high society, the gloomy Azazello, extremely resourceful in the sense of kicking all kinds of sinners out of apartment No. 50, from Moscow, even from this to the next world. And then alternating, then speaking in pairs or threes, they create situations, sometimes eerie, as in the case of Rimsky, but more often comical, despite the devastating consequences of their actions.

Styopa Likhodeev, the director of the variety show, gets off with the fact that Woland's assistants throw him from Moscow to Yalta. And he has a whole load of sins: “... in general, they,” Koroviev reports, speaking of Styopa in the plural, “have been terribly swine lately. They get drunk, enter into relationships with women using their position, they don’t do a damn thing, yes and they can’t do a damn thing, because they don’t understand anything about what they are entrusted with. They rub glasses on the authorities. “They’re driving a state-owned car in vain!”

And for all this, just a forced walk to Yalta. A meeting with evil spirits is avoided without too serious consequences for Nikanor Ivanovich Bosom, who really doesn’t play around with currency, but still takes bribes, and uncle Berlioz, a cunning hunter for his nephew’s Moscow apartment, and the leaders of the Spectacular Commission, typical bureaucrats and loafers .

On the other hand, extremely severe punishments fall on those who do not steal and are not smeared with Stepin's vices, but have one seemingly harmless flaw. The master defines it like this: a person without a surprise inside. For the financial director of the variety show Rimsky, who is trying to invent "ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena", Woland's retinue arranges such a horror scene that in a matter of minutes he turns into a gray-haired old man with a shaking head. They are completely ruthless to the barman of the variety show, the very one who pronounces famous words about sturgeon of the second freshness. For what? The barman just steals and cheats, but this is not his most serious vice - in hoarding, in the fact that he robs himself. “Something, your will,” Woland remarks, “bad things lurk in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, table conversation. Such people are either seriously ill or secretly hate others”

But the saddest fate falls to the head of MASSOLIT, Berlioz. Berlioz’s fault is that he, an educated person who grew up back in pre-Soviet Russia, openly changed his beliefs in the hope of adapting to the new government (he, of course, could be an atheist, but not at the same time claim that the story of Jesus Christ, on which the whole European civilization took shape - "simple inventions, the most ordinary myth.") and began to preach what this government would demand from him. But there is also a special demand from him, because he is the head of a writers' organization - and his sermons tempt those who are just joining the world of literature and culture. How can one not remember the words of Christ: "Woe to those who tempt these little ones." It is clear that the choice made by Berlioz is conscious. In exchange for the betrayal of literature, he is given a lot of power - position, money, the opportunity to occupy a leadership position.

It is interesting to observe how the death of Berlioz is predicted. “The stranger looked at Berlioz, as if he was going to sew him a suit, muttered something like: “One, two ... Mercury in the second house ... the moon has gone ... six - misfortune ... evening - seven ... "- and loudly and joyfully announced: “Your head will be cut off!” .

Here is what we read about this in the Bulgakov Encyclopedia: “According to the principles of astrology, twelve houses are twelve parts of the ecliptic. The location of certain luminaries in each of their houses reflects certain events in the fate of a person. Mercury in the second house signifies happiness in trade. Berlioz is really punished for having introduced merchants into the temple of literature - members of the MASSOLIT headed by him, concerned only with obtaining material benefits in the form of summer cottages, creative business trips, vouchers to a sanatorium (Mikhail Alexandrovich thinks about such a voucher in the last hours of his life) ” .

The writer Berlioz, like all writers from the House of Griboedov, decided for himself that the writer's deeds matter only for the time in which he himself lives. Next - non-existence. Raising the severed head of Berlioz at the Great Ball, Woland addresses it: "To each will be given according to his faith..." Thus, it turns out that "justice in the novel invariably celebrates victory, but this is most often achieved by witchcraft, in an incomprehensible way."

Woland turns out to be the bearer of fate, and here Bulgakov finds himself in line with the traditions of Russian literature, linking fate not with God, but with the devil.

With seeming omnipotence, the devil administers his judgment and reprisals in Soviet Moscow. Generally speaking, good and evil in the novel are created by the hands of the person himself. Woland and his retinue only give an opportunity to manifest those vices and virtues that are inherent in people. For example, the cruelty of the crowd towards Georges of Bengal in the Variety Theater is replaced by mercy, and the initial evil, when they wanted to tear off the head of the unfortunate entertainer, becomes a necessary condition for goodness - pity for the headless entertainer.

But the evil spirit in the novel not only punishes, forcing people to suffer from their own depravity. It also helps those who cannot stand up for themselves in the struggle against those who violate all moral laws. In Bulgakov, Woland literally revives the burnt novel of the Master - a product of artistic creativity, preserved only in the head of the creator, materializes again, turns into a tangible thing.

Woland, who explained the purpose of his visit to the Soviet capital for various reasons, finally admits that he arrived in Moscow in order to fulfill the order, or rather the request, of Yeshua to take the Master and Margarita to him. It turns out that Satan in Bulgakov's novel is Ga-Notsri's servant "on such commissions, which the highest holiness cannot ... directly touch." Maybe that's why it seems that Woland is the first devil in world literature, admonishing the atheists and punishing for non-compliance with the commandments of Christ. Now it becomes clear that the epigraph to the novel “I am part of that force that wants evil and always does good” is an important part of the author’s worldview, according to which high ideals can only be preserved in the supermundane. In the earthly life of a brilliant Master, only Satan and his retinue, who are not bound by this ideal in their lives, can save from death. And in order to get the Master to himself with his novel, Woland, wishing evil, must do good: he punishes the opportunistic writer Berlioz, the traitor Baron Meigel and many petty crooks, such as the thief-barman Sokov or the grabber-manager Bosoy. Moreover, it turns out that giving the author of the novel about Pontius Pilate to the power of otherworldly forces is only a formal evil, since it is done with the blessing and even on the direct instructions of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, personifying the forces of good.

The dialectical unity, the complementarity of good and evil, is most densely revealed in the words of Woland, addressed to Levi Matthew, who refused to wish health to the "spirit of evil and the lord of shadows": "Would you be kind enough to think about what your good would do if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows come from objects and people. Here is the shadow from my sword. But shadows come from trees and living creatures. Do you want to strip the whole globe by tearing it down away all the trees and all living things because of your fantasy of enjoying the naked light. You are stupid."

Thus, the eternal, traditional opposition of good and evil, light and darkness, is absent in Bulgakov's novel. The forces of darkness, with all the evil that they bring to the Soviet capital, turn out to be assistants to the forces of light and good, because they are at war with those who have long forgotten how to distinguish between both - with the new Soviet religion, which crossed out the entire history of mankind, canceled and rejected all the moral experience of previous generations.

Accept the collection of colorful heads,
Half funny, half sad.
vulgar, ideal,
The careless fruit of my amusements,
Insomnia, light inspirations,
Immature and withered years
Crazy cold observations
And hearts of sad notes.
A.S. Pushkin

In the story “The Heart of a Dog”, Bulgakov described the outstanding scientist (Professor Preobrazhensky) and his scientific activities as the main character, and moved from specific scientific problems of eugenics (the science of improving the human breed) to philosophical problems revolutionary and evolutionary development of human knowledge, human society and nature in general. In The Master and Margarita, this scheme is repeated, but the main character is a writer who has written only one novel, and even that one has not finished. For all that, he can be called outstanding because he devoted his novel to the fundamental moral issues of mankind, and did not succumb to the pressure of the authorities, which called on (and with the help of literary associations forced) cultural figures to sing the successes of the proletarian state. From questions that concern creative people (freedom of creativity, publicity, the problem of choice), Bulgakov in the novel moved on to the philosophical problems of good and evil, conscience and fate, to the question of the meaning of life and death, therefore, the socio-philosophical content in The Master and Margarita , in comparison with the story "Heart of a Dog", is distinguished by greater depth and significance due to the many episodes and characters.

The genre of "The Master and Margarita" is a novel. Its genre originality can be revealed as follows: a satirical, socio-philosophical, fantastic novel within a novel. The novel is social, as it describes life in the USSR in the last years of the New Economic Policy, that is, in the late 20s of the 20th century. It is impossible to more accurately date the time of action in the work: the author deliberately (or not on purpose) combines facts from different times on the pages of the work: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has not yet been destroyed (1931), but passports have already been introduced (1932), and Muscovites travel in trolleybuses (1934). The scene of the novel is philistine Moscow, not ministerial, not academic, not party and government, but precisely communal. In the capital, for three days, Woland and his retinue study the mores of ordinary (average) Soviet people, who, according to the plan of communist ideologists, should be a new type of citizens, free from social diseases and shortcomings, inherent in people class society.

The life of Moscow inhabitants is described satirically. The evil spirit punishes the grabbers, careerists, schemers who "bloomed luxuriantly" on "healthy soil" Soviet society". The scene-visit of Koroviev and Behemoth to the Smolensky market in the Torgsin store is wonderfully presented - Bulgakov considers this institution a bright sign of the times. Petty demons in passing expose a swindler who pretends to be a foreigner and deliberately ruin the entire store, where a simple Soviet citizen (due to the lack of currency and gold things) cannot go (2, 28). Woland punishes a cunning businessman who conducts deft frauds with living space, a barmaid from the Variety Theater Andrei Fokich Sokov (1, 18), a bribe-taker and chairman of the house committee Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy (1, 9) and others. Bulgakov very wittily portrays Woland's performance in the theater (1, 12), when new beautiful outfits are offered free of charge to all interested ladies in exchange for their own modest clothes. At first, the audience does not believe in such a miracle, but very quickly greed and the opportunity to receive unexpected gifts win over distrust. The crowd rushes to the stage, where everyone gets an outfit to their liking. The performance ends funny and instructive: after the performance, the ladies, seduced by gifts of evil spirits, turn out to be naked, and Woland sums up the whole performance: “... people are like people. They love money, but it has always been ... (...) in general, they resemble the former ones, the housing problem only spoiled them ... ”(1, 12). In other words, the new Soviet man, about whom the authorities talk so much, has not yet been brought up in the country of the Soviets.

In parallel with the satirical depiction of crooks of various stripes, the author gives a description of the spiritual life of Soviet society. It is clear that Bulgakov was primarily interested in the literary life of Moscow in the late 1920s. Outstanding representatives of the new creative intelligentsia in the novel are the semi-literate, but very self-confident Ivan Bezdomny, who considers himself a poet, and the literary official Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, who educates and inspires young members of MASSOLIT (in different editions of the novel, the literary association, located in the house of Griboedov's aunt, is designated Massolit, then MASSOLIT) . The satirical depiction of proletarian cultural figures is based on the fact that their high conceit and claims do not correspond to their "creative" achievements. Officials from the Lightweight Spectacles and Entertainment Commission are shown simply grotesquely (1, 17): the costume calmly replaces the head of the Commission Prokhor Petrovich and signs official documents, and petty clerks sing folk songs during working hours (the same “serious” occupation in the evenings was Domkomovsky activists are busy in the story "Heart of a Dog").

Next to such "creative" workers, the author places a tragic hero - a real writer. As Bulgakov said half-jokingly, half-seriously, the Moscow chapters can be briefly recounted as follows: a story about a writer who ends up in a lunatic asylum for writing the truth in his novel and hoping that it will be published. The fate of the Master (Bulgakov in the novel calls his hero "master", but in critical literature another designation for this hero is adopted - the Master, which is used in this analysis) proves that in literary life The Soviet Union is dominated by the dictates of mediocrity and functionaries like Berlioz, who allow themselves to rudely interfere in the work of a real writer. But he cannot fight them, because there is no freedom of creativity in the USSR, although the most proletarian writers and leaders talk about it from the highest tribunes. Against independent, independent writers, the state uses its entire repressive apparatus, which is shown by the example of the Master.

The philosophical content of the novel is intertwined with the social, scenes from the ancient era alternate with a description of Soviet reality. The philosophical moral content of the work is revealed from the relationship between Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea, the all-powerful governor of Rome, and Yeshua Ha-Notsri, a poor preacher. It can be argued that Bulgakov sees in the clash of these heroes a manifestation of the eternal confrontation between the ideas of good and evil. The Master, who lives in Moscow in the late 20s of the 20th century, enters into the same fundamental confrontation with the state system. In the philosophical content of the novel, the author offers his own solution to the "eternal" moral questions: what is life, what is the main thing in life, can a person, alone opposing the whole society, be right, etc.? Separately, in the novel there is the problem of choice, connected with the actions of the procurator and Yeshua, who profess opposite life principles.

The procurator understands from a personal conversation with Yeshua that the accused is not a criminal at all. However, the Jewish high priest Kaifa comes to Pontius Pilate and convinces the Roman governor that Yeshua is a terrible rebel-instigator who preaches heresy and pushes the people to confusion. Kaifa demands the execution of Yeshua. Therefore, Pontius Pilate is faced with a dilemma: to execute an innocent and calm the crowd, or to spare this innocent, but prepare for a popular revolt, which the Jewish priests themselves can provoke. In other words, Pilate is faced with a choice: to act according to his conscience or against his conscience, guided by momentary interests.

Yeshua does not face such a dilemma. He could have chosen: to speak the truth and thereby help people, or to renounce the truth and be saved from crucifixion, but he had already made his choice. The procurator asks him what is the worst thing in the world, and gets the answer - cowardice. Yeshua himself demonstrates by his behavior that he is not afraid of anything. The scene of interrogation by Pontius Pilate testifies that Bulgakov, like his hero, a wandering philosopher, considers truth to be the main value in life. God (higher justice) is on the side of a physically weak person if he stands for the truth, therefore a beaten, beggar, lonely philosopher gains moral victory over the procurator and makes him painfully experience the cowardly act committed by Pilate just out of cowardice. This problem worried Bulgakov himself both as a writer and as a person. Living in a state that he considered unjust, he had to decide for himself: serve such a state or oppose it, the latter could be paid for, as happened with Yeshua and the Master. Still, Bulgakov, like his heroes, chose confrontation, and the writer's work itself became bold act, even the feat of an honest man.

Elements of fantasy allow Bulgakov to more fully reveal the ideological concept of the work. Some literary scholars see in The Master and Margarita features that bring the novel closer to the menippea, a literary genre in which laughter and an adventurous plot create a situation of testing high philosophical ideas. Distinctive feature fantasy is the menippea (Satan's ball, the last refuge of the Master and Margarita), it overturns the usual system of values, gives rise to a special type of behavior of heroes, free from any conventions (Ivan Bezdomny in a madhouse, Margarita in the role of a witch).

The demonic beginning in the images of Woland and his retinue performs a complex function in the novel: these characters are capable of doing not only evil, but also good. In Bulgakov's novel, Woland opposes the earthly world of crooks and unscrupulous functionaries from art, that is, he defends justice (!); he sympathizes with the Master and Margarita, helps separated lovers to connect and settle accounts with the traitor (Aloisy Mogarych) and the persecutor (critic Latunsky). But even Woland is powerless to save the Master from the tragic denouement of life (full disappointment and spiritual devastation). In this image of Satan, of course, reflected European tradition, which comes from Goethe's Mephistopheles, as indicated by the epigraph to the novel from Faust: "I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good ...". Perhaps that is why Bulgakov's Woland and the petty demons turned out to be sympathetic, even generous, and their witty tricks prove the extraordinary ingenuity of the writer.

“The Master and Margarita” is a novel within a novel, as one work intertwines chapters from the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate and chapters in which the Master himself is the main character, that is, “ancient” and “Moscow” chapters. By comparing two different novels within one, Bulgakov expresses his philosophy of history: an ideological and moral crisis ancient world led to the emergence of a new religion - Christianity and Christian morality, the crisis of the European civilization of the XX century - to social revolutions and atheism, that is, to the rejection of Christianity. Thus, humanity moves in a vicious circle and after two thousand years (without one century) returns to the same thing from which it once left. The main thing that attracts Bulgakov's attention is, of course, the depiction of contemporary Soviet reality. Reflecting on the present and the fate of the writer in modern world, the author resorts to an analogy - to the depiction of the historical situation (the life and execution of the philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri in Judea at the beginning of a new era).

So, the novel "The Master and Margarita" in terms of genre is a very complex work. The description of the life of Moscow during the NEP period, that is, the social content, is intertwined with scenes in ancient Judea, that is, with philosophical content. Bulgakov satirically ridicules various Soviet swindlers, semi-literate poets, cynical functionaries from culture and literature, and useless officials. At the same time, he sympathetically tells the story of love and suffering of the Master and Margarita. So satire and lyrics are combined in the novel. Along with a realistic depiction of Muscovites, Bulgakov places in the novel fantastic images Woland and his suite. All these diverse scenes and image techniques are combined in one work through a complex composition - a novel within a novel.

At first glance, The Master and Margarita is a fascinating novel about the fantastic tricks of evil spirits in Moscow, a witty novel that caustically ridicules the mores of the NEP life. However, behind the external amusement and gaiety in the work, one can see a deep philosophical content - a discussion about the struggle between good and evil in the human soul and in the history of mankind. Bulgakov's novel is often compared with the great novel by J.-W. Goethe "Faust", and not only because of the image of Woland, who is both similar and unlike Mephistopheles. Another thing is important: the similarity of the two novels is expressed in the humanistic idea. Goethe's novel arose as a philosophical understanding of the European world after the Great french revolution 1789; Bulgakov in his novel comprehends the fate of Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. Both Goethe and Bulgakov argue that the main value of a person is in his striving for goodness and creativity. Both authors oppose these qualities to chaos in the human soul and destructive processes in society. However, periods of chaos and destruction in history are always replaced by creation. That is why Goethe's Mephistopheles never receives the soul of Faust, and Bulgakov's Master, unable to withstand the struggle with the surrounding spiritless world, burns his novel, but does not harden, retains in his soul love for Margarita, sympathy for Ivan Bezdomny, sympathy for Pontius Pilate, who dreams of forgiveness .

In the story “Heart of a Dog”, Bulgakov described the outstanding scientist (Professor Preobrazhensky) as the main character and his scientific activities, and from the specific scientific problems of eugenics (the science of improving the human breed) he moved on to the philosophical problems of the revolutionary and evolutionary development of human knowledge, human society and nature in general. In The Master and Margarita, this scheme is repeated, but the main character is a writer who has written only one novel, and even that one has not finished. For all that, he can be called outstanding because he devoted his novel to the fundamental moral issues of mankind, and did not succumb to the pressure of the authorities, which called on (and with the help of literary associations forced) cultural figures to sing the successes of the proletarian state. From questions that concern creative people (freedom of creativity, publicity, the problem of choice), Bulgakov in the novel moved on to the philosophical problems of good and evil, conscience and fate, to the question of the meaning of life and death, therefore, the socio-philosophical content in The Master and Margarita , in comparison with the story "Heart of a Dog", is distinguished by greater depth and significance due to the many episodes and characters.

According to the genre "The Master and Margarita" - a novel. Its genre originality can be revealed as follows: a satirical, socio-philosophical, fantastic novel within a novel. The novel is social, as it describes life in the USSR in the last years of the New Economic Policy, that is, in the late 20s of the 20th century. It is impossible to more accurately date the time of action in the work: the author deliberately (or not on purpose) combines facts from different times on the pages of the work: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has not yet been destroyed (1931), but passports have already been introduced (1932), and Muscovites travel in trolleybuses (1934). The scene of the novel is philistine Moscow, not ministerial, not academic, not party-government, but precisely communal. In the capital, for three days, Woland and his retinue study the mores of ordinary (average) Soviet people, who, according to the plan of communist ideologists, should be a new type of citizen, free from social diseases and shortcomings inherent in people of class society.

The life of Moscow inhabitants is described satirically. Evil spirits punish thieves, careerists, schemers who "flourished luxuriantly" on the "healthy soil of Soviet society." The scene-visit of Koroviev and Behemoth to the Smolensky market in the Torgsin store is wonderfully presented - Bulgakov considers this institution a bright sign of the times. Petty demons in passing expose a swindler who pretends to be a foreigner and deliberately ruin the entire store, where a simple Soviet citizen (due to the lack of currency and gold things) cannot go (2, 28). Woland punishes a cunning businessman who conducts deft frauds with living space, a barmaid from the Variety Theater Andrei Fokich Sokov (1, 18), a bribe-taker and chairman of the house committee Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy (1, 9) and others. Bulgakov very wittily portrays Woland's performance in the theater (1, 12), when new beautiful outfits are offered free of charge to all interested ladies in exchange for their own modest clothes. At first, the audience does not believe in such a miracle, but very quickly greed and the opportunity to receive unexpected gifts win over distrust. The crowd rushes to the stage, where everyone gets an outfit to their liking. The performance ends funny and instructive: after the performance, the ladies, seduced by gifts of evil spirits, turn out to be naked, and Woland sums up the whole performance: “... people are like people. They love money, but it has always been ... (...) in general, they resemble the former ones, the housing problem only spoiled them ... ”(1, 12). In other words, the new Soviet man, about whom the authorities talk so much, has not yet been brought up in the country of the Soviets.

In parallel with the satirical depiction of crooks of various stripes, the author gives a description of the spiritual life of Soviet society. It is clear that Bulgakov was primarily interested in the literary life of Moscow in the late 1920s. The prominent representatives of the new creative intelligentsia in the novel are the semi-literate but very self-confident Ivan Bezdomny, who considers himself a poet, and the literary official Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, who educates and inspires young members of MASSOLIT (in different editions of the novel, the literary association located in the house of Griboedov's aunt is denoted as Massolit, then MASSOLIT). The satirical depiction of proletarian cultural figures is based on the fact that their high conceit and claims do not correspond to their "creative" achievements. Officials from the Lightweight Spectacles and Entertainment Commission are shown simply grotesquely (1, 17): the costume calmly replaces the head of the Commission Prokhor Petrovich and signs official documents, and petty clerks sing folk songs during working hours (the same “serious” occupation in the evenings was Domkomovsky activists are busy in the story "Heart of a Dog").

Next to such "creative" workers, the author places a tragic hero - a real writer. As Bulgakov said half-jokingly, half-seriously, the Moscow chapters can be briefly recounted as follows: a story about a writer who ends up in a lunatic asylum for writing the truth in his novel and hoping that it will be published. The fate of the Master (Bulgakov in the novel calls his hero "master", but in critical literature another designation for this hero is accepted - the Master, which is used in this analysis) proves that in the literary life of the Soviet Union reigns the dictate of mediocrity and functionaries like Berlioz, who allow themselves rudely interfere with the work of a real writer. But he cannot fight them, because there is no freedom of creativity in the USSR, although the most proletarian writers and leaders talk about it from the highest tribunes. Against independent, independent writers, the state uses its entire repressive apparatus, which is shown by the example of the Master.

The philosophical content of the novel is intertwined with the social, scenes from the ancient era alternate with a description of Soviet reality. The philosophical moral content of the work is revealed from the relationship between Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea, the all-powerful governor of Rome, and Yeshua Ha-Notsri, a poor preacher. It can be argued that Bulgakov sees in the clash of these heroes a manifestation of the eternal confrontation between the ideas of good and evil. The Master, who lives in Moscow in the late 20s of the 20th century, enters into the same fundamental confrontation with the state system. In the philosophical content of the novel, the author offers his own solution to the "eternal" moral questions: what is life, what is the main thing in life, can a person, alone opposing the whole society, be right, etc.? Separately, in the novel there is the problem of choice, connected with the actions of the procurator and Yeshua, who profess opposite life principles.

The procurator understands from a personal conversation with Yeshua that the accused is not a criminal at all. However, the Jewish high priest Kaifa comes to Pontius Pilate and convinces the Roman governor that Yeshua is a terrible rebel-instigator who preaches heresy and pushes the people to confusion. Kaifa demands the execution of Yeshua. Therefore, Pontius Pilate is faced with a dilemma: to execute an innocent and calm the crowd, or to spare this innocent, but prepare for a popular revolt, which the Jewish priests themselves can provoke. In other words, Pilate is faced with a choice: to act according to his conscience or against his conscience, guided by momentary interests.

Yeshua does not face such a dilemma. He could have chosen: to speak the truth and thereby help people, or to renounce the truth and be saved from crucifixion, but he had already made his choice. The procurator asks him what is the worst thing in the world, and gets the answer - cowardice. Yeshua himself demonstrates by his behavior that he is not afraid of anything. The scene of interrogation by Pontius Pilate testifies that Bulgakov, like his hero, a wandering philosopher, considers truth to be the main value in life. God (higher justice) is on the side of a physically weak person if he stands for the truth, therefore a beaten, beggar, lonely philosopher wins a moral victory over the procurator and makes him painfully experience a cowardly act committed by Pilate just out of cowardice. This problem worried Bulgakov himself both as a writer and as a person. Living in a state that he considered unjust, he had to decide for himself: serve such a state or oppose it, the latter could be paid for, as happened with Yeshua and the Master. Still, Bulgakov, like his heroes, chose confrontation, and the writer's work itself became a bold act, even a feat of an honest man.

Elements of fantasy allow Bulgakov to more fully reveal the ideological concept of the work. Some literary scholars see in The Master and Margarita features that bring the novel closer to the menippea, a literary genre in which laughter and an adventurous plot create a situation of testing lofty philosophical ideas. A distinctive feature of the menippea is fantasy (Satan's ball, the last refuge of the Master and Margarita), it overturns the usual system of values, gives rise to a special type of behavior of heroes, free from any conventions (Ivan Bezdomny in a madhouse, Margarita in the role of a witch).

The demonic beginning in the images of Woland and his retinue performs a complex function in the novel: these characters are capable of doing not only evil, but also good. In Bulgakov's novel, Woland opposes the earthly world of crooks and unscrupulous functionaries from art, that is, he defends justice (!); he sympathizes with the Master and Margarita, helps separated lovers to connect and settle accounts with the traitor (Aloisy Mogarych) and the persecutor (critic Latunsky). But even Woland is powerless to save the Master from the tragic denouement of life (full disappointment and spiritual devastation). In this image of Satan, of course, the European tradition was reflected, which comes from Goethe's Mephistopheles, as indicated by the epigraph to the novel from Faust: "I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good ...". Perhaps that is why Bulgakov's Woland and the petty demons turned out to be sympathetic, even generous, and their witty tricks prove the extraordinary ingenuity of the writer.

"The Master and Margarita" is a novel within a novel, as one work intertwines chapters from the Master's novel about Pontius Pilate and chapters in which the Master himself is the main character, that is, "ancient" and "Moscow" chapters. By comparing two different novels within one, Bulgakov expresses his philosophy of history: the ideological and moral crisis of the ancient world led to the emergence of a new religion - Christianity and Christian morality, the crisis of the European civilization of the 20th century - to social revolutions and atheism, that is, to the rejection of Christianity. Thus, humanity moves in a vicious circle and after two thousand years (without one century) returns to the same thing from which it once left. The main thing that attracts Bulgakov's attention is, of course, the depiction of contemporary Soviet reality. Comprehending the present and the fate of the writer in the modern world, the author resorts to an analogy - to the depiction of the historical situation (the life and execution of the philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri in Judea at the beginning of a new era).

So, the novel "The Master and Margarita" in terms of genre is a very complex work. The description of the life of Moscow during the NEP period, that is, the social content, is intertwined with scenes in ancient Judea, that is, with philosophical content. Bulgakov satirically ridicules various Soviet swindlers, semi-literate poets, cynical functionaries from culture and literature, and useless officials. At the same time, he sympathetically tells the story of love and suffering of the Master and Margarita. So satire and lyrics are combined in the novel. Along with the realistic depiction of Muscovites, Bulgakov puts fantastic images of Woland and his retinue into the novel. All these diverse scenes and image techniques are combined in one work through a complex composition - a novel within a novel.

At first glance, The Master and Margarita is a fascinating novel about the fantastic tricks of evil spirits in Moscow, a witty novel that caustically ridicules the mores of the NEP life. However, behind the external amusement and gaiety in the work, one can see a deep philosophical content - a discussion about the struggle between good and evil in the human soul and in the history of mankind. Bulgakov's novel is often compared with the great novel by J.-W. Goethe "Faust", and not only because of the image of Woland, who is both similar and unlike Mephistopheles. Another thing is important: the similarity of the two novels is expressed in the humanistic idea. Goethe's novel arose as a philosophical reflection on the European world after the French Revolution of 1789; Bulgakov in his novel comprehends the fate of Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. Both Goethe and Bulgakov argue that the main value of a person is in his striving for goodness and creativity. Both authors oppose these qualities to chaos in the human soul and destructive processes in society. However, periods of chaos and destruction in history are always replaced by creation. That is why Goethe's Mephistopheles never receives the soul of Faust, and Bulgakov's Master, unable to withstand the struggle with the surrounding spiritless world, burns his novel, but does not harden, retains in his soul love for Margarita, sympathy for Ivan Bezdomny, sympathy for Pontius Pilate, who dreams of forgiveness .