Fantastic Metropolis

The third narrative stream is the love story that gives the book its title, concerning an author known only as ‘The Master’ and the object of his adulterous passion, Margarita. Introduced curiously late in the book, the tale of the Master and his lover teems with symbolism, quotes from a variety of mythological source material and is brimful of metaphysical speculation—serious and frivolous. This tale is the one most concerned with the need for art, the power of the creative act and the rôle of artists within a repressive society. When he despairs of seeing his work in print, the Master flings his manuscript into the fire, simultaneously losing his reason for living, his lover and his mind. That’s the point at which the devil intervenes and we learn of the flame-resistant nature of manuscripts.

But Bulgakov shared The Master’s despair: he spent the last 12 years of his life working on The Master and Margarita, certain that he’d never see it published. And yet—in spite of everything—he was just as certain that the work was worth doing. Information about Bulgakov’s political outlook is vague. He began as an uncritical monarchist; later, in spite of his service in the White Army, he is believed to have become sympathetic to the broad aims of the Bolshevik revolution; and he seems to have ended life as a kind of anarchist-mystic with strong humanist streak. Having lost faith in organised religion, scientific progress and political change, art was the only force he had left to believe in as a means of transforming human behaviour.

The Master and Margarita contains many biographical references and detailed caricatures of figures from Moscow in the 1930s, but transcends its setting, its era and even, to some extent, its author’s intentions. One reason the novel hasn’t dated is that Bulgakov’s satire didn’t depend on embedded allegorical references to Stalin’s regime: the whole book challenges the notion of external controls on the artistic process through its life-affirming humour, sense of the grotesque and relish for the absurd.

While its heady brew of fantasy, myth and bawdy comedy was an act of literary insurrection against the established ethos of ‘Socialist Realism’, the novel’s enduring appeal and resonance for a contemporary audience is easy to understand. There’s a growing awareness of the crisis of modernity that Bulgakov started reporting more than 70 years ago: the notion of progress seems more fragile than ever and our models of the way the world works are pre-packaged by party and corporation spin doctors—the private-sector progeny of MASSOLIT.

There’s a lot of expediency and selling out in the book: Pilate betrays Yeshua and is eternally tortured by his decision; Ponyrev, a poet, becomes Berlioz’s toady and suffers infernal torture and episodes of madness; and the Master betrays his art. The recurring motif of betrayal seems to reflect Bulgakov’s doubts about his own artistic integrity. In 1930 he wrote to Stalin asking for permission to leave Russia or to be found work in the Moscow Art Theatre. And Stalin, the unlikely admirer of The Days of the Turbins, gave Bulgakov a job. In 1938 he was persuaded to write Batum, a play about the early life of Stalin. This was a painful and—ultimately—futile episode as the play was eventually banned by its leading character. So the theme of betrayal and redemption in The Master and Margarita seems to be rooted in Bulgakov’s coming to terms with the compromises he’d made to ensure his artistic and personal survival.

Throughout the book, Bulgakov raps on the themes of creativity and authorship. The tale-within-a-tale, the Yeshua story, is related initially by the devil, later becomes the subject of The Master’s great novel and, finally, achieves resolution in the dreams of the poet Ponyrev. And there’s a degree of ambiguity surrounding the narrator of the framing Moscow story. These games with layers of storytelling are tremendous fun, but also serve the purpose of dragging the reader into Bulgakov’s great quest: the relentless separation of truth and falsehood.

The Master and Margarita was the culmination of the work of a great writer. It’s darkly ironic—but there’s a lot to laugh at too. Admirers of Iain Sinclair, Angela Carter, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Salman Rushdie and Michael Moorcock will find much to enjoy in Bulgakov. Our own era (like Yeats’, like Bulgakov’s) is one where the forces of mediocrity are driving “the living imagination” out of the world. A journey through the surreal streets of Bulgakov’s Moscow is a powerful reminder of what we risk losing and an entreaty—for readers and writers—to join the fight to keep it.

This essay was originally commissioned by Nicholas Royle for the defunct Time Out literary website.