ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 3 ( 2014/2 ) |
NEITHER GOD NOR
DEVIL: A NEW THEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO BULGAKOV’S THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
HANNAH SCHNEIDER*
Summary
This paper presents a new
approach to Bulgakov’s masterpiece, the novel The Master and Margarita. By
examining the theme that “manuscripts don’t burn,” this paper argues that this
novel cannot be simply compared to individual religions or to other works of
fiction, as it has generally been treated.
Instead, a multivocal analysis is needed since none of these past
interpretations succeeds in rationalizing a monological foundation of the novel.
This paper analyzes the characters of Ieshua and Woland to demonstrate that the
novel cannot be explained by one system (whether Christianity, Pelagianism, or
Manichaeism), but must be addressed in its own right as a constructive
theological system. By treating Bulgakov’s work not as a variation of something
preexistent, but as a theology with familiar symbols but entirely different
implications, we can begin to understand what Bulgakov was presenting as a new
religion for the Soviet age.
Keywords: Theology,
Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, Pelagianism,
Manichaeism, God, Devil.
While
many scholars compare The Master and
Margarita to the Bible, or to other literary and philosophical works, they
do not explain why these similarities
are significant. Bulgakov’s novel cannot
be interpreted by trying to fit its complexities into any one literary or
theological system; instead, it must be read as a constructed theological
system, a project Bulgakov embarked on in order to rewrite the gospels and
emphasize what he believed were the most important aspects of human
spirituality. This essay breaks down traditional, monological interpretations
of The Master and Margarita, and
parses the significance of a new, constructive theological approach.
The novel, written between 1928 and 1940 but
only published decades later, details the account of the devil’s visit to
Soviet Moscow. The novel proceeds in two
planes—one takes place in Moscow in the era just mentioned, while the other
takes place in first century Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem sections, Bulgakov’s rewriting of the Gospels, leave some
crucial scenes missing (such as the last supper and the resurrection), which
shockingly appear in the Moscow sections.
The chronotope of the novel, therefore, is far from linear, and
conceptions of time and space become problematic. The Jerusalem narrative
begins from the mouth of Woland, the devil character, and continues in the
Master’s novel, and even appears as a dream of another character, the mad poet
Ivan Homeless. The continuity of the story is broken; split between narrators,
major questions about the origin and legitimacy of the Jerusalem chapters arise,
and the question what Bulgakov was trying to demonstrate about the nature of
gospels by writing his own version becomes ineluctable.
The novel
lends itself to so many theological and philosophical comparisons because on
first glance, Ieshua clearly seems to represent Jesus Christ and Woland clearly
seems to represent Satan (multiple characters in the novel even confirm the
latter suspicion). But the obvious
similarities are far less interesting than the subtle differences, and the
significance of the novel lies obscured in minutiae and not in broad
comparisons.
Traditional structural or thematic analyses of
the novel end with literary conclusions, but Bulgakov’s multivalent novel deserves
multivalent analysis. This paper addresses the theological implications of
Bulgakov’s project and the textual justification for treating The Master and the Margarita as a
theological work. For the enormity of
the theological analysis necessary to decode this novel, many more pages are
needed, but this paper will hopefully prompt further discussion of these
themes, and analyze a few key points which will attract further attention in
the future.
Throughout
Bulgakov’s novel, the theme that
“manuscripts don’t burn” keeps appearing.
In the first Jerusalem chapter of the novel, Ieshua, on trial for allegedly
inciting the people, explains to Pilate that he is afraid that misunderstanding
of his statements will “last for a very long time.”[1] Defending his own innocence Ieshua explains
his predicament with Matthew the Levite, his disciple who follows him “everywhere
with nothing but his goatskin parchment and writes incessantly.” Ieshua
continues, stating: “I once caught a glimpse of that parchment and I was
horrified. I had not said a word of what was written there I begged him,
‘Please burn this parchment of yours!’ But he tore it out of my hands and ran
away.”[2]
The
implication is that Matthew the Levite’s text survived, and that that is what
we know of as the Bible today: it is a misunderstood account created by a
half-mad disciple. That makes Bulgakov’s
novel, in contrast, the true version of the events of first century Jerusalem.
This is the first of several instances in the novel where a text, once written,
cannot be erased. In this case,
according to Bulgakov, the results of the indestructability of Matthew’s
manuscripts began millennia of false religious understanding.
In
another instance that demonstrates Bulgakov’s concept of eternal manuscripts,
the Master burns his novel about Pontius Pilate in his apartment stove only to
have it handed back to him later by Behemoth the cat at Woland’s behest. Woland chastises him, exclaiming that he
ought to know by now that “manuscripts don’t burn.”[3] An eerie parallel to Bulgakov’s own life
emerges: he simply could not eliminate the manuscript. He burned the original draft of The Master and Margarita in 1930 only to
begin rewriting the whole thing the next year.
His wife kept the manuscript hidden from Soviet authorities for years
before trying to publish it. Even when
it first came out, it was heavily censored (especially the sections that
blatantly mocked bureaucratic officials), but the censors did not prevail;
eventually those sections were restored.[4] The parallels between the novel and
Bulgakov’s own life and political situation (including readings of the novel
which equate Woland with Stalin) certainly aid in interpreting the foundations
of The Master and Margarita, but like
the parallels to the Bible, the divergences become more interesting than the
convergences, and similarities to life and other traditions are only the
building blocks of the story.
In light
of the theme that “manuscripts don’t burn,” the novel is Bulgakov’s tribute
that nothing written can be destroyed.
In writing his novel, Bulgakov had a profound sense of duty—duty because
he knew that whatever he wrote would last.
His novel would become a new version of the Bible for many
Russians. Upon publication in the 1960s,
the novel attracted an instant cult following that has flourished up until the
present, with the Bulgakov Museum functioning as a gathering place for
enthusiasts. There are still shrines to The Master and Margarita in Moscow, and
numerous songs, films, and paintings have been inspired by the book.
The theme
of the author and his everlasting work, therefore, is critically important to
discerning crucial thematic elements of the novel. Since Bulgakov treated his novel as a new and
indestructible theological work, readers ought to approach it with a similar
understanding of Bulgakov’s project in mind.
And since a large part of the novel deals with undermining the authority
of the Biblical gospels and rewriting the gospels, these themes must be
addressed. Bulgakov’s novel, therefore,
must be treated as he wrote it: as a theological system, with all of the ensuing
implications addressed.
In light
of Bulgakov’s constructive project, the nuanced divergences in the novel from
its source texts don heightened importance.
This essay focuses on the characters of Woland and Ieshua in comparative
analysis and suggests a synthesis of the theological implications of the twists
and variations on these characters.
None of
the recent approaches to the topic of tangled theology in The Master and Margarita has successfully encompassed Bulgakov’s
project. Boris Gasparov famously
analyzed the structure of the novel, noting that sometimes the novel is not
“entirely like the gospels, and sometimes it is entirely not like the gospels.”[5] He suggests that it is not identical to the
Bible because Bulgakov was writing polemically, but I suggest that there is a
deeper, more fundamental reason that Bulgakov changed the gospel narrative.[6] Gareth Williams, contrary to Gasparov,
claims that there is a way to read the theology of The Master and Margarita as a cohesive whole. Reading it through a Manichean lens, he
argues, makes sense of Woland’s and Ieshua’s roles.[7] In Manichean philosophy, equal powers of
light and darkness battle in the universe, and since Ieshua and Woland are more
equal in the novel than Jesus and Satan are in an orthodox reading of the
Bible, Williams argues that a Manichean understanding is more apt than a
Christian once. There are many moments, however, when the Manichean system
breaks down in the novel, and it would be a stretch to assert that Bulgakov’s
main goal was write a novel based on Manichean philosophy. A.C. Wright, in “Satin in Moscow: An Approach
to Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita,”
also tries to fit Woland into a single, preexisting theological system. He claims that in the Old Testament the devil
had no malignant attitude toward God and mankind, and that that was a New
Testament distortion of the Old Testament’s description of Satan. According to Wright, therefore, the Old
Testament explains Woland’s seemingly contradictory character in ways the New
Testament cannot. But on closer
examination, this proves to be unorthodox and shoddy exegesis of the Old and
New Testaments, and so Wright’s argument that Woland can be categorized as a
strictly Old Testament figure is fundamentally faulty. Another attempt to explain the novel using a
single coherent framework was made by Val Bolen. Bolen claims that “the novel as a whole
reflects a universal plan based on justice.”[8] But this, too, does not explain Bulgakov’s
system. It seems that justice, as it is
usually defined, would not send Margarita to suffer the Master’s fate of lost
memory, or that justice would have Ieshua killed when he had done nothing
wrong. If justice is defined as giving
each person according to his due, and Ieshua had lived an honest and innocent
life, then it could not have been just for him to die a tortuous death as a
criminal—at least in a human scheme of justice.
If Bulgakov is writing based on some “universal plan of justice” then he
has also redefined this universal plan based on seemingly illogical categories.
Joan
Delaney makes another attempt to interpret this novel monologically. Instead of using a philosophical approach,
she allows theological concerns to fade to the background and claims that the
novel is best explained in light of Bulgakov’s life: it is about “the artist
and his work.”[9] As discussed earlier, this
is surely a crucial theme, but Delaney fails to steward the analysis to its
natural conclusion; she compares the Master to Bulgakov, but she does not examine
the broader implications of the fact that Bulgakov presentd his novel as the
true version of the gospels, which are the basis of one of most widespread
religions on earth. The present essay
extends Delaney’s analysis and critiques her analysis.
Understanding
Bulgakov’s theological system requires beginning with the basic differences
between Christianity and the novel and why they are significant for his
system. A comparison of Bulgakov's
theological system to Christianity, as Gasparov suggests, reveals stark
differences. In addition to the fact
that Ieshua is not the divine savior, there is another huge problem: God is not
visible in the novel. Ieshua cannot be
God since he clearly does not have ultimate authority in the novel. For
instance, when Matthew the Levite appeals for the eternal fate of the Master,
it is Woland to whom he appeals, and not Ieshua. When Matthew appears to Woland, he explains,
“he has sent me…and he asks you to take the master with you and reward him by
granting him peace.”[10] The Biblical Jesus would not need to ask
permission of the devil; instead, he would be able to pardon himself. He is omnipotent, as he states explicitly
according to the Gospel of Matthew 28:18: “All authority has been given to me
in heaven and on earth.” He also cannot be the Son of God. First, he makes no such claim. But second, he also fails to meet any of the
Old Testament prophecies about the Son of God. For instance, he comes from the
town of Gamala, not Bethlehem as was foretold.[11] He also does not claim that God is his
father. When Pilate asks him about his
parentage, he falters, “I don’t know exactly…I don’t remember my parents. I was
told my father was a Syrian.” But the
key moment is when Pilate asks Ieshua “What is truth,” which is quoted straight
from the Bible.[12] Ieshua’s answer addresses the pain that
Pilate was secretly suffering from: “At this moment the truth is chiefly that
your head is aching and aching so hard that you are having cowardly thoughts
about death.”[13] Jesus, on the other hand, clearly states
what truth is in the New Testament: “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me.”[14] At every pivot in the novel where Bulgakov
could have asserted the divinity of Ieshua, he alters the details just enough
in order to make it nearly impossible for the reader to hold that he could be
either God or the Son of God. Instead,
Ieshua fits quite nicely into Renan’s positivist tradition, which promotes a
view of Jesus as just a human caught up in the politics of first century
Jerusalem.
Since God
is not visible in the novel, it is impossible for the central message of the
Bible to be conveyed in the novel. That
is, the message that God sent his son into the world to die the death that
sinners deserved so that men may be reconciled to God. Ieshua’s death, once again, does not meet the
criteria of the Old Testament prophecies as Christ’s was meant to (Ieshua’s
hands and feet are not pierced, for instance,[15]
but tied).[16] Aside from all of these detailed discrepancies,
however, one glaring passage proves the difference of Bulgakov’s cosmic schema
from the Biblical one. At the moment of
crucifixion, Matthew stands at a distance and begs “God to perform a miracle
and allow Ieshua to die.”[17] He also curses God, exclaiming, “no other God
would have allowed a man like Ieshua to be scorched to death on a pole.”[18] Finally he goes even further, screaming, “you
are a God of evil… You are not an almighty God—you are an evil God!”[19] While Matthew can see nothing in the crucifixion
of Ieshua but cruel and unjust atrocity, the crucifixion of Christ resulted in
something quite different: it was intended to demonstrate God’s ultimate
justice and authority. While the
crucifixion was brutal and gory (for this is the punishment that humans were
meant to pay for betraying God with sin, according to the Bible), it was also
the beginning of the victorious redemption that Christ would make for his
children, mankind. Anglican theologian
N. T. Wright (not to be confused with literary scholar A. C. Wright) explains, “on
the cross Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil.”[20] Jesus conquered the power of evil because
once the sinless God had paid the penalty for sin, which is death, there could
be no other sacrifice needed, no other victims of death. In Christ, men can live, and at the end of
time, Christ will return to raise the dead and put an end to suffering. In the novel, however, this is not what
transpires. Whereas in the gospels,
Jesus triumphantly raises from the dead and ascends to heaven in preparation to
come to earth again, in the novel, the naked body of Ieshua slips down off the
cross, never to be seen again. Indeed,
the word “cross” is not even mentioned in the novel. Instead, the words “pole” or “crossed sticks”
are used. Bulgakov eschews any semblance
of a sacrificial death or atonement. Far
from the powerful death and the triumphant resurrection of the gospels, in the
novel, Ieshua slips from view while Woland, the devil character, grows in
power.
God clearly
does not appear in the novel, except for in name when Matthew the Levite curses
him, and when Pilate calls upon pagan gods.
But it is less clear whether the devil appears. After all, if Woland is so powerful, could he
properly be conceived as the devil? In fact, Bulgakov’s depiction of Woland
places him outside the categories of the Biblical devil, further distancing
Bulgakov’s novel from a Christian interpretation.
Woland is
indubitably the principle divine figure of the novel, which in itself indicates
a different focus from that of the Bible.
Beyond his prominence, he also serves different functions from those of
the Biblical devil, as mentioned. But
there are problems with comparing Woland to the Biblical devil in the first
place since there are vast disagreements in the literary world about this
character. Some literary scholars have
argued that the Biblical devil serves a different purpose in the Old Testament
from the purpose he serves in the New Testament.[21] But while the devil may be described
differently in literary terms in the two halves of the Bible his roles are the
same. In the books of Genesis and Job,
for instance, the devil tempts people and distracts them from God. This accords with the devil’s intentions as
laid out in the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians 4, for instance, when it is
written that Satan “blinded the minds of the unbelievers.”[22]
Though A. C. Wright argues that the devil in the Old Testament does not have
any malignant attitude toward God or his followers, this cannot be the case:
according to the Bible “all wrongdoing is sin,”[23]
and since sin is anything that goes against the will of God, if the devil is
tempting people to act contrary to God’s will, then the devil is acting as
God’s adversary. Even though the theology
is not spelled out in the Old Testament as it is (by Paul, for instance) in the
New Testament, there is clear consistency between the two Testaments. Since the goal of the devil in the Bible is
to thwart the will of God on earth, but God does not even appear in Bulgakov’s
novel, it is difficult to argue that Woland parallels the devil as presented in
either testament. A. C. Wright’s
rendering, therefore, cheapens the Biblical presentation of the devil and does
not help in analyzing Woland.
In
addition to the problems Woland presents, however, Ieshua also presents
problems. Not only is he not the son of
God (but instead the son of some unknown father), but it is also unclear
whether he is a powerful and good deity (as Trinitarian Christian theology claims
that Christ is part of the godhead), or just an employee of a different
“department” for the institution that Woland also works for. He does not redeem people in the novel, but
pardons them. This is a crucial point:
whereas in the Bible people are so evil that they could not possibly conduct
lives worthy of salvation without Christ taking their punishment, in the novel,
Ieshua does not take people’s punishment upon himself, but instead pardons
them. There is no schema of atonement. There is no need for grace. When Matthew the Levite comes to Woland in
the second half of the novel to appeal the fate of the Master, he pleads with
Woland: “He [presumably Ieshua] has read the Master’s writings… and asks you to
take the Master with you and reward him by granting him peace.”[24] Woland responds by asking, “why don’t you
take him yourself to the light?”[25] Matthew’s answer is revealing. He makes an appeal to an independent
standard:
“He
didn’t earn light. He earned peace.”[26]
This
means that in Bulgakov’s anthropology, man is good enough to follow a set
standard in order to gain certain rewards.
Christ is not necessary to absorb the wrath of God on man’s behalf. This is why no matter how much Ieshua
resembles Jesus, he is not functioning in the novel in the same way Jesus
functions in the Bible and in Christian theology.
Ieshua’s powers are more ambiguous than
Woland’s: it is unclear to what degree the devil can control the fate of those
who did not “earn light.” For example,
the matter of whether Woland freed Pilate from torture out of mercy, or whether
he freed Pilate because the latter genuinely earned peace remains
unresolved. At the very end of the
novel, Woland escorts the Master and Margarita to some state after death where
they also see Pilate, who is tortured with insomnia during full moons.Voskresenskaya Square[27] Margarita, showing her characteristic
compassion, questions the justice in this scenario: “Twenty-four thousand moons
in penance for one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?”[28] She goes on to scream that he be released, to
which Woland answers, “there is no need for you to plead for him, Margarita,
because his cause has already been pleaded by the man he longs to join.” Moments later, the Master announces Pilate’s
freedom by hollering, “You are free! Free! He is waiting for you!”[29] It seems, therefore, that while Ieshua might
have pleaded the Master’s case, it was Woland who made the decision. If it was not Woland who made the decision,
then perhaps it was a designated length of punishment that Pilate was forced to
endure, although this option seems less likely according to the text.
This scene indicates a critical distinction in
Bulgakov’s system: there will be no final judgment. Since in the Bible Christ comes to “judge the
living and the dead”[30]
but in the novel there is no Christ, only a deficient Ieshua, there is no
implication that the eternal ramifications of Ieshua’s life will include a
final judgment. Instead, each person
seems to earn a fate that can then be altered by some sort of divine bureaucracy,
but not by a mandate ordained before the dawn of time.
In
addition, the Christian view of the final resurrection is very different from
Bulgakov’s portrayal of life after death. N. T. Wright argues that for
Christians the resurrection of the physical body when Jesus returns to remake
the world is crucial. “God’s intention
is not to let death have its way with us,” he explains.[31] He continues, stating that “if the promised
final future is simply that immortal souls leave behind their mortal bodies,
then death still rules—since that is a description not of the defeat of death but simply of death
itself, seen from one angle.”[32] This is exactly what Bulgakov has shown:
death has had its way despite the continuation of souls. For Christians, the kingdom of heaven “in the
preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from
this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it
is in heaven.’”[33] Bulgakov’s picture, then, excludes this
kingdom of heaven; the concept of “light” as opposed to “peace” in the novel is
still far more abstract and vague than the images in Revelation of Christ’s
remaking of the physical world to redeem it to its Eden state. Bulgakov’s Ieshua and Woland are difficult to
interpret because the cosmic order in Christian theology is thrown off-kilter
by not having a resurrection, a final victory where life conquers death and
good conquers evil.
Bulgakov’s novel, and more specifically, the
idea that the characters earn their eternal destinies, more closely echoes one
of several early Christian heresies than it does Christianity. The early Christian heresy of Pelagianism
strikes a particularly familiar resonance.
Pelagianism, formulated by the 4th century monk Pelagius,
defends the possibility of innate human goodness and free will as a combination
that could bring man to God without the help of a redeemer. Though this
soteriology seems to fit with Bulgakov’s, the entire framework still does not
mesh: Pelagianism, even though condemned by the church, still maintains a
grounded concept of God which Bulgakov prevaricates.
Another
possible influence for Bulgakov’s theological system is a similar heresy,
namely, Manichaeism, in which there is a struggle between the powerful (but not
omnipotent) good spirit called God, and the non-eternal evil figure Satan. In addition, Manichaeism champions a concept
of a spiritual realm of light versus a material realm of darkness. This helps explain some of Bulgakov’s
terminology, especially in cases when Matthew the Levite uses terms like going
to “light” (as quoted earlier) instead of to heaven or some other familiar
religious post-mortem location. This could be another allusion to Manichaeism.
And indeed, Woland seems to imply Manichaean philosophy in his conversation
with Matthew the Levite:
Where
would your good be if there were no evil, and what would the world look like
without shadow? Shadows are thrown by people and things. There’s the shadow of
my sword, for instance. But shadows are also cast by living beings. Do you want
to strip the whole globe by removing every tree and every creature to satisfy
your fantasy of a bare world?[34]
Woland discusses here a balance
in the universe between good and evil that would be perfectly congruent with
Manichaean teaching. Following the
Manichean dichotomy of good and evil coequal powers, we see that Ieshua and
Woland seem also to fall into place: Ieshua sees the good in all people, as he
explains in the first Jerusalem chapter of the novel. Pilate asks him about the peculiar term he
keeps using to describe people—good men.
“Is that what you call everybody,” Pilate wonders.[35] Ieshua responds, “Yes, everybody… there are
no evil people on earth.”[36]
Woland sees the bad in all people (as well as some good), the greed, dishonesty
etc. and names them simply “people like people.” In the chapter entitled “Black Magic
Revealed,” Woland sets up a farcical show with his troupe of demons in a
prominent Moscow theater. But what
starts as a compellation of magic tricks transforms into a different kind of
show. Woland causes money to fall from
the ceiling and opens a magical shop for ladies on the stage (complete with
free Chanel No. 5 and chic dresses). All
of this is meant to help him determine the character of the Muscovites, whether
they were the same as always. Woland
even obliges when the audience unsuspectedly demands that he lob off the head
of the M.C., Bengalsky. In the final
analysis, Woland declares,
they’re
people like any others, but thoughtless…but they do show some compassion
occasionally. They’re overfond of money,
but then they always were…humankind loves money, no matter if it’s made of
leather, paper, bronze or gold. They’re thoughtless, of course, but then they
sometimes feel compassion too… They’re ordinary people—in fact, they remind me
very much of their predecessors, except that the housing shortage has soured
them.[37]
In this case, Woland’s philosophy
proves to contradict Manichaeism: for Woland, there is a blurry distinction
between the pure light of the spiritual realm and the pure evil of the material
realm, as is delineated in Manichaeism.
People are partly good and partly bad for Bulgakov. In this blurriness,
it is clear that Bulgakov does not maintain that there is a binary opposition
between light and darkness.
This same phrase that breaks down
the possibility of a Manichean interpretation also confirms the impossibility
of a Christian framework for the novel. The
problem is that in Woland’s view, people are soured by circumstances, and not
by a condition of the heart, as is the case in Christian theology. In Christianity, no people are ordinary
people, because man’s intended state was to be one of sinless communion with
God, which was broken by the fall. If anything is clear, it is that the Soviet
regime is a power of darkness which must be exposed for its intrinsic evil and
fought against. This, however, is more a
political binary than a theological one.
The
mysterious irony is that the devil does not look so bad in comparison to the Soviet
officials. Later in the novel, Woland
does actually release one soul, named Frida, from the eternal punishment of
being faced with the handkerchief she had wielded to strangle her child. It seems that Woland releases Frida at
Margarita’s request, but it is unclear whether it was Margarita’s request that
in itself served as the absolution of Frida, or whether it was Woland who
allowed her to be freed. Whether it was
Woland’s power, Margarita’s purity, or Woland acting on behalf of someone else,
it is still a moment of grace. The
Soviet officials, in comparison, seem merciless. The Master suffers because of the officials
who censor his novel, and the other corrupt officials appear throughout the
novel. The Master suffers at the hands
of merciless political powers, whereas humans both suffer and are blessed by
these seemingly evil deities. What kind
of devil is this if human evil can be so much worse than his? Once again,
Manichaeism seems to break down in the novel because there is no clear difference
between good and evil, or between light and darkness. These elements are mixed within the people of
Moscow and even within Woland himself.
While Williams claims that “the reader
finds out that darkness and light are used throughout the work in a manner
consistent with the Manichaean philosophy,”[38]
this is not the case. In Bulgakov’s novel, light and darkness are not simple
representatives of Manichean good and evil.
Evidently,
in order to do justice to Bulgakov’s spiritual framework, and thereby to this
novel, analysis must penetrate beyond the classically undertaken comparative
studies. Now that distinctions have been
made, we must proceed with the particularities of Woland’s roles, and what
these mean for Bulgakov’s theology. In the first conversation of the novel, we
see that Woland, who has appeared in Moscow, engages two prominent figures of
the Soviet intelligentsia, Berlioz, “editor of a highbrow literary magazine and
chairman of the management committee of one of the biggest Moscow literary
clubs…[and] his young companion…the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov, who wrote
under the pseudonym Bezdomny.”[39] These two both deny that the devil exists,
and when Ivan first proclaims, “There is no such thing as the devil,” it causes
Woland to shout.[40] As Berlioz and Ivan are trying to slip away
from their awkward first encounter with Woland, he begs “as a farewell request,
at least say you believe in the devil! I won’t ask anything more of you. Don’t
forget that there’s still the seventh proof-the soundest! And it’s just about
to be demonstrated to you!”[41]
Their
denial discomforts Woland, who seems to desire recognition from them. For their impudent atheism, Woland punishes
them. It was this punishment that he was
referring to as the seventh proof. Earlier
in their conversation, they had debated the various proofs for the existence of
God offered by Kant. Woland, now, is
about to prove something that he had asserted earlier: that man does not
control his own fate, but there is another who “rules the life of man and keeps
the world in order.”[42] This can be seen, then, as a twist on the old
trope the God of the Old Testament: the people of Israel turn away from Him,
and so He punishes them. Here, however,
the people of Moscow have not turned away from God only, but also from the
devil, and it is for this latter offense that each pays dearly (the clothes
that the women procured at the show, for instance, all disappeared off of their
bodies once they left the theater, rudely exposing the women—in their state of
nature—to the people of Moscow). While
in the Bible it was the devil seeking to distract people from God, here, the
devil, like God himself, desires to be recognized in his own right.
To return
to the Variety Theater, there are several other clues from Woland’s behavior
which help decode Bulgakov’s theology.
For instance, when he is evaluating people to see if they are as they
used to be, it seems that he is acting as a grand inquisitor, exposing the
inner state of Muscovites with his bizarre show. Woland’s testing draws an uncanny parallel to
the Old Testament book of Job. In the story, God allows the devil to test Job’s
devotion to God; indeed, no matter how the devil tortured Job by depriving him
of wealth, his family, and his health, Job held firm in his commitment to
God. The difference in the novel (in
addition to the fact that God is nowhere overtly present) is that when Woland
tests the Muscovites, luring them with money and luxuries, they do not hold
firm. They succumb to the tests and
prove to be every part as bad as expected, or as Woland says, “they are people
like people.”
The
problem with this correlation, however, is that while Job is an individual, the
Muscovites constitute a mass. The
question arises as to whether the Muscovites can undergo temptation in the same
way an individual can. The important point to gather in this analogy,
regardless of scale, is simply the role of the devil as tempter in the cosmic
scheme. In the Bible, God permits the
devil to try Job; in the novel, the devil simply tries a handful of the
Muscovites, seemingly of his own accord for his own purposes, without divine
permission. This creates a deep
imbalance in the novel, however, since the Muscovites only seem to have one
option: evil or evil. They cannot chose
between succumbing to the devil’s temptation and following God since the only
visible source of power is the devil. He
is the one wanting to be recognized and worshiped, and he is the one testing. Unlike Job, the Muscovites have no way out of
their trial. Woland searches the hearts
of the Muscovites, but there seems to be nothing good to which they could cling
that would keep them from falling into this evil. There is no reward for
remaining true, because there is nothing good to which they could remain
true. There is no God to turn to as an
alternative to sin. Woland seems to be
serving in the classic devilish role of tempter, but the key difference here is
that people seem to have no way of resisting his temptation.
Woland’s
image as a character replacing God in Moscow develops as the novel
progresses. In addition to appearing as
a figure desiring recognition and as an inquisitor, he next appears as one
capable of enacting resurrection from the dead.
At the great Satan ball, we see the dead materialize again from their
coffins, an image similar to that described in Ezekiel 37:1-14 in the Old
Testament. The prophet Ezekiel sees a
valley of dry bones, which by the power of God, turn to flesh in front of his
eyes—a frightening similarity to the perverted version in the novel. Whether or not Bulgakov had Ezekiel in mind,
he certainly had the resurrection of the body in mind—something Christ
promises—since the Ieshua character is such an important figure in the
novel. But while Christ promised to
restore our bodies and elevate them to glory, as discussed earlier, we see the
opposite in the novel. The only sort of
resurrection we see in the novel is that prompted by the devil himself as a
one-night respite from eternal torment in Hell, not a permanent restoration of
the body to paradise. Woland offers a
deceitful resurrection; he can raise the body, but what he raises it for pales in comparison to that aim for
which Christ promises to raise the body.
Woland’s resurrection is a mockery, not a realization of paradise.
After the
Satan ball, Woland appears in yet another function typically attributed to God:
he is a pardoner. Even though he jokes
about pardoning being “in another department,” he nonetheless releases Frieda
from her punishment per Margarita’s request.
In the Bible, even though Satan presides over punishment, he is the
torturer, not the judge. The question of
how the Master and Margarita’s fates are determined becomes even more
complicated. Up to this point, Woland
has filled some roles which traditionally God fulfills—he demands recognition,
he resurrects, and he pardons. But he
has also filled the traditional role of the devil by tempting people and
revealing their inner states of hopeless sin.
What does
it mean when mankind has no redeemer? When there is no clear line between light
and darkness? When the devil both tempts and punishes, but also resurrects?
Bulgakov was not merely tweaking the gospels, but foundationally reconstructing
all of Biblical theology into a system with different implications for mankind. According to The Master and Margarita there
is no ultimate standard of goodness, but a relative, negotiable spectrum. Sins are pardoned if done out of the right
motives (Margarita earned light despite her adulterous lifestyle with the
master since they were never officially married). Since there is no absolute goodness—as it
must have seemed when Bulgakov looked around him in the Soviet world—the best
people can do is to reconcile themselves with whatever power happens to exist
and cherish the people they love. Moreover,
while memories fade, and time seems even to play games by becoming cyclical
instead of linear, one thing remains: the written word. Therefore the Master’s project and Bulgakov’s
project was the same, to create a new tradition in which there would be no
condemnation and in which he could rationalize life in a cruel time.
[1]Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and the Margarita, trans.
Michael Glenny (The Harvill Press, London: 1967), 20.
[2]Ibid., 20
[3]Ibid., 286
[4]S. Lovell, “Bulgakov as Soviet
Culture,” in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 76, No. 1
(Jan., 1998), 30
[5]B. M. Gasparov, Iz nabludenii nad motivnoi strukturoi romana
M. A. Bulgakova “Master i Margarita” in Kafelralnaya
Biblioteka
[6]Ibid.
[7]Gareth Williams, “Some
Difficulties in the Interpretation of Bulgakov's ‘The Master and Margarita’ and
the Advantages of a Manichaean Approach, with Some Notes on Tolstoi's Influence
on the Novel,” in The Slavonic and East
European Review, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 234-256
[8]Val Bolen, “Theme and Coherence
in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,”
in The
Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1972), pp.
427-437
[9]Joan Delaney, “The Master and
Margarita: The Reach Exceeds the Grasp” in Slavic
Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 89-100.
[10]Master, 358
[11]Ibid., 19; Micah 2:5
[12]21; John 18:38
[13]Ibid., 21-22
[14]John 14:6
[15]Psalm 22
[16]Master, 180
[17]Ibid.,176
[18]Ibid.
[19]Ibid.
[20]N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers
Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 95
[21]A. C. Wright, “Satan in Moscow: An Approach to Bulgakov's
The Master and Margarita,” in PMLA , Vol. 88, No. 5 (Oct., 1973),
1164
[22]2 Corinthians 4:3-4
[23]1 John 5:17
[24]Master, 358
[25]Ibid.
[26]Ibid.
[27]Ibid., 378
[28]Ibid.
[29]Ibid.
[30]Acts 10:42
[31]Surprised by Hope, kindle edition, page
15, location 422 of 5741
[32]Ibid.
[33]Ibid., page 18, location 467 of 5741
[34]Master, 357
[35]Master, 24
[36]Ibid.
[37]Ibid., 125
[38]Williams, “Some Difficulties,”
242
[39]Master, 3
[40]Ibid., 42
[41]Ibid., 43
[42]Ibid., 10
Bibliography
Bolen,
Val, “Theme and Coherence in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,”
in The Slavic and East European Journal,
Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1972), pp. 427-437.
Bulgakov,
Mikhail, The Master and the Margarita, trans.
Michael Glenny (The Harvill Press, London: 1967).
Delaney,
Joan, “The Master and Margarita: The Reach Exceeds the Grasp” in Slavic Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar.,
1972), pp. 89-100.
Gasparov,
B. M., Iz nabludenii nad motivnoi
strukturoi romana M. A. Bulgakova “Master i Margarita” in Kafelralnaya Biblioteka.
Lovell,
S., “Bulgakov as Soviet Culture,” in The Slavonic and East European Review,
Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1998).
Williams,
Gareth, “Some Difficulties in the Interpretation of Bulgakov's ‘The Master and
Margarita’ and the Advantages of a Manichaean Approach, with Some Notes on
Tolstoi's Influence on the Novel,” in The
Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp.
234-256.
Wright,
A. C., “Satan in Moscow: An Approach to
Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,” in PMLA , Vol. 88, No. 5
(Oct., 1973).
Wright,
N. T., Evil and the Justice of God (Downers
Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
Wright,
N. T., Surprised by Hope: Rethinking
Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York:
HarperCollins, 2008). Kindle edition.
*Hannah Schneider - Is pursuing a degree in Russian Language and Literature as a 1789 Scholar at Georgetown University where her research has focused on terrorism in Russian literature, tropes of the Caucasus in Russian literature and film, and lately, new interpretations of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita
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