The Master and Margarita is the story of the Devil coming to Moscow during Stalin’s time, accompanied by his team of demons which includes a vodka-swilling, talking, enormous black cat; a fanged assassin; a beautiful, naked woman and an ex-choirmaster. They wreak havoc on the city and its residents by appealing to their vanity and greed.
In parallel runs the story of The Master, a struggling author whose real name is never revealed and who now resides in a mental asylum; and his long lost lady love, Margarita, who becomes a witch and accompanies the Devil to a ball in order to get him to reunite her with The Master. We also get to read the Master’s unpublished masterpiece; an account of Jesus Christ’s final days from the point of view of Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator of Judaea who sentences Jesus to his death.
Bulgakov had a lot of trouble with the stifling Stalin regime. The Soviet Union of the 1930’s was when the Secret Police executed or locked up thousands of people on the barest of evidenc, and the government maintained a strict control on foreign nationals, currency, literature and art. Bulgakov’s plays were banned, publishers refused to publish his work, and he couldn’t emigrate out of Russia. He once burned the first few chapters of his unfinished book, not unlike the protagonist of his novel, before deciding to rewrite the entire thing. Even though the novel was finished in 1940, it could only be published in 1966, 26 years after his death.
This novel is an act of rebellion symbolized by the often-quoted “Manuscripts don’t burn”; which expresses the faith in the triumph of literature, of art, of creativity over oppression. The reader is forced to wonder why the context of The master’s novel deals with the last few days of Jesus Christ’s life; when they could have been about anything at all. It seems to refer to the state-sponsored “Godlessness” of the time, when religion was practically banned, and the incorrect portrayals of Christ in all the anti-religious propaganda. The book opens with a conversation between an editor and a poet over whether Jesus was real or fictitious, when the Devil (who calls himself Woland) joins in and expresses surprise at their lack of belief. And since the supernatural doesn’t exist in atheist Russia, all the mischief that the demons work just cannot be explained and leaves everyone confounded.
But the novel can easily be read without considering its historical and political context. Bulgakov’s style is simply delightful. The accounts of Woland and his retinue taking over the city are hysterically funny. The demons aren’t just plain evil, but have a lot of personality. They are clever and witty, and Bulgakov’s imagination runs wild in his very inventive depictions of how the residents are manipulated, spirited away, humiliated or killed. The demons also display ‘good’ characteristics like sympathy and fairness, and by the end, the author hints at the Devil being in league with God, like two sides of the same coin. The narrative abruptly translates between the satire of the demonic gang chapters, to the descriptive account of the Pontius Pilate story along with his despair and reluctance, and the complex emotions of Margarita and the Master. The adventures of Woland’s henchmen provide comic relief when juxtaposed with the seriousness of the other two narratives. In the dealings of The Devil with Margarita and her Master, complex moral issues on cowardice and justice are explored.
Ignoring the historical context however robs you of many layers of the book. The juxtaposition of political and theological satire with romance as well as exuberant hilarity makes for a very unique book. This book for me gave a whole new dimension to ‘unputdownable’. It was unputdownable not because of the thrill or the suspense, but simply because it was just too enjoyable.
Apoorv Gupta
2007ME20563
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is considered one of the best and most highly regarded novels to come out of Russia during the Soviet era. The book weaves together satire and realism, art and religion, history and contemporary social values. It features three story lines. The main story, taking place in Russia of the 1930s, concerns a visit by the devil, referred to as Professor Woland, and four of his assistants during Holy Week; they use black magic to play tricks on those who cross their paths. Another story line features the Master, who has been languishing in an insane asylum, and his love, Margarita, who seeks Woland's help in being reunited with the Master. A third story, which is presented as a novel written by the Master, depicts the crucifixion of Yeshua Ha-Notsri, or Jesus Christ, by Pontius Pilate.
ReplyDeleteUsing the fantastic elements of the story, Bulgakov takes a jab at the greed and corruption of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which people's actions were controlled as well as their perceptions of reality. In contrast, he uses a realistic style in telling the story of Yeshua. The holy life led by Christ in this book is more ordinary than the miraculous one told in the Scriptures. Because the book derides government bureaucracy and corruption, the manuscript of The Master and Margarita was hidden for over twenty years, until the more lenient Khrushchev government allowed its publication.
Abhishek Bhatnagar
2007EE10314
Mam, some how i am not able to post my review here. Theres some problem in the subscription, so I am posting my Book review here only (Apoorv: hope you dont mind brother!)
ReplyDeleteShort Stories by Joseph Conrad
The Informer
The story runs in the background of anarchism against established social order that existed in Europe in 18th century and of the revolutionary activities that were taking place at that time.
The author writes about a man, very tastefully named Mr. X, who collects a very rare and exquisite form of collectables - temperaments and behavior of extremely well known, famous and wealthy people, people who are respected in their fields of work, rather almost every one who is worth knowing for their work. The author himself is Chinese porcelain collector. But in the course of the novel the author writes about the enigmatic persona of this Mr. X in a way that it makes you wonder whether the author himself has started to play the role of Mr. X by writing the story about his acquaintance Mr. X (as Mr. X was supposed to be man who would notice the personalities of people he met).
Mr. X was also a revolutionary writer, writer of anarchism, essentially an anarchist himself. On their last encounter Mr. X recounts a breath-taking incident in his life as a revolutionary activist. Mr. X was asked to visit London once by his revolutionary friends as many of the plans that had been hatched in their London head office had gone wrong, awry and police had smoothly arrested and intercepted the revolutionist movements. It was suspected that there was a mole in the London chapter of revolutionary activities.
Mr. X understood the predicament in which he was in as soon as he reached there. Because not only was it important to find the mole in the organization but it was also important not to create an atmosphere of suspicion and down the motivation and raging enthusiasm of some of the true activists working from there.
The hideout was a pretty ideal place for activities. It was in a rather well known and respected street. The hideout was the house of a government official, or rather it was house of his daughter and son, a perfect cover for such a place. When Mr. X went there he met the owner of the house (daughter). She was a woman, who would put a great effort into exerting her own individuality, but then that was the case for every woman, but this woman was not afraid to go to extreme measures to be a part of the anarchist movement and yet make herself visible and do things in her own way. She had a comrade Sevrin and the person in-charge of the entire London operation was Horne, a true revolutionist. It was very clear that she was in love with Sevrin by the intense and earnest conversations that they would indulge themselves into. Mr. X planned a sham police raid into the hideout and it was expected that the mole would chicken out or at least show less adverse reactions and maintain calm. During the course of the raid Mr. X is not able to find out the real mole, all the revolutionists tried to escape and adopted extreme ways of running away, a few of them even threatened to blow up the entire building and just as the operation was about to go bust, the daughter owning the house came in and Sevrin ordered the sham police to take woman out of the house to safety and then continue their raid, effectively exposing him as the mole. When he was exposed he admitted to his real identity of being a police spy, and as it turned it was his love for the woman that lead his guard down and forced him out. Even so till the end he remained anti-revolutionist and maintained full conviction in his cause.
The story turned out to be a love story which had everything in it, secrets, love, deceit and tragedy. But Mr X had completed his job, which was where he ended his story. The author never met Mr. X ever again but admired the man as someone who was unique, firm and a rare jewel for his ideology, beliefs, experience and intelligence.
Amy Foster
ReplyDeleteIn "Amy Foster", Joseph Conrad has written a great story that shows the different types of love felt between Amy and Yanko.
An unnamed narrator recalls a time several years earlier, when he was staying with his friend Kennedy, a country doctor in the English coastal village of Colebrook, near Brenzett. One day as he accompanied the doctor on his afternoon rounds, they came upon a dull-looking woman named Amy Foster, who was hanging out her wash. Kennedy asked after her son's health. As he continued his rounds, he told the narrator about this woman's recent life.
Although Kennedy agreed that the woman looked passive and inert, he confided that this same woman once had enough imagination to fall in love. As Kennedy explained, Amy seemed satisfied with this drab life until she unexpectedly fell in love.
Yanko began his courtship of Amy with a present of a green satin ribbon, and he persisted in spite of the warnings and threats of the townspeople. After Yanko asked for Amy's hand, Mr. Swaffer gave them a cottage and an acre of land—the same land that Kennedy and the narrator passed during their rounds—in gratitude for saving his granddaughter from drowning.
After Amy bore Yanko's son, Yanko told Kennedy about problems that he was having with Amy. One day, for example, she took their boy from his arms when he was singing to him in his own language. She also stopped him from teaching the boy how to pray in his own language. Yanko still believed that Amy had a good heart, but Kennedy wondered if the differences between them would eventually ruin their marriage.
After breaking off this story, Kennedy said that the next time he saw Yanko, the man had serious lung trouble brought on by a harsh winter. When Kennedy treated Yanko, he was lying on a couch downstairs, suffering from fever and muttering in his native tongue. Kennedy asked Amy to move Yanko upstairs to get him away from the drafty door, but she refused. Kennedy saw fear in her eyes but had to leave to treat his other patients. That night Yanko's fever worsened. Perhaps thinking he was speaking in English, he demanded water, but Amy could not understand him. As his demands increased in intensity, she took her child to her family's farm three miles away.
The tragedy of Yanko Goorall probes the modernist theme of isolation and alienation. This idea also figures prominently in Joseph Conrad's major works. Yanko is an unwilling loner whose free and easy nature undergoes repeated assaults until even the only person who has offered him love abandons him at the moment of his greatest need. His first ordeal was physical confinement in crowded trains, the boxlike berths aboard a ship, and the dungeon like lodge at New Barns.
Kennedy senses, however, that Yanko's most painful ordeal is his verbal and psychological confinement. He notes that “an overwhelming loneliness seemed to fall from the leaden sky of that winter without sunshine. He could talk to no one, and had no hope of ever understanding anybody.” The story repeatedly contrasts Yanko's nobility with the prejudice and insensibility of the townspeople, whose rejection intensifies his feelings of estrangement. Amy's father, for example, opposed Yanko's marriage partly because he heard him mutter to himself in his native language. Told by Kennedy that Yanko was dead, the father responded with indifference: “I don’t know that it isn’t for the best.”
The Idiots
ReplyDeleteThe story is about an unfortunate family who has seen some of the most tragic incidents in time. In this story a concept of idiot child has been introduced. Its a condition in which child is inert to every feeling and sensation. The child doesn’t recognize its own parents, or develops any skills or intelligence. The family is an agrarian family which feeds itself from the crops it is able to sell. Jean is the only son in the family. He grows young and marries a beautiful woman Susan. In the beginning everyone is happy about the communion of the two but tragedy soon strikes. Their first children are twins and soon the couple realizes that both of them are idiot. They don’t cry, aren't playful and dont indulge in any other activity what so ever. Susan is humiliated in the society and is nicknamed the idiot mother. Jean is tense not only about the fact that his children are idiot but more so about the fact that his agricultural lands would fall into somebody elses hands as his own children weren't capable of working as farmers. Jean and Susan subsequently decide to have another child. It was a boy and he also turned out to be idiot. The muteness in the activities of the idiot children is brought out tellingly in the story. The grief is generally accompanied by enormous ridicule from the society. Seeing this Jean who is an atheist converts. Jean still doesn't lose hope and tries for another child. This time its a girl, and Jean is able to reconcile himself that he might be able to marry her to a sound and able-bodied man who would then take care of his fields. But the girl is also an idiot. Jean is enraged and questions the very womanhood of Susan and how was she able to keep producing children who were stupid. Susan is put through enormous stress and torture until a time when she is not able to take it anymore. One day Jean once again physically assaults his wife but this time in reaction his wife thrusts a pair scissors into Jeans throat, He falls on the floor and dies. Tragedy follows yet again when ghost of her deceased husband haunts her and she horrified gets herself in a tricky situation and dies in an accident, The story is basically about grief and also that how if one doesn't stand up to the situation fate has to offer it can become a cause of his own peril. Also its a bad example of parenting because it seems that they both give up on their children as soon as they see signs of them being idiot. The story also ends in a sad not when the children are transferred to their grandparents who then selves are finding hard to get by in their life, and the plot is given to some random catholic who is unrelated to the family.
Abhishek Bhatnagar
2007EE10314
Again sorry for the inconvenience!!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@abhishek: little hyperlink on the top right hand corner called NEW POST
ReplyDeleteI love the picture Apoorv! How in the world did you find that picture of Shashi Kapoor? Very www.cracked.com, I must say!
Taking a cue from what you said in my own book review (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler), I am going to come out and say it straight and simple; though this does not mean I agree with the rest of your rant; this book was weird. It was plain ridiculous at some points, like when Margarita goes flying in the nude over the streets of Moscow. Or when that guy is turned into a pig and Margarita’s servant follows her flying the man-pig, again in the nude.
It’s just random weird stuff! You say that he is criticizing the Moscow literary circles and the Moscow public, but how else would any community, sane or not, have dealt with demons in disguise offering free designer clothes and banishing clerks thousands of kilometers away. He is criticizing the government’s stifling of religious expression…. By narrating true accounts from the Bible??? Just doesn’t make sense…
The demons having fun with the Muscovites was entertaining. The religion part was basically a repeat of what I’d seen in “the Passion of The Christ”. Bulgakov came before Mel Gibson, but I’m sure that Christians would know the whole story. And the love story between Master and Margarita is nothing striking.
Mixing them and juxtaposing them does nothing except leave the reader confused and exasperated. This is possibly the most overrated book I have come across.
Unputdownable! Really? Reeeealllly? You hypocrite! After all the crap you commented on my own post!
Anirudh Mendiratta
2007PH10596