~ Sunday, April 12, 12:00 AM ~
"But I don't want comfort. I want God,
I want poetry, I want real danger,
I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Aldous Huxley ~ Brave New World
I live in a family of Huxley fans who have yet to enjoy one of my all - time favorite novels, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. To get them started, I shared as a counterpoint to Huxley's quotation, the discussion of Peace vs Light, that occurs near the end of the novel, after Jesus reads the Master's manuscript and determines his eternal reward.
On an errand from Jesus, St. Matthew speaks to Satan: "'He [Jesus] has read the Master's work and asks you to take the Master with you and reward him with peace. Is that hard for you to do, spirit of evil?'As you can imagine, there is a lot of literary analysis on the topic of why the Master & Margarita deserve peace [comfort] instead of light. But obviously it is seen as a sad outcome & a lesser reward than light -- and all the other things that Huxley mentions: God, poetry, danger, freedom, goodness, sin.
"'Nothing is hard for me to do,' answered Woland [Satan], 'You know that very well.' He was silent for a while, and added: 'But why don't you take him with you, into the light?'
"'He has not earned light, he earned peace,' Matthew said in a sorrowful voice.
"'Tell him it will be done,' Woland replied."
Significantly, in the context of the novel, it's not so much a battle of good (Jesus) AGAINST evil (Satan), but more like Good & Evil (the characters of Yeshua & Woland) working together AGAINST cynicism, skepticism, and stupidity.
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Between The Master and Margarita -- the perfect novel for Holy Week -- and Jesus Christ Superstar, I've sort of put together my own version of the Life of Christ that I carry around inside my head. Every now and then, I have to remind myself that it's not entirely biblical. On the other hand, much of it is!
From the Reddit thread:
ReplyDeleteIn Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita why does the Master deserve peace but not light.
In chapter 29 of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Matthew Levi is sent to ask Woland to take the lives of the master and his beloved in order to reward him with peace. From the Pevear, Volokhonsky translation:
'He has read the master's work', said Matthew Levi, 'and asks you take the master with you and reward him with peace. Is that hard for you to do, spirit of evil?' ' Nothing is hard for me to do,' answered Woland, 'You know that very well.' He paused and added: 'But why don't you take him with you into the light?'
'He does not deserve the light, he deserves peace,' Levi said in a sorrowful voice. ' Tell him it will be done,' Woland replied...
Within this context and the context of the book as a whole, why is it that the master deserves peace but not light? I have read this book twice and i still struggle to understand the meaning of these words. I feel that this sentence is one of great importance within the work as a whole. On what criteria is the master judged not to deserve light and what deeper meaning could one draw from this portion of the text? The character of the master seems to me to be in many ways a portrait of Bulgakov himself. Is this just a projection of some personal feeling of Bulgakov? Religion was obviously of a great deal of importance to him so to my mind this might make sense.
If you read M & M as an anti-Stalinist work, as Vladimir Lakshin does, for example, you could interpret the Master as a figure so destroyed by the anxieties of the purges that he no longer even longs for light, only for peace. (He and Pontius Pilate both say that line about "Even in the moonlight I have no peace.") In that reading, he is simply too broken even to strive for more, while Pilate never stops desiring another encounter with Yeshua.
If you set up a contrast between the Master's passive withdrawal and burning of his own manuscript and Margarita's strength and willingness to embrace any chance at saving him, the peace is a mild condemnation, or perhaps just not full praise, for a figure who has withdrawn from the world and from his artistic potential. Liudmila Skorino was an early critic to talk about the Master's (and Yeshua's ) passivity, though I believe she read passivity and inactivity as ideals promoted in the novel, and thus found it to be anti-Soviet.
You could attack this through the lens of dark/light imagery, and of the potential need for shadow to appreciate light, presented in the chapter "The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided." They've ended up somewhere in between, not punished exactly for consorting with the devil, but not allowed to walk the path with Yeshua either.
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ReplyDeleteA final option, that I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of but that I don't have a citation for, is to think about how Bulgakov is playing with conventions of socialist realism, the standards for official literature at the time he wrote M & M. I'm going to post this and write you a separate little blurb on soc realism in a minute.
Socialist realism was established as the official soviet literary style at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. One word that gets associated with it a lot is teleology, i.e. having an end point, showing progression toward an end. When you read a work of socialist realist literature, you should see how the characters and plot are part of the historical development towards communism, fitting into a larger picture of progress towards a definite goal.
You can see that in the definition from 1934:
Socialist Realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.
Of course, socialist realism isn't the only kind of teleological literature. Christian literature is, too, because we see events as they lead towards salvation and towards the second coming of Christ.
So, if Bulgakov (or the Master!) writes a novel that subverts the official soviet style and values, but plugs in a Christian/salvific ending, we'd still have a teleological narrative. That's not necessarily bad, because you can take the similar narrative forms and contrast them thematically: interest in individuals versus the collective, withdrawal and inactivity versus shared activity to build communism, belief versus atheism, etc.
But Bulgakov goes another step and kind of subverts both of those expected forms--there is a path leading somewhere higher, but not everyone goes to heaven or hell, and the Master and Margarita kind of choose their way right off the map, not fitting neatly into any framework. And that lets him avoid resolving any of the moral or political questions of the novel in an overly neat manner. I always find profound ambiguity in ending of the novel: relief and peace, but not without a sense of irretrievable loss and narrative potentials closed.
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ReplyDeleteSo that's what I've got on the question, but lots of critics have written brilliantly about the novel, so, if you're really interested, I'd suggest reading some criticism. I read a book on the novel that I really liked at one point that I believe was Andrew Barratt's Between two worlds: A critical introduction to The Master and Margarita.
It should be noted that M & M is hardly an anti-Stalinist work though... Moreover, there's plenty of evidence of it being not just pro-Stalinist, but written specifically for Stalin's personal tastes, its message being, essentially, "Do whatever you want with the plebs, but conserve the artist". Giving the Master peace, of all things, is very much in line with it.
It is difficult to talk about the religiosity of Bulgakov. He was from orthodox family (his grandfather was a priest, his father was teacher in religius school), but neither publicly nor in other works he shows any kind of religiosity. The Orthodox Church criticizes the "Master and Margarita" and even calls the Master's novel "The Gospel of Satan." On my opinion the Devil and Jesus in the novel are primarily cultural phenomena and together are opposed to the atheism of the other characters, which is not because of lack of religiosity but the lack of culture. It is no accident that the name Woland comes from Goethe's Faust. Therefore, light and peace should not be understood in terms of religion, but in terms of culture. It is not so important that the Master contacted the devil, it is not so important that he had a relationship with a married woman, it is important that he burned the novel. Therefore, he does not deserve the light. And I like the version that Bulgakov did not want the novel to be published, i.e. came to light.
Note to self:
ReplyDeleteSomething About the Epsilons in BRAVE NEW WORLD