The Master and Margarita

Summary

The Master and Margarita interweaves two stories: the visit of the Devil to Soviet Moscow in the 1930s and a novel about Pontius Pilate written by an unnamed author known as the Master. On a hot spring evening at Patriarch's Ponds, the literary bureaucrat Mikhail Berlioz and the young poet Ivan Bezdomny are discussing the non-existence of Jesus when a mysterious foreigner joins them. He is Woland, a 'professor of black magic', who tells them that Jesus existed and that Berlioz will have his head cut off that evening. He begins to narrate Pilate's interrogation of the wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Notsri in Jerusalem. Berlioz slips on spilt sunflower oil and is decapitated by a tram. Ivan, chasing Woland and his retinue, Koroviev, the giant talking cat Behemoth and the fanged Azazello, ends up in Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic, raving about the devil. Woland's gang then unleashes chaos: they take over Berlioz's flat, stage a black-magic show at the Variety Theatre where money rains from the ceiling and dresses vanish, and expose the greed, cowardice and corruption of Moscow's officials, theatre managers and housing committees. In the clinic, Ivan meets his neighbour, the Master, a former historian who wrote a novel about Pilate. Its rejection and vicious denunciation by critics drove him to burn the manuscript and, in fear and despair, to the clinic; he has abandoned his lover Margarita. Part Two follows Margarita, a married woman who has never stopped loving the Master. Azazello offers her a magic cream that turns her into a flying witch, and she agrees to serve as hostess at Satan's great spring ball, greeting a procession of famous murderers and poisoners. In reward, Woland grants her wish: the Master is returned to her, along with his burned manuscript, for manuscripts do not burn. Interleaved chapters complete the Pilate story: Pilate, suffering a crippling headache, is drawn to Yeshua, who cures it and speaks of the goodness of all people, but he lacks the courage to save him; after the crucifixion he arranges the murder of the informer Judas and is condemned to centuries of remorse. At the end Woland's party leaves Moscow. Through Matthew Levi, Yeshua asks that the Master be granted not light but peace. The Master and Margarita die in Moscow and ride with Woland to an eternal refuge; the Master releases Pilate to walk up the moonbeam to Yeshua. In the Epilogue, the authorities explain everything as mass hypnosis, and Ivan, now a historian, is troubled every spring full moon by dreams.

Plot or Argument

• Part One, Ch. 1–4: Patriarch's Ponds

  Woland meets Berlioz and Ivan, begins the Pilate story, and predicts Berlioz's death, which follows; Ivan pursues the strangers.

• Part One, Ch. 5–12: Moscow in chaos

  Ivan is committed to Stravinsky's clinic; Woland's retinue seizes the flat and stages the Variety Theatre show.

• Part One, Ch. 13–18: the Master

  In the clinic Ivan meets the Master and hears his story; further scandals spread through Moscow institutions.

• Part Two, Ch. 19–24: Margarita and the ball

  Margarita becomes a witch, takes revenge on the critic Latunsky, hosts Satan's ball, and wins back the Master and his manuscript.

• Pilate chapters (Ch. 2, 16, 25, 26)

  Pilate's interrogation of Yeshua, the crucifixion, Aphranius' murder of Judas, and Matthew Levi's parchment.

• Part Two, Ch. 27–32: departure

  Woland's gang leaves Moscow; the Master and Margarita are granted peace; Pilate is released.

• Epilogue

  Official explanations of mass hypnosis; Ivan's yearly full-moon dreams.

Characters

• Woland, Satan

  Mysterious foreign professor of black magic who exposes Moscow's vices.

• The Master, author

  Former historian whose novel about Pilate was destroyed by critics, ending in the psychiatric clinic.

• Margarita, the Master's lover

  Courageous woman who becomes a witch and Satan's hostess to rescue him.

• Ivan Bezdomny, poet

  Young proletarian poet who witnesses Berlioz's death and is committed to the clinic.

• Mikhail Berlioz, editor

  Atheist literary official decapitated by a tram.

• Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea

  Ruler plagued by headaches and cowardice who condemns Yeshua.

• Yeshua Ha-Notsri, wandering philosopher

  Bulgakov's version of Jesus, gentle and believing all people good.

• Koroviev (Fagot), Woland's retinue

  Lanky ex-choirmaster in a cracked pince-nez.

• Behemoth, Woland's retinue

  Huge, chess-playing, vodka-drinking black cat.

• Azazello, Woland's retinue

  Fanged demon who brings Margarita the cream.

• Professor Stravinsky, psychiatrist

  Head of the clinic where Ivan and the Master are confined.

• Matthew Levi, Yeshua's disciple

  Former tax collector who records Yeshua's words.

Lessons

• Cowardice is the worst vice

  Pilate's failure to save Yeshua, and the Master's flight from persecution, show how fear corrupts the conscience. The novel treats moral courage as the rarest and most necessary virtue.

  • Why does Pilate not save Yeshua?
  • Is the Master guilty of cowardice too?
  • How does Margarita's courage contrast with the men's?

• Art survives oppression

  The burned manuscript is restored, and the novel itself survived its author's lifetime of censorship. Bulgakov asserts that true art cannot be destroyed by persecution.

  • What does it mean that 'manuscripts do not burn'?
  • How does the novel portray literary critics and institutions?

• Satire through the supernatural

  Woland's tricks expose greed, vanity and pretence in Bulgakov's Moscow. The devil becomes an instrument of justice where human institutions fail.

  • Is Woland evil?
  • Which institutions does the novel satirize most sharply?

Context

Set in Stalin's Moscow of the 1930s, a period of militant atheism, housing shortages, show trials, informing and literary control by bureaucratic organizations. Bulgakov's own plays were banned, and he famously appealed directly to Stalin in 1930.

Composition

Bulgakov began the novel around 1928, burned an early draft in 1930, and revised it until shortly before his death in March 1940, dictating final changes to his wife Elena Sergeyevna. A censored version appeared in the journal Moskva in 1966–1967; uncensored editions followed abroad and, in 1973, in the Soviet Union.

Reception

Its publication caused a sensation, and it quickly became one of the most beloved Russian novels of the twentieth century, inspiring music (including the Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil'), theatre and film. Its phrases entered Russian speech.

Comparisons

• we

  Two Soviet-era masterpieces suppressed in their authors' lifetimes, one dystopian, one fantastical, both defending the individual against the collective.

• candide

  Both use absurd episodes and a wandering, external perspective to satirize society and its ideologies.

• the-bible

  Bulgakov rewrites the Gospel Passion narrative through Pilate's eyes, departing from it in pointed ways.

• macbeth

  Both portray a ruler's guilt-haunted conscience; Pilate's centuries of remorse and Macbeth's sleeplessness are punishments of the mind.

• white-nights

  Two visions of the Russian city at night under the moon, one sentimental, one demonic.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The epigraph from Goethe's Faust, in which Mephistopheles describes himself as part of a power that always wills evil and always works good. Test it against everything Woland does in Moscow.
• The conversation at Patriarch's Ponds in Chapter 1, where Berlioz explains to Ivan why Jesus never existed, the stranger asks about Kant's proofs of God, and Woland predicts that a woman named Annushka has already spilled the sunflower oil.
• The sudden shift in Chapter 2 from Moscow comedy to a sober, almost documentary Jerusalem, where Pilate's headache, his dog Banga, and his questioning of Yeshua are told in a completely different style. Track how the Pilate chapters (2, 16, 25, 26) interrupt and comment on the Moscow plot.
• The black-magic show at the Variety Theatre in Chapter 12, where money falls from the ceiling and the women's new clothes later vanish. Notice what each trick reveals about the people in the audience.
• Margarita's one request after Satan's ball in Chapters 23 and 24. Before asking for the Master she spends her wish on Frida, the woman at the ball who has been tormented for years by the handkerchief she used to smother her child.

Key terms and names

Woland

The name under which Satan appears in Moscow, posing as a foreign professor of black magic. He punishes greed and lying among the city's officials and treats the Master and Margarita with unexpected respect.

Yeshua Ha-Notsri

Bulgakov's version of Jesus in the Master's novel: a gentle, wandering philosopher from Gamala who tells Pilate that all people are good and who cures his headache. He differs in many details from the Gospel accounts.

MASSOLIT

The Moscow literary association headed by Berlioz, whose members dine at Griboyedov House and judge writing by its political usefulness. Its critics, especially Latunsky, are the ones who destroy the Master's novel.

Patriarch's Ponds

The Moscow park where the novel opens and where Berlioz dies under a tram. It is the place where the Moscow story and the Jerusalem story first meet.

Satan's Great Ball

The midnight ball in Chapter 23 at which Margarita, as hostess, receives a procession of famous poisoners, murderers and traitors risen from the dead. Her endurance there earns her Woland's reward.

Matthew Levi

Yeshua's disciple, a former tax collector, who follows him with a goatskin parchment and records his words inaccurately. In Chapter 29 he comes to Woland as Yeshua's messenger to ask that the Master be given peace.

Aphranius

Pilate's head of secret service, who arranges the murder of Judas of Kiriath after the crucifixion in a scene of quiet, coded conversation that echoes the methods of Bulgakov's own Moscow.

Peace and light

The two possible rewards in the novel's ending. The Master is granted peace in an eternal refuge with Margarita, not light, and the difference is one of the most argued-over points in the book.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What are Berlioz and Ivan discussing when the stranger sits down beside them at Patriarch's Ponds, and what does Woland predict?
2. Comprehension Why is the Master in Stravinsky's clinic, and what happened to his novel about Pontius Pilate?
3. Comprehension What does Pilate do after the crucifixion to the informer Judas, and how does he arrange it without ever giving a direct order?
4. Interpretation Woland's gang mostly punishes bribe-takers, liars, informers and grasping officials. Is Woland a figure of evil, of justice, or something the novel never fully defines?
5. Interpretation Yeshua is reported to have said that cowardice is the worst of vices. Who in the novel is guilty of cowardice, in Jerusalem and in Moscow, and is the Master among them?
6. Interpretation Margarita uses her single wish to free Frida rather than to recover the Master. What does this choice show about her, and how does Woland respond to it?
7. Interpretation Why is the Master granted peace rather than light, and what has he done or failed to do that might explain the difference?
8. Big Question Woland argues with Matthew Levi that good could not be seen without evil, as a world without shadows would be bare. Does evil serve the good in the end, as the epigraph claims, or does that idea excuse too much?

Faith Connections

• John 18:28-19:16 (Scripture)

  John's account of Pilate's questioning of Jesus, including the exchange about truth and Pilate's repeated attempts to release him, is the source Bulgakov reworks in Chapter 2. Comparing the two shows what the novel keeps, such as Pilate's fear for his own position, and what it changes, such as Yeshua's single follower Matthew Levi in place of the Twelve and the absence of miracles beyond the cured headache.

• Job 1-2 (Scripture)

  Satan acts in Job only within limits God sets, and Woland likewise acts in Moscow on terms that Yeshua's messenger can address. The novel's devil is under a higher authority, though Bulgakov leaves the nature of that authority mysterious.

• Augustine, Enchiridion 11 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine teaches that God, being supremely good, would not permit any evil in his works unless he were able to bring good even out of evil. Woland's argument with Matthew Levi in Chapter 29 sounds similar but makes evil necessary to the good, and students can test where the two positions part.

• Goethe, Faust, Part One, the scene in Faust's study (Great Conversation)

  Mephistopheles introduces himself to Faust with the words Bulgakov uses as his epigraph. In Goethe the devil seeks to win a soul, while Woland seeks none; comparing them shows how far Bulgakov has moved his devil toward the role of judge.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A society that denies the existence of God and the devil still lives among greed, cowardice and fear; when the supernatural enters it, those vices are exposed, and those who know the truth, Pilate in Jerusalem and the Master in Moscow, are tested by whether they will stand by it; since cowardice in the face of power is what condemns Pilate and breaks the Master, while courageous love is what saves Margarita and through her the Master, the novel concludes that courage, mercy and faithful love outlast the political orders that persecute them.

Rhetorical device: frame narrative (a novel within a novel). The Pilate chapters are presented in turn as Woland's eyewitness story (Chapter 2), Ivan's dream (Chapter 16), and the Master's restored manuscript as read by Margarita (Chapters 25-26). Each frame raises the question of who authored the truth, and the rescued manuscript in Chapter 24 lets the inner novel survive its burning.

Debate: Resolved: Woland is a servant of justice rather than an agent of evil.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Pilate and the Master both fail through fear, and both are released in the final chapters. Trace the theme of cowardice through the Jerusalem and Moscow plots and argue what Bulgakov suggests about whether such failures can be forgiven, and by whom.

Comparison with The Brothers Karamazov: Ivan Karamazov's Grand Inquisitor and his visiting devil, and Bulgakov's Woland and Pilate, both stage meetings between Christ and earthly or demonic power. Compare one such scene from each novel and argue which book gives the stronger account of why human beings fear freedom and truth.

Medical Lens

Bulgakov was a physician, and the novel is full of medicine. Professor Stravinsky's clinic, modelled on modern Soviet psychiatric hospitals, is portrayed with surprising humanity, though it also serves to neutralize witnesses to the inexplicable; the novel's treatment of 'madness' as the only sane response to an irrational reality anticipates Soviet punitive psychiatry, and Ivan's diagnosis is presented ironically. The Master's anxiety, fear of the dark and despair after persecution, and his voluntary entry into the clinic, read as a portrait of breakdown under political terror; avoid confident diagnosis. Pilate's hemicrania, a disabling one-sided headache cured by Yeshua's attention, is among literature's best-known migraines. Satan's ball parades historic poisoners. Bulgakov's own history of morphine dependence, explored in his story 'Morphine', and his death from nephrosclerosis are relevant biographical context.

• Part One, Ch. 2

  Pilate suffers an excruciating hemicrania during the interrogation; Yeshua perceives it and it lifts.

  PainPhysicians Doctors
• Part One, Ch. 6–8

  Ivan's arrival at the clinic in his underwear, his sedation, and his interview with Professor Stravinsky.

  Asylum InstitutionMadness PsychosisPhysicians Doctors
• Part One, Ch. 13

  The Master tells Ivan of his novel's persecution, his fear, the burning of the manuscript and his flight to the clinic.

  Neurosis AnxietyMelancholia DepressionAsylum Institution
• Part Two, Ch. 23

  Satan's ball: Margarita receives a procession of poisoners and murderers from history.

  Pharmacology PoisonsDeath Dying
• Epilogue

  Ivan, now a professor, is restless at each spring full moon, dreams of Pilate, and is calmed by an injection from his wife.

  Dreams NightmaresSleep Insomnia

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  How does Bulgakov's medical training shape his portrayal of Professor Stravinsky and the clinic?

• Fiction

  Write the clinic's case notes on Ivan Bezdomny's admission.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Pilate and the Master on the moonlit path.

Further Reading

• A Country Doctor's Notebook, Mikhail Bulgakov

  Stories from his rural medical practice, including 'Morphine'.

• Heart of a Dog, Mikhail Bulgakov

  Satire on a surgical experiment.

• Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Source of the novel's epigraph and its Mephistophelean devil.

• Psychiatric Terror, Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway

  On Soviet political abuse of psychiatry.