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Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 21.41-42 (2004): 195-210 The Devil and the Revolutionaries The devils have struck again in Moscow, as Russian director Vladimir Bortko, an artist who has already successfully screened The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov, starts filming The Master and Margarita. The first Russian film version of the famous novel seems like good news. Nevertheless, the devils play havoc again. Nick Paton Walsh announces that “Filming of ‘Fifth Gospel’ Raises Russian Ire,” and that “Russia's Orthodox church has reacted with dismay” to the project.[1] PetersburgCity.com[2] states that actor Oleg Yankovsky has refused to play the devil's part because “he did not know how to approach his character, but more importantly because a human being can't possibly portray either God or the devil.” Alexander Kalyagin, who had been invited to play Berlioz's role – the only character irrevocably punished by the devil, and who is warned of the imminent demonic epiphany by the fact that “his heart pounded and stopped beating for a second, then started up again, but with a blunt needle lodged inside it” (4)[3] – also declined, reportedly after a heart attack. Composer Andrei Petrov, the author of the symphonic fantasy and one-act ballet The Master and Margarita, who at some point was also supposed to collaborate on the film, concludes: “Many people advised the director not to touch the “diabolic matters,” or “deal with supernatural forces,” perhaps because they were superstitious. They were saying that something strange that makes you scared and sends shivers down your spine surrounds the novel. Several actors have refused to star in the film for that very prejudice.” Is this the new curse of the pharaohs? Bulgakov’s exegetes have repeatedly tried to trace Bulgakov's heretical background (with few voices arguing for the novel's orthodoxy),[4] and have largely downplayed the gothic quality emphasized by Petrov; yet The Master and Margarita appeals to (and frightens) orthodox Russia. Surprisingly, however, the dismay of the Russian Orthodox Church is not as great as Walsh suggests, and is directed rather against Bortko’s approach than against the book itself. Walsh quotes reactions of Orthodox officials: one (anonymous) who declares that icons, not films, should interpret the Gospel, and Father Mikhail Dudko, who regards Bulgakov as a “‘genius,’ [end page 195] son of a theology professor, and [who] could not himself be considered ‘anti-Christian.’” Nevertheless, Father Dudko is afraid that “the ideas of the novel will be lost or made primitive,” since “the text of Bulgakov is full of points which contemporary people, especially non-believers, will find very difficult to understand.” The criticism seems to be directed to Bortko, who chose to apply a very literal reading of the novel: “As Bulgakov did, we speak about Yeshua, not Jesus; about Ershalaim, not Jerusalem; and so on. The film has nothing to do with a religious subject.”[5] His comment that Bulgakov used “a divorce-from-reality assumption,”[6] is painstakingly removed from the interpretation of the novel given by the actors who refused to play in the film. Refusing a comfortable “magic-realist” reading of the novel, they seem to take a very traditional (and God-fearing) position: the Devil is real, demonic incarnations exist, and the Devil can be called by using his name (as happens so often in the novel) – or by impersonating him. The Master and Margarita speaks to the non-academic reader, and does so beyond the carnivalesque of the Moscow chapters. On the basis of this assumption, this paper will argue that, despite his literary disguise, Woland is no foreigner, but is the same devil that appears in the New Testament, is rebuked by the Fathers, and is still exorcized in monasteries. The nature of this devil seems ambiguous because Bulgakov complicates the literary protocols that usually divide characters in protagonist, antagonist, and their respective parties: in The Master and Margarita there is no absolutely good figure, nor is there any hero, and perhaps these parts remain to be played by the readers themselves, who can enjoy the ridiculous punishments of the wicked. From this perspective, the devil seems to be the spreader of justice to a God-forsaken earth,[7] and it is very tempting to overlook the fact that, in the end, the devil is still doing what he always did: torment sinners. There is a disjunctive nature to Bulgakov’s presentation of these sinners: on the one hand, they are given psychological depth; on the other hand, they are subjected to farcical penalties in the spirit of the puppet theater. This flattening of the characters forces upon the reader the Aristotelian assumption that we are better than them (because our head would never be cut off and glued back by a gigantic cat, we would never be miraculously transported to Yalta in the confusion of a painful hangover, we would never come back naked from a theater representation). Nevertheless, let the innocent cast the first stone: the sins punished are most common, the more so in a society as severely deprived of all material commodities as that visited by the devils. One would have to be a saint not to fall into temptation – and, well, there are no saints in Bulgakov’s Moscow. [end page 196] The devil is traditionally known to be a tempter, murderer, and liar. While the first two qualities are overwhelmingly obvious in the novel, the third is rather hard to discern. It then should be assumed that either he tells the truth (which would be a great theological innovation), or that his lies are so good that they cannot be distinguished from the truth. The question is particularly important for The Master and Margarita, since the novel has, at its core, a devilish rendering of Christ’s Passion, which is anything but traditional. In fact, there are strong intimations that the traditional accounts are lying but that, lo and behold, we finally have the privilege to hear the truth. Nevertheless, inconsistencies in the devil’s words are visible from the first chapters. The novel begins with the irruption of the supernatural in calm, officially atheist, Moscow. Woland, the devil in disguise, overhears a discussion between Berlioz and Bezdomny, and tries to convince them that they should believe in both God and the devil or, preferably, only in the latter. Yet he does so in a very confusing manner. Woland’s telling of a gospel is seemingly triggered by his need to prove his own existence, since, with respect to Jesus, he says that “[h]e simply existed, and that's all there is to it. [...] no proof is required” (12). Nevertheless, the devil's subsequent display of power – that would be the killing of Berlioz – is labeled as “the seventh proof.” It is therefore placed in a sequence with the six aforementioned proofs of God’s existence, as if the existence of the devil added yet another proof to God’s: AI implore you, at least believe that the devil exists! I ask no more than that. Keep in mind that for this we have the seventh proof, the most reliable of them all!” (35). Which leaves us with the following dilemma: either Bulgakov's devil is a poor logician (a conclusion refuted, nevertheless, by both religious tradition and the construction of the character in the novel) or he is, as Levi Matvei calls him (305), a “sophist” who knowingly uses fallacies in order to convince his audience. If the devil's existence proved that of God, his gospel would be utterly unnecessary. However, Woland, who needs to contradict Berlioz’s radically atheistic opinions, does deliver his story, which indicates that his condition is ontologically parasitic on the good; as Abba Evagrius put it, “[e]vil is not an actual substance, but absence of good; just as darkness is nothing but absence of light.” [8] God is then necessary to the devil – and Woland will have to tell a gospel. If the reverse were true as well, then Bulgakov's conception could safely be labeled as Manichean, featuring equally strong principles of good and evil. This is precisely the point that Woland tries to make in his conversation with Levi Matvei, towards the end of the novel: “What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows [end page 197] are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.” Levi Matvei's remark is to the point. Woland argues that shadows are part of the substance of things and people, and that therefore the former can be removed only through the extinction of the latter. This position contradicts the orthodox perspective, as expressed by Abba Evagrius and as shown in the New Testament by Jesus's frequent casting of devils out of possessed humans, to the effect that the humans are healed, and, in New-Testamentary language, made whole again. Moreover, Woland’s argument confuses the merely physical with the cosmological, which was introduced by Levi Matvei with the appellation “Spirit of Evil and Sovereign of the Shadows” (305). In contrast to the physical world, the transcendent realm, from which Jesus's disciple comes, is precisely one of “naked light” – albeit inconceivable by human logic and ungoverned by the laws of material optics. Things and people are part of this realm, in heaven, and will be part of it on earth, with the coming of the Kingdom of Truth, which entails also the destruction of Evil and its shadows. Therefore, the devil is not absolutely necessary to God, although, for the time being, he carries out tasks appointed to him by Yeshua. It follows then that the devil needs Yeshua’s story in order to develop his own plot. At various points in the book, he actually uses the traditional Gospels and the liturgy in order to create his own world by imitation: as it has been repeatedly pointed out, Satan’s ball has all the characteristics of a black mass (which in turn is a parody of the consecrated mass), while the party at Griboedov, which is constantly characterized by the narrator as “hellish,” is a parody of the Last Supper.[9] In contrast, the Yershalaim plot fulfils a different function. It too parallels the Moscow story, as indicated by the similar time setting and weather, as well as by the general preoccupation with the theme of salvation. Yet, this connection is complicated by the relation between the devil’s gospel and the New Testament, which is not one of mere parody. In fact, Woland claims that his story, stripped of all the miraculous elements present in the four Gospels, has more historical weight: it is an eye-witness account – the real testament of Yeshua – made by someone who was actually present “on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he was talking with Kaifa, and on the platform too” (34), that is, in several locations where Jesus’ disciples could not have possibly been. [end page 198] My discussion will treat the entire Yershalaim plot as one story, although it is presented in the novel in four fragments – the first as told by the devil, the second as dreamed by the poet Bezdomny, and the last two as chapters from the Master’s book. In the four sections, however, the style is homogeneous, and they form a coherent plot. Several critics have therefore seen them as the work of one author. This could be Bezdomny, who he had access to all the parts of the story.[10] It could also be the Master.[11] Laura D. Weeks has pointed out that Woland was in possession of the Master’s manuscript,[12] and that a small excerpt from it had been published, which means that Bezdomny the historian could have found it and read it.[13] However, this willfully realist reading still has to come to terms with the supernatural powers of the devil, who is able to preserve the destroyed manuscript and to reproduce it in front of the baffled Soviet writers. Yet, once these powers are recognized, another interpretation becomes possible – namely that the author of the text is Woland, who also inspired Bezdomny and the Master.[14] This hypothesis is in agreement with descriptions of the devil’s workings given by the Fathers: The devil has a very close relationship and familiarity with the imagination, and of all the power of the soul he has this one as the most appropriate organ to deceive man and to activate his passions and evils.[15] Q: Tell me, Master, how can the devil dare in a vision or a fantasy during sleep to show the Master Christ or Holy Communion? This would be a fair description of the Yershalaim plot. The hypothesis that the devil is the author of the story is also supported by Bulgakov’s frequent references to The Master and Margarita as “the novel about the devil”; by his initial titles for the novel (“The Consultant with a Hoof,” “A Black Magician,” “The Road Tour of Woland,” “The Engineer’s Hoof”) and for the Yershalaim story (“The Gospel According to the Devil”); and by the fact that the Yershalaim story was, initially, one piece.[17] The story is marked by a consistent use of defamiliarization techniques, such as the Aramaic names (Yeshua Ha-Nostri, Yershalaim), the acknowledgment of only one disciple of Yeshua, who is Levi Matvei, and Yeshua’s biography (he was a foundling, probably son of a Syrian; he [end page 199] did not enter Yershalaim riding an ass, and was not received by crowds of admirers; he did not perform miracles). The only details from Yeshua’s life that are mentioned are, remarkably, those emphasized by the evangelists as proofs that Jesus is the Messiah. The result is the figure of a vagrant philosopher who delivers interesting theories and is, humanly, afraid of physical suffering and death. He is an innocent, and a very good person indeed, but he is not divine. To a large extent, the four fragments that constitute the Yershalaim plot show the making-divine of Yeshua by the spreading of rumors. The protagonist of this plot is not Yeshua but Pontius Pilate, the one who allegedly fabricated the legend of the Christ. The choice of St. Matthew as Yeshua’s only disciple may be explained by the fact that his Gospel was long considered to be the oldest; moreover, it is the Gospel that introduces, in kernel, the possibility of a story about Pilate as told by the devil. While all the four canonic accounts deculpabilize Pilate, Matthew enlarges Pilate’s psychological dimension by mentioning the intervention of Pilate's wife and Pilate’s ritual hand-washing, as well as a scheme devised by the Jews in order to deny Jesus’ resurrection by bribing Pilate’s soldiers and by backing them up “if this come to the governor's ears” (Matthew 28:11-15). The Yershalaim plot reverses this last episode in Matthew's Gospel: the scheme is devised not against but by Pilate, and it does not deny the messianic account but secures it. It is a good story, but it is not a gospel: it does not require a position of faith but it simply enacts a principle of realistic credibility. But the incredible part – and that which sets the Moscow plot in motion – is that the story is presented, in twentieth-century Moscow, by someone who pretends to have witnessed these events, two thousand years ago. The miraculous, which had been denied to Yeshua, is surreptitiously brought in as this non-miraculous story’s very warranty of truthfulness. When Woland reveals his sources, Berlioz and Bezdomny decide that he is either mad or an agitator, which forces the devil to give them the seventh proof. Yet, thanks to the Mephistophelian allusions, the reader has already recognized Woland’s true identity, and Bulgakov will embed this knowledge of the reader at the very foundation of the novel, as the greatest source of comic in the Moscow plot: it is because we know more than them that we can laugh at the genuine torments of the Muscovites. Their ignorance earns them their punishment, while our arrogance impedes our compassion – another traditional devilish temptation. The question then becomes: if we know that Woland is the devil, then how much credibility are we to give to Woland’s most credible story? To a large extent, the Yershalaim plot runs according to the Gospels. Woland’s claim that he witnessed the Passion is confirmed by the evangelist, who states indeed that Jesus’s execution was a devilish [end page 200] working, although done according to the divine plan. Critics went a long way to identify that particular Yershalaim character that is the devil in disguise; although this identity has remained unclear, it has been repeatedly pointed out that certain elements that precede the devilish workings in the Moscow plot are also present in the Yershalaim story: unbearable heat, rose scent, headaches. Moreover, Pilate’s official pronunciation that Bar-rabban will be released, which amounts to sentencing Yeshua, is followed by a hellish image: “It then seemed to [Pilate] that the sun began ringing and burst overhead, engulfing his ears in flame. And raging inside this flame were roaring, shrieks, groans, laughter, and whistling” (31). Several elements in Yeshua’s trial correspond to the account of the Passion given in the Gospels: Pilate's desire to save Yeshua, which is countered by Kaifa's determination to have him executed; Pilate's questioning Yeshua about truth; the main head of accusation, which is Yeshua's statement about the coming of the Kingdom of Truth; Pilate's fear that saving Yeshua would cause a riot; Yeshua's preaching of peacefulness; the drink given to Yeshua on the post (in Bulgakov, a sponge soaked in water); Yeshua's kindness towards one of the thieves; the darkness and storm that accompany Yeshua's death. In the final Yershalaim section, Yeshua's body is buried with Pilate's assistance, as in Matthew 28:58. Even Yeshua's lack of divinity can be related, to a certain extent, to the Gospels’ emphasis on Jesus's humanity during the Passion. Other details echo and reverse elements of Matthew's Gospel; grippingly, they appear in episodes previous to the Passion. Jesus's strict prohibition of forswearing (Matthew 5:33-37) is countered by Yeshua's readiness to swear by his life – although he does not actually swear (19), the detail being just meant to scandalize the religious reader. Another example is the debate about “good men,” which has more bearing on the novel. Both Jesus's answer (Matthew 19:16-17) and Pilate's handing over Yeshua to Mark Rat-Killer are caused by inadequate appellations (“good Master” and “good man”). Yet the parallel stops here. Jesus’ position is very different from Yeshua’s: “And behold, one came and said unto him, ‘Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?’ And he said unto him, ‘Why callest thow me good? There is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments’” (Matthew 19:16-17). On the contrary, Yeshua says that “[t]here are no evil people in the world” (20), thus hinting at the lack of substance of evil. Connected with Yeshua’s preaching of peace, this line might be the key to the understanding of the character. It makes Yeshua unsuspicious, quickly falling into Judas' trap, and unable to catch Pilate's hints that the question which he, as a Roman official, must ask is very dangerous. Unlike Jesus, [end page 201] who does not facilitate the task of his prosecutors, Yeshua causes his own doom because “[i]t is easy and pleasant to tell the truth” (22). It is hard not to think that Yeshua is good, and innocent, and a little stupid (or at least very unpractical) – greatly diverging from the Christ of the Gospels, who always recognizes and offsets the cunning hiding in some of the questions addressed to him. This innovation in the character has two main consequences: Yeshua, who is admittedly literate, is still not schooled in the Jewish tradition of religious interpretation and debate (which casts another doubt on his being Messiah), and he is completely stripped of anger, which is an emotion repeatedly emphasized in Biblical accounts of Jesus. In the words of Abba Evagrius the Monk, “[a]nger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure.”[18] Unlike Jesus, Yeshua is unable to fight the devil – which is very convenient for Woland.[19] Contradicting the Gospels, these details are directly linked to the following statement of Yeshua: Those good people [...] are ignorant and have muddled what I said. In fact, I’m beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly. [...] There’s someone who follows, follows me around everywhere, always writing on a goatskin parchment. And once I happened to see the parchment and was aghast. Absolutely nothing that was written there did I ever say. (16) This is Yeshua’s description of Levi Matvei’s writing, which intimates that the Gospels that have been handed down in the Church tradition are inaccurate. Yet this is but another snare for the reader: the Biblical exegesis does not consider the Gospels to have been written during Jesus’s life; moreover, quotes from Levi Matvei’s parchment (279) cannot be found in St. Matthew’s Gospel, which indicates that they are two different texts. Therefore, the only writing undermined by Yeshua’s statement is the parchment quoted by Woland, which could be, at best, an apocryphal collection of Jesus's sayings. By trying to discredit the Gospel writers, Woland remains a diabolon, which in the Greek of the New Testament means “slanderer” or “back-biter.” Other major conflicts between the Gospels and Woland’s story are caused by the use of very different narrative techniques, which are adapted to the purpose of each text. While the traditional Gospels are directly informative, and contain very few descriptions, Woland’s story aims, first and foremost, at captivating the reader. With their scarce use of rhetoric, the Gospels do not impede the free will of the reader, who can [end page 202] choose to believe or not the story; on the contrary, Woland’s gospel is a work of seduction. The use of defamiliarization and the obvious plot departures from the New Testament keep the reader’s curiosity alive. The story appeals greatly to our imagination, and often this function takes over the informative aspect. For example, the first sentence says: “Early in the morning on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood-red lining, and shuffling with his cavalryman’s gait into the roofed colonnade that connected the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great, walked the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate” (12). The sentence provides the time and place setting of the story, and it offers a minute description of the procurator, emphasizing some features of his character: “blood-red” suggests Pilate’s cruelty, which will later be mentioned by several characters, and “cavalryman” indicates his military background. But these both prove to be false clues, as they will be contradicted by this exceptional episode in Pilate’s life: throughout the trial, he will show both his desire to save Yeshua and his cowardice. Although picturesque details are added with each word of the sentence, the essential information is withdrawn as long as possible: the names Herod the Great, Judea and Pontius Pilate, which would definitely settle the story in history, appear only at the end, and the year in which the story takes place is not given but must be guessed by the reader, precisely by using his knowledge of the Biblical events. With this strategy, instead of having to counteract the reader’s resistance to the unusual story, the narrator forces him to collaborate in the creation of the narrative. From here on, the text will abound in details that seem to bring the old familiar story to life. However, besides the obviously provocative divergences from the Old Testament, one particular element, which is very spectacular and introduces great diversity, and is rather flattering to Yeshua, is the strange use of languages during the trial. It is not recorded by the evangelists at this point of the story, although they state that the accusation against Jesus is written indeed in Aramaic, Latin and Greek could be heard regularly. Pilate uses Latin with Afranius and Aramaic when he addresses the crowd. Yet, he uses Greek with Kaifa and, although both Yeshua and Pilate are proficient in the three languages, the interrogation takes place in Greek, a language foreign to both interlocutors. The only exceptions are, first, Yeshua's explanation of how he had guessed that Pilate was suffering from a migraine and was looking for his dog – a piece of detective reasoning delivered in Latin – and, second, Mark Rat-Killer’s admonition, “mispronouncing the Aramaic words, ‘Address the Roman procurator as Hegemon. Do not use other words’” (15). Then, Rat-Killer who speaks Aramaic, says “procurator,” and then “Hegemon,” which is the Greek term for procurator. Pilate will be [end page 203] addressed as “Hegemon” throughout the text, although the narrator refers to him as “procurator.” Furthermore, Pilate suffers from Ahemicrania,@ which is a Greek word, and so is “hippodrome,” which is mentioned again and again, rather ostensibly since nothing happens in the hippodrome. Finally, puzzled by Yeshua’s theories on the goodness of people, Pilate asks him: “Did you read that in some Greek book?,” to which Yeshua answers: “No, I came to that conclusion on my own” (20). With the proviso signaled above, the Greek books in which such ideas could be found were not yet written at the time: they are the four Gospels, and the numerous writings of the Fathers. The devil tries to impress with his legendary language skills,[20] yet the insistence on Greek in precisely those passages that are closest to the Gospels, along with the mention of Gospel episodes previous to the Passion, suggest that Woland's miraculous eye-witness account is, at least up to the death of Yeshua, the simple reworking of a previous text, an imaginative parody of the New Testament.[21] Once again, Woland proves to be a traditional devil. Nevertheless, as we know from the Gospel accounts that the devil was present at the Passion, it still remains unclear why he does not provide his own version of the story. One answer might be suggested if we look at the privileged place that the Yershalaim plot has within the novel. The story about Pilate and Yeshua is the background against which one could organize the multifarious and chaotic Moscow events. This narration is a piling up of burlesque adventures, loosely connected only by the constant presence of the devils and the revolving of their doings around the Variety Theater. We know, vaguely, that Woland’s visit has a purpose, yet this purpose is shifting (first it is, allegedly, the study of some newly found manuscripts of Gerbert d’Aurillac, then the need to study the Soviet homo novus by means of a representation of black magic, and finally, the plans to give Satan’s Great Ball). Nevertheless, although the story remains, at several points, rather purposeless, as the alleged purposes prove to be mere shams, we still expect progression and completion, an expectation artificially induced by the parallel with the Yershalaim plot. Both stories take place in the Holy Week (although this is evident, in Moscow, only when Woland starts planning the Great Ball), yet the time frame does not correspond perfectly: while the Pilate action takes place on Friday (pointing back to Wednesday and Thursday), the devils come to Moscow on Wednesday and leave on Saturday morning. The Yershalaim narration loops back to the recent past; in Moscow, meanwhile, there is a correspondence between succession of events and time of narration, which is generally linear. It should be remarked, however, that given the [end page 204] multiplicity of Muscovite events, many of them simultaneous, the time of narration often needs to catch up with the object of the narration, and several Moscow chapters begin by emphasizing precisely this lack of homogeneity of the action, whose coherence is created artificially, by narrative means: At precisely the time when Styopa lost consciousness in Yalta, that is to say, around 11:30 a.m., Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny regained it as he awakened from a long, deep, sleep. (70) This split time of narration is opposed by the fluid style of the Pilate story, and also by the device used for the three narrative shifts towards Yershalaim: the inscription of the initial Yershalaim sentence, or of its beginning, both in the Yershalaim chapter and at the end of the preceding Moscow chapter.[22] For the first and the last Yershalaim fragments, the last sentence is also quoted at the beginning of the following Moscow chapter. Reasonably, this repetition emphasizes the status of the text within the hors texte, while still allowing the text to stand by itself, as a whole. Although this seems to place Yershalaim in a secondary position as compared to Moscow, since the Pilate story is told by Moscow characters, the overwhelming impression is that, on the contrary, the Yershalaim plot overflows in Moscow and drags the Moscow plot into the Yershalaim time. The scattering of Moscow time, and the incoherence of the events, seem indeed to be resolved in the slow but unitary time of Yershalaim. With its allusion to a sacred story, the Yershalaim plot has the narrative potential of engulfing secular time.[23] Moreover, given the emphasis on the telling of the story, as well as its delivery by installments, one may wonder if Woland's account is not, besides being a pseudo-gospel, also a pseudo-liturgy, since the liturgy is precisely the Christian way of bringing historical time into the sacred. If the Great Ball is indeed the true reason for Woland’s coming to Moscow, and if the Ball is a defamiliarizing description of a black mass, Woland finds himself in the unusual situation of needing to parody without having an original that could be parodied, since, as Berlioz emphatically [end page 205] points out, Moscow is now atheist, and, therefore, no real liturgies are celebrated anymore. Emphasizing the devil’s affinity with imagination, St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain explains: For he, being created by God originally as a pure and simple mind without form and image, as the other divine angels, later came to love the forms and the imagination. Imagining that he could set his throne above the heavens and become like God, he fell from being an angel of light and became a devil of darkness.[24] The devil cannot bring forth his own images, yet he needs them in order to feed his pride; he therefore needs divine images upon which to mold his own. This would explain why he cannot simply deliver an eye-witness account but that, in order for him to create a narration, he needs a narrative model. However, Moscow is so radically iconoclastic that it rejects even the works of the Master and of Bezdomny, which reveal only Yeshua’s humanity, and therefore cannot, by any means, be considered as icons but as mere secular portraits. The devil will need, therefore, to turn to the Gospels themselves, and to the traditional liturgy. He cannot produce an icon either, yet he can, and must, produce some sort of likeness. This is self-serving, and is not done for the benefit of the Muscovites, although Berlioz’s fate shows that they are in real spiritual danger. But Berlioz’s punishment and the use of his skull as a replacement chalice are the high peaks of Satan’s Ball, which indicates that the devil can always use a good atheist. By showing that, in Russia, even the devil is severely reduced in size and power, Bulgakov’s novel remains a harsh critique of his time. In the Moscow chapters, it satirizes the material shortcomings that lead to the corruption of the people, and implies, through the Yershalaim plot, that the spiritual state of Russia is so distressed that even the devil encounters unheard-of hardships. Bulgakov’s message is, however, one of trust in the prevailing goodness of the world. By taking to its limits the battle between good and evil, sacred and profane, and, one may add, the non-Soviet and the Soviet, the writer reveals Evil’s ultimate dependency on the Good, as well as the theological impossibility of a victory of the Evil. According to Bulgakov, the revolution is over. The devil lost, before he even began his fight. [end page 206]
[1]. Walsh, Nick Paton, “Filming of ‘Fifth Gospel’ Raises Russian Ire.” Guardian News Service, November 3, 2004. [2]. “Moscow Novel ‘Margarita’ Filmed in City.” PetersburgCity.com, Official Internet Guide to St. Petersburg, the Cultural Capital of Russia, June 22, 2004: <http://petersburgcity.com/news/culture/2004/06/22/margarita/>. [3]. All the quotations are from Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita. Trans. Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. [4]. Several titles are self-explanatory: George Krugovoy, The Gnostic Novel of Mikhail Bulgakov. Sources and exegesis (Lanham: UP of America, 1991); Gareth Williams, “Some Difficulties in the Interpretation of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and the Advantages of a Manichean Approach” (SEER, 68: 234-56). On the other hand, Nadine Natov considers Woland as “a biblical figure, not a Mephistophelian one,” and the devilries “serve as a kind of catalyst to reveal man’s evil intentions” (Mikhail Bulgakov. Boston: Twayne, 1985: 98, 100). Edward E. Ericson also notes that “although Bulgakov’s Satan does not embody every aspect of the traditional conception of the Devil, there is nothing in his character which lies outside of that conception” (The Apocalyptic Vision of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991: 46). [5]. Natov agrees with this interpretation. Although she considers that the Yershalaim story “forms the basic part of Bulgakov's novel and carries the author’s main ethical message,” she notes that “[a]s a religious man and a Christian, Bulgakov did not permit himself to rewrite or to paraphrase the Gospels. [...] Bulgakov did not even refer to the Gospels, although he dealt with the same events described there” (op. cit., 104). [6]. Shervud, Olga. “Bulgakov's Seminal Novel to Be Made into TV Series.” Interview with Vladimir Bortko. Mosnews.com. June 30, 2004: www.mosnews.com/interview/2004/06/30/bortko.shtml. [7]. Ellendea Proffer mentions “all the good the devil does in the novel” (“Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: Genre and Motif.” The Master and Margarita. A critical companion. Ed. Laura D. Weeks. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1996: 106). Edythe C. Haber draws an extensive parallel between Woland's and Yeshua's deeds (“The Mythic Structure of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.” The Master and Margarita. A critical companion: 164-8). Laura D. Weeks (“Hebraic Antecedents in The Master and Margarita: Woland and Company revisited.” Slavic Review, 42: 224-41) [end page 207] considers Woland to be a Hebraic Satan, i.e., “a part of the natural order of things,” in a cosmology “more holistic in nature than the Christian one. Here the forces of good and evil are not in competition but coexist on more or less equal terms, each performing its natural function in the creation” (232). Joan Delaney (“The Master and Margarita: The reach exceeds the grasp.” Slavic Review, 31: 89-100) believes Woland when he “indicates that he has come to see if the Muscovites have changed inwardly for the better” and thinks that he begins the “search for an honest man. Disgust with the state of affairs apparently converts even Satan to support good where and if he can find it” (92). A.C. Wright (“Satan in Moscow: An Approach to Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.” PMLA, 88: 1162-72) finds “no indication that [Woland] wants to thwart God's purposes or even bring about man's damnation. Indeed, to some people he is plainly beneficent” (1163); Wright also notes the Hebraic “fundamental unity of the idea of God and Devil” (1165). Ericson regards Woland as mainly Mephistophelian, and as such, “a minister of God to bring justice” (op. cit., 63-4). On the contrary, Krugovoy’s Gnostic reading of the novel emphasizes the devil's negative aspects (op. cit., 61-106). [8]. Early Fathers from the Philokalia. Trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G.E.H. Palmer. London: Faber and Faber, 1981: 114. Ericson (“The Satanic Incarnation: Parody in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.” Russian Review, 33: 20-36) quotes Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov, the writer's second cousin: “Evil is a parasite, possessing no substantive title to existence, but subsisting by the confusion of good and evil, as shadows, and darkness itself, are only apparent by contrast with the light” (23). However, he draws a different conclusion. He accepts both the seventh proof and Woland’s argument against Levi Matvei and believes, with respect to the Master's fate, that “[b]y believing in satan the Master has implicitly professed faith in the reality of the Deity” (31). However, this would imply that all Satanists, in Moscow and elsewhere, will be saved. Mere acceptance of the supernatural does not make one a good Christian, as shown in the New Testament, where few witnesses of Jesus work believe that he is the Messiah (Matthew 16:13-17), while the Pharisees even think that he casts out devils by the power of Beelzebub (Matthew 12:22). [9]. Natov, op. cit., 96. [10]. Weeks points out Judith M. Mills’ groundbreaking work in this direction (“‘What I Have Written, I Have Written’.” The Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion: 3-67). [11]. Natov, op. cit., 104; also Elendea Proffer, who discovered that the Yershalaim story ends with the same words as the novel of the Master, [end page 208] which would indicate that the Master’s novel is The Master and Margarita (op. cit., 107). [12]. Krugovoy actually believes that Woland induced the Master to burn the manuscript and thus, in fact, stole it (op. cit., 112). [13]. “In Defense of the Homeless: On the Uses of History and the Role of Bezdomny in The Master and Margarita.” Russian Review, 48: 61. [14]. Neil Cornwell points out Woland's omniscience (qtd. in Weeks, “‘What I Have Written, I Have Written’,” 59), Edward E. Ericson recommends “to mistrust this diabolically distorted account of historical reality” (The Apocalyptic Vision, 71). Interestingly, Barbara Kejna-Sharatt (“Narrative Techniques in The Master and Margarita.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, XVI: 1-12) cannot identify the author of the story, and takes this as a warranty of its truthfulness: “The fact that it is linked with the three protagonists rather than being narrated from the beginning to the end by Voland alone proves that the story does not belong to Voland. It is the only true story, untainted by subjective judgment, and as such is the property of all” (8-9). [15]. Nicodemos the Hagiorite. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain. A handbook of spiritual council. Trans. Peter A. Chamberas. New York: Paulist Press, 1989: 149. [16]. Saints Barsanuphius and John. Guidance toward spiritual life. Trans. Fr. Seraphim Rose. Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1990: 105. [17]. Laura D. Weeks, “What I Have Written, I Have Written,” 11-2. [18]. “To Anatolius: Texts on active life,” no. 15, in Kadoublovsky, op. cit., 99. [19]. It can also be remarked that Berlioz the atheist is rather charmed by the devil, while Bezdomny, who will undergo a sort of spiritual wakening, is angered by Woland: “It should be added that the poet found the foreigner loathsome from the moment he opened his mouth, whereas Berlioz rather liked him, or, if not liked him, then [...] how shall we say it [...] at least took an interest in him” (6). In this scene, Bezdomny is also called “the poet-bully” (8), his reply is qualified as “sneering” (9), he “glare[s] fiercely and malevolently at the impertinent stranger” (10), and he tells Woland: “What a nuisance you are! Stop acting like a loon!” (35). Later on, in the mental clinic, the new Ivan, whose peacefulness is chemically induced, asks: “explain, if you will, why I got so furious at that mysterious consultant, magician, and professor with the black, vacant eye?” (97). Anger against the devil is also obvious in Levi Matvei's behavior towards Woland, in the scene already discussed (305). [end page 209] [20]. Bezdomny testifies to his success (74). [21]. Justin Weir also notes the contradiction between text and context: “[a]lthough it makes a claim on the truth (i.e., that it is not ‘textual’ at all) by retelling the Passion, the Pilate story is perhaps the most intertextual segment of the novel” (The Author as Hero. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2002: 8). He also remarks that “[t]he devil becomes, in effect, the first of many >schizophrenics= in the novel whose attempts to explain themselves or articulate an identity result in paradox or contradiction” (11). [22]. The last transition complicates the pattern by using a fine interlacing of the two plots, with the reiteration of the word “darkness.” Ignoring the chapter break, the text reads as follows: ‘The Darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator...’ [23]. This would also explain the apparent inaccuracy at the end of the first Yershalaim chapter where, after it had been announced that it is almost noon, the final sentence is: “It was about ten o'clock in the morning” (32). This detail could be connected with the theme of immobility, which dominates the first Yershalaim fragment, and might suggest the Christian distinction of two types of temporality, i.e., kairon, the ripe time of he Messianic event, and the laic linear time, which allows for the narrative to develop. Weeks has also analyzed sacred History and profane history in the wake of Oscar Cullmann (“In Defense of the Homeless,” 54-5). It is noteworthy that the Devil also provides his version of time outside history, when he stops the clock at midnight so that his Ball can take place (250). [24]. Nicodemos the Hagiorite, op. cit, 149.
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