[In the essay below, Frank discusses possible reasons for the Master's position in limbo at the conclusion of The Master and Margarita.]

The Master's role and purpose within the general scheme of The Master and Margarita is still an unsolved question, although various approaches to this figure are extant.¹ The fact that he appears relatively late in the novel (Chapter 13) indicates that he may not be the most important character, an honor which probably belongs to Woland. Bulgakov considered at least ten other titles, most of them headlining Woland (i.e., “The Black Magician,” “Satan,” “Prince of Darkness,” “The Consultant with a Hoof,” “He's Appeared,” “The Foreigner's Horseshoe,” “The Great Chancellor,” “The Black Theologian,”) and not until a 1934 version does the Master appear by name.² Moreover, on the level of plot development and space assignment, Pilate and Ieshua share equal billing with the Master. Yet the Master, together with Margarita, is the definitive title figure, and any evaluation of the novel calls for ascertaining his relevance to the major theme(s).

In most analyses, the Master comes across as a positive figure, although the ambiguities attending his nature have not escaped critical notice.³ The positive aspects are easily apparent: The Master is a Stalin time writer who is persecuted for his interest in a religious topic, kept from publishing his story, imprisoned, and turned into a human wreck. He also echoes Bulgakov's own publishing problems in addition to reflecting many elements of Bulgakov's private life.⁴ The fact that his course seems parallel to Ieshua's reflects favorably on him. The juxtapositions linking him to Faust also reinforce the notion that he enjoys the full favor of his creator.⁵ One reviewer even feels that Christ and Faust are merged in the person of the Master.⁶ However, careful reading of the text readily reveals counter elements too strong and consistent to be ignored. The most disturbing one is that this defender of Jesus and victim of dictatorial coercion in the end is denied entrance to heaven, because, as Matthew the Levite sadly recounts, he has not earned the light. He is deprived of a basic Christian reward that is vouchsafed even to the wretched Pilate at the end of the book. Instead, the Master is relegated to limbo in Woland's territory. Several possible explanations are offered here to account for the Master's final destination.

1) The Master, like Faust, is being tested by the powers on high, and falls short. As in Faust, Satan plays the role of the tester. The Master's switch from historian to writer already appears orchestrated by Woland. It is mysteriously made possible when the Master chances to dredge a lottery ticket with the winning number, given to him by the museum, from his dirty laundry basket.⁷ With these means, he gives up his job, obtains some books, presumably dealing with Jerusalem history, becomes interested in the ramifications of the Pilate/Ieshua confrontation, and commences to write his novel. Material comfort beyond the standards of the time is provided. Despite the housing shortage, exemplified by the huge sums offered for the vacant apartment No. 50, the Master manages with ease to exchange his “filthy hole” of a room on Miasnitskaia for a totally private two room apartment near the Arbat. With its basement location, isolation, and cozy arrangements, this abode already points ahead to the Master's limbo, similarly characterized by peace and comfort in the outer layers of Woland's netherworld. It also echoes the pleasant scholarly existence envisioned by Pilate at his Mediterranean residence for Ieshua, which does not materialize due to Ieshua's insistence on his beliefs. The writing itself progresses for the most part without causing the Master undue agony. He relates to Bezdomnyi that his unexpected riches facilitated frequent restaurant dinners and handsome clothes. We are given to understand that his changed situation also facilitated removal of his first wife, an ordinary museum worker in prosaic striped dress, who had to make way for the more inspiring and supernatural-receptive Margarita.⁸ The Master's continuous and obsessive gazing at the moon, while he relates his life story to Bezdomnyi, reinforces his link to Woland, for the moon is prominently associated with Woland throughout the novel.

Margarita's entry into the Master's life, too, has attributes of having been arranged by Woland. After she catches the Master's eye on a busy street, she lures him by commanding looks into a lonely spot to initiate their acquaintance. They themselves feel that fate has brought them together and has kept their affair a secret. Even though the comings and goings of tenants and their guests were, as a rule, closely observed in these suspicious times, no one notices Margarita's daily visits to her lover, in spite of the conspicuous black silk dress. Margarita is placed at the Master's side at a critical point. As the novel nears conclusion, fatigue overcomes him, and Margarita takes over the job of inspiring him and driving him to the finish, rewarding him beforehand with the title of “Master.”⁹

The testing of the Master starts when the novel is finished, when he must leave his sheltered abode to face the pressures of Moscow reality. After the manuscript is rejected, an excerpt from it unexpectedly appears in a newspaper, followed two days later by a denunciation of the Master in another paper.¹⁰ The disconnected phrases used by the confused Master to relate this incident to Bezdomnyi make it possible to connect Woland with the printing of the excerpt, and to suspect that Woland has forced the Master into the crisis to test him. In this episode, the reader is told in vague words that some editor is responsible for printing a piece by the one “who calls himself Master.”¹¹ The excerpt is attacked by a certain Ariman (a synonym for Satan), who designates the Master as “the enemy under the editor's wing” (Vrag pod krylom redaktora). Since Woland is more than once identified with birdwings (as a swallow fluttering above Pilate's and Ieshua's heads in Chapter 2, as a sparrow intimidating Dr. Kuzmin in Chapter 18, in birdlike tailcoat both at the Griboedov House and the Variety Show), the point is made that he is identical not only with the mysterious editor who brought the Master to public attention, but also with the author of the devastating rejoinder.¹² Thus, the surface story charts the Master's run-in with the censorship, while the secondary allusions hint that the Master is set up for his test by Woland. Margarita apparently also has a hand in this affair, for she advised the Master to print the excerpt himself.¹³

The Master grasps very speedily that he cannot stand up to his detractors. As the denunciations intensify, fear becomes the dominant force in his life, paralyzing all further efforts on behalf of his novel. He confides to Bezdomnyi that not the articles themselves, but the realization of his mental insufficiencies, of his flight into psychic derangement, caused him difficulty. It is as if he were suddenly confronted with actually living the life of his fictional heroes, and with being forced to choose between the path of Pilate and Ieshua. Ieshua's case had placed a moral challenge before Pilate: in order to defend the innocent Ieshua and stand up for justice, Pilate would have to risk loss of position and of material comforts, and expose himself to certain imprisonment or even death at the hands of the Roman authorities. The Master faces a similar choice. He can react to his challenge like Ieshua, who stood up for his truth, who rejected the easy escape offered by Pilate's insinuations—even though he feared the consequences—and who paid with his life. Or, the Master can give in to his fears, like Pilate. The indications are that he tilted toward Pilate. He does not put up a Faust-like fight for publication, a fight that matters, for his novel is, after all, a tale of individual courage and Christian implications amid the Stalinist atheism and terror. When the pressure on the Master increases, after Mogarych's betrayal, the frightened Master hands Margarita the remaining 10,000 rubles for safekeeping, instead of entrusting the now obviously endangered manuscript to her. Like Pilate, he drinks to drown his fears, and in desperation flings his work into the fire.¹⁴ It is again Woland who intervenes to save the manuscript. The subsequent taste of misfortune during the Master's short imprisonment (Mogarych denounces him in mid-October, the Master is released in mid-January) turns him into a jittery bundle, unable to cope further. In contrast to the gently determined and persisting prisoner Ieshua, who is brutally beaten during his confinement, the Master runs from further confrontation, seeks the shelter of the asylum, and the relief of Stravinskii's injections. He may wring his hands in agony and bewail his fate in front of Bezdomnyi, but he really remains at the clinic voluntarily, for he has a key to get out, while on the outside the faithful Margarita is left in despair and in the dark over his whereabouts.¹⁵

The burden of giving battle for the Master's novel rests with Margarita, who embodies the real Faustian spirit. She displays no evidence of fear, and undertakes a feisty campaign against the calumniators. It is she who parallels Faust in entering into a pact with the devil. For the sake of the Master, she sacrifices her human qualities to become a witch. When the time comes for her one wish, she unselfishly gives up her own desires in order to save the unhappy Frieda. Finally, it is Margarita who passes the test, as Woland indicates to her in Chapter 24 (My vas ispytyvali). As for the Master, neither restitution of the apartment nor of Margarita can quicken his exhausted spirit. The reality of a continuing life filled with potential violence, suffering, and tension is too much for his sensibilities, wincing, as he does, at even the slightest noises. He continues this flinching even in death, when Behemoth gives his farewell whistle (Chapter 31). He has but one thought: to escape any further upset; to find eternal refuge somewhere. Quite possibly, the theme of cowardice looms so large in the Jerusalem chapters, because the Master unwittingly reveals his own inclinations through it. The story of Ieshua's courage is overshadowed by Pilate's spiritual dilemma, for that mirrors the Master's own torments more closely. Curiously, the chapters of his novel contain no reference to Ieshua's resurrection. The disappearance of the body is explained realistically through Matthew's removal of it. Ieshua appears in divine guise only outside the Master's novel, after Woland, nothing the manuscript's unfinished state, urges resolution of Pilate's case.¹⁶ In fact, the Master's destination is decided by the heavenly powers only after the novel has been read by them. The implication of Matthew's words is that the contents have fallen short somehow.

The deficiency may well be linked to the Master's peculiar perception of Ieshua, the Aramaic form of Jesus' name. The Master limits himself to depicting Ieshua the man, not Christ (from the Greek Khristos, Messiah), the religious symbol. The concept of Khristos and its implications are not part of the Master's tale. Critical writings about The Master and Margarita use the terms “Jesus” and “Christ” interchangeably, thereby obliterating the allusion that the Master did not raise the human Ieshua to divine Christ status. This is not to say that the Master's novel reflects a purely historical Ieshua. In fact, there is very little overlap with what is known about the historical figure.¹⁷ The nature and actions of the Master's Ieshua are determined solely by the plot and theme of Bulgakov's novel. Within that context, the Master, like many a skeptical modern historian, can be seen as portraying Ieshua in terms of a self-proclaimed prophet, not a resurrected deity. Only in the outer novel, where the Master is no longer the author, does Bulgakov show Ieshua as the biblical Khristos. This omission appears to be the Master's primary transgression and results in denial of heaven. For his troubles, his superiority over his corrupt fellow writers, and because of Margarita's intercession, the Master is consigned to a peaceable limbo, replete with Schubert music and pastoral settings. Margarita, who apparently has earned the light, is allowed to join her hapless lover.¹⁸ Faust gave himself up to his “unconditional repose” (Unbedingte Ruh) only after a life of intense striving, when he had finished his tasks, while the Master evaded confrontation from the beginning. On his last visit to Bezdomnyi (Chapter 30), he disengages himself from writing further of Ieshua, and commissions his “disciple” to write the continuation. The task is thereby left in doubtful hands. In the Epilogue, Bezdomnyi is convinced that his full moon hallucinations are the result of crooked hypnotists, who harmed him in his youth. Though he enjoys his mysterious dreams, their impact leaves him upon waking, and he neither remembers nor acts upon his disciple commission.

2) An equally probable explanation of the Master's reward is that Bulgakov's sympathies lie with Woland's rather than Ieshua's conception of the world, even though Bulgakov dropped the earlier title version “The Gospel According to Woland.”¹⁹ The text readily allows for such an interpretation. In his conversation with Matthew (Chapter 29), Woland berates Ieshua's notion that evil is not an inherent part of human nature. Woland reiterates the familiar argument that good is discernible only when offset by opposite qualities. He also hints that a non-dynamic world, duplicating heavenly virtues, may be a vacuous bore. At this point, the reader's attention is directed back to Chapter 2, to Ieshua's incongruous assertion that there are no evil people on earth, even though he himself has just been the victim of Mark the Ratfighter's brutality. Ieshua's remark about good (my italics) people disfiguring the guard almost sounds like auctorial sarcasm of the gentle preacher's philosophy. The viciousness of unchecked evildoing is evident to such an extent on the Moscow level, and in the crimes of Woland's midnight ball guests, that the reader is forced to cast a critical glance at Ieshua's preference for indiscriminate forgiveness. Woland's justice, according to which evildoers are held responsible for their actions, while decent people are aided and rewarded, is presented as an acceptable alternative to Ieshua's grace by Bulgakov. In Woland's scheme, the unfortunate Master is not punished for his human frailties, for no intentional earthly evildoing can be laid at his door. Consequently, he is deposited in the most pleasant layer of Woland's realm. Woland humorously chides Margarita for being too compassionate (Chapter 24), but they get on together, because in essence they maintain similar positions. Margarita, too, revenges injustice, as evidenced in her destruction of Latunskii's flat (Chapter 21). When the novel is understood within these parameters, the final destination of the Master and Margarita becomes understandable. They are imperfect by heaven's standards, and thus are denied entrance to heaven, but they do not perceive this as a deprivation, for the standards of heaven are alien to their many-faceted human nature.²⁰ Bulgakov's own expansive nature could accommodate either view of the Master presented here.²¹

Bulgakov's reasons for incorporating so many elements from Faust, without letting his title character and Woland parallel the qualities of Faust and Mephistopheles, remain as yet unclear. Perhaps he desired to update Goethe's world view. Faust's untiring striving was facilitated by his association with the devil. Through this association, Faust shares responsibility for the crimes committed on his unwitting behalf (i.e., on Gretchen, Valentin, Baucis and Philemon.) In Goethe's epic, the striving cancels the errors, and Faust is saved anyway, while Mephistopheles stands cheated of a soul he should have earned according to the rules of the pact. Bulgakov neither tricks his devil, nor overlooks his Master's shortcomings, and considerably blurs Goethe's clear distinction between good and evil.

3) The difficulties attending delineation of a clearcut characterization for the Master and of a unified central theme may in the end rest with Bulgakov himself. Chudakova has indicated that he had made final corrections only up to the point of Berlioz' funeral when death overtook him, and that similar editing may have been envisioned for the remainder.²² The eight versions of the novel, encompassing several shifts of perspective, support Chudakova's assertions. We also know that Bulgakov in general tended to drastic rewriting and changing right up to performance or publication time.²³ In addition, Bulgakov drew freely on personal experiences and events. The possibility that he did not integrate these biographical notes very closely into the artistic structure should not be ignored. If this is the case, a number of incidents in the novel, especially those relating to Margarita and her identification with Bulgakov's wife and the author's similarity to the Master, cannot be explained within the context of one linked symbolic system. This need not detract from the novel's impact. Traditional literature abounds in biographical references which are not tightly anchored to the central idea. These items have self-value for the light they shed on the author's thinking, behavior, and life, and readers have generally been grateful for such additional information. For some scholars, the elusiveness of a coherent theme and the encyclopedic sweep of the disconnected parts give The Master and Margarita its stature.²⁴ It has also been said that the novel's lack of logically structured argument and its artistic untidiness are overshadowed by its power to evoke responses.²⁵ This power has been demonstrated, as attested by the wealth of essays devoted to it. It is an expression of the force of the book that the title figures' destination, so contrary to reader expectation, continues to stimulate critical interest in Bulgakov's ideas and works.

Notes

1. For a sampling of diverse opinions, see Joan Delaney, “The Master and Margarita: The Reach Exceeds the Grasp,” Slavic Review, 31, No. 1 (March 1972), 89-100; V. Lakshin, “Roman Bulgakova Master i Margarita,” Novyi mir, No. 6 (1968), pp. 284-311; Elena Mahlow, Bulgakov's “The Master and Margarita”: The Textas a Cipher (New York: Vantage Press, 1975); Lesley Milne, The Master and Margarita—A Comedy of Victory (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1977).

2. A. Colin Wright, Mikhail Bulgakov: Life and Interpretations (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 259.

3. The nobility of the Master is questioned by Elizabeth Stenbock-Fermor in “Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Goethe's Faust,” Slavic and East European Journal, 13, No. 3 (1969), 309-25.

4. Shirley Gutry, “An Approach to The Master and Margarita Through the Creative Prose and the Letters of M. A. Bulgakov,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1976, pp. 201-07.

5. The Faust connection is explored by Stenbock-Fermor, “Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita”; see fn. 3.

6. Ewa Thomson, “The Artistic World of Michail Bulgakov,” Russian Literature, No. 5 (1973), pp. 54-64.

7. Most of the biographical information on the Master is presented in Chapter 13, a number not insignificant, if one accepts the notion that the Master betrayed Ieshua by denying him divinity.

8. It has been noted that Margarita, like the Master a later introduction to the novel, owes her existence to Bulgakov's love affair with his third wife. Elena Shilovskaia, like Margarita, was also married to a prominent Moscovite (Wright, pp. 143, 151, 259). This biographical influence cannot, of course, serve to explain the role of Margarita within the context of the novel. One guesses that the position of Margarita's husband as wealthy scientist is not incidental to the plot, for it demonstrates that material comfort and atheistic rationalism, even when lodged in as kind a person as Margarita's husband, did not outweigh the erotic and spiritual elements, which she found in the Master and his tale.

9. The notion that we may be dealing with a negative parallel to Ieshua is already signalled by the fact that Ieshua never presumes such titular self-glorification and goes simply by his name, while the Master has contemptuously renounced his name in favor of the more pompous title.

10. This passage is an addition of the 1973 Soviet edition, Romany (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1973), pp. 559-60.

11. The language used here also questions the Master's right to the title. See fn. 9.

12. Glenny's translation of Vrag pod krylom redaktora as “The Enemy makes a Sortie” obscures the bird identification.

13. The 1973 Soviet edition (p. 562) makes the point clearer than the Glenny translation (p. 145 in the Signet edition). Glenny's manuscript apparently lacked reference to an excerpt published by some editor. Thus, the translator changed Margarita's involvement to one of urging the Master to publish a section after the critics had already attacked the novel. The details separating the various editions are chronicled by Donald Fiene in this issue.

14. We know that Bulgakov burned early drafts of The Master and Margarita in 1930 (M. Chudakova, “Tvorcheskaia istoriia romana M. Bulgakova Master i Margarita,” Voprosy literatury, No. 1 [1976], pp. 218-53.) His reasons are echoed in the Master's plight. The play A Cabal of Hypocrites had just been rejected, he suffered under the complications attending his relationship with Shilovskaia, and he doubted the future of his career (Priscilla Deck, “Thematic Coherence in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, [1977], p. 32). Yet the Master's similar action should be motivated by exigencies of plot development and properly integrated into the overall conception of the Master's character.

15. The entire question of how the Master is presented to the reader awaits further investigation. His story and the content of his novel are related in part by Woland, dreamt by Bezdomnyi, read by Margarita, and supplemented by the narrative voice. I know of no analysis which clearly delineates these biographers of the Master, and which posits a purpose or theme based on their individual perceptions. Until such a structure is explicated, we must assume that the Master's story is all of one piece. For a discussion of the fragments constituting the Master's novel within a different context, see Beatie and Powell, in this issue.

16. The very parameters of the Master's novel are still hotly debated. Milne (fn. 1) believes the Master's novel continues through Chapter 32 (p. 15 of her essay), while Ellendea Proffer gives the Master credit for the Epilogue as well: “The Master and Margarita,” in Major Soviet Writers (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973), p. 411. I rather think that the Master's efforts are limited to the Jerusalem chapters, italicized by Glenny (2, 16, 25, 26). In the rest of the novel, the Master is treated by the narrator as one of the outer novel's characters. Edward Ericson also separates the Master's and Bulgakov's Ieshua: “The Satanic Incarnation: Parody in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,” Russian Review, 33, No. 1 (1974), 26.

17. For a scholarly account of the historical Jesus, see Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribners Sons, 1977).

18. Margarita's acceptance into heaven is not made explicit. It is assumed here from her superiority over the Master and her affinity with Faust's Gretchen. Stenbock-Fermor (“Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita,”) believes that Margarita too is denied the light, because she sacrificed only to earthly love (p. 322). But in effect Margarita, when put to the test, chooses Frieda's release rather than her beloved Master. Ellendea Proffer in “The Major Works of Mikhail Bulgakov,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1971, pp. 361-62, recognizes the “testing” of Margarita, but limits her to the status of “Queen of Satan's Ball.” David Lowe, on the other hand, assumes that both the Master and Margarita are saved due to Margarita's intercession: “Bulgakov and Dostoevsky: A Tale of Two Ivans,” Russian Literature Triquarterly, No. 15 (1978), p. 262.

19. A related conclusion is briefly touched upon by Wright (p. 270). He believes that the key to the entire novel lies in Bulgakov's preference for non-conformists who espouse a healthy gnosticism.

20. Abram Tertz (Andrei Siniavskii) in “The Literary Process in Russia,” Kontinent (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1976), p. 91, suggests that Woland's “W” is the reversed monogram of the Master and Margarita, to stress their proximity to the devil. Tertz identifies Woland, whom he calls “master of evil,” with Stalin. The text does not support such an interpretation.

21. For Bulgakov's philosophical beliefs, consult Gutry or Wright.

22. In the article noted in fn. 14.

23. Many examples are cited in Wright.

24. See Beatie and Powell, in this issue.

25. Wright, p. 261.