Sunday, August 13, 2006

The Master and Who?

Justin sends in his new review of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which, I quote, is "short, innocent, and somewhat ignorant." Come now, Justin, modesty doesn't score any points at TKR! - RD

A most unusual, but pleasant, conversation happened upon me several months ago while I was eating lunch on a patio outside Joe’s Pizza at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. Now, although I would like to claim that I ventured onto the campus strictly to have lunch that day, I must admit that I was also participating in a discussion forum organized by a friend of mine. The forum was developed in attempts to engage students in dialogue about important “life” questions outside of the classroom. Being that I enjoy a good conversation, I volunteered to be the moderator for the event. On this one peculiar afternoon, an extremely inquisitive and eccentric student happened by my table and sat down; whereabouts he proceeded to interrogate me about the nature of the forum. After several minutes of conversation, primarily dictated by his thick Russian accent, I could tell that this student was a serious learner. He was by all accounts of the word, a book worm, and a developed one at that. He was a history major and particularly interested in Eastern European history because of his Jewish heritage. We talked intensely for an hour or so, the subject ranging everywhere from the verisimilitude of New Testament literature, to the current conflicts in the Middle East, to the current intellectual crises in American culture. Towards the end of our exchange he recommended a book to me, exclaiming, “I think you might enjoy this.” It was titled The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, and apparently it was one of the most influential books ever written about Soviet culture. That afternoon I proceeded to the nearest Borders Bookstore to purchase the book. Little did I know that my earlier encounter with the history student from UCSC would serve as a real-life analogy to the contents and themes of The Master and Margarita.

Written during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship, in an attempt to undermine various totalitarian philosophies, The Master and Margarita is fascinating and somewhat troubling read alike, especially for a poor hapless American like me. Although I am sufficiently detached historically and culturally from the Soviet era, I appreciated this book all the same for its courageous renouncements of religious dogma, censorship, philosophical elitism, and the monotony of modernized life. For someone like me, this book was an intriguing look into the mind and culture of post-Christian Soviet life. Written in the wake of various “social cleansing” acts perpetrated by the Stalin propaganda machine, Master attempts to illustrate just how desensitized Russians had become to these heinous acts. One of Bulgakov’s subtle themes is that in time, tyranny can become “normative” and accepted. Throughout Master we see glimpses of just how brainwashed the public had become by the power of the government. We see this sort of power delegated and received unconsciously in nearly every facet of Soviet life.

The MASSOLIT (Masters of the Soviet Literature) is a good example of this power, wherein its members are continually shown to be antireligious and somewhat hegemonic in their application of certain philosophical axioms. In the minds of the elite that form this literary group, religion should not be talked about, let alone given the privilege of critical inquiry. Thus, censorship has not simply become a tool used by the powerful to control others, but an attitude applied by the elite to further marginalize the oppressed. Through this faint example, Bulgakov seems to be suggesting that, via various communist social reformations, the Soviet lifestyle had become disinterested in even the most critical forms of human dialogue. No longer was there a spirit of investigation in the academic medium, for it had been replaced by a dull specter of inheritance and stagnant intellectual tradition.

Or, as we see in the complicated and befuddled mess that is the character of Margarita, a woman so compelled to be entangled in the pines of romance, she willingly escorts the apparition of Satan to a dance in hopes that she may once again regain what had been lost to her for so many years. It is in this character that Bulgakov reveals his most compelling argument. The character Margarita becomes a startling example of how love, and the feelings surrounding it, had become for so many but a pathetic attempt to secure one’s own future through the future of another. Although Margarita’s love is true and steadfast, her pursuit of it becomes more important than the object to which it is directed.

From his satirical portrayals of Satan disturbing the Moscow elite, to his post-critical commentary on the life of Jesus Christ, to his delicate depiction of a romantically crazed woman-turned-witch, Bulgakov applies layer upon layer of meaning and symbolism in order to arouse the sleeping imaginations of his readers. Bulgakov, on nearly every page, draws into light the severity by which Stalin’s dictatorship had conquered the imagination and livelihood of the Soviet peoples. Drawing on themes from Goethe, Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, and Cervantes, Master is an exercise in truly “free verbal construction.” Bulgakov stops at nothing to surprise the reader, allowing the imagination to take authority over the security of the rational mind. It seems that Bulgakov was privy to information being withheld from the common Soviet, so his novel takes on a sort of mystical quality which engages the reader in the senses over and against a formal allegory based on historical fact.

Although I cannot pretend to know the entire historical situation from which this book was written, it is clear that Bulgakov was a literary genius, both in form and function. His book captivated millions of pre-Cold War Soviets who were struggling for air in the vacuous environment of Stalin’s dictatorship. I should hope and pray that there are some contemporary Bulgakovs in our midst today. Like the history student at UCSC, who appeared as if from a crowd of wandering intellectual shapes, Bulgakov’s masterpiece has appeared in similar fashion, from a crowd of dark and harrowing literary shapes, to provide an enlightened and unexpected spirit of optimism in the face of so much cynical confusion.

- Justin D'Agostino

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home