#‘The Master And Margarita’ - Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov

[t-jfh]

Mark Leonard Winter performs in Belvoir St Theatre's 2023 production of The Master and Margarita.

(Photo supplied: Brett Boardman / Belvoir St Theatre)

Of the many themes swirling around the text, Flack argues the novel's "central idea" is the damage wrought by misguided beliefs.

(Photo supplied: Brett Boardman / Belvoir St Theatre)

Anna Samson and Amber McMahon in Belvoir St Theatre's 2023 production of The Master and Margarita.

(Photo supplied: Brett Boardman / Belvoir St Theatre)

The Master and Margarita cast in rehearsals.

(Photo supplied: Brett Boardman / Belvoir St Theatre)

Gareth Davies and Jana Zvedeniuk star in Belvoir St Theatre's 2023 production of The Master and Margarita.

(Photo supplied: Brett Boardman / Belvoir St Theatre)

Master and Margarita, the Russian masterpiece by Mikhail Bulgakov, is adapted for the stage by Belvoir St Theatre

By Nicola Heath for The Stage Show / ABC Arts

ABC News - 27 November 2023

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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov has entranced readers, some of whom spend a lifetime plumbing its mystery and message.

(Illustration: Antra Svarcs / ABC RN)

Visitors to the Bulgakov museum leave graffiti and quotes from the novel in the staircase of the building. (Photo: Getty / Wojtek Laski)

A colourised photo portrait of Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, 1928.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Master and Margarita's enduring literary legacy inside Russia and beyond

Stalin wouldn’t let this book be published. Decades on, it’s still changing lives.

By Rosa Ellen for The History Listen / ABC RN

ABC News - 1 August 2020

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[escapingpurgatory]

just ordered the master and margarita novel! it comes tomorrow, I'm so excited. But I kinda wish I would've waited to watch the movie before I start reading the book, but whateverrr

[rwpohl]

[adobongsiopao]

I bought this "The Master and Margarita" novel by Mikhail Bugalkov last week to read other Russian novels. The good news is that I managed to finish reading it this week. While I had difficulty memorizing many names of the characters here, the story is actually great. I kept continue reading this because it has a surreal story. The villains there who are the demons are interesting because they have complex personalities. While their tricks are mortifying, their motivations are not typical compare to other demons in literature. The title itself tends to be hard to understand until the middle part of the book. It's a really good novel. If you want to try reading a story that is mix with horror, fantasy romance and social satire then "The Master and Margarita" is worth a read.

[lisystrata]

Woland-Gaft. The Master and Margarita

In my opinion, the film adaptation with the participation of Valentin Gaft in the role of Woland was by no means the most successful of all known productions based on this novel (1994). However, the very image of Woland, embodied by Valentin Gaft, seems ideal to me. This is the iconic Woland. Better than him to play the role of Messire could only Conrad Veidt, probably.

He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle's head. He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left — for some reason — green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.

Then the writers long and unsuccessfully wonder what country he came from and who he is by nationality:

`A German...' thought Berlioz. `An Englishman...' thought Homeless (Ivan Besdomnyi). 'My, he must be hot in those gloves.'

'Excuse me, please,' the approaching man began speaking, with a foreign accent but without distorting the words, 'if, not being your acquaintance, I allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that...'

Here he politely took off his beret and the friends had nothing left but to stand up and make their bows.

'No, rather a Frenchman ...' thought Berlioz.

'A Pole? ...' thought Homeless (Ivan Besdomnyi).

'You've been invited here as a consultant, Professor?' asked Berlioz.

'Yes, as a consultant.'

"You're German?' Homeless (Ivan Besdomnyi) inquired.'I? ...' the professor repeated and suddenly fell to thinking. 'Yes, perhaps I am German ...' he said.

After the death of Mikhail Berlioz in a tram accident, Ivan Besdomnyi tries to pursue Woland and his entourage:

Ivan gasped, looked into the distance, and saw the hateful stranger. He was already at the exit to Patriarch's Lane; moreover, he was not alone. The more than dubious choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was still not all: the third in this company proved to be a tom-cat, who appeared out of nowhere, huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with a desperate cavalryman's whiskers. The trio set off down Patriarch's Lane, the cat walking on his hind legs. Ivan sped after the villains and became convinced at once that it — would be very difficult to catch up with them. The trio shot down the lane in an instant and came out on Spiridonovka.

Director of the theater Variety Styopa Likhodeyev (Stephen Evildoer), Mikhail Berlioz's neighbor in communal apartment number 50, wakes up hungover and sees a stranger in front of him. Subsequently, the stranger will be Woland:

'Professor of black magic Woland,' the visitor said weightily, seeing Styopa's difficulty, and he recounted everything in order. Yesterday afternoon he arrived in Moscow from abroad, went immediately to Styopa, and offered his show to the Variety.

In the end, Woland's entire retinue appears in apartment number 50: the jesters Koroviev-Kletchatyi-Fagot (Koroviev-Checkered-Bassoon) and Behemoth the Cat (Cat Behemoth), as well as the demon Azazello:

Before the Satanic Ball:

'Hella, it's time,' said Woland, and Hella disappeared from the room. 'My leg hurts, and now this

'Allow me,' Margarita quietly asked.

Woland looked at her intently and moved his knee towards her. The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee.

Finale of the ball in May in a Moscow apartment:

Woland was in some sort of black chlamys with a steel sword on his hip. He quickly approached Margarita, offered her the cup, and said imperiously: 'Drink!'

Margarita became dizzy, she swayed, but the cup was already at her lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears: 'Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth.

On the balustrade of a Moscow house shortly before leaving the city:

'And what is that smoke there on the boulevard?'

That is Griboedov's burning,' replied Azazello.

'It must be supposed that that inseparable pair, Koroviev and Behemoth, stopped by there?'

'Of that there can be no doubt, Messire.'

Again silence fell, and the two on the terrace gazed at the fragmented, dazzling sunlight in the upper-floor windows of the huge buildings facing west. Woland's eye burned like one of those windows, though Woland had his back to the sunset.

Visit of Matthew Levi:

But here something made Woland turn his attention to the round tower behind him on the roof. From its wall stepped a tattered, clay-covered, sullen man in a chiton, in home-made sandals, black-bearded.

'Hah!' exclaimed Woland, looking mockingly at the newcomer. 'Least of all would I expect you here! What have you come with, uninvited guest?''I have come to see you, spirit of evil and sovereign of shadows,' the newcomer replied, glowering inimically at Woland...

[facts-i-just-made-up]

How will I die?

Not unreality cuz I can't think of a funny reply but I'm reading "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov right now and it opens with a prediction of exactly how someone will die and it's an amazing novel with a very fun and horrifying brand of chaos that some demons wreak across Soviet Moscow and there's a demonic cat named Behemoth and the guy who did those Little Critter books did one of the early cover illustrations and it's one of my favorite images ever so I just wanted to share it:

[librarycards]

hello all, and welcome to your favorite book rec series! :) here are my favorites of the first quarter of 2024. it was, as always, a tough choice, and several 5-star books had to be left out. to see all of my book reviews/follow my reading life, add or follow me on goodreads (and check out my forthcoming novel on goodreads and storygraph while you're at it). I also recommend all kinds of media on my newsletter, which a couple hundred people seem to like!)

with that, here are my top 9 books (in no particular order) of jan-march 2024!

Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks

Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

Megan Milks, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body

Hiromi Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms

Carla Sofia Ferreira, A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us

Sam Sax, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

Ulrich Jesse K Baer, Deer Black Out [I was lucky to get an ARC of this one; it drops in April!]

tagging people who are or might be interested below - but feel free to do this for yourself and tag me, i read every single one i'm tagged in and update my tbr accordingly! thanks for reading & loving this series as much as i do :3

@heavenlyyshecomes @communicationissues @fluoresensitive @gwenderqueer @capricornpropaganda @discworldwitches @stephen-deadalus @materialisnt @boykeats @growtiredofpublicvulnerability @flameswallower @closet-keys @fatehbaz @trans-axolotl @bioethicists @aldieb @petesdragon @passerea @lesbianlizzybennet @slowtides @felgueirosa @sadhoc @sawasawako @candiedsmokedsalmon @tirragen @punkkwix @feypact @abstractlesbian @crippleprophet and anyone who wants to!

[rowanthestrange]

The Master And Margarita Jacket

(Matthew Sweet’s Doctor Who version…but with a frisson of Bulgakov’s)

It’s done! With every bit of unphotographical glittery metallic paint that I can’t capture on camera even if my iphone skills weren’t rubbish.

@spoonietimelordy, @rearranging-deck-chairs, @bearinabandana and everyone else who Did The Reading of that one ‘I Am The Master’ novel but I’ve forgotten to tag because i’m so sleep deprived i can’t think any more but hopefully other people will, assemble!

Detailed closeups and explanations (with some spoilers) below:

Starting front top right side (face on). -Margarita herself, biting a mushroom. A more Cockatoo beak than Macaw, with red face instead of white, to make what exactly she is more mysterious. -The Master Who logo here is just gold, any shading didn’t look right when it was so thin.

Front top right pocket. Purple, of course.

-Next section down are these three. The ‘Never Stop Growing’ patch is my second favourite patch of the bunch. So many Master Themes, and plot relevant. -Then the little ‘Best Buds’ with the heart in the middle. I was inordinately proud of that idea. (Buds, budding, bigenerated vibe). -And then ‘Obscene Lotus’. That’s mentioned early in the book, and while it’s just described as a big purplish lotus, there’s so much sexual charging in that scene that, well, you gotta.

Me, reusing the ‘budding’ pun in a different capacity? It’s more likely than you think.

-The cover of the Penguin Clothbound Classic version of the original The Master And Margarita, that took multiple days to complete and so much agony. -The patch is a blank one that I bought, then painted the design to look like one of those stamps people sometimes put in books. Painted the border the same colour, then tea-stained it to look like old paper. Certainly in real life the colour comes out nicely. I couldn’t find his autograph (and sadly there’s an unrelated artist with the same name lol) but he got his doctorate in Wilkie Collins so I just looked up examples of that guy’s writing and tried to give it a bit of that vibe. Hopefully it’s the thought that counts. But hey, if anyone ever meets him and gets me a signature sample I can just redo it.

General mushroom patch - I like the fire kind of vibe and the looming.

To the other side!

So. You’re asking what’s with the daisy theme. Fair. So Margarita is also another name for a daisy in some languages. I choose to lean into that because it’s also the widely known symbol of Three - with that scene where he talks to Jo and recounts how a hermit living on a mountain helped dispel his depression by getting him to focus on the beauty of the flower (“and it was the most daisiest daisy”). Given that Three is essentially a character in the book, this felt like the vibe we’re going for. It’s perennial. It also is a healer of bruises and wounds, how can that not be relevant meta wise too to the Master’s new companion, hm? And okay yes, Mikhail does say he’s not a botanist, but if you can think of another way to get that message across other than botanical illustration page…

I like the patch because lightbulb, idea, full of mushrooms etc.

-‘I Am The Master’ being the name of the book the story is contained in, plus Fun With Identity. -Next the one bit of Real Art that I attempted to copy in glittery acrylics - Magritte’s ‘The Treachery Of Images’ or more commonly known ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. The story not only of the Master’s experiences recently, but the story’s themes of hallucinations and deceptions; as well as being the symbol of Russian!Brigadier. -This patch is great isn’t it? A play on the Master’s apparent alcoholism or Russian blending in as you prefer, and of course, The Lighthouse of Martin!Doctor fame.

-Mikhail’s guitar for playing Brown Sugar and other ominous inference songs. -The formula triangle of Love, Food, and Music (I couldn’t think of a self-evident way to show his approach to food - Russian dumplings are, well, not exactly distinct). On its side so the glittery pink triangle points in a certain direction because he’s escaped places and I can do ominous inferences too Sweet. -Maybe controversial? There is a failed love story component in here though, that I just couldn’t leave unmarked. The Doctor, K’vo, and Jo all have their parts to play in that.

Now for the arms:

Here’s the right-side looking-on arm. -I repainted this mushroom patch to be the orange and green of K’vo’s. -You’ve already seen the long image of it above, so here’s just a snippet closeup of the motif that goes along both arms. Daisies linked in a chain with the words ‘daisiest daisy’ (if you wonder why everything’s outlined by the way, a) i like the style, and b) it makes glitter infinitely more legible and clearer to see if there’s a dark matt border around it breaking it up, especially with something as variable coloured as denim). There’s the sunflower in the middle because Margarita loves her sunflower seeds.

This is the other arm. Margarita holding a margarita in a margarita. What’s more to add? I used my shittest white (mixed with my fabric medium as everything else has been at every step) rather than @yesokayiknow’s excellent suggestion of Liquitex, which has saved me everywhere else, including those light patches. But here shitty kids basics acrylic is translucent enough to do some excellent work pretending to be glass and ice. The parrot patch has been altered to make the beak entirely black and her face red instead of macaw white, to keep her species ambiguous as literary theme demands.

To the back!

This Master Who logo is bigger, so it has the Master’s purple highlights like bruising.

Here is a small UNIT patch I modified to be a Russian one, globe focused on their continent (roughly). Sweet just translated the word ‘unit’ for Russian!Brigadier’s group, and the text is the re-cyrilliced version of that.

Skipping to the bottom…

Here referencing O’s collection of Doctor Information, Sweet adding to that with having distinct scrapbooks. ‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’ is a line from Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita (spoken by Satan in fact, mhmm) and became something of a rallying cry for oppressed Russian artists. I have ‘Author Unknown’ for the obvious meta with his and the Doctor’s memories, and likewise, the fact that flames are clearly present and burning lets the viewer come to whatever conclusion they like. #133 was chosen for the simple fact that in my copy of Bulgakov’s novel, and the one depicted on the front of the jacket, it is page 133 which starts the chapter The Hero Enters, where we meet The Master who has renounced all other names (who is very much, as Interference notes, the Doctor). They are glitter paint titles done on Hemline repair patches, black, brown, white, and navy blue. I know anything too painty on that area of the back will risk a lot of wear, and these are easily replaced when necessary (if still hours of lettering).

To the left most side…

This was the most expensive patch I bought, £12. But worth it. The mushroom stalk is silk.

Here I depicted in silhouette the scene of the Master climbing up to the Doctor on the giant mushroom. I chose silhouette so as not to draw the eye too much. I also added some 2ply black-black glitter cotton as part of his climbing equipment, attached on by some silver stitches for the…things I can’t remember the name of. It gives it a bit more 3D effect, but also keeps the thread close enough it shouldn’t pull on anything.

And at its base we have a reference to Mikhail’s chosen middle name. I chose to believe it’s relevant, Sweet’s too deep into this for it not to be. This is a cover I edited to highlight the namesake who actually travelled Russia and collected the tales of this book, and indeed, it does include the story of Koschei The Deathless. I edited the robe to be red instead of its original yellow, and added the quintessential Time Lord collar. But I think it’s perfectly passable. This is iron on transfer paper (dark) onto a very light grey polycotton to turn it into a patch. It…*cough* hasn’t had its edges finished or strictly been attached yet, but that’s a bit of handwork I can do as and when.

So finally back up to the middle

I’ve expanded out @spoonlesss-artbook fantastic angel-winged Margarita’s Master art. The Redbubble bag was only that big as it was (hemmed with bostik fabric glue like a true pro and attached as a panel) so it cut off a little, and it didn’t go the whole way anyway, so now we get some endings of the feathers, some all the way up to the arm of the jacket. I tried to blend it into the fire, one creature of both. And trying to get a multidimensional feel, boundary breaking. And again, very glittery irl so plays very well with the fire theme. It was fun when it came to colour-matching particularly the blue wing at the top, because the glitter gives it a bit of a sheen. I blunted it with a few careful washes of black so it still sparkles but is the right colour in most angles.

The Redbubble edit cuts @spoonietimelordy’s signature, so I copied it from the original and moved it over to the left side in some sparkly silver. Also internet doxxing my real life self on the bottom of the back as my own signature.

Doesn’t look like the sort of thing that would take weeks when you see it all together, but I’m really happy with it. I’m so grateful for everyone who’s shown their brilliant art to me and shared posts about painting all these years, cus it allowed me to absorb stuff and let me come out of the gate swinging! It feels thoroughly addictive. Even if I only know ‘use tiny brush’ for almost everything and glitter metallic is great for hiding sins. (And a ‘Ha!’ in the face of my mother keeping me away from it my whole life because of mess - I never got even a single speck on any clothes that wasn’t this jacket. I could’ve been doing this for years rather than just picking up a brush at the age of thirty-damn-one. But at least I’ve got it now).

And thanks to Matthew Sweet for feeding the worms in my brain too.

[voguefashion]

Isabelle Adjani as Margarita, from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel ‘The Master and Margarita’, photographed by Jean Daniel Lorieux, 2008.

[t-jfh]

Photograph by Alexander Yanenko (Russian)

Untitled, 1985

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Related YouTube video regarding photographer Alexander Yanenko, the provenance of this photograph (above) and associated references:

YouTube video >> Zach Dobson Photography - Mystery Solved: The Truth behind the Viral Photo "Black Cat and His Kid" [Released 11 November 2023 / 3mins.+38secs.]:

In Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, the black cat Behemoth character has a penchant for chess, vodka, pistols and obnoxious sarcasm.

Illustration by Christopher Conn Askew

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. New York. 1967. Harper & Row. Translated from the Russian by Michael Glenny. 394 pages. Hardcover. Jacket art by Mercer Mayer.

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A colourised photo portrait of Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, 1928.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

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[ladyofmelk]

How love saved The Master and Margarita

(aka Bulgakov and Nyurenberg's story)

Mikhail Bulgakov and Elena Shilovskaya (née Nyurenberg) met for the first time in 1929 when they were both married - to Lubov Belozerskaya and Yevgeny Shilovskiy respectively.

To quote Elena herself, "I was simply the wife of lieutenant-general Shilovsky, a wonderful, very noble man. It was what they call a happy family: a husband with a high position, two beautiful sons. In general everything was fine. But when I met Bulgakov I knew that this was my fate, in spite of everything, in spite of the incredibly difficult tragedy of separation. It was fast, unusually fast, at any rate for me, love to last my whole life."

She tried everything to avoid him; but then, when they met a year and a half later, the first thing he said to her was "I can't live without you." They began an affair.

In February 1931, Elena's husband found out about their relationship. He demanded they broke it off, and for the sake of their children she never spoke to Bulgakov again for almost a year.

When he met her again, in June 1932, their love was renewed. Elena ran away with him and her children. Bulgakov wrote to Shilovskiy begging him to let Elena go, and after much persistence he finally accepted.

Elena's older son went to live with his father, while her youngest stayed with her. Bulgakov took him under his wing and cared for him like his own child. He divorced Lubov Belozerskaya in October 1932 and married Elena on the next day.

During their honeymoon, while the couple was staying at a hotel in Leningrad, Bulgakov told Elena about a novel he had begun to write years before and that he had burned down in 1930. He had lost all hope for this book, until Elena entered his life. Then, his inspiration had returned. He picked up pen and paper, and started scribbling. When Elena asked him what he was doing, he replied that he was rewriting the book. It was all in his head. But this time, he wanted to add a new character to the story.

Despite being rich and beautiful, Margarita Nikolaevna is not happy at all. Her life is boring and meaningless, until she meets a troubled nameless writer, for whose sake she'll make a deal with the Devil himself. Elena had become the prototype for one of his main characters.

Bulgakov finished editing The Master and Margarita a few weeks before his death with Elena's help. He had been sick and bed ridden for a long time. After he passed, Elena wrote in her diary; "March 10th, 1940. Misha has died."

Elena - who had become Bulgakov's personal secretary and biggest supporter - fought to see her husband's latest, most brilliant work published. She knew it was an impossible task, considering the contents of the book, and their friends tried to discourage her, but she wasn't going to give up on Bulgakov.

First, she tried publishing it on a popular literary newspaper, the Moskva. But the abridged, censored version that got printed was so awful that she eventually stepped back.

Elena kept the manuscript under lock and key for years, and then, in 1967, she finally got it published in France. The first complete version of the novel was released in the Soviet Union in 1973, but illegal copies of it had already been going around for years.

The Master and Margarita was an immediate success. Everyone from all over the world was praising its genius and wit. Eugenio Montale, one of Italy's most important poets and translators of the time, called it "a true miracle".

Margarita - the real Margarita - had once again saved her Master, not letting his name fade away in the mist of time.

The manuscript hadn't burned.

[cantsayidont]

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA (2024): I don't feel any more qualified to analyze Mikhail Bulgakov's monumental Soviet novel than I do Goethe's FAUST (of which it is to some extent a satirical inversion), but this impressive new Russian feature adaptation, directed by Michael Lockshin and co-written by Lockshin and Roman Kantor, makes the rather bold decision to restructure the story rather than simply dramatizing it (as did Vladimir Bortko's more literal 10-part Russian TV version from 2005). Much has been pared down, sometimes severely, including a lot of the novel-within-a-novel about Pontius Pilate (Claes Bang). Lockshin and Kantor opt instead to focus more tightly on the title characters: the Master (Yevgeny Tsyganov), a writer whose work has abruptly fallen out of political favor, eventually landing him in an asylum, and his fiercely loyal mistress Margarita (Yuliya Snigir, dizzingly attractive), who will literally go to the Devil to save him.

It took me a while to warm to this approach, since "burned-out middle-aged male author pulls improbably beautiful younger woman based entirely on his unappreciated literary genius" is one of my least-favorite tropes; it is certainly an element of the novel (leavened a bit by the awareness that Margarita was based on Bulgakov's wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, who not only preserved his jumbled manuscripts for the novel, but also later edited them into a final version and arranged for it to finally be published more than 25 years after his death), but there's also a lot more besides that in the book than this film includes. Fortunately, Lockshin and Kantor are not so foolish as to deprive the audience for too long of the sinister delights of Professor Woland (August Diehl) and his diabolical retinue, and their rather belated arrival offers welcome reassurance that the filmmakers have not completely lost their heads like the unfortunate Berlioz (Yevgeny Knyazev).

What the restructuring most achieves is establishing a more palpable sense of peril for the main characters (underlined by Anna Drubich's strong score), something that the novel carefully veils. Tonally, Lockshin's take on Woland's midnight ball and the fate of the two lovers invites comparison with PAN'S LABYRINTH, and the ending, although not really that different from the book, feels darker. It's not quite as dazzling as it wants to be, some special effects are still subpar (although much better than the Bortko version), and it's never as funny or approachable as the the novel, but it's satisfying overall. One minor distracting point: While some characters' dialogue is in languages other than Russian (Woland speaks German, and what's left of the Pilate storyline is in Latin and Aramaic), it's always overdubbed in Russian, so in those scenes, you hear the same dialogue in two languages from two speakers at once; subtitles would be preferrable. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: A worthwhile and generally compelling cover version, although probably not the best introduction to the story if you've not read the book.

[agentnico]

Master and Margarita (2024) review

Oh when in Soviet Russia…

Plot: Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita". 1930's, Moscow. A famous writer is censored by the Soviet state: his novel is banned, and the theatrical premier of his new play about Pontius Pilate - canceled. In just a few days he becomes an outcast. Inspired by these misfortunes the writer conceives a new novel in which the devil, named Woland, satirically revenges all those responsible for the writer's downfall. He knows this novel can never be published in the USSR, but Margarita - his muse pushes him to write it no matter what.

I truly believe Master and Margarita is one of the most powerful pieces of literature to come out from Russia. Yes I am aware War & Peace is more talked about, but look, I read all of its 1000+ pages and though it is an epic in every sense of the word, it does drag quite about. As for Master and Margarita, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov created a satirical, quasi-biblical allegory that represents themes that are crucial to the human experience, such as struggle between good and evil, corruption in government and high society, human fragility, religion and prophecy, and the endurance of love over all. It’s a masterfully written piece of work, and one that is truly hard to adapt to screen, due to how much happens through its pages. However I’m all for directors giving it a go, with Michael Lockshin taking the challenge with a motion picture that was originally a co-production between Russian studios and Universal Pictures, though the latter pulled out following the Russo-Ukrainian War, even though most of the filming was already complete. Nevertheless after multiple delays the final product is here, so let’s digest.

Let’s talk through the positives first. It’s nice to see a Russian production of such grand scale, that even gives Hollywood a run for its money. There are some truly spectacular set pieces, and also interesting visuals, especially of a futuristic post-modern take of the Soviet Union, that reminded me a little of the recent Atomic Heart video game. Also the inclusion of August Diehl who plays the central Satanic figure Voland. This casting choice was a truly inspired one, as Diehl both looks and feels as if he came out straight from the pages of Bulgakov’s novel. There’s just this presence to him, as you can tell the power behind his eyes, yet he can also be really charming and witty. Whenever he was on-screen, the movie fully came to life, as he managed to perfectly balance the damning mocking tone with a deep inner understanding of things beyond the human mind. Look, there’s a great reason why they casted an actor outside of Russia for this part, as Diehl honestly was incredible. Funny how this is the same guy who got his testicles shot off in that WW2 Tarantino flick. Evgeniy Tsyganov as the titular Master too felt perfectly apt for the role, in some ways personifying Mikhail Bulgakov himself. The Master is a character that can so easily come off as dull, as he’s generally very stoic and constantly deep in his own thoughts, so it was a nice interpretation with Tsyganov breathing more life into him.

Unfortunately this is where the positives end. Look, I think it is truly impressive for the entire novel to be transferred into a 2hr 30min film, and of course I expected certain parts to be rushed. However the movie shoots itself in the foot by trying to approach the source material in a different way. Messing with various realities and reorganising the events of the novel in a completely different order, the result is messy and all over the place. I can say with full certainty that if I haven’t read the book before that I’d be so confused as to what the hell was going on in this movie. From the way it jumps from one place to the other in non linear fashion made it so difficult to be engaged and feel connected with the characters. There was a lot of extra narrative elements added to an already overstuffed plot (with a lot of creative choices being outright baffling) as such causing the movie to need to rush even more certain other key plot points that again, it was really disorganised and jarring.

Also, I know that ever since Batman it’s now cool to go dark with everything, but The Master and Margarita is a novel that doesn’t shy away from raising a few eyebrows. In fact it goes out of its way to be as weird and ridiculous as possible, with the inherent horror and tragedy that befalls each of its characters being felt only later, after the laughs have died down. The humour in the book, especially the dark stuff - that’s sort of famously the Russian novelists’ coping mechanism against, uh, being a Russian novelist. Yet this new 2024 film hardly allows a single joke, and instead tries to cover everything with a dark dramatic tone, and I feel that really takes away from the charm of Master and Margarita. Heck there are even sequences in the film that are supposed to be played for laughs, like the Behemoth cat’s shootout with the KGB cops that screams for physical comedy potential, yet the movie kind of glosses over it in a very monotonous way.

Aside from August Diehl and Evgeniy Tsyganov, the casting left a lot to be desired. Yulia Snigir made for a really bland Margarita. Voland’s entourage of demons, who in the book are a cause for some truly entertaining if silly shenanigans, here are completely wasted, and in fact are borderline annoying. Yuri Kolokolnikov as Korovev, the main member of his entourage, was actually horrendous. In the source material Korovev is a trickster, yet there was still wiseness within his madness. Here however Kolokolnikov plays him as if he were some kind of deranged clown, screaming every single line and maniacally laughing for absolutely no reason. The talking cat, who is one of the book’s best characters, in here is just a CGI cat who says maybe only two lines of dialogue in the whole film, and even then it’s a lazy mumble courtesy of actor Yura Borisov. Claes Bang as Pontius Pilate looked bored out of his mind. To be fair, the whole biblical side plot of Pilot and Jesus suffers the most here by being downgraded to maybe 5 minutes, which at this rate I feel like they should have cut the whole thing out entirely as the 5 minutes added nothing to the overall film. But yes, Claes Bang was evidently there to collect a pay check, and part of me wishes that instead we just had James McAvoy reprise his comedic take of Pilate from The Book of Clarence that came out earlier in the year.

It was never going to be an easy feat adapting Bulgakov’s epic into a movie. The narrative lends itself so much better to a TV series format, and in fact there is a wonderful 2005 limited series adaptation from Vladimir Bortko, and now that right there is how you make Master and Margarita work! That series featured great music, amazing performances, and plenty of breathing room to give every nook and cranny detail of the book its proper time. 2024’s Master and Margarita doesn’t come anywhere close to it, and though I do admire Lockshin’s ambitions, in the end it all falls flat on its face. August Diehl however is truly phenomenal in this, and honestly I really need to watch more of his acting work. I hear A Hidden Life with him is supposed to be good. Adding that to my watchlist as we speak.

Overall score: 4/10

[jonnymarzetti]

Could you put together a book reading list 🙏 I trust your taste and I’ve got to get back into reading argh

SIR YES SIR!! i'll do my best... this might turn into a LONG post

some of my favorite authors, in the parentheses my favorites by them:

kurt vonnegut (his novel while mortals sleep is FANTASTIC)

emily st. john mandel (the lola quartet)

fleur jaeggy (SS proleterka and the water statues)

mikhail bulgakov (the master and margarita!!!)

margaret atwood (the handmaid's tale should be like. required reading omg)

donna tartt (the little friend and the secret history!!!!)

okay now some general recommendations. these are short stories, poetry, and mainly regular novels :) i'm going to make the easier to get into books in green text, the somewhat hard books in orange, and the harder-to-get-into books in red

piranesi (susanna clarke)

sonny's blues (james baldwin)

slouching towards bethlehem (joan didion)

the heart is a lonely hunter (carson mccullers)

maya angelou: the complete poetry (--or anything by her. wow)

grendel (john garnder)

wide sargasso sea (jean rhys)

the trial (franz kafka)

never let me go (kazuo ishiguro)

the haunting of hill house (shirley jackson)*

*actually. anything by shirley jackson

the sound and the fury (william faulkner... note: this one is pretty tough for the first 200 pages)

mouthful of birds (samanta schweblin. note: this is fantastically weird and eerie)

don juan (lord byron) is iconic and funny IF you can stand it

king lear !!!!!! (william shakespeare)

the road (cormac mccarthy)

cuyahoga (pete beatty)

let me know what you think if you ever read these!!! ALSO if you want pdfs of any book i am your dude. just tell me on discord and i will find it for you

[meemoop]

Hiiii whats your top 5 fav books (this is because of the cat"s name)

Goodness, I couldn’t tell you my top five (I love too many), but I can give you the list of books I’ve given a 5-star rating on Goodreads! I can confidently say that The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is my favorite book of all time, with a close second being Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

 Fives:

Fyodor Dostoevsky's books:

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

Devils (or The Possessed)

The Idiot

White Nights

Other authors:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (I cried so much, but I seriously recommend).

VERY High fours: God is Dead by Friedrich Nietzsche, Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I will never stop recommending Dostoevsky. Nietzsche said: “[Dostoevsky] is the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn.” After reading his novels, it seems I have lived ten years in one. Thank you for this ask! The answer is very long but when it comes to books I’ll go on forever and ever! 💕💕💕🫶

[glassheadcanon]

Tagged by @sayonaramidnight - thank-you (and forgive me for blabbing on about so many faves)! ^_^

the last book I read: last novel was So Big, by Edna Ferber; last non-fiction work was The Truth in True Crime, by J. Warner Wallace (I usually have one of each on the go, and switch back and forth between them)

a book I recommend: for fiction, (besides the above - Selina Peake is definitely a roaring 20's Midwestern American kindred spirit to Anne Shirley), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise; and for non-fiction: Person of Interest by J. Warner Wallace and Mortimer Adler & Charles van Doren's How to Read a Book Oooh - and for fellow book lovers: Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair!

a book that I couldn’t put down: the most recent one would have to be Martha Wells's All Systems Red (book one of The Murderbot Diaries) - it had such a compelling narrative and focal character voice!

a book that I’ve read twice (or more): how to choose? Old (and new) friends include: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, and Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane novels

a book on my TBR: Mirra Ginsburg's translation of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov has been at the top of the pile since being recommended by a colleague far too long ago but in the past few years it's been tough to put myself in the right mood and frame of mind for it, sadly

a book I’ve put down: for me, Nabokov's Lolita also immediately comes to mind (had a tough time with it ages ago and haven't picked it up since; like Miya I do want to give it another try - just haven't been able to bring myself to it, especially when there are so many more enjoyable alternatives out there, for me!)

a book on my wish list: way too many to choose from, but I'm really curious about Master-at-Arms by Rafael Sabatini

a favourite book from childhood: I honestly can't choose just one (so many of the classics were faves, especially L.M. Montgomery's and Lewis Carroll's) but for fun I'll admit that these ones: The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson, Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly books (like The El Dorado Adventure) were highly influential, as well

a book you would give to a friend: it always depends on their tastes, of course (though in the past I've enthusiastically gifted JSMN to adult friends who I know enjoy the genre, Island of the Blue Dolphins to young girls, and A.S. Peterson's The Fiddler's Gun and The Fiddlers Green to teen girls I know...I'm auntie to A LOT of nieces and nephews! :D)

a book of poetry or lyrics you own: Dorothy Parker's Enough Rope, and T.S. Elliot's Old Possom's Book of Practical Cats are old faves

a nonfiction book you own: I picked up The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs by Tristan Gooley and look forward to reading it soon

what are you currently reading: currently revisiting my old friend, Anne of Green Gables, and then I hope to go through at least the next one or two in the series again😊

what are you planning on reading next: along with the non-fiction book in #11 above, I'm also thinking of taking Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead with me on vacation in a few weeks

Tagging: @ashknife @jessilroberts @firefletch @cygnascrimbles (no pressure) and any other bibliophiles who're interested and haven't done this one yet!