You're listening to the Slavic literature pod. Your shelf-help guide to all things Slavic. [Music] Hi, I'm Matt Gerson-Ovich, PhD candidate at Northwestern University, studying Russian literature and film. And I'm Cameron Lelana, a literature enthusiast and a guy working in media. This is the podcast for people who want to learn more about Slavic literature, art and culture. Every episode we're going to be bringing you the background and analysis, you'll need to understand these works. If you're interested in supporting us, you can head on over to our website, Slaviclitpod.com. All right, Matt, what are we getting into this week? This week, we are beginning our journey down one of our most requested books across our group of supporters and just our general social media audience. Everybody has been breaking into my house to beat down my door and say, "Matt, when are you going to cover the Master in Margarita?" And I am here to tell you that today, we start our four part series, Mikhail Bugakov's "The Master in Margarita." So that's pretty exciting. Yeah, I've been really glad about that because I've been conferring with Matt's girlfriend, and she said those people don't actually appear, but he's been telling me he's been seeing this weird kind of tall guy peering the background of his vision. Well, I'm thinking maybe this is a good sign that we should get into this book. I hear it. He tells me he's a German professor of black magic, so. Right, so you should listen to him. I don't know what that means for me. When strange tall German men tell me that they're really specialized in esoteric arts, I just kind of go along with whatever, because I feel like something bad is going to happen to me if I don't. Right, right. You kind of have to go along with it. So anyways. Yeah, I'm excited to get into this "Master in Margarita" is an incredible book. It's amazing how it's been, and we're reading chapters one through nine on this episode. Excited to get into it, a little scared to get into it, because there's a lot to talk about here. And people are opinionated too on this book. People are very opinionated, so obviously we're going to walk in as carefully as we can. Not at all like a bull in a china shop. No, I'm going to the cannonball in. Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts on the religious elements of the book, so I'm sure that we'll believe no. Everyone's satisfied and no one unhappy. Can't wait to join your religious splinter group after this episode. Right. So let's start with. We've already talked a little bit about Bulgakov previously in the podcast. We've covered a short story. More feed, we've covered his novella, "Hard of the Dog." You can find both of those in the show notes, but Matt, just let's talk about Bulgakov. It's been a while since we've covered him. We should. We really should. I wanted to start with why people like Master in Margarita in general, and I'm not sure I'm going to totally get it. There's a lot of different reasons to like the novel. For one, you can just take my word at face value that this is an extremely influential novel. For everybody, pretty much, who studies Russian, Soviet, Slavic literature has read the Master in Margarita almost certainly. It's probably, I would say, one of, if not the most popular novel for non-specialists getting into. Or not even getting into, just who wants some familiarity with Russian literature. I would say, I mean, you have like that, and maybe some Dostoevsky, for instance. But I personally know a lot of people where this was like either the gateway, or it's the only Russian book that they've read, and they're just completely enthralled by it. It's had a serious and cult following pretty much ever since its publication, and even before it was officially published, because it circulated in sort of dissidents, copying and distribution within the Soviet Union known as Sami's Dot. So that's pretty fun. And it kind of touches on a lot of important topics relating to writing, rewriting canon, and what it means to be a writer during the Soviet period, but also more broadly. I think that's where the success of the book kind of comes into being, it's not just. It can be read on some level as just a critique of the Soviet period in which it's describing, but it's also kind of. Like you mentioned, Cameron, it delves into this deeper sort of theological exploration that a lot of people that I know are personally quite interested in. And I hope that our analysis will start to guide you that way and show you why people find this book so endearing, and so interesting, and return to time and time again. But like you said, I have just a couple of points on Bugakov that I think is interesting, because on our podcast at least we tend to read, I would say more socialism than most people. Right. Yes. Most people is almost none. So almost I would say probably none at all. Maybe a head nod towards cement. Right. Or maybe. Yeah, so we're going to read something here that is not socialist by any means. It falls more into the sort of magical realism realm by all accounts, but we're reading something that's kind of going to be written in the same periods. Not really sure when Bugakov wrote this, but we know it was written somewhere between 1928 and 1940. So this is going to be the kind of period inching towards high Stalinism. It's going to see intensification of purges, and as a result in the novel, you're going to see a lot of not so veiled mentions of people disappearing. I think in a pretty comical way in the book, almost like an off stage kind of death for a lot of these people would sort of mention in passing in conversational gossip, things like that. And it's an interesting, I guess you could say an interesting take on this period of Soviet life. Bugakov, of course, was not a supporter of the Soviet system by any means. He had his experience in the first world war as a medic. These form the basis of a country doctor's notebook, which we've talked about a little bit on the podcast. He was wounded very severely in these wars, and he became addicted to morphine. And then this forms the basis of his novella morphine. And then following after World War I, after the Russians of war, he couldn't emigrate with his family because he had typhus, big L on that one. And he would have wanted to emigrate because he fought on behalf of the White Army, notably not the Red Army. So this experience forms the basis of the White Guard and the theatrical adaptation of that the day of the Torbans, which Stalin quite famously loved very much and saw many, many times. He had an interesting relationship with Stalin, which included personal phone calls. I believe one of which he hung up on because he thought his friend was pranking him. So by the time that he's writing the Master of Margarita, he's in a situation where he is unable to publish in the Soviet Union. His plays were taken off of the stage. He is attacked in the press for being anti-Soviet, salon, and so forth, as you do at this time. And he was, you know, kind of essentially wrote this as you call for the drawer, something that's probably not really going to be seen. And so like I said, it was circulated amongst the literary crowd in the Soviet Union illegally and had a cult following then. And then eventually it was published severely redacted and it had a cult following then. And then, you know, eventually it's fully published and it, you know, continues to have this cult following. And we'll try to tell you why. I mean, hopefully you'll be able to get that from the conversation. You know, this is only our introductory episode. So you'll have to come along for the whole journey. Every episode. Every single episode. At least this one's only four and not like 12 like Warren Peas. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the background. Let's talk a little bit about what's going on here. This one, thankfully right now it's not too complex, but we are going to be dealing with three separate storylines here, which are all in their own way. One storyline, depending on how you want to look at it. Think about it. Yeah, think about it. Very easy to fall. Luckily, we are mostly, mostly following the first, I loosely call it storyline, which is the story of the devil coming to Moscow. Already, if you are not from the master master, master Margaret, you might see some issues with why this was not published the Soviet Union as is. I don't understand why, but I would love to get I'd love you to explain. What could be so what could be so received so critically? How? I don't know why you're talking about religion and the true story. I didn't quote the story of Jesus Christ would be a touchy subject in the Soviet Union, but we start off in Moscow at the Patriarchs ponds. And we got these two guys, Mikhail Androvich, Alexanderovich Berliolz, who is the editor of a literary journal, chairman of a literary association known as Masolitz, which I think Matt will talk to us a little bit about later. He's meaning with a poet who goes by the name Biz Normley or Homeless, and the reason why they're there is to have a conversation about a recent poem that Homeless has put out. And it's about Jesus. And basically, even though it's a critical piece of like, oh, well, it's not going to too much into what it's about, but basically Berliolz is sitting him down to say, hey, I like your piece. It's not bad. However, really what we should be focusing on is the fact that Jesus didn't exist. And as they're having this conversation, they see this like really tall man, maybe over seven feet, who according to the novel later reports cannot agree.
whether he was, whether he had to limp, whether it was in his right leg, left leg, if it was tall, if he was short, if he had gold teeth, platinum teeth, whatever it is. And of course, as the novel notes, none of these reports have any value. But this man walks up to them and initially they'd taken for a foreigner, but he speaks Russian as if he were native. So their conception of who he is or he comes from, maybe Germany, maybe England shifts over the course of this conversation. And this foreigner sits down and says, "Hey, I hear you're talking about Jesus." Well, of course he did, in fact, exist. And they get into an argument over this, they proofs for the existence of not only Jesus, but God, whether or not man can govern. It's a wide-region conversation. And for the most part, they take him pretty seriously, especially when he tells them that he is a professor of, sort of, coming to Moscow to see some newly found manuscripts and arrange them. And as he's doing this, he kind of has some odd sides, like telling barely-o's that he's going to die by having his head cut off by a calm small girl as part of a larger conversation about the inability of man to really rule over anything. But they kind of let those things sort of go. And then he begins to tell them the story of, you know, in the process of saying, "No, really, Jesus was a real guy, let me tell you the story." And he begins this tale, which continues into chapter 2, which is where we get into the point of view of Pontius Pilate through the execution of Jesus. Now, a couple of things to note, if you're not super familiar with the story of the Bible and finally being forced to go to Bible study for five straight years is coming into use for once in my life. The story of, in brief, the story of like Jesus and the gospel are at least of his execution, which is told like four times over the various gospels, is that, you know, Jesus is going along, he's doing his thing, he's telling tales. The, you know, religious leadership at the time, and not a big fan of what he's saying about them, and what his theology or philosophy implies for them. So they kind of conspired to come together to have him killed. They find someone to accuse him of trying to incite the burning of a temple. That, you know, that eventually could fersed him to the death sentence, Pontius Pilate, who is not a procurator of Jerusalem as is suggested in the novel, but a different title. But he is the one who has to confirm it and is like, basically knows that Jesus is being set up. And through the various, the process, the variant of it, he kind of like in front of the Kriwin announces the execution he washes his hands and is like, basically, this blood is on your hands essentially. And it does not feel great about it, but, you know, whatever it's another day in life, and then condemns him to execution. That's in the various tellings of the gospel. That's like roughly what happens. I'm taking this one directly from the book of Matthew because Matthew is most directly referenced in this book, and I didn't have time to read all four books of all four gospels of Jesus' death. I didn't back to Bible study. So we loosely and briefly for like two or three chapters in the gospel. We are from the point of view of Pontius Pilate. Now instead, this chapter takes a really deep dive into the world of Pontius Pilate. And if you are familiar with the gospels, you'll notice as we follow through Pontius Pilate in this day where he condemns Jesus to death, there are a couple of things that are different. But in short, he's got a headache today. He does not feel great. He's got to receive this accused prisoner. So this guy comes in. He's sitting there like, "All right, what's your name?" Yes, well, Han Nosary, which yeshua would be, is like the predice, the modern Jesus comes from Latin, which comes from Greek, Jesus, which comes from, I don't know if it's directly from Hebrew to Greek, but, you know, in the in the original forms, you know, the modern Jesus comes from yeshua. Han Nosary means roughly from Nazareth. So Jesus of Nazareth. And he's like, "Okay, are you been accused of trying to burn, inside a credit burn on a temple? Is that true?" And yeshua says, "No, it's not true." And then Pilate says, "Well, it's written right here, so you must have done it." But as they talk more, yeshua begins to talk about what the procurator Pilate is going through and basically diagnosing him. And Pilate comes around to see him like almost the sense of wonder and eventually commutes his death sentence. Also, as an side point here, at the very beginning, Pilate, when yeshua calls him a good man, Pilate says, "You think I'm a good man?" "All right, here's my buddy, Rat Slayer." And I was like, "All right, he's going to go outside and whip you until you know what to do." And I was like, "No way." They actually said, "Rat Slayer in the Russian." So I wouldn't check the Russian copy and it's, what is it? Well, yeah, it does translate pretty until Rat Slayer, the Russian word. I feel like we need somebody named Rat Slayer to like pulverize our podcast. That would be good. I also, so I looked it up on the Russian language Wikipedia and Rat Slayer, and I don't know how much we could say this is true or not, but the Russian language Wikipedia, you take that exact word and says, "It refers to a Rat Canoble, which is used to hunt other rats." Although, it does acknowledge in the article that that's more of a folktale, and I don't think there was a source given for that. So take that with an incredible grain of salt, but that is very funny. Okay. And it didn't acknowledge the possibility that he could have been a person controlled by a rat, perhaps under a hat. Right, right. Well, they, yeah, I'd have to see the helmets they used at this time to see the possibility of that. Right. Sort of like an ancient Ratatouille situation. Right. Right. And we'll see if he had instead of getting the cooking rat, he got the incredible brutality rat. So they, they can need to have this sort of philosophical conversation out on the balcony. And suddenly, Pylik gets a letter and then he's like, he flips out and is like, "Did you curse the name of Kaiser or, you know, our Emperor, Tiberius?" And Jesus says, "Basically, yeah, I mean, I said to, I was talking to this guy, Judas, from Curia, who I met the other day. You've read the Bible, you probably know Judas. If you don't, Judas is the one who sells Jesus out to the Romans." And so, Yeshua, I guess it should differentiate Yeshua from like the biblical Jesus. Yeshua is basically like, "Yeah, I've said all authorities' violence and eventually there will be time when there is no authority of the Kaiser or any other sort of authority." And then Pylik's like, "Oh God, okay, well, I have to have you killed now." You mean, Tiberius is obviously the great Emperor. So then he confirms the death sentence. And we go through a similar scene where in this case the Sanhedrin or the religious leaders of the community go through this whole scene where they request Barabas to be released in place of Yeshua. In this version, Pylik, who is unlike in the Gospels, is not married in Master of Margarita, just instead of, it has a personal interest in trying to get Yeshua released. And they have an argument and he says, "Well, Barabas led to the death of a person." "Oh, yeah, they're releasing him because I should mention. They get to do that because it's the Passover and there's part of local custom, local religious leaders get to give me one criminal sentence." So he really piloted his leaning into trying to get Yeshua released. And when that doesn't work, he essentially threatens Kaifa, who is the religious leader, representative of the Sanhedrin. And then he somewhat, on happily, orders the release of Barabas and ask for the execution of Yeshua to go forward. Now that whole scene, we return to Patriarchs Ponds. And much like you, if you read this, might have gotten really engrossed in that Bistulm and Barely O is realized they've also really fallen under this spell. And then the professor, they said they start to argue with them over the truth of that. And then they's like, "Well, that's not what happens to the Bible." And then this professor says, "Wah, are you just saying that Jesus wasn't real?" So the gospel's can't be true. And obviously, you should know that nothing would happen in the gospel's really took place. The professor then tells them, "He knows this is true because he was there. He was on the back of the pilot when he consented to Jesus to death." At this point, they're like, "This guy's not a professor. He's not who he represents himself to be." And Barely O's hurries off to call and report him, which leads to him falling and dying in exactly the way that the professor had recommended. And from here on out, you follow through Moscow as people around it begin to react to Barely O's's death. You go to the Masolitz Association at Griebal Yevdavs, which refers to the House of Griebal Yevdav, which is sort of this clubhouse where everything is. Everyone who's a member has access to all these things, these trips, these benefits, this fantastic restaurant. And they party late into the night until they find out that Barely O's has died and that kind of causes the party to die down. Homeless, who doesn't quite know what to make of this, starts trying to hunt down the professor because he's basically like, "He must have killed Barely O's. He must have set this up." This could not have been an accident when he predicted this. And as he's chasing him, he begins to realize that a sort of a retinue appears around this professor. And it's a longer scene, but essentially he runs in all these places. He begins to know for sure that he's in this house or in the river or whatever. And by the time he makes it to Griebal Yevdavs, he is just. He's wearing different clothes.
He does not look great, he's freaking out, and he basically gets put in a psychiatric hold and then is later committed to an institution. And then the kind of the last scene before we move on, we have the professor who now goes by a volant showing up at an apartment of, I think not super clear, but it's like a roommate. This is a shared apartment situation or like they're both in different apartments in the same apartment building, at least by the phrasing, but Supa Likod, they have who's the director of the variety theater and you know, used to work with Barrios. We learn that this building, very strangely, all its occupants have been disappearing over the course of the last two years, including the wives at Barrios and Likod, but he wakes up and there's this strange man in this room who tells him, "Hey, I'm the performer you signed yesterday." And he looks at his papers and even though he doesn't remember anything, everything seems to be in order. So, all right, sure, they snack, they have conversation, and then finally, as more companions come in, in this really tall man, Kuroviya, this cat who bizarrely is drinking vodka and eating sausage who goes by the name of a heemoth, and then finally, Azello, who come, you know, suddenly at a short squat, man, but ginger hair appears and then Volen says, "This is almost perfect, you know, while I perform at your theater for at least seven performances, but there is one problem." And that's where a little over-crowded here, and I think you might be the odd one out. So as Azello appears, Supa suddenly still kind of passes out and wakes up in Yalta. And at this point, you know, homeless is committed to the psych ward, and one final chapter, we have a guy coming to make sure that they are supposed to be here, all right, who's trying to deal with barely oses of fares, and presumably for shits and giggles, the devil has them set up and arrested for speculating on foreign currency. Before having everyone else involved in that disappeared. That is chapters one through nine. - Super easy. - Super easy to follow. Don't worry, it gets way more complex from here. - I can't wait. But before we head on there, I feel like now is a good time for a quick break. We'll be back in just a second. - Absolutely. This episode is brought to you by our listeners. You can support independent ponja as they can buy heading to our website slubbiklippod.com. You'll get access to the notes we use to make this episode, including links to all secondary sources mentioned. - If you want to support the show, but don't want to spend any of your hard-earned foreign speculative currency, you can join our email list for free at slubbiklippod.com. Or you can leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcast. - Questions, comments, we'll appear on our office hours podcast. Drop us a line. You can reach our voice mail at 209-800-3944. Or you can also email us a voice recording or text question at
[email protected]. We'll bring your question onto the podcast and do our best to address it. - All right, let's get back to the devil. - Okay, so let's talk about this. And I know we normally throw it over to you with a question here, but do you mind if we start with talking about the obvious parallels to the terror? Because I think I want to get this out of the way first, not because I think it's not important, but because I think it is important. That's why I want to talk about it. But also I think that only interpreting this through the lens of the terror is kind of a limiting factor. So I kind of want to talk about that before we start delving into I think a lot more of what we wanted to talk about. - Let's do a Cameron's Pro Terror. (laughing) - You're at it here first. Yeah, so right, most of like this novel would have primarily been written in possibly in the 30s, which is 36 to 39, but to some degree, 33 onward, you have various degrees of what will later be termed the terror or the years of Shina, whatever it is. And you can see that through the lens of obviously, the, as Matt mentioned before, the casual mention of people disappearing, right? Like in the apartment building where Barely O's lives, it's just taken for granted that people will go out and go shopping and suddenly disappear or a police can will come get them. And then suddenly that person will never be seen again and neither will the policeman, right? You've got like the casual, not, I mean, in the apartment it does inspire terror, but eventually that terror just kind of falls into, well, that's how it is, right? Even by the time that Barely O's and, you know, Stiopa, Likho Dei of moving, they just, when their wives disappear, they apparently accept it, right? It's that, that is mentioned in passing that their wives have disappeared. It doesn't seem to concern them too much, even though that does, that seems to have not happened too long ago, right? People casually disappear. There's obviously the rest of Nick and Air Ivanovich, who's the guy that, you know, Volan sets up or the professor I mean, or the person, and they also pin it on someone else who then later disappears. The Sky-Title mentioning, I think, I don't know if there's too much to say there other than that being built in as a facet of life, you know, an obvious parallel. Maybe you could also read into the specifically the story of Pilate when, you know, Jesus' condemned death just for saying that, you know, not for acknowledging the ultimate unlimited authority of Tiberius, the great Kaiser, right? Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge that. I don't know if there's too much to say beyond that. That's why I wanted to get it out of the way first. I don't know, is there any thoughts you have on that or things to add? I think it's just like an interesting way that it's built into the story and that that's sort of like, like it's sort of at least in the first nine chapters or so, the kind of absurdity of life as it exists already, the devil sort of just like perfectly fits into that. And it's actually probably, like the devil is probably not even the weirdest character to be in the book, right? Because it's already so weird what's happening in society just on an everyday basis. And so it almost gets like incorporated into this sort of like magical, whimsical mythos of the universe in which the story takes place. So it's kind of, to me, it's always been interesting how it's sort of incorporated like that. Right. And also, I guess we should underline that point where the explicit mentions to the terror or secret place are mentioned nowhere. The idea here that these people are disappearing is entirely by implication thus, I think, contributing to, as you say, this sort of magical, larger magical realist universe where that's just the possibility that people accept. Right. Which in our universe, obviously, we have something to tie it to, but in this theoretical Soviet Union, there is no obvious comparison. Right. And so it adds like a very comical effect to something that was not so funny. Yeah. And I was happening. But it is, yeah, it's very interesting universe to set a story. And it's almost got this sort of irreverent overtone, I guess, rather than undertone to the action of it. Yeah. All I really had to say on that, I think that's all we have to say on that. Is there anywhere else you want to start now? I wanted to talk about writers because I don't think that a lot of people know how writing worked on the Soviet Union. I'm betting big money. I'm doubling down, baby. Let's do it. Doubling down big time. I just wanted to give a quick explanation on what Masalette would have been. And I sort of like what is the grippy head of's house in like what is this basically? Whenever I had read this in class, at least for non-specialists, people that don't really-- I'm really familiar with this time. It was always kind of like a confusing aspect. And so Masalette would have been this sort of Soviet abbreviation for the Moscow Association of Writers or Literature for the Masses. And essentially, it would be like a trade union. But it would be a state run trade union because if your party is supposed to be representative of the people, you don't need a separate trade union representing the people because you can't have two things representing the people. So it would have been this sort of state run trade union. And all of the official writers-- notice official writers in the Soviet Union would have belonged to this sort of central literary organization. And there were not unofficial writers, right? Like you were or you weren't. This was how you made a living. And you could make a very good living being a writer in the Soviet Union. And so that was essentially the trade off people be like, why would you want to be a writer in the Soviet Union? Well, because it was way more secure than a lot of other countries quite frankly. The trade off is, of course, that when you have a state run sort of organization that organizes all the writers, it's very easy to censor things that they don't like. And so that is essentially the trade off. And so you have a high level of oversight, this potential censorship, the state run newspapers attack you if you write something that's not fond of. But this was really the only way to do it legally and officially in the Soviet Union was to be right part of this. People that were circulating, like I said, these like legally copied variants of works, you're not really earning money doing that. And for the most part, a lot of things weren't allowed to be published outside of the Soviet Union. That would have been seen as something illegal to do, if you're not allowed to publish something in the Soviet Union, a lot of things were smuggled out and published, but you could get into huge trouble for doing that. And so this is the sort of context in which Berlioz and the poet homeless and all of this is sort of taking place is at the level of these official writers that have these sort of comfortable living, comfortable perks they have access to this house with this restaurant and everyone's rubbing elbows. and it's uh
a pretty good time I think until Devil shows up. And I just wanted to explain a little bit about what it would have been like to be a writer, because I think the organization of it is pretty foreign to us. And the idea of being able to make a comfortable living as a writer also is foreign to us. Right, it's not just this kind of ad hoc freelance, I'll do it when I have time sort of thing. It was like a, you know, something much different than we have today. Right. And I think to really emphasize, at least in the terms of the novel, when it's an association, it really is more than just a trade union. It's like this house agreeably, I though, which I think Matt will talk about a little bit more in a bit is a place to hang out. It's a place where you go to get your trips. It's got one of the best restaurants in Moscow. People will go there all the time. You've got writers, you've got journalists, you've got all this, you know, working people who will be there until 12 o'clock, one drink it and listen to jazz, you know, eating good food. It's a, it's a, it's a, it truly is a society of sorts. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like a few a writer, you probably wish you had something like that here now. You got it cool. I guess any job, which you have you access to a nice restaurant where people regularly hung out would be nice. Not only that, but an affordable restaurant, that would be nice. That's true. That's another big part of this. It's very affordable. It's cheaper than other restaurants and a lot nicer. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to kind of highlight that. Because I think it's, you know, since the whole action takes place at the level of the literary establishment, you have to understand how they're organized. - In and out with this official, and you know, this is sort of this idea of like operating within and without the system is something that is, this book is, I'd say concerned with, maybe not a primary one, but it, and talking on, you know, often this book is quite funny and it's quite funny when it's addressing the peculiarities of the Soviet society. And I think, you know, this is kind of this idea of the official writer, but it also extended to the official unofficial of everything, is implied in a lot of places, but it's directly addressed in one point when a Koroviya who is one member of Volans, or the devil's retinue, is being interrogated by a guy like, who are you, a unofficial person? And then this guy Koroviya says, what are official unofficial persons? And all depends on your point of view on the subject. It's all fluctuating in relative Nikonore Ivanovich. Today, I'm an unofficial person. And tomorrow, low and behold, I'm an official one. It also happens the other way around. Oh, how it does. Which, I mean, I guess again, you can tie a little bit to like, rehabilitation to a certain degree and under the, and those years, but also just talking generally about this idea. But also it's fluidity in some ways and sometimes. - I want to talk about the story structure because it's very unique. - Let's do it. It's very unique. Let's talk. - Let's talk. Tell me how it's unique. - So we will be able to go into this a lot more in the next couple of episodes. Once more is revealed to you and to us as we continue on our journey. I don't want to, you know, we're going to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible where we can. And so it's, be difficult to synthesize without going all the way to the end. But you can already tell that the structure of the story is very much focused on the oral storytelling aspect. It retains the sort of level of scams, which is this right oral storytelling style specific to a Slavic literature. There's lots of sourcing on that. That is very interesting to read that we can talk about more people want. Some of the aspects that I noticed that I would point to immediately as oral storytelling and that kind of heightened the level of sort of reverence or I don't know exactly what you call it, but the amount of times some character or the narrator will make an aside to the effect of, whoa, the devil only knows or something like that is, you know, hilarious when you do have this voland devil character. The entire aside on the house of Gripietov on whether he actually lived there in the whole, the backstory with Rites on or whatever it was, it has no bearing really on the story itself. It's just sort of like, yeah, let me bring you into this sort of like oral gossip that's going on within or amongst these writers. Even the way that the transitions between chapters happen is really interesting. The end of chapter one in the beginning of chapter two, the Pontius pilot chapter as voland is transitioning into his story, they end and begin with the same line in the white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gate of cavalry men early in the morning of the 14th day and so on and so on. And you know, chapter one ends with this and begins with this. And it's an interesting way to bridge the sort of gap between these two worlds which are quite unlike each other. This Pontius pilot world does not seem to be this world of oral storytelling and gossip, it retains a much more realist character, funnily enough. And then chapter eight, which I thought was just, it's just like so playful, which says, at the same time that consciousness left Stiopa and Yalta, that is around half past 11 in the morning, it returned to Ivan Homeless, who woke up after a long and deep sleep, right? The idea that the action of the story doesn't continue unless someone is deliberately talking about it or it's deliberately being portrayed to you as the reader. It's just such an interesting and kind of unique feature of the Master of Margarita. I just, I enjoyed it. It retains the sort of like playfulness throughout it. - Yeah, which I think to your point, like that playfulness, that sort of almost conversational, not exactly style, does, like it does, especially heightens like the pilots part, especially I think in a lot of ways, like the pilots are getting tougher in a lot of ways. I mean, so for example, when we first have this minute with the Yeshua and Pontius Pilate, Yeshua, as I mentioned before, calls him a good man, please. And then pilots, like, you think of a good man, and then he has rat slayer go out and whip him. And it's a pretty tough scene, it's bloody. It's probably only matched by later on when you're hanging out with Briliose's body, but you go from this kind of, even like the death in sort of the devil coming to Moscow, that Briliose's death is a little comical, not comical in pilot story, very. - No, I think that that's one of the differences though, is the whole devil in Moscow. To me, like the devil essentially is almost like chance. It's sort of like the aspects of life that can't be reduced to ideology, or that cannot be calculated right, it's almost tolstoying in that aspect, right? The death of Briliose requires a lot of things to go wrong in a row, which they do. The scene with pilot, it's not all based on chance, right? It's kind of calling into question, should you be responsible for your actions more or less, I guess, whereas there's no responsibility in Moscow, right, because everything is left and this sort of chance, magical, whimsical, right? There's no one really doing things directly in a lot of ways, which is a very interesting difference between the two. - Right. Actually, I want to, I, it's narrowing on that for a second, 'cause I want to talk about Vull and I want to talk about the devil, and this is a very interesting portrayal, because when I came, on my first read, Gamastra Margarita, I would often describe the book as sort of like a, at least in relation to, the scenes of the Pontius pilot, I would tell it is sort of like an atheistic retelling of the Gospels. And now that I've read it a second time, I don't think that characterization stands up. It's obviously it's not faithful to the Gospels. It is a retelling in which, Judas was not a disciple, but rather just an informant. It's a retelling where, at least according to you, or believe the devil about how it actually went, Yeshua, I'll know how, how knowsry is not a, does not have any sort of magical ability or any sort of, God, you know, God given capabilities beyond the modern, a basic man, Matthew Levi, who, the book of Matthew is named after Matthew Levi, but as I understand it, modern scholars don't believe that, this, that this Matthew actually wrote that, they believe it was written later on. This, this Matthew Levi in this retelling is not a disciple, but rather just some due to follow as Jesus around, and Jesus is like, please stop writing that stuff down, like none of that, whatever you're writing down, implying, you know, that what happened in the Gospels is actually true, I didn't say any of that. It's not a faithful retelling, however, and I think it does engage with a lot of, I guess, themes that you do see throughout the Bible, maybe not themes that are directly engaged with, as like that's the primary theme, but like, like let's go to the devil, and first second, and over the course of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the original Hebrew texts, and then the New Testament, the sort of Christian edition, you have very different perspectives of the devil. You have Old Testament, which tends to be a little bit less, like this idea of Satan or Haas-Aden, is not so much a particular person as it is a title. I think the closest it comes to becoming a person is in the book of Job, when it's, you know, Haas-Aden, when it's like a particular person who questions God, which if you wanna know more about that, you can listen to our episode on Leviathan.
But it's not like this celestial evil being this fallen angel archetype. You don't see that in the Old Testament. I'm not even certain you actually see that in the New Testament. That's a lot of, I think it's something to have been took knowledge is a lot of, I think true to some degree for all religions, but I can only speak to Christian here for this. There is a lot of fan fiction which has become understood to begin like the influence of the deliverance lost, probably that idea of which is of course not from the Bible has influenced Christian beliefs as much as the actual Bible has in a lot of ways. Or the apocrypha, these books of the Bible which the Catholic Church considered not real in some way and had removed or excised at some point. And so these certain books which are considered apocrypha, you know, and you've got the modern term apocryphal, believe it, you know, a tale that's not true. So the portrayal of the devil in the New Testament does relate more to like a singular celestial being who does take on this sort of characterization of evil as like an opposition to good of God, which is an interesting difference where in the Old Testament you got the God of Job from whence, all good and all evil comes. But then in the New Testament you have this sort of difference where, you know, when the Jesus of the New Testament talks about, you know, the devil and hell, it is sort of an evil force. It is an opposition to God whereas in the Old Testament to the extent that that exists, it's more of a shadow of God. It's more, you know, another aspect. And that's why I think Vollen is very interesting because you got, considering not only Vollen, but also his retinue, you got Vollen who's sort of like kind of an Old Testament like he's not really evil. I mean, he comes in here and he, he's these two guys arguing and is like, hey, just, you know, Jesus totally did exist. I mean, didn't go how they tell in the Gospels, but I feel it's my duty to tell you that he is a real guy or, you know, was. And you've got his, so he, and then he also, when he's doing these, you get to a certain degree, he is doing these things. He's predicting these deaths, but he's not actively causing them to a certain degree. You could say he's just like, he kind of can see out of time and, right, he can, he can predict what's going on. But he also does explicitly play jokes on people. And when I say jokes, it's like, hey, have that, I don't like him, have him disappeared, you know, and then, you know, people will get arrested. But it is a little bit more, it's a little comical. It's not actively like evil. Whereas some of his retinue, the characters of each one, each of these characters takes their names from various parts of the Bible. And there's this interesting article, which I'm not going to delve too much into called Satan and Moscow and approach to Bulgakhov's The Master Margarita by AC Wright, which goes into each of their names. Obviously, we've got Behemoth of the cat, a Koroviya, who is not a biblical demon, but and Naz is all, who is, they're all mentioned in various places in the Bible or in Hebrew texts. And so, but they all have different aspects. And they all, to the extent, which you could call them kind of evil versus the extent you could call them, kind of just go along with it. It portrays like kind of a wide, wringing, wide, ranging view or different viewpoints that have occurred over various points in time, which have come together to be covered in the Hebrew text and later on the Christian Bible, which I think are an interesting engagement with those ideas. And I think later on, I can say more about that, but just for now, as a set up, that's something I found very interesting. Yeah, this is really kind of comical, the articles that we were reading for this, because I don't think that we can even totally get into it at the onset of the book, but it is such an interesting question to start broaching. I read this one, which is open access and was wonderful, and you can take a look at it on our prep guide and our website. For all of our supporters out there, there is one called neither God nor devil, a new theological approach to Bulgok of the Master in Margarita by Hannah Schneider. That was published in the International Journal of Russian Studies and the claim in this article, which actually does cite AC writes a bunch of other like influential readings of Master in Margarita, which if you're trying to get a grasp on what people are saying, this was actually a good article because it actually outlined a lot of what the previous approaches were. And essentially, the articles, conclusions that none of them really fully encapsulate what Bulgok of is doing. They'll try to fit the novel into a sort of pre-existing Christian conception of God in devil. And this article argues actually that the novel doesn't quite give us enough of the basis for that. And that we don't end up with God or devil in the novel. We get sort of Bulgok of own approach to building a theology of sorts. And this article is actually quite interesting and takes the point of view of quite a little bit the opposite to what you were saying earlier. On one, the Old Testament God saying that it doesn't quite, or the Old Testament devil saying that it doesn't quite hold up, but I can't quite explain why because we haven't gotten to all of these issues yet. But also actually saying that this whole analogy between Jesus and Yeshua doesn't really hold ground here in that we might not really be able to read it quite as an analogy for Christ in that there are actually some significant differences between the two. And so that's I think where they sort of form the basis of, well, this is sort of Bulgok of own thing. We shouldn't just read it as a complete analogy. And so that's an interesting question to, like I said, to start the brooch as we get further along. Because like you said, I always had really heard it as, right, people trying to co-opt into some sort of encompassing theological approach, but it is a little too complex, I think, in a lot of ways for that. Yeah. Yeah. I think I agree. I think it's more interested in any of the questions than any theology, but that will develop these ideas as we go. We got so much left to do. So much left to talk about. If you do happen to read this, I think what are the things that will, I will kind of speak forward to is that the entire book is great, but the bits with pilot or someone like the most arresting fiction I think I've ever read just in terms of how it's like the rest of, I mean, the book is fine. It's all good. It's all good writing, but the pilot's, you know, it seems like that. That's really, I think it's heightened because it's an interaction that the rest of the book, it would not, I don't think it would be as powerful on its own, but you know, the conversation when pilot and yes you was is really, really fascinating. There was just like one theme that I was noticing here a lot, which I think relates to this insanity madness of absurdity conversation that we're having. The amount of people with headaches in the first nine chapters, I did not mark them all, but by the end I was like, wow, everybody's head hurts in Moscow and in pilot times, I guess, because pilot has a headache and is cranky the whole time. And then homeless in his conversation with Stravinsky, the doctor, there is mentions of heads hurting. If you pay attention, there is a lot of different mentions of this throughout the first nine or so chapters and probably will continue throughout the book. I don't remember because I didn't notice this last time, the last time I read, but that was one interesting thing I wanted to know. And then the last one that I thought was interesting that I know we said we shouldn't read all as sort of Soviet analogy, but this conversation in chapter eight between homeless and Stravinsky was actually really interesting. I sort of read it as like interrogation analogy. This whole thing where the doctors trying to evaluate whether homeless is, you know, losing his mind basically. Right. And he's telling them all these things that happened and he's sort of kind of like logically, but kind of like a gas like geeky Soviet boss kind of way, right, like doing it and kind of leading him through like how he's no matter what he does, he's just going to end up in this, in this facility again, so he may as well just stay. There's this line that says his will seem to crack and he felt himself weak and need of advice. And there is kind of like, I don't know, I felt just so much analogy between the way that the doctor was kind of strong, arming him into agreeing with a lot of things related to Soviet interrogation that I read and the kind of like mental pressure that they could apply to get people to confess or kind of do whatever because it was just this kind of like incongruous situation where you're being interrogated for being a spy or something which seemed like absolutely absurd. And then on the flip here, you have this sort of like incongruity between what Stravinsky sees and what had happened to homeless, right? And one is sort of strong armed and two, accepting his fate more or less. Right. Yeah. Which is interesting, I thought. It is. I mean, I think you can kind of see a similar ish scene almost in the interaction with pilot in Yeshua where pilots like, what do you mean you didn't do it's written right here? Obviously you had to have done it, right? This sort of, you know, I mean, there's a little bit more of a back and forth because Stravinsky's it's theoretically a diagnosis. Although I should point out that one of homeless's buddies, sort of buddies, they don't get along that well. The buddy thought they were buddies, homeless Tissuaries, is there the whole time which does take, I think, take on a little bit to your point, a little bit of interrogation where Stravinsky, you know, he's like
like diagnosing homeless to his face and also to the other people in the room, who are giving their own input, you know, I think enhancing that sort of interrogation feel it has. - Yeah. It was just something that I noticed on this read through that I was like, "I'm interested." - Yeah, yeah. I think I read, I only get too much into this, but I think it's our article by, I think it's Eric Erickson, the Satanic Incantation parody in Bulgawk of the Master of Mercury, to deposits, this interesting for homeless specifically, he's diagnosed with schizophrenia and Erickson puts forth this argument that, you can see that sort of in relation to the various world attitudes, which are roughly on the spectrum, you can have barely osm one, and it's just purely materialistic, purely, you know, sort of, soviet socialist reality, the devil, which is much more fantastical on the other end, and then, there's only homeless, sort of not exactly in the middle, but open to some of the questions that the devil is putting forth, but also not quite listening, and by virtue of not existing on either end, he's then diagnosed with, and he's treated as, you know, not mentally fit by the rest of society, is then due to diagnosed with schizophrenia, the inability to sell, you know, reality, and heavy quotes here, because of course, you know, we know in the Quran context of this book, he does know reality. It's just that the others around him have collectively decided that they can't, that it can't logically be, you know, proven. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot more to tell. I mean, there's so much to cover. There's this book is like full, but also I think we're coming up on our time. I also just have such a hard time, 'cause I wanna jump forward in it, but I can't. - Right. - I shant. - I shant. - Oh, refuse. Yeah, it's, I mean, because there's, there's so much to talk about going forward, and also here, I mean, we didn't even have a chance to talk on the conversation between the devil, and barely os to a certain degree of, you know, the humor of barely os saying, you know, now that Jesus knows the devil exists, and the devil standing there says, really the devil doesn't exist, that's fascinating. - Tell me more. - Yeah, and so there's, yeah, if you do read it, there's, you will catch a lot of stuff, which we didn't even have a chance to talk about. And hopefully later episodes, we can talk more about it and develop more, but it's serious, this novel is so chocolate, all the stuff you should, I mean, I recommend you read everything we cover, but Master Margarita just is a personal favorite of mine, so I would absolutely recommend you, rabokoppy. And if there are things that we didn't talk about that you wanna tackle, you should join our discord, link in the description, and we'll be happy to talk more about it there. - Absolutely. All right, Matt, before we totally wrap up, I gotta ask, you know, keep in mind that we are only covering longer reads once a month, we will not be continuing. Unfortunately, Master Margarita directly next episode, but don't worry, it'll be back soon, but what instead are we tackling next week? - Next week, we got a new format type thing for you. We're hosting office hours, and we hope you'll join us. We got a lot of good questions from our community already for this episode, it's gonna be a bit of a beat down. This is gonna be good. - Right, yeah, there is no credit for tending office hours, but you do get favorable grading and the final paper. - Right, I mean, I'm not allowed to tell you that you do, but you definitely do. (laughing) - To help keep our show independent and for exclusive access to notes containing all of the research that went into this episode, head on over to our website, SlavicLipPod.com. - Before we let you go, we want to extend this and see how thank you to all of our current supporters. - Yes, and that's my Daniel, Lou, Gary, Janice, and Isaac, Emily, Kaitlin, Yitzsa, Irene, and Pac-Rob. The music used in this episode was Taraya Kino, but Tiromoka, you can find more of their stuff on Bandcamp or Spotify, the links and spelling are in the show notes. - You'll hear from us again soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
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