In The Master and Margarita Bulgakov
described Margarita as a prostitute who
betrayed the Master to the secret police.
The belief that Margarita reflects Bulgakov's
third wife is erroneous.

Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita:
the true content

by Alfred Barkov

Section I. Constrained by the stereotypes

Chapter I. Did Bulgakov intend solemn meaning of the notion of Master?

All versions of traditional interpretation of the contents of The Master and Margarita do not fit into manifold facts Bulgakov included into the text. Such facts are just ignored as if they were not existing at all. The main reason is that the approach to the content of The Master and Margarita is biased. That is, the commentators know in advance that the image of the Master should represent Mikhail Bulgakov himself while the image of Margarita reflects his last wife Yelena Sergeyevna Bulgakova.

Naturally, such attitude inevitably prompts ready-to-use answers: as Bulgakov depicted himself as the Master, the sole notion of the Master should be interpreted only positively; as Margarita was meant as Bulgakov's wife, the relations between the Master and Margarita should be interpreted only as exalted. Accordingly, the 'eternal house' the Master was granted in the final should be understood as being something heavenly, and so on. The Russian philologists who dictate the World the way The Master and Margarita should be interpreted neglect even their native traditions. Among the Russians and Ukrainians, the expression 'eternal house' always means burial; this expression is an element of any traditional folklore funeral threnos.

It has become a tradition among the scholars to neglect a very awkward situation described in the text of The Master and Margarita. It goes on the relations between the Master and his lover. Even at the most critical moments, Margarita used to leave the Master alone explaining to him she had to see somebody, and that was her duty. On that crucial October night Margarita has left the Master just before he was arrested. It is only too evident that Bulgakov described a secret police contact, and that Margarita betrayed the Master to the people who arrested him.

Moreover, there exists in the plot a parallel image of prostitute Niza who betrayed her lover Judas to the Roman secret police. According to multiple details, it is only too obvious that the image of Niza was intended as a trop describing the true characteristics of Margarita. Actually, the Niza-Judas situation is very similar to that with the Master and Margarita.

The genetic connection attributed to the image of Margarita and to the figure of Bulgakov's third wife positions the scholars into an awkward situation. They have either to admit that Mikhail Bulgakov's third wife had been spying on him (that piquant issue has been given more attention in my next book — see Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita: a literary mystification) or to revise their basic approach to the content of The Master and Margarita. The commentators of The Master and Margarita overlook the fact that the mockingly exalted style of the passages depicting the 'everlasting love' between the Master and Margarita suggests that the whole novel has been intended by Bulgakov as a bitter parody.

It was only recently that I discovered striking parallels between Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It is astonishing that in the four centuries, the public did not notice the mocking intention of Shakespeare. The plot of Romeo and Juliet contains explicit contradictions which still remain unexplained. But the parallel between the two masterpieces is not restricted to solely inner structure elements such as multiple plots, subjects, additional levels of sophisticated composition, etc. Even the equal structure of both titles suggests that Bulgakov was aware of the satirical nature of Shakespeare's work (cp.: The Master and Margarita and Romeo and Juliet.)

Last updated: Nov. 4, 2002
© A. Barkov 2002

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