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According to Russian cultural traditions, acquiring the mastery qualities means inevitable death of the art. The mastery is understood as the technical ability just to do something substantial but ordinary, while the notion of art presupposes the presence of special spiritual qualities necessary for the creation of unique masterpieces which cannot be duplicated.
It was as early as at the beginning of XXth century that very prominent Russian writers and poets ironically referred to M. Gorky punning with the mastery attribute. In The Master and Margarita the hero designates himself as master explicitly setting this attribute as opposed to the notion of writer.
It has become a tradition to refer to the hero of Bulgakov's novel as to the Master, every time transcribing the word with the capital M. In the original text of The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov transcribed the word designating the hero only in the lower case as master. Such unique designation of the hero suggests that by substituting the name with the sobriquet master Bulgakov pursued a special goal. Against the background of the centuries long mastery vs. art controversy in the Russian literary environment, it is evident that Bulgakov intended to discriminate the hero from real artists capable to create unique masterpieces rather than mass production.
Having erroneously attributed the notion of master to Bulgakov, the commentators are bound to interpret its meaning only positively thus neglecting the historical fact that the mastery policy was forced into application by the Soviet system, and that was a disaster to our culture.
The Soviet repressive system understood the mastery as the readiness of a writer to refuse his beliefs and create works prescribed by the Powers. The notion of mastery acquired explicitly odious meaning after the poet O. Mandelshtam was arrested in 1934 for creating a poem satirically featuring the figure of Stalin. In a telephone talk with other poet B. Pasternak, Stalin persistently demanded of him to define if Mandelshtam was a master or not. The Bulgakov and Mandelshtam families lived in the same block of houses, and Bulgakov and his wife were among the very first with whom Mrs. Mandelshtam shared the bad news. Upon hearing the news, Bulgakov immediately demolished the manuscript of The Master and Margarita. It is impossible that Bulgakov would use the notion master without considering its odious meaning dominating in the Soviet society. It should be added that the attribute master first appeared in the next version of The Master and Margarita written after the arrest of O. Mandelshtam. At first, it was attributed not to the hero whom we have come to know as the Master but to Woland the Satan.
The A. Lunacharsky's concept of the mastery in literature was published in 1933, well before the phone conversation between Stalin and Pasternak took place, and before Bulgakov introduced the master attribute in the text of The Master and Margarita.
As I mentioned earlier, the notion master was canonized in the figure of M. Gorky. It should be added that in February 1936, the plenary session of the Board of the Union of the Soviet Writers (headed by M. Gorky) sent a greeting cable to Stalin. It contained the words: "You are the best master of life, comrade Stalin!" About that time Gorky was proclaimed as Stalin of the Soviet literature.
The fact that in the thirties, the odious notion of master was fixedly associated with Gorky and Stalin excludes any probability of Bulgakov's intention to describe himself as a master.
Therefore, the imposed interpretation of The Master and Margarita is erroneous.
Remarks
1. See chapter 13 of The Master and Margarita.
Back Chapter I.
Did Bulgakov intend solemn meaning of the notion of Master?
In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov described Margarita as a debauched prostitute who betrayed the Master to the secret police.
(For the complete text in Russian, click here)
Chapter II. The Master and Margarita: the denominative notion of Master
Though the sobriquet Master is perceived as a proper name, in The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov transcribed the word master only in the lower case.
(For the complete text in Russian, click here)
Next: Chapter III. Why the Master was not admitted to the light
What Bulgakov described in The Master and Margarita as clinic is actually a jail where the Master serving the diabolic Soviet regime, converted talented poets into idiots.
(For the complete text in Russian, click here)
Chapter IV. Mikhail Bulgakov's Margarita: a bestial whore betraying the Master
In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov depicted Margarita as a bestial whore betraying the Master to the secret police.
(For the complete text in Russian, click here)
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