32. Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

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Gods, my gods!

This paragraph was written when Bulgakov knew that he was dying of nephrosclerosis. According to some sources the last line of the paragraph was intentionally left unfinished. "And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and  rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone..."

Bulgakov's wife Elena Sergeevna would have insisted to finish this sentence and in some versions of the novel it ended with “…can bring him peace.” In the Russian edition there is written at the end, but between clear brackets: … < успокоит его. >. In the English traslations the sentence is simply finished with “…can comfort you” (Glenny) or “…can bring him peace” (Pevear en Volokhonsky). And the French can’t stand neither to see a sentence with no end, because the French reader sees a nicely finished phrase “…lui apportera la paix”.

Koroviev, the dark-violet knight

When they leave Moscow the members of Woland’s retinue change and turn back into their original forms. Koroviev changes  in a  dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face.

Click here to read about the transformation of Koroviev

Behemoth, the best jester the world has ever seen

Behemoth changes into a slim youth, a demon-page, and the "best jester the world has ever seen”.

Click here to read about the transformation of Behemoth

Azazello, the demon of the waterless desert

Azazello loses his fang. His eyes were both the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold and he showed himself "as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon".

Click here to read about the transformation of Azazello

A stony, joyless, flat summit

Bulgakov most likely describes Mont Pilatus at the lake of Luzern in Switzerland. Although the name of this mountain has probably nothing to do with Pontius Pilate. According to the apocryphal book Mors Pilati or The death of Pilate the body of Pilate would have been transported to Losania, after some attempts to dump it, first  in Rome and later in France, and it would have been buried in the mountains. But Losania  may be Lausanne, and not Luzern. The name of the mountain in Luzern is almost certainly derived from Mons Pilateus, which means The mountain with the hat. Because very often at noon the clouds form some kind of a cap around the mountain’s summit.

But those who love folklore don’t mind. According to the legend the devil, each year on Goof Friday, digs up Pilate’s body here to put it on a stone throne while Pilate washes his hands.

Twelve thousand moons

Margarita makes a miscalculation here: twelve thousand moons is one thousand years. But Pilate is sitting on this mountain since two thousand years.

Romantic master!

Here Bulgakov sets himself apart from the Socialist Realism of his time and prefers to identify with the Romantics of the 19th Century such as Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) or Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman (1776-1822). The individual vision of the artist was vitally important to them. Bulgakov had read an article on Hoffman which expressed the following ideas that run throughout the novel: a real artist was doomed to solitude, art is powerless when confronted with a reality that is destructive to art, the artist is not of the ordinary world, clarity and peace are needed for creation, a man of genius faces two possibilities: to succumb to reality and become a philistine or to die before his time or go mad. The Romantic idea of the artist as a tool of divine inspiration is also present as a work of art is a revelation granted to the artist.

In the evening listen to Schubert's music

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is the famous Austrian romantic composer with several connections to Bulgakov. He died very young, set several poems of Goethe to music -including one of Faust - he suffered constant defeats in his life, and suffered from depression. Melancholy suicide and death were his themes.

Woland threw himself into a gap

This scene corresponds to the climax of the concert opera La damnation de Faust  written by the French composer Louis Hector Berlioz (1803-1869).

The master’s memory began to fade

The Master's peace comes at the price of the loss of his memory, but it is his memory we must rely on for the preservation of his novel - see Margarita’s question in chapter 30.

On the eve of Sunday

The Sunday is Easter Sunday. Just like Faust and La Divina Commedia, The Master and Margarita is a story playing in the period of Easter. The Moscow and Yershalaim scenes correspond with the timing in terms of days of the week.

The fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate

The novel Bulgakov writes about the Master ends with the same words as the novel the Master writes about Pilate.



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