Too much is too much

February 17, 2014

If you think that The Master and Margarita appeals only to a small group of die-hards, you are wrong. Every week, your webmaster receives some sixty e-mails related to the novel. Readers who ask for explanations, students who are working on their master papers, theatre producers who are planning stage adaptations... Often there are also announcements on new music and new illustrations that were inspired by my favourite novel. Of course, it's nice to see that the efforts to keep the website up to date are appreciated. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's all a bit too much.

Don’t let me be misunderstood, dear readers, it's really nice to get so many responses and please, continue to do so. But there is one thing you don’t have to do, and that is: to overwhelm me with pictures of the so-called Panteleymon statue in Kyiv, and try to convince me that it is a statue of Behemoth.

Over a hundred of visitors have sent me pictures of this statue saying that they have seen Behemoth in Kyiv. Well, dear readers: this has got nothing to do with Behemoth, Bulgakov or The Master and Margarita. Really.

In the mid 90s, Margarita Sichkar, the owner of the Pantagruel restaurant in Kyiv, let a gray Persian cat live in the kitchen of the restaurant. Its name was Pantyusha and she walked continuously between the tables and checked that everyone was satisfied. In return, the visitors of the restaurant thanked her with treats. When a fire broke out in the restaurant, the cat could not escape from the burning building and was suffocated by the smoke.

In memory of this beloved animal, friends of the restaurant owner raised money to make a bronze statue of Pantyusha which was placed at the Zolotovorotsky square in front of restaurant in 1998.

It's a nice statue, sure, but it is not Behemoth. To see Bulgakov's black cat, you must walk a kilometer further away, to the Bulgakov House in Alexandrovsky spusk.

 

Panteleymon in Kyiv   Behemoth in Kyiv