History of the text of the novel by M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita” (ideological concept, genre, characters)

The Master and Margarita is Bulgakov’s legendary work, a novel that became his ticket to immortality. He thought about, planned and wrote the novel for 12 years, and it went through many changes that are now difficult to imagine, because the book acquired an amazing compositional unity. Alas, Mikhail Afanasyevich never had time to finish his life’s work; no final edits were made. He himself assessed his brainchild as the main message to humanity, as a testament to descendants. What did Bulgakov want to tell us?

The novel opens up to us the world of Moscow in the 30s. The master, together with his beloved Margarita, writes a brilliant novel about Pontius Pilate. It is not allowed to be published, and the author himself is overwhelmed by an impossible mountain of criticism. In a fit of despair, the hero burns his novel and ends up in a psychiatric hospital, leaving Margarita alone. At the same time, Woland, the devil, arrives in Moscow along with his retinue. They cause disturbances in the city, such as black magic sessions, performances at Variety and Griboyedov, etc. The heroine, meanwhile, is looking for a way to return her Master; subsequently makes a deal with Satan, becomes a witch and attends a ball among the dead. Woland is delighted with Margarita's love and devotion and decides to return her beloved. The novel about Pontius Pilate also rises from the ashes. And the reunited couple retires to a world of peace and tranquility.

The text contains chapters from the Master's novel itself, telling about events in the world of Yershalaim. This is a story about the wandering philosopher Ha-Nozri, the interrogation of Yeshua by Pilate, and the subsequent execution of the latter. The insert chapters are of direct importance to the novel, since their understanding is the key to revealing the author's ideas. All parts form a single whole, closely intertwined.

Topics and issues

Bulgakov reflected his thoughts about creativity on the pages of the work. He understood that the artist is not free, he cannot create only at the behest of his soul. Society fetters him and ascribes certain boundaries to him. Literature in the 30s was subject to the strictest censorship, books were often written to order from the authorities, a reflection of which we will see in MASSOLIT. The master was unable to obtain permission to publish his novel about Pontius Pilate and spoke of his stay among the literary society of that time as a living hell. The hero, inspired and talented, could not understand its members, corrupt and absorbed in petty material concerns, and they, in turn, could not understand him. Therefore, the Master found himself outside this bohemian circle with the work of his entire life, which was not permitted for publication.

The second aspect of the problem of creativity in a novel is the author’s responsibility for his work, its fate. The master, disappointed and completely desperate, burns the manuscript. The writer, according to Bulgakov, must achieve the truth through his creativity, it must benefit society and act for the good. The hero, on the contrary, acted cowardly.

The problem of choice is reflected in the chapters devoted to Pilate and Yeshua. Pontius Pilate, understanding the unusualness and value of such a person as Yeshua, sends him to execution. Cowardice is the most terrible vice. The prosecutor was afraid of responsibility, afraid of punishment. This fear completely drowned out his sympathy for the preacher, and the voice of reason speaking about the uniqueness and purity of Yeshua’s intentions, and his conscience. The latter tormented him for the rest of his life, as well as after his death. Only at the end of the novel was Pilate allowed to talk to Him and be freed.

Composition

In his novel, Bulgakov used such a compositional technique as a novel within a novel. The “Moscow” chapters are combined with the “Pilatorian” ones, that is, with the work of the Master himself. The author draws a parallel between them, showing that it is not time that changes a person, but only he himself is capable of changing himself. Constantly working on oneself is a titanic task, which Pilate failed to cope with, for which he was doomed to eternal mental suffering. The motives of both novels are the search for freedom, truth, the struggle between good and evil in the soul. Everyone can make mistakes, but a person must constantly reach for the light; only this can make him truly free.

Main characters: characteristics

1. Yeshua Ha-Nozri (Jesus Christ) is a wandering philosopher who believes that all people are good in themselves and that the time will come when truth will be the main human value, and institutions of power will no longer be necessary. He preached, therefore he was accused of an attempt on the power of Caesar and was put to death. Before his death, the hero forgives his executioners; he dies without betraying his convictions, he dies for people, atonement for their sins, for which he was awarded the Light. Yeshua appears before us as a real person of flesh and blood, capable of feeling both fear and pain; he is not shrouded in an aura of mysticism.
2. Pontius Pilate is the procurator of Judea, a truly historical figure. In the Bible he judged Christ. Using his example, the author reveals the theme of choice and responsibility for one’s actions. Interrogating the prisoner, the hero understands that he is innocent, and even feels personal sympathy for him. He invites the preacher to lie to save his life, but Yeshua is not bowed down and is not going to give up his words. The official's cowardice prevents him from defending the accused; he is afraid of losing power. This does not allow him to act according to his conscience, as his heart tells him. The procurator condemns Yeshua to death, and himself to mental torment, which, of course, is in many ways worse than physical torment. At the end of the novel, the master frees his hero, and he, together with the wandering philosopher, rises along a ray of light.
3. The master is a creator who wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua. This hero embodied the image of an ideal writer who lives by his creativity, not looking for fame, rewards, or money. He won large sums in the lottery and decided to devote himself to creativity - and this is how his only, but certainly brilliant, work was born. At the same time, he met love - Margarita, who became his support and support. Unable to withstand criticism from Moscow's highest literary society, the Master burns the manuscript and is forcibly committed to a psychiatric clinic. Then he was released from there by Margarita with the help of Woland, who was very interested in the novel. After death, the hero deserves peace. It is peace, and not light, like Yeshua, because the writer betrayed his beliefs and renounced his creation.
4. Margarita is the creator’s beloved, ready to do anything for him, even attend Satan’s ball. Before meeting the main character, she was married to a wealthy man, whom, however, she did not love. She found her happiness only with the Master, whom she herself called after reading the first chapters of his future novel. She became his muse, inspiring him to continue creating. The heroine is associated with the theme of fidelity and devotion. The woman is faithful to both her Master and his work: she brutally deals with the critic Latunsky, who slandered them; thanks to her, the author himself returns from a psychiatric clinic and his seemingly irretrievably lost novel about Pilate. For her love and willingness to follow her chosen one to the end, Margarita was awarded by Woland. Satan gave her peace and unity with the Master, what the heroine most desired.

Woland's image

In many ways, this hero is similar to Goethe's Mephistopheles. His very name is taken from his poem, the scene of Walpurgis Night, where the devil was once called by that name. The image of Woland in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is very ambiguous: he is the embodiment of evil, and at the same time a defender of justice and a preacher of true moral values. Against the background of cruelty, greed and depravity of ordinary Muscovites, the hero looks rather like a positive character. He, seeing this historical paradox (he has something to compare with), concludes that people are like people, the most ordinary, the same, only the housing issue has spoiled them.

The devil's punishment comes only to those who deserve it. Thus, his retribution is very selective and based on the principle of justice. Bribe takers, incompetent scribblers who care only about their material wealth, catering workers who steal and sell expired food, insensitive relatives fighting for an inheritance after the death of a loved one - these are those whom Woland punishes. He does not push them to sin, he only exposes the vices of society. So the author, using satirical and phantasmagoric techniques, describes the customs and morals of Muscovites of the 30s.

The master is a truly talented writer who was not given the opportunity to realize himself; the novel was simply “strangled” by Massolitov officials. He was not like his fellow writers with a credential; lived through his creativity, giving it all of himself, and sincerely worrying about the fate of his work. The master retained a pure heart and soul, for which he was awarded by Woland. The destroyed manuscript was restored and returned to its author. For her boundless love, Margarita was forgiven for her weaknesses by the devil, to whom Satan even granted the right to ask him for the fulfillment of one of her desires.

Bulgakov expressed his attitude towards Woland in the epigraph: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good” (“Faust” by Goethe). Indeed, having unlimited capabilities, the hero punishes human vices, but this can be considered an instruction on the true path. He is a mirror in which everyone can see their sins and change. His most devilish feature is the corrosive irony with which he treats everything earthly. Using his example, we are convinced that maintaining one’s convictions along with self-control and not going crazy is possible only with the help of humor. We cannot take life too seriously, because what seems to us an unshakable stronghold so easily crumbles at the slightest criticism. Woland is indifferent to everything, and this separates him from people.

good and evil

Good and evil are inseparable; When people stop doing good, evil immediately appears in its place. It is the absence of light, the shadow that replaces it. In Bulgakov's novel, two opposing forces are embodied in the images of Woland and Yeshua. The author, in order to show that the participation of these abstract categories in life is always relevant and occupies important positions, places Yeshua in an era as distant as possible from us, on the pages of the Master’s novel, and Woland in modern times. Yeshua preaches, tells people about his ideas and understanding of the world, its creation. Later, for openly expressing his thoughts, he will be tried by the procurator of Judea. His death is not the triumph of evil over good, but rather a betrayal of good, because Pilate was unable to do the right thing, which means he opened the door to evil. Ha-Notsri dies unbroken and undefeated, his soul retains the light in itself, opposed to the darkness of the cowardly act of Pontius Pilate.

The devil, called to do evil, arrives in Moscow and sees that people's hearts are filled with darkness even without him. All he can do is denounce and mock them; Due to his dark essence, Woland cannot create justice otherwise. But it is not he who pushes people to sin, it is not he who makes the evil in them overcome the good. According to Bulgakov, the devil is not absolute darkness, he commits acts of justice, which is very difficult to consider a bad act. This is one of the main ideas of Bulgakov, embodied in “The Master and Margarita” - nothing except the person himself can force him to act one way or another, the choice of good or evil lies with him.

You can also talk about the relativity of good and evil. And good people act wrongly, cowardly, selfishly. So the Master gives up and burns his novel, and Margarita takes cruel revenge on the critic Latunsky. However, kindness does not lie in not making mistakes, but in constantly striving for the bright and correcting them. Therefore, forgiveness and peace await the loving couple.

The meaning of the novel

There are many interpretations of the meaning of this work. Of course, it is impossible to say definitively. At the center of the novel is the eternal struggle between good and evil. In the author’s understanding, these two components are on equal terms both in nature and in human hearts. This explains the appearance of Woland, as the concentration of evil by definition, and Yeshua, who believed in natural human kindness. Light and darkness are closely intertwined, constantly interacting with each other, and it is no longer possible to draw clear boundaries. Woland punishes people according to the laws of justice, but Yeshua forgives them in spite of them. This is the balance.

The struggle takes place not only directly for human souls. A person’s need to reach out to the light runs like a red thread throughout the entire narrative. True freedom can only be achieved through this. It is very important to understand that the author always punishes heroes shackled by everyday petty passions, either like Pilate - with eternal torment of conscience, or like Moscow inhabitants - through the tricks of the devil. He extols others; Gives Margarita and the Master peace; Yeshua deserves the Light for his devotion and faithfulness to his beliefs and words.

This novel is also about love. Margarita appears as an ideal woman who is able to love until the very end, despite all the obstacles and difficulties. The master and his beloved are collective images of a man devoted to his work and a woman faithful to her feelings.

Theme of creativity

The master lives in the capital of the 30s. During this period, socialism is being built, new orders are being established, and moral and moral standards are being sharply reset. New literature is also born here, with which on the pages of the novel we become acquainted through Berlioz, Ivan Bezdomny, and members of Massolit. The path of the main character is complex and thorny, like Bulgakov himself, but he retains a pure heart, kindness, honesty, the ability to love and writes a novel about Pontius Pilate, containing all those important problems that every person of the current or future generation must solve for himself . It is based on the moral law hidden within each individual; and only he, and not the fear of God's retribution, is able to determine the actions of people. The spiritual world of the Master is subtle and beautiful, because he is a true artist.

However, true creativity is persecuted and often becomes recognized only after the death of the author. The repressions affecting independent artists in the USSR are striking in their cruelty: from ideological persecution to the actual recognition of a person as crazy. This is how many of Bulgakov’s friends were silenced, and he himself had a hard time. Freedom of speech resulted in imprisonment, or even death, as in Judea. This parallel with the Ancient World emphasizes the backwardness and primitive savagery of the “new” society. The well-forgotten old became the basis of policy regarding art.

Two worlds of Bulgakov

The worlds of Yeshua and the Master are more closely connected than it seems at first glance. Both layers of the narrative touch on the same issues: freedom and responsibility, conscience and fidelity to one’s beliefs, understanding of good and evil. It’s not for nothing that there are so many heroes of doubles, parallels and antitheses here.

The Master and Margarita violates the urgent canon of the novel. This story is not about the fate of individuals or their groups, it is about all of humanity, its fate. Therefore, the author connects two eras that are as distant as possible from each other. People in the times of Yeshua and Pilate are not very different from the people of Moscow, the Master’s contemporaries. They are also concerned about personal problems, power and money. Master in Moscow, Yeshua in Judea. Both bring the truth to the masses, and both suffer for it; the first is persecuted by critics, crushed by society and doomed to end his life in a psychiatric hospital, the second is subjected to a more terrible punishment - a demonstrative execution.

The chapters dedicated to Pilate differ sharply from the Moscow chapters. The style of the inserted text is distinguished by its evenness and monotony, and only in the chapter of execution does it turn into a sublime tragedy. The description of Moscow is full of grotesque, phantasmagoric scenes, satire and ridicule of its inhabitants, lyrical moments dedicated to the Master and Margarita, which, of course, determines the presence of various storytelling styles. The vocabulary also varies: it can be low and primitive, filled even with swearing and jargon, or it can be sublime and poetic, filled with colorful metaphors.

Although both narratives are significantly different from each other, when reading the novel there is a feeling of integrity, so strong is the thread connecting the past with the present in Bulgakov.

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"Master and Margarita"

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3

Chapter 1. Title, epigraph, genre and composition of the novel………………..6

Chapter 2. The problem of man in the novel “The Master and Margarita” and its continuity in the works of Russian classical writers………………………………………………………………………………………… …...10

2.1. Modern Moscow world…………………………………..10

2.2. Ancient Yershalaim world. Tragedies and farces (lesson model)…………………………………………………………………………………12

2.3. GPU motive – NKVD in the novel by M. Bulgakov………………….17

Chapter 3. Easter in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”………20

Chapter 4. Attitude to religion M.A. Bulgakov in life and in the novel……………………………………………………………………………….…21

Chapter 5. True and imaginary values ​​in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”…………………………………………………………….…..22

5.1. “Manuscripts don’t burn...”……………………………………………..25

Chapter 6. “He deserved peace”………………………………………….…28

Conclusion……………………………………………………………... 32

Literature……………………………………………………………………………….33

Appendix………………………………………………………………...35

Introduction

Deny Him - and with thunder

The firmament will not split...

Only light from a sinful house

Maybe it'll be gone forever

And you will hardly notice it:

All worries and vanity...

We have betrayed more than once

And they were ashamed to believe in Christ.

But He looks from afar,

All exposed and covered in blood

Children, children of My sorrow,

Children, children of My love.

Nadezhda Pavlovich

"Our children"

Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita has been repeatedly recognized by even experienced and highly qualified readers as both confusing and entertaining, offering so many clues to understanding that any goal of unraveling its meaning is inevitably doomed. However, while paying tribute to research intuition and ingenuity and having long perceived the novel as a generator of ideas and interpretations, one cannot help but note one curious fact: part of the novel’s mysteries were created by the researchers themselves. Some were unable or unwilling to test their concepts by “slow reading”, others were carried away by the “beautiful” hypothesis and came into conflict with the text, and some simply did not have early editions of the novel at the time of writing their works. At the same time, the novel is unusually responsive to various literary versions, and this circumstance, while enriching our perception, turns at the same time into a certain danger of research arbitrariness, both conscious and involuntary. This book is a large feuilleton in which there is no positive hero (and in this it is akin to “The Inspector General”). There is no need to idealize anyone - neither Yeshua, nor the Master, nor Margarita, nor Professor Ponyrev. Not in the sense that it is not ideal from the reader's point of view. More importantly, Bulgakov’s own attitude towards these characters is far from exalted.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov himself, a man of a painful, but also happy fate. The writer went through the fire and blood of the revolution and the Civil War, survived the collapse of the world to which he belonged from birth, he suffered and was mistaken, lost heart and tried to come to terms with the new government. Dying in suffering, he asked to save the novel with the words “Let them know!” - said Bulgakov. Why know? Is it really just to be convinced of the hopelessness and meaninglessness of life?

Very interesting is the perception of the novel by an Orthodox believer, who would consider reading this work a sin, because the main character of the novel is Satan.

We will be able to comprehend the philosophical and religious ideas of M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” by drawing on the works of Deacon Andrei Kuraev. He studied the novel very carefully and thoroughly and offered us his view of this book. He wrote a work that is a religious study.

We can see similar reviews in the articles of Archpriest, church historian Lev Lebedev and teacher of the Moscow Theological Academy Mikhail Dunaev. Within the framework of the Orthodox point of view, the religious and ethical content of the work and its moral impact on the reader are taken into account.

Scientific criticism examines other aspects of the novel: its structure, genealogy, “ciphers,” although here, too, the quality and degree of influence of the novel on the reader are often taken into account. The novel after its publication in 1966-1967. gained such popularity, primarily because it introduced many of its readers to the Holy Scriptures and even received the common name “The Bible of the Sixties.” The universal principle of Bulgakov's treatment of the Gospel texts is that the writer constantly maintains duality: the Gospels are simultaneously refuted and confirmed.

But Bulgakov’s spiritual relatives - the white church intelligentsia - were able to read his novel as a Christian work. It is also worth noting that Orthodox Anna Akhmatova, having listened to the author of “The Master and Margarita”, did not interrupt her communication with Bulgakov. Moreover, she told Faina Ranevskaya that this is brilliant, he is a genius!” The reaction of the great literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin was also positive. They knew that there was an evil more terrible and lasting than Soviet power.

Bulgakov's book is present in the high culture of Russia, in the compulsory school curriculum. When you learn the history of the novel, its birth through pain and trials, it becomes more difficult to work. Questions arise: who is Yeshua? And is this love at all? Not everything is so simple.

Therefore, I consider it necessary to convey to students the spiritual intent of the novel, based on the study of a work of art in the context of Christian culture.

Target - Punderstand the writer's intention; notice and comprehend the echoes of lines in the novel. To give students the right point of view, which would help them not only read and analyze literature, but also understand life.

The implementation of this goal necessitated the formulation and solution of the followingtasks :

Talk about the meaning of the novel, its fate; show the features of the genre and composition;

Understand the moral lessons of Bulgakov, the main value that the writer talks about;

Identification of the Christian component in Russian literature; learn to find the good in a person without noticing the bad;

Identification of the influence of traditional (Christian) sources on the work of M. Bulgakov;

Conducting a comparative analysis with the works of Russian classic writers.

Chapter 1. Title, epigraph, genre and composition of the novel.

It is known that the title of a literary text (like the epigraph) is one of the essential elements of the composition with its own poetics. The title is the name of the work. “The Master and Margarita” reminds us of the famous “Romeo and Juliet”, “Tristan and Isolde”, “Daphnis and Chloe” in world literature and sets the reader up with the love theme of these heroes. As the equivalent of the text, the title states its main themes and their tragic resolution. However, if you think about the meaning of the name, it also speaks of creativity. In Ancient Rus', a master was a person who had achieved high art in his craft. At the same time, the masters had proper names: Danila - master, Lefty. Bulgakov's master is nameless. Only a special flair (and knowledge of global philosophical developments) could prompt the author to protect the hero from disclosing his own name and give him the mysterious:master . The very idea of ​​incorruptibility, the all-conquering power of mastery, and the peculiarity of the mastery of words is one of the fundamental ideas of the novel “The Master and Margarita”.

Andrey Kuraev in his article “The Master and Margarita”: for Christ or against? writes that the wordmaster must be read in Hebrew. In European language it means “closure”. For Bulgakov, the Master is a replacement of a name, a refusal of a name. A name is not needed when the life of a person (character) is reduced to a single, most important function. The person dissolves in this function. And as Bulgakov’s narrative progresses, the Master dissolves in the novel he wrote and in his dependence on Woland.

The novel was conceived as a “novel about the devil” - this is evidenced by the lists of proposed titles in the drafts (“Black Magician”, “Consultant with a Hoof”, “Grand Chancellor”, “Here I Am”<фраза, с которой в опере предстает перед Фаустом Мефистофель>, “Hat with a Feather”, “Black Theologian”, “Foreigner’s Horseshoe”, “Consultant’s Hoof”, “The Gospel of Woland”, “Prince of Darkness” and others). The writer reported this in a letter to the government on March 28, 1930: “And I personally, with my own hands, threw a draft of a novel about the devil into the stove...” However, during the work, the plan underwent global transformations, and the initial balancing between the satirical (in the spirit of “The Twelve Chairs” Ilf and Petrov) and the fantastic resulted in a change in the overall author’s strategy and semantic perspectives of the novel. The latter was reflected in the change in the title of the work, which in the final version brought to the fore two characters - Margarita and her nameless lover, who were absent at the stage of conception of the work and appeared in Bulgakov for the first time in 1931.

Still, the title could not fully reflect the intent of the novel.Bulgakov’s heightened attitude towards the collapse of religion in Russia - as a whole layer of cultural, spiritual, moral life , prompted him to preface the text with an epigraph that states another theme of the novel of good and evil.

As an epigraph, Bulgakov chose the wordsfrom Goethe's immortal work. "Who are you?" - asks Faust. And Mephistopheles replies: “Part of the strength that is without numberHe does good, desiring evil for everyone.”

And this choice is hardly accidental: philosophical insightinto the mysteries of existence excited Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakovno less than the great author of Faust. The epigraph from Goethe is a direct reference to the philosophical issues of the famous text of world culture. The image of one of the main characters of the novel, Woland (in Goethe, Mephistopheles) as a force of evil doing good, also goes back to Faust. Mephistopheles, with his tricks and intrigues, pushes Faust to overcome earthly temptations and comprehend the hidden meanings of existence. Bulgakov's Woland is deprived of the traditional appearance of the Prince of Darkness, thirsting for evil, and carries out both acts of retribution for “specific evil” and acts of retribution, thus creating a moral law that is absent in earthly existence.

The theme stated by the epigraph is exhibited in the text through the motivic structure of the Moscow plot.

The virtuous side of Woland's actions prompted researchers to talk about Bulgakov's dualism and the Gnostic roots of his novel, in which the devil's forces are almost equal to God's.

Among the coincidences with Faust, it is worth noting the time of action: the story of Yeshua is timed to coincide with Easter, with the parallelism of events that is fundamental for Bulgakov, the Moscow plot, just like the Yershalaim one, develops in the week before Easter. The name of the main character of the novel, Margarita, and an indication that in his unearthly incarnation the master can become a “new” Faust, etc. can be traced to Goethe.

It is curious that, as usual with Bulgakov, the epigraph is parodically played out in the text: “Who is he, finally? – Ivan asked in excitement, shaking his fists.” In the Christian understanding, it is not Satan who does good, but God, for the sake of saving the human soul, allows the devil to act on a person (and then only to a certain extent) and himself turns all his machinations to good. Consequently, the Christian reader, to whom Bulgakov’s novel was addressed, upon seeing this “calling card” (epigraph), will immediately sense a catch... realizing that if the speech comes from the person of Mephistopheles, then the truth cannot be expected from this speech.

The novel can be called everyday (pictures of Moscow life of the twenties and thirties are reproduced), and fantastic, and philosophical, and autobiographical, and love-lyrical, and satirical. A novel of multi-genres and multi-facetedness. Everything is closely intertwined, just like in life.

The composition of the novel “The Master and Margarita” is determined by Bulgakov’s decision to structure his work as “text within a text,” “a novel within a novel.” This formula should be understood as the construction of a work from several autonomous parts, endowed with different artistic codes. The composition “text within text” was chosen by Bulgakov precisely in order to emphasize the repetition of the most significant and irreversible event in history: the conviction of an innocent person, the assignment of the right to take his life, the belatedness of any repentance and the thought of the burden of responsibility for each of his actions. The two storylines of the novel - Moscow and Yershalaim - are built as parallel ones; it is no coincidence that researchers identify pairs, triads and even tetrads of heroes.

So, “The Master and Margarita” is a double novel. Both “novels are opposed” to each other, and the appearance of the main character of the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate - Yeshua - in the novel about the Master is impossible, since it tells us about the time of the writer himself, the era, the symbol of which was Woland - Satan. Good in real life could only be relative, partial. Otherwise, its existence would become impossible. That is why the Master and Margarita, the embodiment of good in the novel about the Master, are forced to enter into an “alliance” with Woland, that is, to compromise with their conscience, to lie in order to preserve the love and truth about Christ that was revealed to the Master. This explains the duality of the characters. Holiness and goodness are sometimes combined in their images with evil, lies and betrayal. Thus, Margarita acts not only as a witch wreaking havoc in the apartment of the critic Latunsky: she consoles a crying child, which in folk legends is characteristic of either a saint or the Most Pure Virgin herself. The master, restoring in his novel about Pontius Pilate the course of events that took place in Yershalaim “on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan”125, is, of course, a talented and extraordinary person, but broken by persecution - he renounces creativity, betraying the truth that was revealed to him. The Master's only student, the poet Ivan Bezdomny, gives up writing poetry on the advice of his teacher, but nevertheless, he later considers what happened to him only as a serious obsession, an illness.

Good, as A. Kuraev notes, is primary and self-sufficient. From an ontological point of view, it has its support in God, and not in Satan. From a gnosiological point of view, good has sufficient persuasive power for the human conscience not to need the help and recommendations of evil.

The good in the novel about the Master, although not absolute, is real. Evil is depicted in it differently: it is presented as real, generated by the state system, and supernatural, biblical. Woland and his retinue appear on the pages of the novel with the goal of exposing real evil. Bulgakov gives them the functions of judges in order to ridicule public life, the literary atmosphere and show the relativity of power.

Thus, the title, epigraph, genre and composition of the novel confirm the thesis: the main idea of ​​the novel is the highest purpose of art, designed to affirm good and resist evil. With his novel, M. Bulgakov asserts the priority of simple human feelings over any social hierarchy. The writer believed that only by relying on the living embodiment of these humanistic concepts can humanity create a truly just society. In order for a person to succeed as a person, that is, a being capable of perceiving respect for the moral law, he must develop a good beginning in himself and suppress the evil. And everything here depends on the person himself. Good and evil in M. Bulgakov are created by human hands, and not by God or the devil.

Chapter 2. The problem of man in the novel “The Master and Margarita” and its continuity in the works of Russian classical writers.

2.1. Modern Moscow world.

In The Master and Margarita there lives a deep belief in the immutable moralsnatural laws. The problems raised in the work are revealed inall the brilliance of the author's craftsmanship. They are present in the depictioneach of the central characters.

What lies at the basis of human behavior - a coincidence of circumstances, a series of accidents, predestination or adherence to chosen ideals and ideas? Who controls human life?

Turning to the events of the Moscow chapters, let us reflect on the essence of the dispute between the strange foreigner and the leaders of MASSOLIT at the Patriarch's Ponds. Moscow townsfolk do not believe in miracles, insisting on the banal-habitual dimension of life, since Berlioz “is not used to extraordinary circumstances ...” and does not believe in the real existence of Christ. Woland, being completely contemptuous of people’s capabilities, does not deny the divine principle and the predetermination of human efforts; he contrasts it with a miracle: “... if there is no God, then the question is, who controls human life and the entire order on earth in general?” Whose side is the author of the novel on in this debate? Observing the events in Moscow, directed by Woland and his retinue, we are convinced of the rightness of the magician, the insignificance of the Moscow people, greedy for petty values ​​and not believing in God or the devil.

Bulgakov depicts the world of Moscow as immobility, incapacity for tragic oncoming movements. This static nature of the Moscow circle pushed Bulgakov towards Gogol’s style. Creating a film script based on “Dead Souls,” Bulgakov constantly dynamizes and reveals the framework of Gogol’s narrative. The consciousness of Muscovites is focused only on familiar circumstances and comically tries to adapt the “fantastic” to the real. Likhodeev’s transfer to Yalta amazes his colleagues: “It’s funny to say! – Rimsky shouted shrilly. - talked or didn’t talk, but he can’t now in Yalta! That's funny!

He’s drunk...” Varenukha said.

Who's drunk? - asked Rimsky, and again they both stared at each other.”

Gogol’s style in this dialogue is obvious, and it is necessary, since Bulgakov describes a motionless world that absorbs nothing except known circumstances: “During the twenty years of his activity in the theater, Varenukha saw all sorts of scenes, but then he felt that his mind was covered, as it were, with a veil. , and he was unable to utter anything except the everyday and, at the same time, completely absurd phrase: “This cannot be!” How reminiscent this is of Korobochka’s reaction to Chichikov’s proposals. The Gogolian style is inevitably present in the Moscow chapters of The Master and Margarita, since the system of repetitions of some situations in the biblical chapters creates a diminishing effect. For example, the suffering of Styopa Likhodeev in the seventh chapter of “Bad Apartment” is somewhat reminiscent of Pilate’s headache, but in their description it is not spirituality that appears, but animality.

The vanity and self-interest of a society of beggars in the ninth chapter of “Koroviev’s Jokes” are described in completely Gogolian tones. The petty alogism (denial of logical thinking as a means of achieving truth) of the “claims to the living space of the late Berlioz” is reminiscent of scenes from “The Government Inspector” and “Dead Souls.”

In the Moscow chapters, the action takes on an incoherent, feverish, noisy pace of buffoonery. Thus, where there is no inner life of a person, the boiling of vanity becomes chaotic. The grasping instinct of philistinism and the materialism of the Moscow public are exposed by M. Bulgakov with the help of Gogol’s technique of reducing hyperbole.

The entire scene in the variety show is a reduced variation of Mephistopheles’ aria from Charles Gounod’s opera “Faust” (“Satan rules the show there, people die for metal...”). So Bulgakov, instead of the poetic bacchanalia of Hun, gives a disgusting fever of vulgarity.

The eccentricity of Bulgakov's satire prompts us to remember that the Gogol tradition came to him through Saltykov - Shchedrin and Chekhov. This is especially noticeable in the seventeenth chapter, where Moscow is infected with scandal and strives for it, like any eventless life. After the tragic requiem of the sixteenth chapter, this fussy allegro is especially comical. The drama of what is happening in Moscow is not perceived as a disaster, just as we calmly laugh at Chekhov’s “Death of an Official.” Before us are not people, but wind-up dolls who can only perform a given part, but are unable to navigate events or comprehend them. Puppetry and inhumanity are noticeable in such characters as Sempleyarov, Maigel, as well as in many others.

The ideology of the novel is sad, and you can’t hide it...

Contemporaries saw in Bulgakov's novel, first of all, an evil parody of Soviet society and primarily emphasized the influence of Griboyedov, Gogol and Dostoevsky on Bulgakov. In Bulgakov’s novel there are many faces, the specific prototypes of which are recognizable, which is clearly clarified by B. Sokolov in the “Bulgakov Encyclopedia” . Of course, with all the character of such persons as Berlioz or Bengalsky, a type emerges in each of them. However, the eternal types (Yeshua, Pilate, Woland), breaking the shackles of time, carry the influence of Pushkin. The Gogolian tradition is certainly present in The Master and Margarita and is reflected in the werewolf motif. Suffice it to recall Behemoth or the transformation of the “bottom tenant” Nikolai Ivanovich into a hog. Bulgakov is really close to Gogol in his assessment of paganism. In the novel, communist Moscow is presented as a step back from Christianity, a return to the cult of things and demons, spirits and ghosts. (Sokolov 1998) Nowhere can one find solid existence, nowhere can one see a human face. This ghostliness was born from deceit.

Vices are presented as a distortion of the human being, rather than the basis of life. And therefore, not melancholy, not despair, but laughter crushing evil - the result of Bulgakov’s picture of Moscow in no way confirms Ha-Notsri’s assertion that there are no evil people in the world. Characters from Moscow life are, as it were, outside of good and evil; in them there is no place for an ethical assessment of themselves and life. Bulgakov’s world of Moscow is not absolutely mechanical and dead, as in “Dead Souls,” where the picture of the provincial city was confirmed by “The Tale of Captain Kopeikin.”

If life is woven from chance, is it possible to vouch for the future and be responsible for others? Are there any unchanging moral criteria, or are they changeable and a person is driven by the fear of power and death, the thirst for power and wealth?

2.2.Ancient Yershalaim world. Tragedies and farces (lesson model).

The “Gospel” chapters are a kind of ideological center of the novel. Although Bulgakov distances himself from the canonical Gospels and the behavior of him and Yeshua only vaguely resembles the actions of Jesus Christ, upon careful reading, the permeation of the text of the novel with New Testament realities becomes discernible.

Goal: to show the role of the Yershalaim chapters in the structure of the novel. In general, they do not take up much space. However, it is precisely these chapters and faces that turn out to be the measure of everything that happens in Moscow and Woland himself. Why is he only a witness and not a participant in the events of the Yershalaim chapters? This question leads to the creation of a problematic situation centered around the dilemma: “Is evil omnipotent?”

Based on the material from the Moscow chapters, students might get the impression that evil is more powerful than good. The vulgarity of the townsfolk, the mocking pranks of Woland’s retinue, the ease with which the “black magician” takes possession of the city and deals with it, the misfortune of the Master, Margarita, Ivan Bezdomny, as people in whom the soul is still alive - all this speaks of the omnipotence of evil. Bulgakov does not allow the reader to draw conclusions based on one layer of life, one historical emotional situation. The author of the novel collides modern and biblical scenes, immediacy and eternity, tragedies and farces, anecdote and myth. At this crossroads of contrasts, other conclusions emerge.

Students in the analysis of chapters (for example, the death of Berlioz and the death of Judas) are convinced of the difference in the author's attitude to events. Biblical stories are characterized as high tragedy, where everything is significant, where even in the fallen there is poetry of feeling. The Moscow world, with the exception of the Master, Margarita, Ivan, is vulgar, soulless and therefore worthy only of a farce.

Trying to answer the central question of the lesson: “Is evil omnipotent?”, students of their own choice unite in groups, working on the following questions and tasks.

First group working on material related to Pontius Pilate.

1. Why does Pilate want to save Yeshua and put him to death?

2. How did Pilate change after the execution of Yeshua? What was his repentance?

3. How does a thunderstorm change the lives of Pilate and the Master?

Second group ponders the fate of Judah from Kiriath.

How does the Gospel motivate the betrayal of Judas and how is it explained in Bulgakov’s novel?

Is Afranius right when he says that Judas is inspired only by a passion for money? Why does Afranius hide the true circumstances of the murder of Judas from Pilate?

Compare the scenes of Andriy’s arrival to the Polish woman and his death in “Taras Bulba” with the meeting of Judas and Niza and his death, the last moments of the life of Judas and Don Guan (Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest”).

Why does Bulgakov give his hero a resemblance to the “knights of love” in the works of Pushkin and Gogol?

Third group ponders questions related to the images of Yeshua and Levi Matthew.

Why did Yeshua refuse to drink a drink before his death that could alleviate suffering, and said “that among human vices he considers cowardice to be one of the most important”?

Why does Bulgakov let you see the execution through the eyes of Levi Matvey?

Why does Levi curse God and refuse Pilate's good deed?

Why does Yeshua not blame anyone for his death and comfort Pilate in the world of spirits?

Compare the death scenes of Yeshua and the Master (chapters 16, 25, 30). How are their attitudes toward suffering and toward people different?

When the group is ready to answer, the conclusions are discussed with the whole class and the teacher makes his own additions.

The second chapter of the novel, “Pontius Pilate,” breaks the circle of everyday life and takes the reader into the space of eternity. Here Pushkin's concept of the tragedy about Christ comes to life. In the space of eternity, the same painful questions about the essence of man are being resolved. In the duel of conscience and fear of public opinion, which goes on in the soul of the procurator, the truth of Yeshua’s words is revealed. Pilate, driven by pain to the state of a hunted animal, in a conversation with a ragamuffin, turns out to be able, if not to understand, then to feel the universal significance of what is happening and passionately tries to save Yeshua from execution. This attempt was prompted not only by Yeshua granting him relief from physical suffering, but also by an awakened conscience. The presence of Ha-Notsri requires the procurator to be unselfish, fair, and abandon usual ideas and actions. However, you can save Yeshua only by freeing yourself from fear for yourself. Behavior and well-being, according to Bulgakov, directly depend on faith in a person’s good beginnings. The prisoner dares to speak not about the personal weakness of the procurator, but about the falsity of the entire system: “all power is violence over people, and ... the time will come when there will be no power of either the Caesars or any other power. Man will move into the kingdom of truth and justice, where no power will be needed at all.” The procurator orders to untie Ha-Nozri and thereby confirms Yeshua’s thought: “There are no evil people in the world.”

Despite the dissimilarity of the situation, the duel between Yeshua and Pilate, their dispute about good and evil, is reminiscent of Pushkin’s tragedy “Mozart and Salieri.” Mozart's gullibility and his music execute Salieri, just as Pilate is disarmed by Yeshua's sincerity. Mozart's belief that "genius and villainy are two incompatible things" is akin to Ha-Nozri's reasoning about good people. Pilate is as attracted and attached to Yeshua as Salieri is to Mozart. And unable to withstand this strange love, and which calls them to change, both Pilate and Salieri decide to execute the tall one, so as not to drink the poison themselves, but, by killing the good, they are deprived of peace. The tragedy about Christ conceived by Pushkin was written by Bulgakov.

It is interesting to compare the coverage of the Yershalaim and Moscow chapters.

In the third chapter, Bulgakov emphasizes the incompleteness of the Moscow world with the presence of the moon, “not yet golden, but white.” The sun raged in Yershalaim, from which Pilate’s “brain caught fire.” The fierce fire of the sun and the reflected light of the moon separate real and imaginary life. The light of the moon is deceptive, as Pushkin persistently wrote about in Eugene Onegin. The “sad” and “inspirational” “goddess of secrets and tender sighs” becomes the natural companion of dreamers who surrender to illusions: Tatiana and Lensky. For the “cold” Onegin, there is only the “stupid moon”. It is characteristic that after visiting Onegin’s house and sobering up, the moon no longer shines for Tatyana. At the end of the fourth chapter of the novel, “Eugene Onegin” is mentioned, but the discussion here is not, as in Pushkin’s novel, about the lofty delusions of sentimentalism and romanticism. Pushkin's world is vulgarized in the Moscow chapters. “The hoarse roar of the polonaise from the opera “Eugene Onegin”” and “the omnipresent orchestra, to the accompaniment of which a heavy bass sang about his love for Tatyana,” demonstrate the distance between what is happening and the passions of Pushkin’s heroes. The shock that Bezdomny experienced when he saw how accurately Woland’s predictions were coming true is ready to turn into a vulgar persecution of a swindler who may have faked his death. Outwardly, this is the persecution of Woland, with the aim of exposing him. But in Homeless there is also a vague attempt to discern the truth in the incident. And that is why the motif of light is so important in this chapter. The homeless man begins to see clearly, and the moon turns golden. But Moscow life is not accessible even to this bright light: “One moonbeam, filtering through a dusty window that had not been wiped for years, sparingly illuminated the corner where a forgotten icon hung in the dust and cobwebs...”. Bezdomny also wanted to “break through” the “web” of Moscow society, to defeat evil, but he cannot do it alone. And could he do it? As Andrey Kuraev writes: “I am convinced that Bezdomny, unfortunately, has become my official colleague, that is, he is a philosopher, not a historian. Because in those 7 years that passed from the meeting at the Patriarch’s Ponds to the epilogue, it is impossible to become a professor of history from an illiterate workers’ correspondent who knows nothing about Kant or Philo of Alexandria under any regime.” The reader also discovers signs that Ivan is a student who has not reached the level of a teacher, who has received the master’s blessing to continue the novel about Pilate, but is deprived of further spiritual mentoring; Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev behaves like a person to whom the truth has only just been revealed. This is enough for a “profane” world, but not enough for the path to immortality.

Bulgakov said: “The Soviet system is good, but stupid, just as there are people with good character, but stupid...” . In his depiction, the “fool” came closer, without losing its modern appearance, to the popular concept of Ivan the Fool, who would yet show his true mind.

In The Master and Margarita, life is caught in its “fatal moments.” Peace is given in a duel between goodness and cruelty, sincerity and pretense, trepidation and indifference. This fight takes place in the chapters of the novel written by the master, and in real life in Moscow. The chapters of the master's novel inherit Pushkin's drama. Bulgakov's novel is crowded, but there is a typological similarity in the situations and characters of the Yershalaim and Moscow circles, which researchers have repeatedly written about. These projections of persons and events only emphasize the contrast between the confused fussiness of Soviet society and the majesty of the biblical scenes. The reduction in level, the content of human conflicts, is obvious to the reader. Bulgakov's novel is structured as a combination of comedy and tragedy. The subtle irony of the Yershalaim circle turns into an outright farce in the Moscow chapters, although the story of the master, Margarita, and Ivan Bezdomny retains the drama of man’s struggle with evil and the tension of a complex psychological life. Naturally, the Yershalaim chapters are marked by the nobility of Pushkin’s style. Describing in the second chapter of the novel the intricacies of Pilate in a conversation with the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, Bulgakov sneers at the great art of the deliberate play of the procurator, which does not cancel the tragic insights: ““Immortality... immortality has come...” Whose immortality has come? The procurator did not understand this, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him feel cold in the sun.” Comparing the thunderstorm in Yershalaim and Moscow, we notice that the natural elements are not subject to historical and social transformations. In both biblical and modern scenes, thunderstorms cause fear in unrighteous people and bring salvation to those in whom the soul lives. The thunderstorm in Yershalaim appears as a cleansing element: “it was getting darker. The cloud had already filled half of the sky, rushing towards Yershalaim, white boiling clouds rushing ahead, clouds filled with black moisture and fire” (Chapter 16). The thunderstorm in chapter 25 of the novel is depicted as a struggle between darkness and light. The roar of catastrophe accompanies the thunderstorm, which is born as an echo of nature in response to the death of Yeshua. The good in Yeshua is not defeated by any torment.

The Master does not die as meekly as Yeshua: “Poisoner...” the Master still managed to shout. He wanted to grab a knife from the table to hit Azazello with it, but his hand helplessly slipped off the tablecloth, everything surrounding the Master in the basement turned black and completely disappeared.” And again a thunderstorm appears, as a symbolistic echo of a crime, and a natural protest against darkness, as a cleansing storm, bringing rebirth.

Here the master and Margarita have already been raised to another life and are flying over Moscow. The catastrophe of the thunderstorm in Bulgakov leads to the rebirth of life, darkness is replaced by light.

“The thunderstorm was carried away without a trace, and, spreading like an arch across the whole of Moscow, a multi-colored rainbow stood in the sky, drinking water from the Moscow River.” Bulgakov becomes a poet here. This is the animation of faith. The writer, creating a novel about the saving power of faith in a good beginning in life, is not afraid to make Pushkin’s victory of light over darkness the law of the world. When Pilate calls on Afranius to take revenge on Judas for his betrayal, “the sun returned to Yershalaim... The fountain came to life completely..., the doves climbed out onto the sand...”.

Bulgakov also combines Pushkin and Gogol styles when it comes to the death of Judas from Keriath. Afranius, who presents Judas to Pilate as a man whose only passion is money, himself knows that this is not so. He knows that Judas loves Nisa, and it is she who makes her an accomplice to the murder. Afranius knows that Judas needed money to fulfill his dream. However, Afranius spares Pilate and does not connect Judas’ crime with love.

The author emphasizes this connection. Just as Pushkin’s Guan in The Stone Guest pronounces Anna’s name before his death, either with regret about unfulfilled love, or with a reproach for fate, which takes away life precisely when Guan really loves, so Bulgakov, with almost the same intonations, makes Judas whisper the name of Niza . Love for her, and not passion for money, guides him. He was ready to give money to the killers to save his life. And Bulgakov describes Judas’ search for Niza, like Andriy’s path to the Polish woman in Taras Bulba, and with bitter sympathy he draws the body of the dead Judas, reminiscent of the appearance of Andriy killed by his father: “In the shadows, it seemed to the beholder as white as chalk, and somehow spiritually beautiful "

But is it only the Yershalaim chapters of the novel that claim that good cannot be eradicated from the world? Finishing the lesson with this question, we suggest doing one of your homework assignments.

Why did Ivan Bezdomny turn from a mediocre poet into a master's student? What is the price of his insight?

What mistakes or crimes did Margarita commit and for what purpose? How does Bulgakov’s heroine differ from Goethe’s “Faust” Margarita?

Is Matthew Levi’s sentence fair to the master: “He didn’t deserve light, he deserved peace.” Has this sentence been fulfilled?

Why did Woland and his retinue disappear into the hole?

Has Moscow changed the procurator's game since Woland's departure?

2.3. Motive of the GPU - NKVD in the novel by M. Bulgakov

As the novel unfolds, it becomes obvious to the reader that there is a certain organization in Bulgakov’s Moscow (a prototype of the GPU), whose power extends to the entire capital. Bulgakov changed both the regulations of what was permitted and the rules of the game prescribed to the artist in a totalitarian state. The GPU is depicted as a shadow “without a face or name,” as a power structure dissolved in society (NKVD). The institution prefers to wear a mask, its name is replaced by the designations “call there”, “them”, appear “where you should” or omissions. The investigators are also nameless.

The vocabulary is drawn into a verbal masquerade: the word “arrest” is replaced by the phrase “I have business with you,” “just a minute,” or “I need to sign.”

Representatives of Bulgakov's secret chancellery are people of indeterminate profession and rather spacious appearance.

Despite all the “unmanifestation”, the department is extremely aware. Everyone is ready to believe that they are surrounded by all-hearing ears, that every step “out there” is known. Even during the flight to the Sabbath, Nikolai Ivanovich, having heard Natasha’s phrase: “To hell with your papers!”, “screamed pleadingly”: “Someone will hear.”

The activities of the GPU are described as follows: “it will be quickly explained,” “everything has been clarified,” “everything has been deciphered,” “all this will be explained, and very quickly.” However, the function of the unnamed organization is not limited to an innocuous explanation: it has power over people's lives. It is with the description of her actions that the motives for arrest, search, exile, fear, denunciations, and imprisonment are connected in the novel. The position of people living in the described world is dual. They are instilled with the confidence that they cannot trust even their loved ones, because anyone can be connected with a secret agency. For example, Margarita’s assumption that “Natasha was bribed.”

The era gave birth to thousands of informants who fulfilled their revolutionary duty. During Bulgakov's lifetime, the valor of the informer was also confirmed: in 1937, Stalin ordered the erection of a monument to Pavlik Morozov.

Bulgakov's informer is a massive and at the same time complex figure. The theme of denunciation is represented by the story of Judas, the desire to “expose the villains” of Varenukha, the insignificance of the act of Aloysius Mogarych, the civil behavior of Ivan Bezdomny, intending to arrest the “consultant”.

Another layer associated with this organization is arrests, prisons and the underlying theme of violence against the individual and deprivation of freedom, as “the most precious gift” with which a person is awarded. It has been given different forms - from detailed descriptions of searches and arrests to direct names of places of detention: “If only we could take this Kant to Solovki!”

At times the activities of the GPU are presented by Bulgakov in an openly parodic aspect. Masquerade of detectives guarding the apartment under the guise of plumbers; their equipment (master keys, black Mausers, thin silk nets, ampoules of chloroform). The “well” prepared operation ends in complete disgrace of the GPU under the mocking remarks of the cat.

Interest in persons exercising power at its highest levels is a characteristic feature of Bulgakov, as evidenced by the writer’s surviving diaries and numerous hidden and explicit references in his work.

There are no names in the novel, and the name Stalin is taboo. It can be seen in the appearance of Woland, and in the toast of Pontius Pilate - “to you, Caesar, father of the Romans, the dearest and best of people!” Bulgakov's generation went through fear. Bulgakov himself realized that fear is the most important sign of a totalitarian regime, implying the forced life in conditions unacceptable to the individual.

Bulgakov consciously, sometimes demonstratively, emphasizes the autobiographical nature of the Master’s image. The atmosphere of persecution, complete renunciation from literary and social life, lack of livelihood, constant expectation of arrest, denunciation articles, devotion and dedication of the woman he loved - Bulgakov himself and his hero experienced all this.

The Master’s beloved also suffered a lot; so she, too, was given an easy and quick death (“she suddenly turned pale, grabbed her heart and ... fell to the floor”) - a quick death and quick peace next to a dear person. This is the ending of the novel, but seven years before its end, Bulgakov wrote to Elena Sergeevna, his Margarita, on a copy of the book “Diaboliad”: “... you will take the last flight with me.”

The hours of life have ended, the hours of death have begun.

From the Writers' Union we went to the crematorium, a meeting with which he also, albeit in a peculiar way, predicted in one of his letters. “The stove has long become my favorite edition. I like her because, without rejecting anything, she equally willingly consumes laundry receipts, the beginnings of letters, and even, oh shame, shame, poetry.”

Now she has swallowed him up...

The fate of Master Bulgakov is natural. In the country of “victorious socialism” there is no place for freedom of creativity, there is only a planned “social order”. The master has no place in this world - neither as a writer, nor as a thinker, nor as a person.

For all its merciless realism and deep sadness breaking through in places, this book is light and poetic; the faith, love and hope expressed in it can dispel any darkness. Bulgakov writes about the spiritual survival of Russian people. Man here is not humiliated, not trampled by the forces of evil, he managed to survive even at the bottom of the totalitarian abyss, understood and accepted the cruel pedagogy of life. Of course, this book is a farewell to life and people, a requiem to himself, and that is why the author did not part with it for so long. But Bulgakov’s sadness is also bright and humane. Man - a spiritual magnitude - is the main and saving discovery of Russian Christianity in the twentieth century.

Dostoevsky said that the main idea and goal of high humanistic art, Russian classics, is “the restoration of a lost person.” This is the main theme of the novel "The Master and Margarita". A record of Bulgakov’s most interesting thought has been preserved: “we must evaluate a person in the entirety of his being, a person as a person, even if he is sinful, unsympathetic, embittered or arrogant. We need to look for the core, the deepest center of humanity in this person.” After all, this is, in essence, the great testament of Dostoevsky, of all Russian classical literature from Pushkin to Chekhov - “with complete realism, find the person in a person.” And to help a dying, distrusted, destroyed person, to revive him to a new life.

Mikhail Bulgakov was always faithful to this covenant.

Chapter 3. Easter in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita".

Does Bulgakov have an Easter theme? Moscow Orthodox Easter is not mentioned anywhere in the novel. But events lead to it.

When Woland leaves Moscow, the writer notes that there were Christian churches in this city: from the Sparrow Hills, evil spirits look down on Moscow and “at the gingerbread towers of the nunnery” (chapter 31).

The novel constantly emphasizes that Moscow is flooded with the light of the spring full moon, and May is repeatedly mentioned. And the action of the novel takes place from Wednesday to Sunday night - the formula of the Orthodox late Easter. The epilogue quite directly hints at this: “Every year, as soon as the festive full moon comes…”.

The novel begins with Great Wednesday: the atheistic Sanhedrin (Berlioz and Bezdomny) decides how to further wound Christ. On Holy Wednesday, the wife pours myrrh (fragrant oil) on the head of Jesus.

On a Moscow Wednesday, Berlioz's head rolls on oil spilled by another wife (Annushka) on the tram tracks.

The variety show takes place during the “service of the 12 Gospels” - the evening of Maundy Thursday, when gospel stories about the sufferings of Christ are read in all churches. Woland’s mockery of Muscovites (who themselves, however, preferred to be in a variety show rather than in church) occurs at those hours when Christians are experiencing the Gospel story about the mockery of Christ. At these hours of this day, there are very clear divisions: where the Russian people gather, and where the “scoops” are. It was the latter who, in their “temple of culture,” found themselves defenseless against Woland.

On the morning of Good Friday, the apostles stood behind the cordon line, watching in horror the execution at Calvary. Muscovites also spend the morning of this Good Friday surrounded by police, but this cordon is protected by a line of “freeloaders” clamoring for tickets at the variety show.

The procession with the coffin of the headless Berlioz turns out to be an atheistic surrogate of the Friday procession with the Shroud.

Satan's ball runs from Friday to Saturday. Margarita bathes twice in the bloody pool. In the ancient Church, it was on the night of Holy Saturday that the catechumens received baptism - in the image of the death and resurrection of the Savior...

But it doesn’t come until Easter: Woland cannot stay in Moscow on Easter: “- Messire! Saturday. The sun is bowing. It is time". And the Master and Margarita run away from Easter.

Woland, of course, does not consider his powers limited, but there are two scenes in the novel that hint that he also has a very powerful opponent: the image of the cross and the sign of the cross (the barman and cook being baptized).

Bulgakov makes this hint a reference to the reaction of evil spirits to the sign of the cross. These details are all the more expressive since church themes are completely absent in the final text of the novel. The sign of the cross, and the icon behind which Ivan Bezdomny is hiding - these are all the signs of the existence of the Church in Bulgakov’s Moscow.

There is not even a mention of God in the novel. God, precisely by His absence, becomes the most important character: only in Moscow, which forgot about God, renounced Him and blew up the Temple of Christ, could a “noble foreigner” show up. However, in Moscow there were people in whose faith and memory there remained an invisible Temple - a Temple built in time. And even their secret, home Easter prayer was enough to recreate the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Thinking about the origins of our tragic destinies in the past century, Bulgakov sees the main reason: the lost Home and the lost God.

In the novel, obviously or hidden, everyone suffers in different ways: the Master, and Margarita Nikolaevna, and Berlioz, and Poplavsky, and Latunsky, and Aloisy Mogarych, and Likhodeev, etc. One of the characters is generally called Homeless, whose name, obviously, should emphasize his loss between good and evil.

And Woland himself also lives in someone else’s “living space.”

In the “ancient chapters” Yeshua Ha-Nozri is a “tramp” and “alone in the world.” This homelessness is a state of mind that has lost its usual support in the world.

The former God was embodied precisely in the House, in the entire national way of life. He was like the air they breathed. And the man had Faith.

Bulgakov in his novel leads us to the idea that the resurrection of God must occur in man himself.

Chapter 4. Attitude to religion M.A. Bulgakov in life and in the novel.

It should, of course, be taken into account that the attitude towards faith in different years of Bulgakov’s life was different. His grandfather was a priest, his father a professor at the Theological Seminary, a specialist in Western doctrines and Freemasonry, an active member of the Religious and Philosophical Society named after V. Solovyov.

Even in his early youth, Bulgakov was inclined towards unbelief. After the death of his father, the atmosphere in the family became completely secular. But at the same time, he does not accept the complete denial of God, characteristic of the atheistic propaganda of those years. Although in some cases he is extremely disrespectful towards the church, priests, and religious rituals. However, in general, the expression of his attitude towards religion was quite restrained. And only in the novel “The Master and Margarita” did the author fully reveal his imagination.

Not only cultural, religious traditions, and family atmosphere affected Bulgakov’s worldview, but also his individual psychological characteristics.

One of the reasons with the first wife (Tatyana Nikolaevna) was her openly hostile attitude towards religion. His third wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, recalled: “Did he believe? He believed, but, of course, not in the church way, but in his own way. In any case, when I was sick, I believed – I can vouch for that.”

Faith in God is evidenced by Bulgakov’s entries in diaries, letters and rough sketches for the chapters of the novel: “Help, Lord, finish the novel.”

There is a legend that the last sadness of the dying Bulgakov was a novel about the Master. Bulgakov put his disagreements, satirisms, and denials into the mouths of his characters. But he did not trust them with his faith.

Orthodox Rus' found itself in the position of a landless wanderer in the Soviet Union. Its earthly temples exploded and closed, but still Bulgakov believed in the revival of Russia, in its people, and therefore dedicated his novel to them... “So that they know... so that they know...”. And it should be noted that Bulgakov was not mistaken.

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Chapter 5. True and imaginary values ​​in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita".

When reading the novel in the context of the Christian cultural tradition, facts are revealed that call into question the very concept of truth for which the heroes could suffer.

Bulgakov in his novel develops a tradition close to the ideas of the Gnostics. Gnosticism easily allowed in its texts a mixture of concepts, images and ideas that go back to a variety of sources: Christianity and Judaism, Platonism and primitive culture, Pythagoreanism and Zoroastrianism, etc. If for Christians knowledge comes, first of all, from faith in God, then for Gnostics it comes from faith in oneself, in one’s own mind. For Christians, the highest knowledge of good and evil is the destiny of God. For Gnostics, evil is natural. If in Christian teaching God gave freedom of choice between good and evil, then the Gnostics recognize evil as the engine of man. Jesus for them is just a teacher, a man.

Within the framework of this approach, “Woland turns out to be the bearer of the highest justice,” but in reality, the crimes of Muscovites and the punishments imposed on them by the self-appointed judge still turn out to be disproportionate. With all the power of Woland, Bulgakov gives him concrete human traits, just like Yeshua. Woland is deceived by his henchmen, like an ordinary person, he feels pain, his leg hurts inappropriately before the ball, he is tired of the orgy of victims of vice at the ball, he is even noble in his aversion to vulgarity and is generous to the sufferers. However, Woland, who exposes and punishes evil, does not believe in the good nature of man, so a careful reading of Bulgakov’s text can hardly conclude that “Woland is the most charming character in the novel.” If Woland had inspired only disgust, the triumph of evil in the world in which Bulgakov lived (and us too) would have been incomprehensible. 4 Yeshua and Woland, light and darkness are not only opposed in the novel, but are also inextricably linked as two sides of the world: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” This question is an appeal to readers. We perceive the significance and existence of the world precisely in the experience of moral choice. Only by having a foothold in the world can you be free. Everyone makes their own free choice, for which they are responsible. The novel can be seen as the Gospel, and at the same time as a parody of it.

Many characters pass before us in Bulgakov's work. But there is one among them, becoming more and more noticeable in its quiet invisibility. Let us consider the image of Yeshua in this aspect. “The image of Yeshua, contrary to the enthusiastic assurances of the educators, is not an icon. This is not the Face that Bulgakov himself believes in...” writes A. Kuraev. The image of a beloved and positive hero is not sketched with such strokes: “Yeshuaingratiatingly smiled...", "Yeshua got scared and saidtouchingly “Just don’t hit me too hard, otherwise I’ve already been hit twice today.” So what is the power of Yeshua? First of all, he is always in a state of spiritual impulse “toward.” His very first movement in the novel expresses his main feature: “The man with his hands tied leaned forward a little and began to say:

A kind person! Trust me…".

This is the first spiritual gesture of Yeshua. His hands may be tied, but internally he is the freest of all. “The trouble is,” he says to Pilate, “that you are too closed and have completely lost faith in people.” You couldn’t say better about the cause of “evil”: both in the procurator and in any person in general... Moving towards is the essence of good; withdrawal into oneself, isolation - this is what opens the way to evil. The truth for Yeshua is what it really is; it is dearer to him than his own life. All natural accompaniment: a free swallow, a merciless sun, the song of water in a fountain, the pervasive aroma of roses testifies to the naturalness of Yeshua’s truths and the wrongness of Pilate, who touched them and retreated in fear.

Yeshua thus asserts that truth is all empirical reality. This is everything that happens to a person, everything that he experiences with his body, feelings, and mind.

But a person can have true and false thoughts, positive and negative emotions, good and evil desires. And in the words of Yeshua there is no criterion for their distinction. If they exist, then they too are the truth. As noted by D.V. Makarov: “Such an idea of ​​truth leads to terrible distortions in public morality.” Universal human values, developed by humanity and reflected in its culture, cannot be mixed with momentary benefits: wealth, power, carnal pleasures.

Margarita occupies a special place in the novel: in the name of saving her lover, she is forced to make a deal with the devil.

True love is always sacrificial, always heroic. It’s not for nothing that so many legends have been created about her, and it’s not for nothing that poets write so much about her. The truth of love conquers all obstacles. With the power of love, the sculptor Pygmalion revived the statue he created - Galatea. With the power of love, loved ones are saved from illness, taken out of grief, saved from death...

Everyone was touched by Margarita’s mercy when she asked Woland and almost demanded that Frida stop giving that handkerchief. No one expected this request from her. Woland thought that she would ask for a Master, but for this woman there is something that is higher than love. Love for the Master is combined with hatred for his persecutors. But even hatred is not able to suppress mercy in her.

The image of the main character of the novel attracted the attention of many researchers, including prototype seekers. To date, at least five prototypes of the heroine have been named, including even those who were not related to Bulgakov’s biography. Biographically and psychologically, the most convincing decision seems to be in favor of the writer's widow, supported by family friends and almost all researchers of The Master and Margarita.

A number of researchers see in Margarita, the master’s companion in the transition to higher spaces of existence, the embodiment of Sophia’s theology - Eternal Femininity, which they trace directly to the philosophy of the Gnostics, then to the teachings of G. Skovoroda and the mysticism of Vladimir Solovyov. Others see a personification of the “alchemical queen” undergoing initiation at Satan’s ball, as well as projections onto the mysteries of Isis.

However, Bulgakov often wrote his characters so vividly that readers mistook character for positivity. But that's not true. There is no need to romanticize Margarita and elevate the face of the witch to the same level as the bright Madonnas of the Russian classics...

Andrey Kuraev writes in his work that Margarita is by no means a “guardian angel” or a “good genius” of the Master. Margarita is not a Muse. She is only listening to a novel that has already been written. Margarita appears in the master’s life when the novel is almost finished. It is she who pushes him to a suicidal act - to give the manuscript to Soviet publishing houses.

Master - writer. His work is published as part of large novels in which he himself is the character. Subject of the master's work: Holy Week in Jerusalem. Initially, with Bulgakov everything was obvious: the author of the “novel about Pilate” was Woland. But as the novel is revised, the “executor” of the manuscript becomes a person – the Master. But the Master is creatively active and independent only in literary design, and not in essence. At the same time, there were never two Masters in the novel: when Woland was the Master, Margarita’s lover was called a “poet.” And as Bulgakov’s narrative progresses, the Master dissolves in the novel he wrote and in his dependence on Woland.

The Master’s relationship with Woland is a classic relationship between a human creator and a demon: a man gives his talent to the spirit.

5.1. “Manuscripts don’t burn...”

We already know that Bulgakov himself saw the “gospel of Satan” in the “novel about Pilate.” But how can the reader know about this? A clue can be found in the famous phrase “manuscripts don’t burn.” In the mouth of Woland, this is a clear claim that the manuscript inspired by him should replace the church Gospels or at least stand on a par with them. If V.A. Chebotareva has no doubt that the author is behind the aphorism, that it expresses “Bulgakov’s faith in the power of art, the triumph of truth, in the fact that “manuscripts do not burn””, then G. Krugovoy seriously sees in this phrase a trick of the devil, who, under the guise of the Master’s manuscript, cleverly slips in his own, devilish, manuscript. Let us only note that we are closer to the understanding of the role of devilish power in Bulgakov’s novel, which was expressed by B.F. Egorov in the article “Bulgakov and Gogol. The theme of the fight against evil." One thing is certain: Bulgakov agrees with Woland here. The quote, although not textual, is semantic. Apparently, the scope of observation should be expanded, and then it will turn out that the history of the famous aphorism is much more extensive both in time and space. Here we also find a echo - voluntary or unconscious - with an old mythologeme that has been familiar to Russian culture for more than one century. The motif of testing by fire is found both in the apocrypha and in Russian spiritual poems, including the most ancient ones. He was especially loved by schismatics. After all, “for the Russian consciousness of the middleXVIIcenturies, the righteous did not go into the fire to perish. At the council, Pope Lazarus even invited the Nikonians to go through the fire with him, that is, to be judged by God's court. It was assumed that the right one would come out of the fire unharmed.” This idea extended to books; Their immersion in the fire was considered a kind of test. As proof of the truth of the Old Believer faith, Deacon Fyodor Ivanov (a “prisoner” of Archpriest Avvakum) reported on his trip to Athos: they tried to burn old Russian books, but they did not burn in the fire. It is also noteworthy that in the correspondence of Habakkuk with his supporters, one of his most ardent opponents, the persecutor of the old faith, is referred to as Pontius Pilate. In the light of these facts, it becomes clearer which manuscripts do not burn and why they do not burn.

The list of echoes of this tradition in Russian literature can be expanded in the other direction, and then, following the comrades-in-arms of Avvakum, following Gogol and along with Bulgakov, it is appropriate to recall Anna Akhmatova, in whose poem “Dream” we read:

And so I write, as before, without blots,

My poems in a burnt notebook.

A common belief says that what God preserves is not destroyed, including true books containing the correct understanding of biblical stories. Now Woland acts as both a custodian of manuscripts and a determiner of their reliability.

Thus, there is every reason to talk about an archetype that existed in the popular poetic consciousness for centuries before it found new life in Bulgakov’s novel, embodied in the aphorism: “Manuscripts do not burn.”

Satan is interested in this anti-gospel. This is not only reprisal against his enemy (Christ of church faith and prayer), but also an indirect exaltation of Satan. Woland himself is not mentioned in any way in the Master's novel. But through this silence, the effect Woland needs is achieved: these are all people, I have nothing to do with it, I’m just an eyewitness, I was flying past, fixing a primus... And, as befits an anti-gospel, it appears in filth: from under the cat’s ass (“Cat” He immediately jumped up from his chair, and everyone saw that he was sitting on a thick stack of manuscripts."

Love and creativity are what can resist the ever-existing evil. The concepts of goodness, forgiveness, understanding, responsibility, truth, and harmony are also associated with love and creativity. In the name of love, Margarita accomplishes a feat, overcoming fear and weakness, defeating circumstances, without demanding anything for herself. The image of the Master allows Bulgakov to pose the problem of the creator's responsibility for his talent. The master is endowed with the ability to “guess” the truth, to see through the thickness of centuries the image of true humanity. His gift can save people from unconsciousness, from their forgotten ability to do good. But the Master, having written a novel, could not stand the struggle for it, abandoned his creation, and did not accept the feat.

Margarita values ​​the novel more than the Master. With the power of her love, Margarita saves the Master and his novel. The theme of creativity and the theme of Margarita are associated with the true values ​​​​affirmed by the author of the novel: personal freedom, mercy, honesty, truth, faith, love.

Chapter 6. “He deserves peace...”

At various times, L. Yanovskaya, V. Lakshin, M. Chudakova, N. Utekhin, O. Zapalskaya, V. Kotelnikov and other researchers drew attention to some of the reasons why the Master “did not deserve the light”, offering “answers” more often ethical, religious and ethical. “Answers” ​​should follow from the analysis of different levels, “zones” of the novel.

The master did not deserve light because it would contradict:

Christian requirements (“hero zone”),

The philosophical concept of the world in the novel (“the author’s zone”),

The genre nature of the novel (“genre zone”),

Aesthetic realities of the twentieth century (“zone of the era”).

Of course, such a division is rather arbitrary and is dictated primarily by educational and methodological purposes.

Let us turn to religious, ethical, Christian reasons. They are in the “zone of heroes”, flowing from the novel’s destinies of the heroes, as if the heroes lived “on their own”, according to their own will, and not according to the author’s. But this is the most common approach, especially in school.

From a Christian point of view, the Master did not deserve the light, since beyond the threshold of death he continued to remain too earthly. He did not overcome the human bodily principle within himself. This was expressed, in particular, in the fact that the Master looks back at his earthly sinful love - Margarita; he would like to share his future unearthly life with her. The classic precedent in world literature is known: in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” those who were devoted to earthly love were denied light and placed in Hell or Purgatory. According to Christian ideas, earthly worries, sorrows and joys should not burden those leaving the sinful earth. The situation in the novel is similar to the biblical one: the Master also “looks back at his past. But Bulgakov disposed of the fate of his hero differently: he does not completely justify the Master, but sympathizes with him.

Critics rightly accuse the Master of despondency. Dejection and despair are also sinful, and not only according to Christian standards. The master refuses the truth revealed in his novel, he admits: “I no longer have any dreams and I don’t have any inspiration either..., nothing around me interests me except her (Margarita)... I was broken, I’m bored, and I want to go to the basement... He I hate this novel... I experienced too much because of it.” Burning a novel is a kind of suicide.

Did the Master believe, did he, like the hero of Dante’s poem, strive for the blissful light? The novel provides no basis for an affirmative answer.

The reason - the lack of faith and desire for light - is the most important, and it is connected in particular with the concept of the image of Yeshua in the novel. Although the author does not renounce the divine hypostasis of Yeshua, he (Yeshua) appears before the reader, first of all, as a morally beautiful person who has undeservedly suffered. In the novel there is no resurrection of Yeshua, and he does not look like the one who should be resurrected. The master “guessed” what happened two thousand years ago, when Yeshua came into the world, but from the point of view of a believer, he did not guess everything. The truth was revealed to him as historical truth, as a morally attractive image, but not the complete truth of a real Christian.

The third chapter of the novel is called “The Seventh Proof.” We are talking about proof of the existence of God.

For Kant, God is not a “moral law,” but the Lawgiver of this law. Kant saw the existence of morality as a manifestation of God. God is higher than human moral experience. Human moral experience is a clearing in the world of everyday unfreedom, allowing us to see Something much higher. The very existence of morality is only a pointer to the existence of human freedom.

The main thing in Kant's construction is the exposure of the logical necessary connection between human freedom and the existence of God. Woland did not approve of this evidence. He doesn't like human freedom at all. The whole history of Woland’s appearance in Moscow is an exposure of the fundamental lack of freedom of people. And what about this freedom for those people who themselves have broken off contact with the world of High Freedom? The author of this recognizable picture turned out to be... Satan. This is “reduction to absurdity.” Bulgakov showed the reality of Satan as clearly as possible.

Truth is inseparable from God. In modern society, the concept of truth is not very clear. This is a category of seeking rather than possessing. It is determined by the spirit of the times.

To understand any evidence, you need to have a culture of thinking, and it is different for everyone.

The strange “peace” in Bulgakov’s novel is a kind of “agreement”, an attempt not to contrast “light” and “shadow” in the artificially created forms of the world, as in the real earthly one.

And of course, the highest value for the author of a novel is creativity. In deciding the Master's fate, love and creativity balanced the lack of faith on the scales; neither Heaven nor Hell were “outweighed.” A compromise solution was needed - to reward - punish the Master with “peace”. In this decision one can read the approval of the highest earthly truth - the truth of creativity and love. But again, it must be said that this approval in the finale turns out to have an unexpected side.

We remember that Matvey Levi speaks about peace—the reward—in a “sad voice.” O. Zapalskaya, assessing the fate of the Master as a religious critic, believes that “peace” is not a reward, it is the misfortune of the Master, who refused to make a choice between good and evil, light and darkness.

Hence, naturally, the sadness of Levi Matthew. But the “sad voice” is not the author’s voice. It can be argued that the center of the novel is not the problem of choice, which O. Zapalskaya writes about, but the problem of the tragically necessary inseparability of good and evil. “Light” (heavenly peace) would be unmotivated not only from religious, ethical, philosophical and conceptual points of view. Of course, Bulgakov and his hero are not identical to each other, the author sometimes makes fun of his hero, and yet the confessional, autobiographical nature of the novel is beyond doubt.

In addition to the “hero zone”, “author zone”, “genre zone”, there are also “era zones” - the aesthetic realities of modern times. In the twentieth century, especially the idea of ​​achieved, stopped time, happiness - reward is not indisputable. Probably, indeed, from an aesthetic point of view, there is no category more boring than eternal bliss. Compare – I. Brodsky: “.. for there is nothing beyond Paradise, nothing happens. And therefore we can say that Paradise is a dead end.” M. Bulgakov’s novel was created in accordance with a well-known trend in the art of the twentieth century - the secularization of gospel motifs and images, the “demystification” of culture, a trend that originated in the Renaissance period.

M. Bulgakov’s novel was created in an era for which, according to S.N. Bulgakov, is characterized by division, discord between church life and cultural life, and the context of this era undoubtedly influenced the author of The Master and Margarita.

Andrey Kuraev in his work “Fantasy and Truth of the Da Vinci Code” notes that Woland describes the future life of the Master and Margarita in a house (“Caesar’s” gift) with an old servant, with walks, with candles and a quill pen in the evenings, with music Schubert (instrument of disguised torture).

But in fact, he palms off on the Master not a Faustian ideal, but a Wagnerian one. And this static bookish Wagnerian paradise will definitely not please the Master. Woland gives the Master “happiness” from someone else’s shoulder. It will sting and rub his soul. The appearance of the “eternal home” indicates that death in “The Master and Margarita,” as usual in romanticism, acts as a deliverer from earthly suffering. The concept of “eternal home”, which is key for this episode, read as the persecuted hero finding an eternal refuge from homelessness, is given another meaning, introducing the theme of complete hopelessness. In the Russian tradition, there is a direct connection between the concepts of “home” and “last refuge” - the coffin is called a domovina.

By crossing out the words about fading memory in the last paragraph of the 32nd chapter, Bulgakov preserved the unity of his hero’s self-awareness after his physical death, closely aligning with the Christian interpretation of immortality. The problem of death and immortality confronted the dying writer in 1939, and Bulgakov solved it not only in purely artistic and philosophical-religious terms, but brought it as close as possible to the autobiographical layer of the novel.

Following the literary tradition and depicting the final fate of many of the characters in The Master and Margarita, the epilogue, however, is rather not the end of the novel, but a message about what happened after the only event that the city recognized as real - after the disappearance of the Master and Margarita. This is comparable to the biblical parable of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, that is, with the destruction of the city after the righteous left it. Thus, the dominant image of the epilogue - endless whirling - acquires a social and metaphorical meaning: with its help, “a story about a world that died without knowing it” is created.

Bulgakov’s “peace” is bodily – mental, empirical; He is deceptive because he is not divine. Love and creativity, although they are very highly valued by Bulgakov, are not universal, eternal values ​​and cannot serve as a sufficient basis for entering into real, true “peace” - the place of God.

The final motives here are the motives of “freedom” and “abyss”. And freedom here is not a traditional companion of divine peace, but abstract, emotional and situational. “Freedom” is associated with the “abyss” - cosmic cold, darkness. The author of the novel about Pilate, like his hero, must go into the “abyss”, into the sphere of Woland.

Bulgakov leaves “peace” in the Christian sense outside the novel; he affirms peace-dream.

Conclusion

So, the study of the poetics of the novel by M.A. Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” in the context of the Russian Christian tradition (which included an analysis of the meaning of the title, epigraph, structure of the novel, figurative system and other elements of poetics) made it possible to get closer to the main problem of the novel - the author’s intention of the writer. Bulgakov created a parody novel. The novel is devoid of allusions that hide a political or any other hint of topical circumstances. We are not talking about historical repetitions of one era in another, but about the endless and continuous historical embodiment of sacred subjects that belong not to time, but to eternity. In this case, we are talking about the death of an entire centuries-old culture.Bulgakov, in essence, creates a universal author's myth about the death of Russia as a whole.

On the pages of the novelimportant and deep religious - philologicalsophistic questions - about the meaning of life, about basic values, about human freedom.

Avtorus asserts prioritypure human feelings above any social hierarchy. Writerbelieves that only by relying on the living embodiment of these humanistic ideassuch concepts, humanity can create a truly fairsociety.

Bulgakov considers good as his owna property that is inherent in human nature, as well as evil. In order for a person to take place as a person, that is, a being capable ofable to perceive respect for the moral law, he must oncedevelop a good beginning in yourself and suppress the evil. And everything here depends on youmy person. Good and evil in M. Bulgakov are created by human hands, and not by God or the devil.

Instead of moral improvement, humanity is plunging into lack of spirituality and debauchery. People turn out to be unstable to temptations and show exorbitant ambitions and needs.

The confrontation between good and evil has always aroused interest among people. Many philosophers, church leaders, poets and prose writers tried to comprehend this problem. This problem aroused particular interest among humanity during critical epochs, when old foundations, laws and orders were being broken down, as well as during the years of bloody wars. XX was no exceptionIa century that gave rise to many complex and dramatic phenomena in the spiritual quest of society.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that the whole meaning and burden of Orthodox life is free will. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every person, and the choices that make up our lives are who we are.

The goals and objectives that were set in our study have been achieved. However, there are many unexplored aspects of the novel that will continue to be explored.

Bibliography

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Application

Questions and assignments based on the novel by M.A. Bulgakov

"Master and Margarita".

Follow main storylines in M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”, compose chronologicallystory about his following heroes (with elements of their characteristics): a) Master; b) Margarita; c) Yeshua Ha-Nozri; d) Pontius Pilate; d) Woland

What do deviations from the chronological sequence, parallel depictions of events from different eras, and shifting the boundaries of historical events give in artistic terms?

Find analogies between characters from the 30sIcentury and 30s of the twentieth century.

Try to identifyparallels in the depiction of Yershalaim in the 30sIcentury and Moscow of the 30s of the twentieth century: a) in their general description; b) in the manifestations of the eternal forces of nature (sun, moon, clouds, thunderstorms, lightning); c) in highlighting the eternal issues of human existence (greed, tragedy, human existence, dependence on higher powers); d) in the arrangement of images - characters.

Define the novel's problems : what is it about, what eternal problems of eternal existence?

Match – in the form of an oral story – episodes of the trial and execution of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel (Matthew, ch. 27, 28; John, ch. 18, 19) and similar episodes in Bulgakov’s novel (ch.II And XVI). As a writer with factual material from the Gospel, how did his authorship manifest itself and how, in connection with this, did the characters of the characters (Jesus - Yeshua, Pontius Pilate, Levi), their internal content change in connection with the direction of the narrative dictated by the author's plan?

Take part in

The novel “The Master and Margarita” is the central work of M.A.’s entire work. Bulgakov. This novel has an interesting artistic structure. The novel takes place in three storylines. This is the realistic world of Moscow life, and the Yershalaim world, which takes the reader to distant events and times, as well as the fantastic world of Woland and his entire retinue. Of particular interest is the analysis of the novel "The Master and Margarita", with the help of which you can better feel the entire philosophical significance of this work.

Genre originality of the novel

In terms of its genre, The Master and Margarita is a novel. Its genre originality is revealed as follows: a socio-philosophical, fantastic, satirical novel within a novel. This work is social because it reflects the last years of the NEP in the USSR. The scene of action is Moscow, not academic, not ministerial and not party-government, but philistine, communal.

Over the course of three days in Moscow, Woland and his entire retinue study the customs of the most ordinary Soviet people. According to the plan of communist ideologists, these people were supposed to represent a new type of citizens who were free from social disadvantages and diseases.

Satire in the work "The Master and Margarita"

The life of Moscow inhabitants in the novel is described by the author extremely satirically. Here, evil spirits punish careerists, grabbers, schemers. They “flourished magnificently”, taking advantage of the “healthy soil of Soviet society.”

The author gives a description of the spiritual life of society in parallel with a satirical depiction of swindlers. First of all, Bulgakov was interested in the literary life of Moscow. Prominent representatives of the creative intelligentsia in this work are the literary official Mikhail Berlioz, who inspires the young members of MOSSOLIT, as well as the semi-literate and extremely self-confident Ivan Bezdomny, who considers himself a poet. The satirical depiction of cultural figures is based on the fact that their greatly inflated self-esteem does not correspond to their creative achievements.

The philosophical meaning of the novel "The Master and Margarita"

Analysis of the work shows the great philosophical content of the novel. Here scenes from the ancient era are intertwined with a description of Soviet reality. From the relationship between the procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate, the all-powerful governor of Rome, and the poor preacher Yeshua Ha-Nozri, the philosophical and moral content of this work by Bulgakov is revealed. It is in the clashes of these heroes that the author sees a vivid manifestation of the combat of the ideas of evil and good. Elements of fantasy help Bulgakov more fully reveal the ideological concept of the work.

Analysis of an episode of the novel

Analysis of the episode "The Master and Margarita" can help to deeply experience this work. One of the most dynamic and striking episodes of the novel is Margarita's flight over Moscow. Margarita’s goal is to meet Woland. Before this meeting, she was allowed to fly over the city. Margarita was overcome by an amazing feeling of flight. The wind liberated her thoughts, thanks to which Margarita was transformed in the most amazing way. Now the reader is faced with the image not of a timid Margarita, a hostage to the situation, but of a real witch with a fiery temperament, ready to commit any crazy act.

Flying past one of the houses, Margarita looks into the open windows and sees two women quarreling over everyday trifles. Margarita says: “You are both good,” which indicates that the heroine will no longer be able to return to such an empty life. She became alien to her.

Then Margarita’s attention was attracted by the eight-story “Dramlit House”. Margarita learns that this is where Latunsky lives. Immediately after this, the heroine’s perky disposition develops into a witch’s frenzy. It was this man who killed Margarita’s lover. She begins to take revenge on Latunsky, and his apartment turns into a water-filled mess of broken furniture and broken glass. Nothing can stop and calm Margarita at this moment. Thus, the heroine transfers her heartbreaking state to the world around her. In this case, the reader encounters an example of the use of alliteration: “shards ran down,” “real rain began,” “whistled furiously,” “the doorman ran out.” Analysis of "The Master and Margarita" allows us to delve deeper into the hidden meaning of the work.

Suddenly, the witch's excesses come to an end. She sees a little boy in a crib in a third-floor window. The frightened child evokes in Margarita the maternal feelings inherent in every woman. Together with them she experiences awe and tenderness. So, her state of mind after the mind-blowing defeat returns to normal. She leaves Moscow very relaxed and with a sense of accomplishment. It is easy to see the parallelism in the description of Margarita’s surroundings and mood.

The heroine behaves fiercely and frantically, being in a bustling city in which life does not stop for a single minute. But as soon as Margarita finds herself surrounded by dewy meadows, ponds and green forests, she finds peace of mind and balance. Now she is flying slowly, smoothly, reveling in the flight and having the opportunity to enjoy all the charm of a moonlit night.

This analysis of the episode of "The Master and Margarita" shows that this episode plays an important role in the novel. Here the reader observes the complete rebirth of Margarita. She urgently needs it to perform actions in the future.

The authors of the article address the issue of the author's intention in Bulgakov's novel “The Master and Margarita”. The main idea of ​​the work constantly eludes the reader, thanks to the figurative writing of the novel and strange, memorable characters. The plot action takes place in two time intervals: the era of the life of Jesus Christ and the period of the Soviet Union. It is interesting to observe how the author draws parallels between completely different historical eras, based on a mystical and philosophical idea. This work shows the predetermination of fate, draws attention to the fact that consciousness and reason do not give people free will, demonstrates the fact that the boundary between true evil and good is set not by man, but by something from above. We can define the following system of characters from the point of view of power and the ability to independently determine their life path. Three tiers: the highest - Woland and Yeshua; middle – The Master and Margarita; the lowest - all of Moscow.

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mystical-philosophical idea

1. Bulgakov M.A. Master and Margarita. – M.: Eksmo, 2006.

2. Gavryushin N.K. Lithostroton, or the Master without Margarita // Symbol. – 1990. – No. 23. – P. 17–25.

3. Zhestkova E.A. Extracurricular work on literary reading as a means of developing the reading interests of junior schoolchildren / E.A. Zhestkova, E.V. Tsutskova // Modern problems of science and education. – 2014. – No. 6. – P. 1330.

4. Zhestkova E.A. The world of childhood in the creative consciousness and artistic practice of V.I. Dahl // Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. – 2014. – No. 4–3 (34). – pp. 70–74.

5. Zhestkova E.A. N.M. Karamzin and A.K. Tolstoy: on the artistic understanding of the historical era of Ivan the Terrible // Bulletin of the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design. Series 2: Art history. Philological sciences. – 2013. – No. 4. – P. 51–54.

6. Zhestkova E.A. The era of Ivan the Terrible as depicted by N.M. Karamzin and A.K. Tolstoy // World of science, culture, education. – 2011. – No. 6. – P. 290.

Nowadays, almost a century after the publication of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” many assumptions and theories have appeared to explain the author’s intent of this work. Initially, the novel was written up to the fifteenth chapter, but was destroyed by the author himself in 1930, and started again in 1932. Mikhail Bulgakov finished the work, being bedridden with a fatal illness, dictating the last lines to his wife, Elena Sergeevna. 1939 is the date of completion of writing the novel.

“The Master and Margarita” is a work in which the thoughts of M.A. are embodied. Bulgakov about modernity, about the importance of man in the world, about power. This is a novel that amazingly interweaves caustic satire, a subtle psychological analysis of a person and a philosophical understanding of existence. The author comprehends the foundations of society that existed in our country in the thirties, tries to understand the complex, contradictory era and its processes. The novel raises global, universal issues.

Critics interpret the book differently. There are those who see an encrypted political subtext, the author’s protest against Stalin’s tyranny. Nikolai Dobryukha, in his article for a well-known newspaper, noted: “I was surprised to discover a direct connection between the title of the novel “The Master and Margarita” and the way Stalin was called in Moscow at that time! It is difficult to say who was the first to call the leader “Master”. It is possible that with his novel Bulgakov wanted to show Master-Stalin what (according to his ideas) a real Master should be..." Others talk about the author's apology for darkness, about admiring the devil and about capitulation to pure evil: "... it should be noted that all the abominations that the devil did were very inventive. The author showed him as a master, as a teacher, and in his relationship with Margarita as a kind and caring mentor."

In fact, M.A. Bulgakov is considered a “mystical writer,” since he called himself that way, but this mysticism did not cloud the author’s mind: “The main features of creativity: ... black and mystical colors (I am a mystical writer).”

The main idea of ​​“The Master and Margarita” constantly eludes the reader, thanks to the figurative writing of the novel and strange, memorable characters. Most people, when reading this work, first of all pay attention to the love story, completely ignoring other subtexts. But it is worth noting that a writer of this caliber would not spend fifteen years of his life telling only a love story, or, as was said earlier, describing political tyranny.

The idea of ​​the book is revealed to the reader gradually, so we will analyze it in several stages.

The plot action takes place in two time intervals: the era of the life of Jesus Christ and the period of the Soviet Union. At the same time, life during the twentieth century is presented both in reality and in the eternal other world. It is interesting to observe how the author draws parallels between completely different historical eras, based on a mystical and philosophical idea. The chapters telling about Pilate begin with the same words as the chapters about the Master and Margarita end. But this is not the most important thing. There is a certain overlap between the eras, a connection that is noticeable upon a more in-depth study of the history. Throughout the narrative of the novel, M.A. Bulgakov focuses on this idea several times. Woland tells the story of Pilate to Berlioz, and the Master says that his novel was written specifically about Pontius Pilate. The novel ends with the story of how Pilate was freed by the Master and of his forgiveness from Yeshua. The final words of the work are also about Pilate. It turns out that the central figure of the novel and the object under the close supervision of the author is precisely him. Let's look at such an important figure in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel.

Pontius Pilate is an official in Roman service. A fairly ordinary person, suffering from hemicrania and severe premonitions. Pilate has a negative attitude towards the Jews from the Sanhedrin, towards the Roman legionnaires and generally does not have warm feelings for any person. He is attached only to his dog Bango. Yeshua, initially, only causes him irritation, but then genuine curiosity appears. He even has a desire to appoint this person as his doctor. But because of his altruistic love for people, Yeshua dies, which he predicted for himself in advance. Pilate did not want his death and to the last resisted the decision that he ultimately made. Having lost the only person in this world who did not disgust him, Pontius Pilate is left alone with an unwanted immortality, from which only the Master managed to bring him out: “Thoughts rushed short, incoherent and extraordinary: “Dead!”, then: “Dead.” !.." And some completely ridiculous one among them about some kind of immortality, and immortality for some reason caused unbearable melancholy." It was precisely such a person that Mikhail Bulgakov made one of the centers of his thoughts.

Let us pay attention to the relationship between Pilate and Yeshua. They are nothing more than a game in which the desire of both of them for the due and inevitable is hidden. Their main difference is that Yeshua is full of awareness of his mission, he is aware of his divine essence, while Pontius Pilate only feels something inevitable, follows his predetermined fate, without a clear awareness of his actions. Pilate was chosen as a puppet in order to carry out some higher will. If we consider the New Testament, then this is the will of God the Father, but in the work of M.A. Bulgakov is the will of Yeshua, commanding the chosen victim: “Well, it’s all over,” said the arrested man, looking benevolently at Pilate, “and I’m extremely happy about it.” It was Pontius Pilate who became the victim of this story, since he was chosen to play the role of a murderer and villain, without having the corresponding thoughts in his head. Already here, at this conflict point in the novel, we can notice the differentiation of human characters into absolute people who are capable of controlling themselves and others (Yeshua), and puppet people (Pilate), who do not know what they are doing and under whose authority they are. The former are independent, not under anyone’s authority, the latter, without realizing it, are led by the former. You can notice that in Moscow there live just such people-puppets: Nikanor Bosoy, Varenukha, Georges Bengalsky and others, who constantly do what the main players - Yeshua and Woland - order. Only the last two are masters of themselves, others, and even have a loyal retinue. For example, answering Berlioz’s question, Woland notes precisely his importance as a person: “... but here’s the question that worries me: if there is no God, then, one wonders, who controls human life and the entire order on earth in general? “It’s the man himself who controls.”

It is worth paying attention to another character in the plot of the novel “The Master and Margarita”. Under Yeshua there is a disciple Levi-Matthew. According to Bulgakov’s book, in this character one can notice a somewhat transformed image of the Apostle Matthew, who was a tax collector and disciple of the Savior. He is devoted to Yeshua Ha-Nozri, loves him, tries to alleviate the suffering on the cross. However, having analyzed his image more deeply, one can notice that Levi-Matvey is cruel, and treats the teachings of Yeshua with such fanaticism that he even allows himself to distort it. After the crucifixion of Ga-Norzi, he decided to rebel against God himself, which contradicts the teachings of his mentor. For this character, what comes first is his own understanding of Yeshua’s teachings, rather than the true meaning inherent in it. Yeshua spoke about him like this: “He walks and walks alone with a goat’s parchment and writes continuously. I once looked at this parchment and was horrified. I said absolutely nothing of what was written there.” Levi interpreted what the teacher said with genuine courage, without understanding the most important thing. Woland, turning to Berlioz, said: “Exactly nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually happened,” referring specifically to Levi’s interpretation of reality.

Let's pay attention to another hero of the novel - restaurant pirate Archibald Archibaldovich. Mikhail Bulgakov often focuses on his supernatural instinct, with which he is able to recognize any of his guests, including Woland’s retinue. This person has an instinct similar to that of an animal, warning more about danger or gain than about the meaning of everything that happens around him. But there is no reason in him, therefore the Griboyedov restaurant dies at the conclusion of the work.

Let's take a closer look at Woland's personality. This hero of the novel is endowed with special powers, “the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows,” the powerful “prince of darkness.” He arrived in Moscow as a “professor of black magic.” Woland studies people and tries to reveal their essence in various ways. He looked at the inhabitants of Moscow in the variety theater and concluded that they are “ordinary people, in general, reminiscent of the old ones, the housing problem has only spoiled them.” Having given a “great ball,” he brings confusion into the lives of Muscovites. Woland, as the owner of superhuman powers, a representative of darkness, is non-standard. He does not create evil as such, but rather restores some kind of justice with his own, not humane, but especially effective methods. He exposes and in his own way punishes sensualists, informers, vile and selfish people, and bribe-takers. Woland is a kind of evil, without which there is no good, a character who maintains the balance of the parties: “... what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” . But, at times, Woland can be condescending towards human weaknesses: “They are people like people. They love money, but that's always been the case. Humanity loves money, no matter what it is made of, whether leather, paper, bronze or gold. Well, they are frivolous... well, well... and mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts.” The power vested in the superman Woland uses wisely and carefully.

The Master and Margarita are the only characters in the novel who can be called people because they are deeply aware of their life situation. They represent the structure of the world around them and its rulers. The Master is tolerant of human puppets, but Margarita hates them with all her heart. The Master sets himself the goal of life - to free Pilate from bad memories, Margarita - to do everything so that the Master lives in peace and the joy of creativity. Where does the Master get the desire to release Pilate? He realizes his innocence, understands that he was only carrying out orders. The Master also receives the same absoluteness from Yeshua, but he is not accepted into the light. This is due to the fact that his position as a person is the middle one in relation to good and evil. By absolving Pontius Pilate of his sins, the Master commits an act of non-retribution for the misdeeds of all villains and criminals. This position is ethically flawed, since most human puppets attribute their misdeeds to the Devil, and their righteous deeds to God. Man himself, based on this, is only a toy of higher powers. As Woland noted: “Sometimes the best way to destroy a person is to let him choose his own fate.” That's why there are certain forces from above.

This is exactly how the author’s main idea of ​​the novel seems to us. This work shows the predetermination of fate, draws attention to the fact that consciousness and reason do not give people free will, demonstrates the fact that the boundary between true evil and good is set not by man, but by something from above. We can define the following system of characters from the point of view of power and the ability to independently determine their life path. Three tiers:

1) the highest - Woland and Yeshua;

2) medium - The Master and Margarita;

3) lowest - all Moscow M.A. Bulgakov's human puppets.

The middle is that stage of awareness of fate, where a person is able to freely dispose of himself, but does not have the right to dispose of the lives of others. Towards the end of the novel, Professor Ponyrev, the spiritual student of the Master and ideological heir, successor, can also be attributed to the middle tier. At the beginning of the work, Ivanushka appeared before the reader as a person who does not think about moral and philosophical issues; he believes that he sees the line between what is good and what is bad. This spontaneity evaporates only with the appearance of Woland and the tragic events taking place before Ponyrev’s eyes. He begins to live a conscious life, on which an indelible imprint was left by the bright and at the same time tragic story that he witnessed. “He knows that in his youth he became a victim of criminal hypnotists, was treated after that and was cured.” By the end of the novel, he himself becomes a Master. Mikhail Bulgakov shows how Ivanushka Ponyrev becomes an intellectual, accumulating knowledge, developing intellectually and changing his inner world, assimilating the cultural traditions of humanity, getting rid of the spell of “criminal hypnotists”, “black magic”. Ivanushka Bezdomny is the only hero of the novel who undergoes fundamental changes: the ideological and moral basis of the personality changes, character evolves, and there is a constant philosophical search.

If you take an unbiased look at the work, the content of the novel is not a love story between the Master and Margarita, but rather a story about the embodiment of demonic forces in a person. The master appears only in the thirteenth chapter, Margarita - even later, in connection with Woland's needs. What was Wolanda’s goal before visiting Moscow? Organize a “grand ball” here, but not for ordinary dancing. As noted by N.K. Gavryushin, who researched this novel: the “great ball” and all the preparation for it constitute nothing more than a satanic anti-liturgy, a “black mass”.

Evil in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is more primary and older than good. The author does not try to attract the reader with the dark side, he only shows the world in the harmony of the combination of these two concepts, draws attention to the equality of the statuses of good and evil.

To summarize, I would like to say that the author’s intention of the work by M.A. Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is unique for every reader. There will still be a lot of thinking and writing about the novel. The plot of the book and the message are very contradictory; the reader will not agree with every idea, but in any case, he will not remain indifferent. It can be noted that the plot line of love plays an important role in the general idea of ​​the novel, but the main idea conveyed to us by the author is precisely the confrontation between good and evil, power and obedience. The mystical atmosphere of the book is captivating, and the development of the storylines makes you wonder which tier of the previously presented ones you belong to. “The Master and Margarita” is not a novel of one era or two, it is a novel that passes through time, beyond eras and beyond culture.

Bibliographic link

Mikhail Bulgakov’s work “The Master and Margarita,” recognized as a genius, still amazes even modern readers; it is practically impossible to find an analogue to a novel of such originality and skill.

Moreover, even modern writers have difficulty identifying the reason why the novel gained such fame and what is its main, fundamental motive. This novel is often called “unprecedented” not only for Russian, but also for world literature.

The main idea and meaning of the novel

The narrative of “The Master and Margarita” takes place in two time periods: the era in which Jesus Christ lived, and the period of the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, the writer combines these two very different eras and draws deep parallels between them.

After all, the main character of the work, the Master himself, writes a novel about Christian history, about Yeshua Ha-Nozri, Judas and Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov develops an incredible phantasmagoria as a separate genre and extends it throughout the entire narrative of the novel.

Events taking place in the present time are surprisingly connected with what once changed humanity forever. It is very difficult to single out one specific topic to which the novel could be devoted; “The Master and Margarita” touches on too many sacramental and eternal themes for art, and especially for literature.

This is a revelation of the theme of love, unconditional and tragic, meaning of life, distortions in the perception of good and evil, this themes of justice and truth, madness and unawareness. It cannot be said that the writer reveals this directly; he creates a holistic symbolic system that is quite difficult to interpret.

The main characters of his novels are so extraordinary and non-standard that only their images can serve as a reason for a detailed analysis of the concept of his already immortal novel. “The Master and Margarita” is written with an emphasis on philosophical and ideological themes, which gives rise to the extensive versatility of its semantic content.

"The Master and Margarita" - timeless

The main idea of ​​the novel can be interpreted in completely different ways, but for this you need to have a high level of culture and education.

The two key characters Ga-Notsri and the Master are peculiar messiahs, whose bright activities affect completely different time periods. But the Master’s story is not so simple; his bright, divine art is connected with dark forces, because his beloved Margarita turns to Woland to help the Master.

The highest artistry of The Master and Margarita lies in the fact that the brilliant Bulgakov simultaneously talks about the arrival of Satan and his retinue in Soviet Moscow, and how the tired and lost judge Pontius Pilate sentences the innocent Yeshua Ha-Nozri to execution.

The last story, the novel that the Master writes, is amazing and sacred, but Soviet writers refuse to publish the writer because they do not want to recognize him as worthy. The main events of the work unfold around this. Woland helps the Master and Margarita restore justice and returns to the writer the novel he had previously burned.

“The Master and Margarita” is an impressive, psychological book, which in its depth reveals the idea that circumstantial evil does not exist, that evil and vice are in the souls of people themselves, in their actions and thoughts.