Yes, OK, reviewing The Master & Margarita is absurd. Imagine a well-meaning Russian stumbles on a translation of The Adventures of Huck Finn and “reviews” it, despite knowing nothing about America or Missouri or slavery or the 1800s. That’s me.

But I would enjoy watching an outsider try to make sense of Huck Finn. How do they feel when stupid Tom Sawyer shows up with news of Miss Watson’s suspiciously convenient death? Isn’t there a place for outsiders trying to make sense of Huck Finn?

Wednesday

It’s the 1930s. BERLIOZ (editor) and HOMELESS (poet) are sitting in a park in Moscow. Berlioz is explaining that Jesus never existed when Professor WOLAND joins them. Woland is thrilled to learn that they are atheists, but asks: If God doesn’t exist, who governs events on earth? Clearly not humans, with their heads so easily removed by tram cars. He insists that Jesus did exist, but Berlioz respectfully demands proof. Woland begins telling a story and the park dissolves.

It is 33 AD. Pontius PILATE (Procurator of Judea) has arrived in Jerusalem to render judgement on Yeshua HA-NOZRI (wandering philosopher, incarnation of God the Son). Pilate has a terrible headache and just wants to lay in a dark room with his dog. In a horrendous mood, he has Ha-Nozri whipped. Then Ha-Nozri, bleeding, cures his headache. Pilate is enchanted by Ha-Nozri and wants to acquit, but Ha-Nozri refuses to recant his statements that Caesar’s authority is temporary. The local priests demand death, and Pilate, fearful of Rome, grants it.

The park reappears. Berlioz and Homeless blink. What just happened? Berlioz decides to report Woland to the secret police, run off, slips, and is decapitated by a tram car. Homeless chases Woland, but an upright-walking CAT distracts him. Homeless realizes that to catch Woland, he must go to the river and dive into the icy water. When he surfaces, his clothes are gone. Raving about dark powers, he is taken to a mental institution.

Thoughts. This Woland. He’s Satan, right?

Thursday

Berlioz’s flatmate, the director of the Variety theatre, wakes up hungover to find Woland sitting in his bedroom, waiting to discuss the contract they apparently signed last night for Woland to perform. He calls the theater and they confirm this happened. Cat appears, now talking and drinking Vodka, followed by an obsequious but menacing Koroviev (tall, checkered jacket, wears a pince-nez, human). They declare that they will be staying in the flat.

Thirty minutes later, the findirector of the Variety receives a telegram from the Yalta police, reporting that they’ve taken custody of an insane man who claims to be the director of the theatre. This is odd, given that he spoke to the director thirty minutes ago at his apartment, and Yalta is 1900 km away. Several telegrams from the director follow, begging for help. The findirector sends the Variety’s administrator to report everything to the secret police, but he is abducted en route by minions, kissed by an ice-cold naked girl, and apparently dies.

That night, Woland walks on stage, sits down, and makes some disparaging remarks about Moscow and her inhabitants. At a wave, Koroviev manifests a deck of cards snaking through the air to Cat. Cat sends them back, whereupon Koroviev opens his mouth and swallows them, card by card. Money starts raining from the air. The master of ceremonies—a loyal citizen—asks Woland to explain these “illusions”. In response, Cat tears his head off, demands the head apologize, and then replaces it. A Parisian boutique appears on stage and women trade in their old clothes. Pandemonium ensues, the police enter, and Woland and minions disappear. Soon, the dresses vanish, leaving women naked in the streets.

At the mental hospital, Homeless has grown hopeless. At night, a fellow patient sneaks in from the balcony. Homeless tells his story. Surprisingly, the man doesn’t think he is crazy. He believes everything, indeed seems to understand it better than Homeless does. He explains that Woland, of course, is Satan.

Then the visitor tells his story: Trained as a historian, he won a lottery two years ago and moved to a private (and therefore luxurious) basement apartment where he begins writing a novel about… Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate. One day, he meets a lonely woman in the street. They instantly fall in love and begin an affair. (Both are married, though he can’t remember his wife’s name.) The woman was obsessed with the novel and starts calling this man—Homeless’s visitor—a MASTER.

She convinces him to submit his book for publication. The editor asks: Where did you come from? Why has no one heard of you? Why write about such a strange topic? Two weeks later, his manuscript, looking very worn, is returned and rejected. Even so, literary figures begin publishing editorials denouncing the Master as an apologist for Jesus Christ. Fear takes hold of the Master. He tries to burn the manuscript, but his lover pulls the charred husk from the fireplace. She resolves to leave her husband for the Master, but before she can, he is taken by the secret police. Released months later, he finds someone else living in his basement apartment. He considers throwing himself under a tram car, but decides instead to check himself into the mental hospital.

Thoughts. OK, Woland is Satan. But why has he appeared in 1930s Moscow? Is this book about Christianity? The USSR? Good and evil? Who is the Master? Why can’t he remember his wife? Why did he write a novel about Pontius Pilate? Why does that novel contain the same story that Woland told Berlioz and Homeless?

Why did all the literary people denounce him? Who is his lover? Is she the Margarita? Why is she so obsessed with this book?

And what do all these minions represent? (Besides Koroviev, Cat, and naked ice-cold girl, several others appear, including Stout Guy With Fang, and Hot but Seemingly Dead Maid.) Their hijinks are amusing, but what’s the goal? Why are they alternatively cruel and polite? Why have they taken over Berlioz’s flat? And why, when they seem to have such otherworldly power, are they so afraid of the secret police?

Friday

MARGARITA is 33 years old, beautiful, and intelligent. Since she was married at 19, she has lived with an adoring husband in a fashionable apartment spanning the entire floor of a house. Yet, her only happiness has come from her affair with the Master. Since his disappearance, she has known only grief.

On Friday, she wakes up, depressed, and takes a bus to the Kremlin to read the charred remains of the Master’s manuscript. Berlioz’s funeral procession comes by, with rumors of a stolen head. One of Woland’s minions arrives and invites Margarita to a meeting but—sensing his demonic vibe—she declines. To convince her, the minion quotes from the Master’s book and tells her he is alive.

At 9pm, she covers her body in an ointment the minion gave her. It smells of swamp. Her grief disappears. Looking in the mirror, she realizes she now has the body of a 20-year-old. She leaves a note for her husband, saying she has left him to become a witch, and flies off on a broomstick, naked, invisible, and cackling with joy.

She finds the home of the first critic to denounce the Master, intending to murder him, but he is away, so she contents herself with a rampage inside his flat. Minions bring her to Berlioz’s flat, which now contains an enormous darkened hall. They ask her to be hostess for a ball. In a small room, she finds Woland playing chess with Cat. She hustles up to him and rubs his knee. He gives her only one instruction: During the ball, drink nothing but water.

Saturday

Minions cover Margarita in blood. At midnight, guests begin emerging from the fireplace, mostly dead aristocrats who in life committed some kind of murder or treachery. Margarita becomes incredibly tired but is the perfect host, welcoming all. Eventually, she is shuffled to the center of the ballroom, where Woland appears, dressed in rags. Berlioz’s head is brought out, alive. Woland asks the head, you wanted proof, did you? He raises his sword and the head dies.

Then, they bring out an employee of the Spectacles Commission who had crashed the ball, intending to spy for the secret police. His chest explodes and blood is collected in a cup. Woland drinks, and then offers the cup to Margarita. Drink, he says! She drinks.

Margarita awakens in the original Berlioz flat. For her excellent service, Woland offers her a favor. Immediately, she says, “I want my beloved master to be returned to me right now, this second.”

The master appears, wearing a robe. Who are you, Woland asks? Why does she call you a master? The Master explains that he wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate, but burned it. Nonsense, Woland replies, manuscripts don’t burn. He snaps his fingers and it appears intact.

Anything else, Woland asks? Well, Margarita says, someone is living in the Master’s apartment… The intruder falls from the ceiling. Did you denounce the Master to steal his basement apartment, the minions ask? For shame! Get out!

What about his memory? What about the landlord’s records? All fixed, Woland says! Won’t the Master be missed at the mental hospital? No, all records are erased, along with all memories! The Variety’s administrator even appears, no longer a vampire. He’s fine! Satan is so cool!

Back at the basement apartment, the Master sleeps and Margarita reads his manuscript. Apparently, after Ha-Nozri’s execution, Pilate lay around miserable and drinking wine, and was eventually joined by his dog. The dog was happy to see his master, lays down at his master’s feet, can tell his master is upset, and tries to comfort his master. (Get that?)

Secret police round up everyone from the Variety, but they just speak nonsense and demand to be put in guarded prison cells. Police storm Berlioz’s apartment, but find only Cat, who explains that they shouldn’t mind him, he’s just fixing his Primus stove. Cat grabs for a gun, is shot and bleeds out, cursing their cruelty. Then, he takes a shot of benzene from the stove, jumps up, and engages the police in a lengthy firefight in which no one is hurt. Finally, he sets fire to the apartment, and jumps out the window, stove in hand.

Woland is on a terrace overlooking Moscow. MATTHEW (tax collector, disciple of Ha-Nozri) appears and says that his teacher has read the Master’s work, and requests that he be granted peace. Why not take them into the light, Woland asks? Because he only deserves peace, Matthew answers. Well OK, Woland says, no problem! Cat and Koroviev appear, laden with food they valiantly rescued from a luxury store after setting it on fire.

Now awake, Master and Margarita take stock. Margarita is overjoyed. She is happy, so happy, that she has struck a bargain with Satan! Satan is the best! Satan, Satan, Satan! The Master is also happy, but wonders how they will live. A demon arrives and invites them on an excursion. They agree, but first drink a toast to Woland’s health. It’s poison and Master and Margarita die. The demon confirms that their dead bodies are safely resting in her house / the mental hospital. Then he gives their other dead bodies in the basement apartment more wine and they wake up and fly into the sky.

As they fly, faster and faster, the demons’ true forms are revealed, Koroviev a dark knight and Cat a young jester. (Woland’s true form is unspecified.) The Earth transforms and they arrive at a joyless platform, where a man sits miserably on a chair, his dog beside him. Woland tells the Master, here is your hero! He has been suffering for 2000 years, dreaming only of walking with Ha-Nozri. The Master tells Pilate he is free and Pilate follows a path of moonlight towards Jerusalem, followed by his dog.

Shall I follow him, the Master asks?

What, Woland asks? No. You and Margarita should have the peace you never had in life: A house in the country where you can stroll under the trees by day and write by quill at night. The Master and Margarita cross a stream, walk toward the house and live (?) happily ever after.

Back in Moscow, the secret police decide it was all mass hypnosis and life goes on as before. The end.

So what does it all mean?

The obvious way to read The Master & Margarita would be as some kind of lesson about Christianity, the USSR, secret police, the nature of good and evil, etc. Those are all certainly themes, but if there’s a general lesson, what is it?

Is it about atheism?

Early on, I thought that perhaps Satan had just discovered that Soviet citizens are atheists, and thus not under God’s protection, and therefore decided to do… something. This seemed plausible. Communism really was a historically unique leap away from religion, which could explain why Satan emerged in the 1930s in Moscow.

But this theory doesn’t stand up. Woland uses only a tiny fraction of his power and has no obvious goal other than throwing a weird party, and then disappears without a trace.

Is it about Soviet life?

Ordinary life in Moscow in the 1930s plays a huge role in The Master & Margarita. Above all, there is an obsession with living space. The USSR underwent massive urbanization in the 1920s and 1930s, but housing was state property, and industrial infrastructure took priority over housing construction. Living space was allocated by square meter in crowded shared apartments where families occupied single rooms. There was constant anxiety about wait lists, registration, and someone with better connections taking your space.

So the Master’s private basement apartment was an extraordinary privilege. Ironically, he got the money for this apartment by winning a state bond lottery—by giving the government a theoretically voluntary but in-practice near-compulsory loan.

Housing stress seems to be represented by the Primus stove. In the 1930s, when several families crammed into what was formerly a single residence, each often cooked on their own private Primus. These appear repeatedly, culminating in Cat using one to resurrect himself and then burn down several buildings. Maybe Cat, the jester, is making some point about beautiful collectivist ideals and grimy individualist reality?

The Soviet artistic establishment is another focus. They live in terror of the state, but they also enjoy exclusive privileges. Several scenes take place at Griboedov’s, an exclusive club for artists with fine food and low prices. Cat and Koroviev turn up with a Primus and burn it down before leaving town. Surely this gesture means something.

Still, I don’t see Bulgakov as making a clumsy political statement. Often, Soviet life is presented with a sort of ironic affection. In one of my favorite scenes, the Variety’s findirector and administrator are puzzling over the telegram from the Yalta police when they receive a second telegram, this one from their missing director:

Beg believe thrown Yalta Woland hypnosis wire criminal investigation confirm identity.

They stare at each other dumbfounded, until the telegram delivery woman yells, “Citizens! Sign, and then be silent as much as you like!”

Is it about denunciations?

Later, I thought the novel might be about the culture of fear and denunciations that reigned in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. There’s clearly something to this. Denunciations and secret police and disappearances are everywhere in The Master & Margarita. Bulgakov himself was fiercely attacked for his 1925 novel The White Guard. (Although Stalin apparently loved it.)

There’s an attractive analogy here: Pontius Pilate condemns Jesus not because he wants to, but because he is afraid of Caesar. In the Great Purge, citizens informed on each other because they were afraid of the state.

But if that’s the point you want to make, why bring Satan into it?

Several times, when people encounter literal Satan, their first thought is to run to the secret police, either to ask them to capture Satan, or to denounce someone so that Satan’s activities don’t get them into trouble. But, other than showing how central the state is to their minds, what role is Satan playing in this theory?

Is it about Christianity and good and evil?

From the very beginning, this book insists that Jesus was real. Furthermore, he was kind and wise, while 1930s Moscow is cold and unforgiving. Even so, it seems impossible that Bulgakov wrote this book in the hopes that people would return to traditional Christian values. There are two basic problems:

1. Satan is way too cool.
2. Satan’s commitment to evil seems quite tenuous.

For example, on Wednesday, Berlioz’s uncle in Kiev receives a telegram:

Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch’s Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz.

On Friday, dreaming of an apartment in Moscow and not very grief-stricken, he arrives at Berlioz’s flat. Inside, Koroviev and Cat mock his rapaciousness. Then, a minion empties the uncle’s suitcase, finds an entire roast chicken inside, and hits the uncle in the face with it so hard he falls into the hallway and down the stairs.

Shortly thereafter, the bartender from the Variety arrives, annoyed that after people had paid him with Woland’s free money, it transformed into rubbish. Woland is extremely courteous, and tries to get the bartender to play a game of dice, although he also tricks him into spilling wine on his pants and seems to assume he’s visited in order to be lectured on the low quality of the food he serves. After explaining that, “They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness”, the bartender manages to turn the conversation to the money. But when he pulls out the rubbish, it has been transformed back into rubles. Are you alright, Woland asks? What if it changes back, the bartender asks. Come back anytime, Woland says, you are always welcome!

Why is the bartender treated so much better? Is it a coincidence that the uncle is greedy and duplicitous, while the bartender is direct and (mostly) honest?

The difference between Jesus and Satan doesn’t appear to be in their love for evil, but in how they deal with evil people. Jesus loves everyone and claims that everyone is good. Satan sees hypocrisy everywhere, and hits people in the face with it.

Beyond that, Bulgakov’s Jesus seems distant and impotent. If he loves everyone, if everyone is good, then why did he leave Pilate to suffer for 2000 years? Why did he have to ask Satan a favor to have him released? Are they working together? Do they have some kind of jurisdictional boundaries? That’s all very interesting, but it’s not what they teach you in church.

Is it about courage?

Ha-Nozri doesn’t get a lot of lines. Even so, he states twice that cowardice is the greatest vice.

Pontius Pilate’s sin doesn’t seem to be that he condemned Jesus, so much as that he condemned Jesus out of fear, despite the fact that what he really wanted was to spend the rest of his life walking with Jesus, debating the good of man.

Satan appears to share this view. Woland seems to treat people most harshly when they are acting out of fear.

You could even theorize that this is why his minions abduct people when they try to go to the police. It’s not that the authorities pose a danger, they’re just disgusted by people acting out of fear?

And it’s not just about secret police. Margarita, the hero of the story, displays insane, almost suicidal courage. (Bulgakov explicitly labels the Master as the hero in a chapter title, but I’m not having it. It’s clearly Margarita.) Woland treats her the best of all.

This theory seems to fit. And yet, I have questions.

Who is the Master?

Why did a historian suddenly feel compelled to write a novel about Pontius Pilate?

There are strong hints that the Master is Pontius Pilate. He has a vague backstory as a “historian” and no clear name. In the first chapter, Pontius Pilate appears in a white cloak with a blood-red lining. Much later, when discussing his apartment, the Master mentions red furniture. Most of all, when Margarita reads the Master’s novel at the end Pilate is referred to as the dog’s master six times in a single paragraph.

But if the Master is Pontius Pilate, then what? Did he live for 2000 years? Was he re-born over and over? Who arranged that, Satan or Jesus? What’s happening when the Master frees Pilate at the end of the book? Are there now two Pilates?

And if the Master is Pontius Pilate, then who is Margarita? Is she the dog? That seems to fit, but seems weird. Is she… Jesus? The Master wants to spend eternity with her, just like Pilate wanted to spend eternity with Jesus. But Margarita does many decidedly un-Jesus-like things, e.g. having an affair with the Master, becoming a witch, serving Satan.

Is it anything?

More questions: Why did Woland kill Berlioz? Did he kill Berlioz, or just foresee that it was going to happen? Why did he show up in the 1930s in Moscow? Why was he so intent on taking over Berlioz’s flat? What is the meaning of minions and their strange activities? Who is the ice-cold naked girl? It’s disorienting.

You could stare at this book for decades trying to figure out what all the obscure references mean. (Many have!) But I don’t think that’s the right way to read it.

Occasionally, Team Satan gives some clear answers, but they don’t provide any order. For example, why was Margarita chosen to host the ball? Koroviev tells her that tradition states that the hostess must be named Margarita, and she happened to be the most suitable out of 121 Margaritas in Moscow. And why did Woland put on that bizarre show at the Variety? Woland tells the bartender that this was just a convenient way to look at a bunch of Muscovites.

Bulgakov’s Satan is mostly uninterested in humanity. He is disgusted by hypocrisy and cowardice, sure, but mostly people just bore him. He showed up in Moscow because he wanted to have a party. He lets his minions screw with people because he finds it amusing. The Master is sort of Pilate and sort of not. Margarita is sort of the dog and sort of not. Pilate happened to get released from his torments in the 1930s because that’s how long it took. Jesus is kind but distant for reasons that are unclear. It’s a messy universe.