Chapter 24: The Master is Released
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:24 am
The tottering Margarita, after the seemingly imaginary Satanic ball, finds herself in the company of Satan and his crew. in Berlioz' flat. She asks the cat if the clear liquid he has poured for her is vodka, and indignant, the mad fool cat informs her it is pure alcohol, unadulterated by water. This weirdo cat is particularly upside down all the time. Normal indignation in such a circumstance would be vented at the suggestion he was plying her with liquor of any type, not that the drink was only half proof. The cat then eats salt and pepper pineapple, a recipe I have not yet tried. After saying the ball was grand, and being contradicted by the devil who complains it gave him a migraine, the appalling sycophant cat immediately reverses his opinion to agree with his master.
The conversation turns to the assassination of the innocent sacrificial victim at the ball. It turns out the Baron was shot by Azazello, who then vies with the cat for the right to murder Latunsky, the critic whose bad review of the Master had so upset Margarita. At least she has the human decency to reject this Satanic offer. Azazello then proves his capacity with a gun by shooting a selected pip from a hidden seven of spades, firing over his shoulder, which distinctly impresses Margarita. The cat tries to repeat the trick but instead kills the owl sitting on the mantelpiece and also hits the clock, blaming his hopeless aim on everyone else for gossiping about him.
The Mad Hatter’s tea party continues, until Margarita is ready to go. She feels black depression at the lack of any offer to reward all her work for the devil at the ball, and not being able to go home, announces her plan to drown herself in the Moscow River. She shows her pride by refusing to ask for anything, and the devil congratulates her for this attitude, asking her to name her reward, echoing the Herodian reward brought to Satan at the ball. She only asks for the salvation of Frieda, the ghost woman at the ball who constantly smothered her own baby, since she had promised to help her and would feel guilty to let her down. This is an exercise of pure compassion by Margarita.
The devil says he can’t help, seemingly deflating this request, but then says that is only because he lacks power to forgive, a power that Margarita has. In bursts the ecstatic Frieda, Margarita pronounces her forgiveness for her crime, and again tries to go. But not so fast. The devil has still not granted a reward since he claims he did not do anything to save Frieda. Margarita must ask for something for herself, so she asks for the return of her lover, the Master, who then miraculously walks in the window on a moonbeam.
Bulgakov displays a mastery of dramatic tempo in this chapter. The surreal supping with Satan sees hopes rise and fall and rise again several times like billowing waves in the sea. The next crushing is that the Master is indeed returned, but he seems broken, like as one tortured in the Lubyanka, Stalin’s massive political dungeon that still stands in central Moscow.
His flat gaze, his fear of torment, his hallucinations, all speak of the deep trauma routinely inflicted on enemies of the people by the monstrous Bolsheviks. Restored by a glass of the devil’s fire water, the Master begins to come to his senses, and proceeds to engage in conversation with the old adversary, explaining to the devil that while in the madhouse the young poet Ivan had told him all about the events at the Patriarch Ponds.
The Master tells Satan he would prefer to consider him a figment of hallucination, but must believe in him. The parable here is that we would prefer to believe that evil does not exist in the world, but cannot avoid the evidence of our senses. The fool cat then offers to prove he is a hallucination by showing that he has no shadow, but is told to shut up.
Next comes the most celebrated line in The Master and Margarita, as the Master explains Margarita’s regard for him based on his burnt novel. At this, Woland informs him that manuscripts don’t burn, and, via the mad cat, the devil produces a full copy of the destroyed novel, with a laugh like a clap of thunder.
This line, manuscripts don’t burn, became a celebrated story of the Russian underground samizdat typewritten documents, and served as the title of Bulgakov’s posthumous diaries and letters. The great irony is that the KGB retyped Bulgakov's diaries when they invited him in for a chat and inspection of the instruments. The secret police gave the originals back to the author, which he burnt, in sheer terror at the fear of being caught again with heretical literature.
Presto, these burnt manuscripts reappeared like magic in 1991 from the belly of the beast, vomited from the vaults of the Lubyanka during the five minutes of sunshine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The conversation continues, but that is enough for today.
The conversation turns to the assassination of the innocent sacrificial victim at the ball. It turns out the Baron was shot by Azazello, who then vies with the cat for the right to murder Latunsky, the critic whose bad review of the Master had so upset Margarita. At least she has the human decency to reject this Satanic offer. Azazello then proves his capacity with a gun by shooting a selected pip from a hidden seven of spades, firing over his shoulder, which distinctly impresses Margarita. The cat tries to repeat the trick but instead kills the owl sitting on the mantelpiece and also hits the clock, blaming his hopeless aim on everyone else for gossiping about him.
The Mad Hatter’s tea party continues, until Margarita is ready to go. She feels black depression at the lack of any offer to reward all her work for the devil at the ball, and not being able to go home, announces her plan to drown herself in the Moscow River. She shows her pride by refusing to ask for anything, and the devil congratulates her for this attitude, asking her to name her reward, echoing the Herodian reward brought to Satan at the ball. She only asks for the salvation of Frieda, the ghost woman at the ball who constantly smothered her own baby, since she had promised to help her and would feel guilty to let her down. This is an exercise of pure compassion by Margarita.
The devil says he can’t help, seemingly deflating this request, but then says that is only because he lacks power to forgive, a power that Margarita has. In bursts the ecstatic Frieda, Margarita pronounces her forgiveness for her crime, and again tries to go. But not so fast. The devil has still not granted a reward since he claims he did not do anything to save Frieda. Margarita must ask for something for herself, so she asks for the return of her lover, the Master, who then miraculously walks in the window on a moonbeam.
Bulgakov displays a mastery of dramatic tempo in this chapter. The surreal supping with Satan sees hopes rise and fall and rise again several times like billowing waves in the sea. The next crushing is that the Master is indeed returned, but he seems broken, like as one tortured in the Lubyanka, Stalin’s massive political dungeon that still stands in central Moscow.
His flat gaze, his fear of torment, his hallucinations, all speak of the deep trauma routinely inflicted on enemies of the people by the monstrous Bolsheviks. Restored by a glass of the devil’s fire water, the Master begins to come to his senses, and proceeds to engage in conversation with the old adversary, explaining to the devil that while in the madhouse the young poet Ivan had told him all about the events at the Patriarch Ponds.
The Master tells Satan he would prefer to consider him a figment of hallucination, but must believe in him. The parable here is that we would prefer to believe that evil does not exist in the world, but cannot avoid the evidence of our senses. The fool cat then offers to prove he is a hallucination by showing that he has no shadow, but is told to shut up.
Next comes the most celebrated line in The Master and Margarita, as the Master explains Margarita’s regard for him based on his burnt novel. At this, Woland informs him that manuscripts don’t burn, and, via the mad cat, the devil produces a full copy of the destroyed novel, with a laugh like a clap of thunder.
This line, manuscripts don’t burn, became a celebrated story of the Russian underground samizdat typewritten documents, and served as the title of Bulgakov’s posthumous diaries and letters. The great irony is that the KGB retyped Bulgakov's diaries when they invited him in for a chat and inspection of the instruments. The secret police gave the originals back to the author, which he burnt, in sheer terror at the fear of being caught again with heretical literature.
Presto, these burnt manuscripts reappeared like magic in 1991 from the belly of the beast, vomited from the vaults of the Lubyanka during the five minutes of sunshine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The conversation continues, but that is enough for today.