**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on body mutilation, animal cruelty, & others.
I doubt that the morbid fascination held towards morphed & puzzled people will ever dissipate. Humanity has held the taste on their tongue for too long now to regurgitate the flesh that emitted the flavour. Yet, what becomes of our species as we search endlessly to piece ourselves together via the body of others; animals, flowers, fora, the dirt under our nails reeking rather sullenly of death?
Bulgakov has a keen talent for incorporating the animalistic tendencies of human beings into his narrative & placing the blame for the bulbous mischief of our actions onto the backs of our animal friends. In his most famous work “The Master and Margarita” (1967) Bulgakov spoke to the reader from the perch of a sparrow’s viewpoint & the meowing nature of the feline.
The reliance on others is no stranger to the reader; every story must be told from the inner workings of a narrator, one does not need to agree on their physique to welcome the tale itself. Yet, what should happen if tomorrow, the story of religious flagrance & perseverance was shared with us by a rodent standing on the altar dedicated to a hairless man whom the rat could not recognize as kin?
In this novella, readers meet a doctor renowned for his bizarre medical undertakings. Rather, the success of his experiments ripples through the city like a plague. A transplanted monkey’s uterus; secret parts from four-legged friends; the salacious sexual stamina of vermin; people travel from far & wide to meet the man who plays Victor to the Monster’s Mash.
Dr. Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky & Dr. Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal take life at their leisure. Their days are spent studying, eating good food, & meeting a slew of citizens each of whom has problems more mundane than the next. One day, Dr. Preobrazhensky brings home a stray dog, Sharikov, & works under the pressure of the rotting body of a drunken man, to transplant Sharikov’s essence (his spirit) into the man’s body.
This is, of course, an oversimplification. I am no medical doctor & I do not have the mind of madness that is required to undertake such an experiment. However, I do have the heart of literature & the experience of living in a world fraught with the vestige of curious accounts. It is from this position that I both approached the story & met you now, through this review.
I highlight the particular person who might find themselves in communal understanding with the author & his characters because I found this book to be a bore. I have read books of the like, rather more in the realistic non-fiction than of the magical variety. That is to say, I am aware of the science that lingers in the background, that which might have influenced the Doctors in their quest to transplant a dog into a human person.
I suppose I had been hoping to meet more fanaticism within this book than what Bulgakov felt necessary. On occasion, I felt that the narrative ran stale. In some parts, the characters were blabbering on & like a guest seated in the room with them, I zoned out, forgetting that what they said might be of value because it was a nagging complaint in a high-pitched echo.
Readers may be inclined to believe that it is my fault for not enjoying a Classic. Certainly, the author is acclaimed & his writing ability is not up for debate. I came looking for this book because “The Master and Margarita” (1967) is one of my favourite stories. Maybe, in part, I am to blame for expecting brilliance in this book when in reality, I should have come empty-handed & with an open heart. I accept fault in this category but, I shall not hide behind it entirely; this is not a great story.
The characters, though vivid, do not bring any girth to the plot. The plot itself is slim, very skinny in its ability to dazzle a reader. Knowing that the plot was to explore the scientific exploration of transplantation, I had hoped to see the tactics & debate around such an undertaking, explored in more detail. What brings a man to the precipice of this surgery? Do the Doctors believe that only human beings have personalities? Do the characters not fear persecution for their behaviour?
Throughout the story, the characters are always on the edge of losing their sanity & stability. The apartment complex is under renovation, & the rooms they hold will be overtaken by strangers to share & yet our friends rebel & threaten to leave their homes for greener, freer, pastures. Then, without warning they make a dog into a man & no one blinks an eye.
Surely, readers might appreciate the heart of this story; it is perhaps less the nature of the experiment that matters & rather more the consequences of this dream made reality. Yet, the author did not set up his story to be read in this way. The moral qualms that one might have towards the experiment render the backdrop of the tale very important. Readers understand where the Doctors live & what the nature of the political state entails yet, the severity of this does not affect the characters.
The fear & dialogue that reflects their displeasure at the government & its desire for control does not impact them in their undertaking or their everyday lives. They are often inconvenienced by what is happening, yet their experiments seem to reflect a bizarre if not utterly vulgar understanding of physiognomy that does not bring repercussions to their door.
As a tertiary, & admittedly rather detached observer, I found the apathetic nature of the government & its henchmen odd. Should a reader be inclined to forget the nature of the scene—the troubles that ensued following a horrible war & the climaxed arrival of a new political party—they may also simply enjoy the odd pondering that comes along with this story.
Can science erase human nature by squaring it into molecules transportable in any flesh? Religion, neutral thinkers, & ideologues over the centuries have thought of ways to express the nature of humanity tangibly. If one thinks, one is, or so said René Descartes.
On the other hand, are our thoughts our own or does the cryptic nature of philosophy follow the patterned grooves of the neuron that pulses through our person? Can a thought be independent if others have held it, unbeknownst to them, at the same time as another? Can we utter the semblance of a unique philosophy if our species endlessly covets the same Rubik’s cube?
Maybe there is no point in asking such questions; someone might have already written them down somewhere & I have yet to come upon them as though for the first time.
Books are by nature flawed by their creator. Bulgakov, though a man of immense talent, is a man nonetheless. What did he foresee when drafting his tale? Did he think Sharikov would become a beloved friend to all readers or did he think his characters would manifest the terrors beheld in older Classics of a similar nature? Is the reader meant to derive sentiments of empathy from the torment of a soul cloistered in the body of a foe?
Ultimately, I may circle & double down over, & over, again; I shall be granted no clarity. Perhaps it is best that I leave this story on my shelf to be admired & beloved by the peculiar hand of a friend whence they come to visit, someday in the future. Maybe this story functions as a simple strange narrative that admires the morbid nature of the human being with the drive & mind to play King to his longings.
As I maroon in the moors of the city streets, I find myself longing for my derision to simmer. What a loss it is to me to find that the man I have loved—the author who lit my mind from the inside—should disappoint me in such a way.
However, therein lies the bereaved infatuation of a reader towards their invisibly inked love; the author shall never give to the reader that which they want. This is not why books are written & it is certainly not why Sharikov acted in derogatory & stupid ways in front of such an intelligent company.
A story comes upon the reader like a rose in the middle of a pebbled path; chance, luck, the sunny sky of a God, the wandering eyes of duplicity under our feet; we make our way to the nightmare that looms in our abilities, with more enthusiasm, more than is rational, more than is moral.
Sharikov will no longer be who he was; he has been lost in the middle, the grey zone made mauve by its heart of darkness. With Bulgakov as a tradesman & talking head, a reader is accompanied by one who is conniving in their use of attainable comprehension; deceived by the pure nature of the blackness behind words....more
**spoiler alert** Silly stories are a passing fancy we do not often emphasize with critical remembrance. Nor do we advocate for them to be known on ou**spoiler alert** Silly stories are a passing fancy we do not often emphasize with critical remembrance. Nor do we advocate for them to be known on our shelves because they are an act of casual enjoyment rather than a demonstration of cultivated intelligence. This is a disservice. When Bulgakov wrote about hippopotamus-sized black cats, emerald-eyed naked women, towering fangs in callused mouths, & the repeated story of a prophesied man, what did he set out to achieve? There are other books which speak of a man whose personality became the scapegoat for all moral injustice & whose presence on earth enacted gun wars when once he was stapled to the very jewelry dawned by lovers of silver & gold. Neither story is very funny in its essence & yet, we laugh at the absurdity of one book collected in the hands of the willfully naïve, the ill-equipped reader, & the sorrowful citizen in the hope of finding, words that will make clear the bustling society that kills from within.
Bulgakov’s Russia is a darkened stage with tram cars, Minos-style alleyways, & rambunctious militia sneaking in the crevices of brick walls, waiting to reinforce the rules that are unknown to the reader. The opening scene of his imagining presents readers with what they will know, encouraging them to become lost in the talons of the story. If one does not recognize the domesticated scene of religious conversation, one is perhaps delicately sleeping through life. I am in no position to judge this approach. After all, most of this story was lost on me even accounting for the fact that I have had myself cloistered in church rows & snuggled between devious idols, representative of things I could not understand.
It is my opinion that one does not need to hold an expert level of understanding on a subject matter to appreciate it for what it is. When singing hymns as a child I wondered why I was meant to regard myself through a derogatory lens. Why were these songs about pity & poor decisions? Had we, not any freedom to choose? Were we not allowed to make mistakes without an invisible man in the sky striking us down? Could we not walk through the cities that we built without bringing up a man of flesh & blood as though we had communally agreed that he was to die for something we could not escape, even if we tried?
The intermingling existence of religion and government persists to this day. I have long since walked away from the steeples that loomed over my childhood asking me to remember that I was a piece of dirt while the son of someone I never knew to exist allegedly died because he was convinced of something I knew nothing about. Today, I find the streets & corners of my city to present a similar setting in nature & authenticity as the Russian community of this book. If we choose to believe that there is someone who knows better than us, how can we speak with conviction when we allow ourselves to acknowledge the levels of our own inventory?
The author’s introduction speaks of this very question. Two men sit speaking amongst themselves, with certainty, just as I have done in writing this review. They state that Jesus never existed. Religion is a system of beliefs & neither intellectual believes that there is a worthwhile cause to invest in the invisible. The strange character of Woland—Satan—comes wandering to their bench eager to share with them that he knows exactly of the man they speak. The reader certainly cannot blame the men for adopting disturbed expressions of wonder & curiosity. No one alive today could have been alive before. We ride the turbulent wave of belief through this entire plot & it is entirely up to the reader to decide whether they advocate for this truth or another.
I will not pretend that this review will explain everything away. There is too much that remains locked behind a wee mouse door along the baseboards of the pages for me to have the clarity to speak fully on every symbolic semicolon. Perhaps that was the intention of the author when he sought to decipher his own surroundings. When one reads, one is drawn, subconsciously, to the points of the plot that mirror a desire in the mind. One might have read George Orwell’s 1945 novella, “Animal Farm”, & been easily dissuaded from the ease of revolt. Who would we rather be, the tired farmer who has been unjustly forbidden his own home or the swine who hogs safety & joy to themselves through violence & methods of tumulus fear?
Bulgakov allows the mind of the wandering reader to forget the possibility of critical thought. Who would we rather be when reading this same story? The timelines are, once again, too deliberate. Which platforms enunciate the presence of a governing body to be welcomed in all of common life? Who ruminates the engagement of blood-soaked soil under the severed feet of decomposing bodies? What spectator is free from sport?
This book is split into two sections—reality & religion. Because we are encouraged to forget ourselves in the uncharacteristic way of the clinically insane, we become moored in an either-or fashion while reading. I personally found the religious sections wherein we are the same bird on the scorched balcony of Pontius Pilate as Satan, rather tedious. I laughed awkwardly when the orphaned man stood to be convicted of inciting violence. Perhaps we are meant to laugh. Perhaps, I am meant to feel that the outside world of my life sees the blissful desires of death & desolation accumulated in the actions of those for whom a single book contains the only words worth reading while the protagonist would have accepted the freedom of a long life if given the chance.
Neither the convicted nor Woland differ greatly in the ways in which humanity perceives them. Often the system of belief that supports crisp bread on a pink tongue declares it impossible to live without figureheads of both good & evil. According to this belief, one must acknowledge that there exists a being that advocates for virtue. Could that not be humanity itself? In this story, the protagonist who sets free the Russian city from the toiling of circus games & perky unexpected nudity is a man.
When The Master is welcomed on the scene he wanders the balcony of the asylum for the mentally insane in a familiar fashion. He could leave but, as so often is the case, we know too well the confines that our own limits set; where could we possibly go to escape ourselves? The Master is without a name for he is simply as his nomenclature dictates. His powerful ability to draw forth reality in words catapults him out of the protective shell of love & into the world where harm resides like saliva in the mouth of the dictator, syrupy & sweet, awaiting the crowd.
I began to lose my way in an attempt to weave past the religious meandering of the manuscript written by The Master. I wanted to linger in the room with the poet as he pretended to be able to leave himself behind. Though the medical professionals in this institution did not appear to deliberately believe that the men being welcomed were past saving, they did not necessarily encourage them to heal. This is not to say that I believe that Woland’s actions made ill the men & women who fell prey to the whim of the deceiver. What I mean to say is that, in life, we are often discouraged from the truth of what we know.
Through the presentation of the absurd Bulgakov renounces the casual & generous belief that humanity gifts that which it desires. The agency of the characters is never so much stolen from them as it is manipulated. The people who awaken to the truth are diagnosed as troubled, malady-infested thinkers. I should not want my stance to be used as the opposite of what I mean, nor would Bulgakov, I presume. This does not mean that people who believe in whatever they please, to purport a desire contrary to the liberties of the collective, are martyrs of the truth. Rather, on the contrary, these same people allow the Emperor to roam nude in avoidance of what might render life easier—authenticity to accuracy.
Bulgakov initiates the train of thought that gratifies similitude. The Master is perhaps He who looms in rainclouds, or more pointedly in desert bushes, while remaining the narrator of some form of a story that no one will necessarily read because it is invented lore. Margarita is a catatonic neuron who forgot that the limb they were meant to put into action was ciphered into the ground via the visage of a neighbour. Why do we choose to believe that one person—one man—has all of the answers? Why have we not learnt that the genial joy of conga lines is but a party trick & not a way of life?
Should a reader reflect on the poised stance of Woland as he simply partakes in the voracious joys of he who bolsters something that others do not, one is animated in the realization that this Moscow that finds itself as the Devil’s play-thing is but the city of all humanity. How could a man stand in front of a procurator to claim that everyone is good only for that same definition to become warped like sores on cerated skin? I have spoken sideways & along a milky river regarding my opinion on religion. Am I wrong? Does there exist in this world a reader far more capable of a critical analysis than I, who has read the works of holy tales & is able to decipher meaning in the words of men that might exist in the vernacular of a being none of us have ever seen?
Might we regard the title of this book & the twin pioneers as a play on the hidden love affair said to have taken place by the mortal saviour of men? Was a ghostly phantasm in the sky too removed from humanity for us to believe that he could at once flood our home & wish for us to multiply? Within this story, no mortal man strives. One must die to be free from the terror that plagues the species. There is no governing people, no terror in the night, no wandering evil that wears the same skinned bodice as us to torment the dead. Woland becomes the saviour of the people whose own divinity crumbled at the mouth of the parasites that disappear the decomposing.
Margarita is a woman who is written as having the freedom of anything she wants. The reader might observe her character’s downward spiral into absurdity as just that—lunacy. For the love of a man whose mind was sullied by rejection, she becomes a witch who breaches window panes & catalogues the revenge her heart keeps alive. It is complicated & boring to read about a woman who is nude all of the time as though nude were the absolute worst thing a person could be. Yet, do we not find it strange when someone is stumbling through the streets inebriated against the same social conduct as us?
Supposing that their love was truly what leant Woland to their plight, one can observe that no amount of alleged evil surpasses that which is housed in our very species. The titular figure of evil understands what it means to be human more than the son of the saviour. The parasitic horned beast who is said to be set on destruction is consistently absent from every wrongdoing that the Lord himself casts onto the earth. Nowhere can we find Satan but in the market of intentional insight, broodingly complex conversation, & the final scenes wherein he allows love to be set free.
Ultimately, we may contemplate this work as a reflection of the torment we lie about. The ones who believe that burning books cast words into the abyss are wrong. Ideas live in the mind. If the soul exists behind the skeletal form that drafts us into wars, fires inward flames of hate alongside clocked bullets meant for death; there exists inside the spiralling mind the shape of tomorrow. The evil players in this story are the same ones we see today. The opposite of the double M—The Master and Margarita—must be the inverted letter—Woland.
The opposite of everything we have done lies in the metamorphosis of a paralleled river watcher whose heart is too filled with stories & warmth to forget whence he came. Should Ovid write about us again we might find ourselves face to face with the devil we know. Should Bulgakov revisit his own satire we might find ourselves pondering the absurdity of a life well-lived. When we revisit our own jaunt down the garden laneway & seek to ask the charmer of dark magic if he might lend a hand to the stars we see in the sky, may we find ourselves in remembrance of the system of belief that led us there....more
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on the consequences of war, death, suicidal ideations, attempted suicide, forced confinement, psychological distress, & others.
When I think of all the ways in which a story can touch my inner sanctum, I am simultaneously faced with the impossibility of outward reflection. To be seen in the words of a stranger is a heartbeat through the twinge of a cord being pulled by a ghost. I long to find that feeling hidden via languages that I do not yet speak; reflected in prose from a person long since departed. Though we have come to delve into the occult; the supernatural sautéed within our norm; we have yet to find a way to thank the phantoms of the writers who doused our society in connectivity unparalleled by all the winds in the world.
Nabokov is a name that feels familiar & yet I know nothing of the man who spent his life in a similar fashion to the unnamed character of this short story. There are facts that are classified as being fun—for whom, I cannot pretend to know—that tell of a life hurdled in shadows, transported by the violence of governing bodies & egos that slashed the breath from the throats of the innocent. In the midst of a mind that was governed by a body fleeing this very cycle of ours is the man who studied butterflies. Perhaps, I mention these pieces of a long life because, for the characters in this book, life is darkness cataclysmically more profound than night.
Our story follows a set of parents as they journey to the asylum where their adult son is housed. As a study in oddities, the staff at the hospital seem perplexed & obsessed with the charm of the son; a person suffering a delinquency that highlights his desire to leave the pattern of platitudes found in the human community. Awkwardly timed smiles & body language that speaks of a gentility unfound within mental hospitals, the parents are unnerved by the truth of the situation; their son suffers a fate worse than death, that of chance.
The world of this story is our own & yet we do not hear birds chirp or rain pellet rooftops. The transit to the asylum is silent, pestering in its emptiness. The parents are inconvenienced by the casualty of the 24-hour clock; buses & trains are late, they stall, & the weather shatters the ceiling of comfort. All the while, this same ticking rumbles in between the crevices of their child’s mind; singing a song of finality that promises reprieve. The only reason he is not dead is because of the unsuspecting vigilantes that plague the earth.
Should he have been left to die? This presents a cruel question & yet we maneuver our way through a multitude of conversations that pose the same subject matter between our teeth until we spew it like a kernel, eager to find the floor. If a person is as this invisible character is; captured in a system that does not understand him, should he be able to be set free? Who is allowed to choose when & why death is an acceptable end? Certainly, we do not want people to suffer yet, many people do. Who gets to play God in the theatrical production of our false awareness of the depths that loom like a serpent's body on the ocean floor?
Everything in this story is a sign of something else. There is symbolism in every tongue movement used to form a word. The one animal we encounter in this story is drowning, floundering in the rain. At the same time, someone thought that one of the son’s suicide attempts was his attempt to take flight. What does this mean? We know even less about the people we journey with during every second of the odyssey than we did at the onset. Why does the patriarch not have a career in America but his brother does? Do the parents feel disgusted or prideful that “The Prince” allows them to live off of his earned dollars? Where are all of the people that this family used to love?
Can we conclude that everyone who acts off-page is indeed out of time? What is the significance of jam jars? Why would these parents think that their son would have been able to use something so delicious from the outside world when everything in his life is communicating the dullness of his own? Part of the tenderness within this narrative is that what plagues the mind of the son is in fact a casualness that many people rely on to feel more tethered to the world. If the sun shines on a morning after a person cried themselves to sleep they might take this as a sign that the skies welcome them into a good day ahead. If a person were to be made late because of a broken train, they might deduce that they were not meant to be delivered to their destination. Why do we not listen to the man who was institutionalized for believing that everything around him recognized him for the person that he wished to be?
I cannot speak to the details of committing someone to an institution. I do not think that those details are the purpose behind this story. However, I do think that it is interesting to read the recollection of the matriarch as she remembers a time when the eccentricities of her child were just that—the raving lunacies of genius rather than a madness unfit for shapeless minds. Within every action that takes place, there is the recollection that something more can be taken from it. We have been taught to think this way since we were in school—for some of us, even before that. When we read a sentence we must ask ourselves an amplitude of questions, mainly: how does this phrase fit into the book as a whole?
Should we approach this story with the opposite intention? Should we welcome the suicidal ideations of a person we do not know because we were told that they were bad, therefore we should believe them? Should we forget that life is a game of deductions, calamities forming our habits into puzzle pieces so that our quotidian is more manageable for a long life? Should we take nothing away from the story? Perhaps we should look at this book as we look on to ourselves; a riddle hidden in the confines of a skin barrier moulded with intent to the life inside.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK•...more
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