The novel by M. A. Bulgakov is a masterpiece of world and Russian literature. This work remained unfinished, which gives each reader the opportunity to come up with his own ending, to some extent feeling like a real writer.

PART ONE

Chapter 1 Never talk to strangers

The next topic of conversation between Ivan Bezdomny and Mikhail Berlioz was Jesus Christ. They argued heatedly, which attracted the attention of a stranger who decided to have the audacity to interfere in their dialogue. The man resembled a foreigner in both appearance and speech.

Ivan's work was an anti-religious poem. Woland (the name of the stranger, who is also the devil himself) tried to prove the opposite to them, assuring them that Christ exists, but the men remained adamant in their convictions.

Then the foreigner, as evidence, warns Berlioz that he will die from sunflower oil spilled on the tram rails. The tram will be driven by a girl in a red headscarf. She will cut off his head before she can slow down.

The novel “The Master and Margarita” is a work in which philosophical, and therefore eternal, themes are reflected. Love and betrayal, good and evil, truth and lies, amaze with their duality, reflecting the inconsistency and, at the same time, the completeness of human nature. Mystification and romanticism, framed in the elegant language of the writer, captivate with the depth of thought that requires repeated reading.

A difficult period appears tragically and mercilessly in the novel. Russian history, turning around in such a homely way that the devil himself visits the palaces of the capital to once again become a prisoner of the Faustian thesis about a force that always wants evil, but does good.

History of creation

In the first edition of 1928 (according to some sources, 1929), the novel was flatter, and it was not difficult to highlight specific themes, but after almost a decade and as a result of difficult work, Bulgakov came to a complexly structured, fantastic, but therefore no less a life story.

Along with this, being a man who overcomes difficulties hand in hand with the woman he loves, the writer managed to find a place for the nature of feelings more subtle than vanity. Fireflies of hope leading the main characters through devilish trials. So the novel was given its final title in 1937: “The Master and Margarita.” And this was the third edition.

But the work continued almost until the death of Mikhail Afanasyevich; he made the last edit on February 13, 1940, and died on March 10 of the same year. The novel is considered unfinished, as evidenced by numerous notes in drafts saved by the writer’s third wife. It was thanks to her that the world saw the work, albeit in an abbreviated magazine version, in 1966.

The author's attempts to bring the novel to its logical conclusion indicate how important it was for him. Bulgakov, with the last of his strength, burned out on the idea of ​​​​creating a wonderful and tragic phantasmagoria. It clearly and harmoniously reflected his own life in a narrow room, like a stocking, where he fought the disease and came to the realization true values human existence.

Analysis of the work

Description of the work

(Berlioz, Ivan the Homeless and Woland between them)

The action begins with a description of the meeting of two Moscow writers with the devil. Of course, neither Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz nor Ivan the Homeless even suspect with whom they are talking on a May day on the patriarchal ponds. Subsequently, Berlioz dies according to Woland’s prophecy, and Messire himself occupies his apartment to continue his pranks and hoaxes.

Ivan the homeless man, in turn, becomes a patient psychiatric hospital, unable to cope with the impressions of meeting Woland and his retinue. In the house of sorrow, the poet meets the Master, who wrote a novel about the procurator of Judea, Pilate. Ivan learns that the metropolitan world of critics treats undesirable writers cruelly and begins to understand a lot about literature.

Margarita, a childless woman of thirty, the wife of a prominent specialist, yearns for the disappeared Master. Ignorance leads her to despair, in which she admits to herself that she is ready to give her soul to the devil, just to find out about the fate of her lover. One of the members of Woland's retinue, the demon of the waterless desert Azazello, delivers a miraculous cream to Margarita, thanks to which the heroine turns into a witch in order to play the role of queen at Satan's ball. Having overcome some torments with dignity, the woman receives the fulfillment of her desire - a meeting with the Master. Woland returns to the writer the manuscript burned during the persecution, proclaiming a deeply philosophical thesis that “manuscripts do not burn.”

In parallel, the storyline about Pilate, a novel written by the Master, develops. The story tells of the arrested wandering philosopher Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who was betrayed by Judas of Kiriath and handed over to the authorities. The procurator of Judea holds court within the walls of the palace of Herod the Great and is forced to execute a man whose ideas, disdainful of the authority of Caesar, and of authority in general, seem to him interesting and worthy of discussion, if not fair. Having dealt with his duty, Pilate orders Afranius, the head of the secret service, to kill Judas.

The plot lines are combined in the last chapters of the novel. One of Yeshua’s disciples, Matvey Levi, visits Woland with a petition to grant peace to the lovers. That same night, Satan and his retinue leave the capital, and the devil gives the Master and Margarita eternal shelter.

Main characters

Let's start with dark forces appearing in the first chapters.

Woland's character is somewhat different from the canonical embodiment of evil in pure form, although in the first edition he was assigned the role of a tempter. In the process of processing material on satanic themes, Bulgakov created the image of a player with unlimited power to shape destinies, endowed, at the same time, with omniscience, skepticism and a bit of playful curiosity. The author deprived the hero of any props, such as hooves or horns, and also removed most of the description of the appearance that took place in the second edition.

Moscow serves as a stage for Woland, on which, by the way, he does not leave any fatal destruction. Woland was called upon by Bulgakov as high power, the measure of human actions. He is a mirror reflecting the essence of the other characters and society, mired in denunciations, deceit, greed and hypocrisy. And, like any mirror, messir gives the opportunity to people who think and are inclined towards justice to change for the better.

An image with an elusive portrait. Outwardly, the features of Faust, Gogol and Bulgakov himself are intertwined in him, since heartache, caused by harsh criticism and lack of recognition, caused the writer many problems. The Master is conceived by the author as a character whom the reader rather feels as if he is dealing with a close, dear person, and does not see as a stranger through the prism of a deceptive appearance.

The master remembers little about life before meeting his love, Margarita, as if he never really lived. The hero’s biography bears a clear imprint of the events in the life of Mikhail Afanasyevich. Only the writer came up with a brighter ending for the hero than he experienced himself.

A collective image that embodies female courage to love despite the circumstances. Margarita is attractive, daring and desperate in her desire to reunite with the Master. Without her, nothing would have happened, because with her prayers, so to speak, a meeting with Satan took place, a great ball took place with her determination, and only thanks to her unshakable dignity a meeting between the two main tragic heroes took place.
If we look back at Bulgakov’s life, it is easy to note that without Elena Sergeevna, the writer’s third wife, who worked on his manuscript for twenty years and followed him during his life, like a faithful but expressive shadow, ready to drive away enemies and ill-wishers from the world, it would not have happened either publication of the novel.

Woland's retinue

(Woland and his retinue)

The retinue includes Azazello, Koroviev-Fagot, Behemoth the Cat and Gella. The latter is a female vampire and occupies the lowest level in the demonic hierarchy, a minor character.
The first is the prototype of the desert demon, he plays the role right hand Volanda. So Azazello mercilessly kills Baron Meigel. In addition to his ability to kill, Azazello skillfully seduces Margarita. In a way, this character was introduced by Bulgakov in order to remove characteristic behavioral habits from the image of Satan. In the first edition, the author wanted to call Woland Azazel, but changed his mind.

(Bad apartment)

Koroviev-Fagot is also a demon, and an older one, but a buffoon and a clown. His task is to confuse and mislead the respectable public. The character helps the author provide the novel with a satirical component, ridiculing the vices of society, crawling into cracks where the seducer Azazello cannot reach. Moreover, in the finale he turns out to be not a joker at all in essence, but a knight punished for an unsuccessful pun.

The cat Behemoth is the best of the jesters, a werewolf, a demon prone to gluttony, who every now and then brings chaos into the lives of Muscovites with his comical adventures. The prototypes were definitely cats, both mythological and very real. For example, Flyushka, who lived in the Bulgakovs’ house. The writer’s love for the animal, on whose behalf he sometimes wrote notes to his second wife, migrated to the pages of the novel. The werewolf reflects the tendency of the intelligentsia to transform, as the writer himself did, receiving a fee and spending it on purchasing delicacies in the Torgsin store.

“The Master and Margarita” is a unique literary creation that has become a weapon in the hands of the writer. With his help, Bulgakov dealt with hated social vices, including those to which he himself was subject. He was able to express his experience through the phrases of the characters, which became household names. In particular, the statement about manuscripts goes back to the Latin proverb “Verba volant, scripta manent” - “words fly away, what is written remains.” After all, while burning the manuscript of the novel, Mikhail Afanasyevich could not forget what he had previously created and returned to work on the work.

The idea of ​​a novel within a novel allows the author to conduct two major storylines, gradually bringing them closer together in the timeline until they intersect “beyond the border”, where fiction and reality are no longer distinguishable. Which, in turn, raises the philosophical question about the significance of a person’s thoughts, against the backdrop of the emptiness of words that fly away with the noise of bird wings during the game of Behemoth and Woland.

Bulgakov's novel is destined to pass through time, like the heroes themselves, in order to touch upon again and again important aspects social life man, religion, issues of moral and ethical choice and the eternal struggle between good and evil.

At the hour of a hot spring sunset, two citizens appeared on the Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them - approximately forty years old, dressed in a gray summer pair - was vertically challenged, dark-haired, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat like a pie in his hand, and his neatly shaven face was adorned with supernaturally sized glasses in black horn-rimmed frames. The second, a broad-shouldered, reddish, curly-haired young man in a checkered cap pulled back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewy white trousers and black slippers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, editor of a thick art magazine and chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, abbreviated as MASSOLIT, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.

Finding themselves in the shade of slightly green linden trees, the writers first rushed to the colorfully painted booth with the inscription “Beer and water.”

Yes, the first strangeness of this terrible May evening should be noted. Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, fell in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty.

“Give me Narzan,” Berlioz asked.

“Narzan is gone,” answered the woman in the booth, and for some reason she was offended.

“The beer will be delivered in the evening,” the woman answered.

- What is there? asked Berlioz.

“Apricot, only warm,” the woman said.

- Well, come on, come on, come on!..

The apricot gave off a rich yellow foam, and the air smelled like a barbershop. Having drunk, the writers immediately began to hiccup, paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond and with their backs to Bronnaya.

Here a second strange thing happened, concerning only Berlioz. He suddenly stopped hiccupping, his heart pounded and for a moment sank somewhere, then returned, but with a dull needle stuck in it. In addition, Berlioz was gripped by an unreasonable, but so strong fear that he wanted to immediately flee from the Patriarch's without looking back. Berlioz looked around sadly, not understanding what frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and thought: “What’s wrong with me? This has never happened... my heart is racing... I’m overtired... Perhaps it’s time to throw everything to hell and go to Kislovodsk...”

And then the sultry air thickened above him, and from this air a transparent citizen of a strange appearance was woven. On his small head is a jockey cap, a checkered, short, airy jacket... The citizen is a fathom tall, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and his face, please note, is mocking.

Berlioz's life developed in such a way that he was not accustomed to unusual phenomena. Turning even paler, he widened his eyes and thought in confusion: “This can’t be!..”

But this, alas, was there, and the long citizen, through which one could see, swayed in front of him, both left and right, without touching the ground.

Here horror overcame Berlioz so much that he closed his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that it was all over, the haze dissolved, the checkered one disappeared, and at the same time the blunt needle jumped out of his heart.

- Fucking hell! - the editor exclaimed. “You know, Ivan, I almost had a stroke from the heat just now!” There was even something like a hallucination... - he tried to grin, but his eyes were still jumping with anxiety, and his hands were shaking.

However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with a handkerchief and, saying quite cheerfully: “Well, so...”, he began his speech, interrupted by drinking apricot.

This speech, as we later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet to write a large anti-religious poem for the next book of the magazine. Ivan Nikolaevich composed this poem in a very short time, but, unfortunately, it did not satisfy the editor at all. Homeless outlined the main thing actor his poem, that is, Jesus, in very black colors, and yet the whole poem had, in the opinion of the editor, to be written anew. And now the editor was giving the poet something like a lecture about Jesus in order to highlight the poet’s main mistake. It’s hard to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolayevich down - whether it was the visual power of his talent or complete unfamiliarity with the issue on which he wrote - but his Jesus turned out to be, well, a completely alive, once-existing Jesus, only, however, equipped with all the negative features of Jesus . Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing is not what Jesus was like, whether he was bad or good, but that this Jesus, as a person, did not exist in the world at all and that all the stories about him are simple inventions, the most common myth.

It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians, for example, the famous Philo of Alexandria, the brilliantly educated Josephus, who never mentioned the existence of Jesus. Displaying solid erudition, Mikhail Aleksandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that the place in the fifteenth book, in chapter 44 of the famous Tacitus “Annals”, which talks about the execution of Jesus, is nothing more than a later fake insertion .

The poet, for whom everything reported by the editor was news, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his lively green eyes on him, and only hiccupped occasionally, cursing the apricot water in a whisper.

“There is not a single Eastern religion,” said Berlioz, “in which, as a rule, immaculate virgin would not have produced a god. And the Christians, without inventing anything new, created their own Jesus in the same way, who in fact was never alive. This is what you need to focus on...

Berlioz's high tenor resounded in the deserted alley, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich climbed into the jungle, into which only a very educated person can climb without risking breaking his neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris , the benevolent god and son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Fammuz, and about Marduk, and even about the lesser-known formidable god Vitzliputzli, who was once highly revered by the Aztecs in Mexico.

And just at the time when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet about how the Aztecs sculpted a figurine of Vitzliputzli from dough, the first man appeared in the alley.

Subsequently, when, frankly speaking, it was too late, various institutions presented their reports describing this person. Comparing them cannot but cause amazement. So, in the first of them it is said that this man was short, had gold teeth and limped on his right leg. In the second - that the man was enormous in stature, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The third laconically reports that the person had no special signs.

We have to admit that none of these reports are any good.

First of all: the person described did not limp on any of his legs, and he was neither short nor huge, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold ones on the right. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and foreign-made shoes that matched the color of the suit. He cocked his gray beret jauntily over his ear and carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle's head under his arm. He looks to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaven clean. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word - a foreigner.

Passing by the bench on which the editor and the poet sat, the foreigner glanced sideways at them, stopped and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from his friends.

Vladimir Bortko's fiction series "The Master and Margarita" was awarded a Special Prize International festival FIPA, which took place in January 2007 in Biarritz (France).

The fate of famous novel Mikhail Bulgakov's life was not easy, but it was an unconditional success among readers and covered the writer's name with immortal fame. The text has literally been pulled apart into quotes; several have been created based on the novel. theatrical productions, including at the Taganka Theater, and only the film version is still haunted by evil fate.

"Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no real, true, eternal love? May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and only me, and I will show you such love!”

"...The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the terrible Anthony Tower disappeared, an abyss fell from the sky and flooded the winged gods over the hippodrome, the Hasmonean palace with loopholes, bazaars, caravanserais, alleys , ponds... Yershalaim disappeared - a great city, as if it did not exist in the world..."

Oleg Basilashvili invited to play Volanda, does not consider his hero evil spirits. According to a veteran of cinema and stage, in Bulgakov’s novel Satan, rather, “a major official of a certain “department from there” who flew to Earth to see what was happening in a country that had abandoned God.”

“At the side of everyone, Azazello was flying, shining with the steel of his armor. The moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a trace, and the squint turned out to be false. Both of Azazello’s eyes were the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello was flying in his present form as a demon of the waterless desert, a demon-killer."

Actor Alexander Filippenko, playing the role Azazello, I am sure that this image fully corresponds to his role. He believes that after he played Koshchei the Immortal and Death, the role of Azazello turned out to be very suitable. And the very decision of the image was born in disputes with the director. The actor sincerely considers the film adaptation of the novel to be a great project. He admitted that participating in it was both an honor and responsibility. Although, personally, as an older generation of actors, it was difficult for him to work when he had to use new filming technologies. The actor recalls with particular dislike the scenes filmed for subsequent computer processing.

“Gods, my gods!.. What did this woman need, in whose eyes some kind of incomprehensible light always burned, what did this witch, slightly squinting in one eye, need, who then decorated herself with mimosas in the spring? I don’t know. I don’t know. Obviously ", she told the truth, she needed him, the master, not in a Gothic mansion, and not in a separate garden, and not in money. She loved him, she told the truth."

Anna Kovalchuk It wasn't easy working on the image. For example, for filming the ball scene, she was dressed in a corset weighing 16 kg (in which she could only lie or stand), an iron crown and metal shoes, which mercilessly rubbed her feet, leaving unhealed abrasions. And at the same time, the actress complained, she also had to fly upside down. But now, seeing the finished result, Anna feels real pleasure, recognizing that the role Margaritas- the highest blessing in her acting career.

"In a white cloak with bloody lining, a shuffling cavalry gait, early morning On the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, entered the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great. More than anything else, the procurator hated the smell of rose oil, and everything now foreshadowed a bad day, since this smell began to haunt the procurator from dawn..."

Despite the fact that the plot of the book has not undergone any changes and the creators of the telenovela have treated the text of the original source very carefully, viewers are still in for a surprise. Some actors played two roles, and this was a completely deliberate move by the director, who emphasized the kinship of seemingly different characters.

Dmitry Nagiev played not only Judas, but also Baron Meigel, whose blood is in the cup from the skull of the long-suffering Berlioz They present it to Margarita at the ball with the words that where this blood was shed, vines have long grown. Both Judas and Maigel are traitors, and this is the one common feature, which allowed the director to combine them by choosing one actor for two roles.

Valentin Gaft got used not only to the image Caiaphas. He became and A man in a jacket. The last one is a certain collective image, whose replicas are scattered throughout the novel and together create a completely complete impression of an abstract functionary of Soviet times. Both Kaifa and the Man in a French Jacket supposedly stand in defense of the state and the existing ideology.

According to general director TV channel "Russia" Anton Zlatopolsky, the budget for the television series was more than $5 million.

Vladimir Bortko was awarded the TEFI - 2006 award in the category “Director of a television feature film/series” (“The Master and Margarita”).

Director and scriptwriter: Vladimir Bortko
Producer: Valery Todorovsky
Artist: Vladimir Svetozarov
Operator: Valery Myulgaut
Composer: Igor Kornelyuk
Cast: Alexander Galibin, Anna Kovalchuk, Oleg Basilashvili, Alexander Abdulov, Alexander Bashirov, Alexander Filippenko, Sergei Bezrukov, Kirill Lavrov, Valentin Gaft, Vladislav Galkin, Alexander Adabashyan, Alexander Pankratov-Cherny, Valery Zolotukhin, Roman Kartsev, Ilya Oleynikov, Nina Usatova, Dmitry Nagiyev, Lev Borisov, Vadim Lobanov, Vasily Livanov, Ksenia Nazarova, Irina Rakshina, Semyon Furman, Tatyana Tkach, Lev Durov, Galina Bokashevskaya, Yulia Aug