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I read the The Master and Margarita for a literature class at University. It was a fascinating but confusing book, but lots of references which made it ideal to get some help by someone who scope and historical context (USSR being at its end when I read it).
Of course now with the internet there is help from wikipedia:
Readers may find the Master and Margarita website[1] to be very thorough in providing the background information, plot and character summaries, and other supplementary materials. It is the best resource I know on the subject
There is also an active Bulgakov facebook page [2] with things like fan art and informations about upcoming adaptations.
As a matter of disclosure, I created the facebook page in 2008, but it has been run for many years now by Jan Vanhellemont, the man who is also responsible for [1]. I consider him to be the foremost fan of Master and Margarita on the English language internet.
[1] http://www.masterandmargarita.eu/en/ [2] https://www.facebook.com/m.a.bulgakov/
I often wish for interactive, annotated, "hypertextual" versions of books -- technologically it should be trivial to build.
M&M is an obvious example; there are many (Tolstoy, Dumas, Conrad, Zola, Proust and, in more modern times, Patrick O'Brian) where historical, biographical and technical annotations would be hugely useful and fun. In the case of translations, concurrent access to the original would also be awesome.
One of the earliest web versions of this that impressed me was a "Web 1.0" hypertext version of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, which is a poem constructed almost entirely out of allusions, and which makes little sense without the necessary annotations.
Do any of the eBook formats support anything like this? Have anyone done this in a way that's accessible in any meaningful way on a Kindle?
> I often wish for interactive, annotated, "hypertextual" versions of books -- technologically it should be trivial to build.
Heavily annotated books pre-date the Internet - my edition of M&M footnotes and endnotes the hell out of the book for context.
Of course. I was referring to digital e-books.
I read M+M in college. Later I had a Russian girlfriend and found that I didn't have a clue what it was about. Understanding Animal Farm is pretty easy because we get the references. But understanding M+M without a Russian history background is impossible. Still, even without that background, it's a fun read.
Don't feel too bad though about not fully understanding it - M+M is one of my favorite books, and I've re-read it may times, and have read tons of comments, and still I recently found a lecture course on it that showed me I haven't properly understood several important aspects of it. That's how it goes with great literature - it works on many levels.
The Master and Margarita also has a lot of details from biblical history that help making sense of it... I read it when I was taking a class from a Dead Sea Scroll archaeologist about how the bible was written and modern interpretations of it. So we read some of Gilgamesh, Old Testament, Dead Sea scrolls, Paradise Lost, and The Master and Margarita, among others (here's some version of the syllabus: http://web-app.usc.edu/soc/syllabus/20111/60056.doc)
There is much more extensive and better (and pre-wikipedia vintage, to boot) help at
Thats excellent. I'm going to go though it later when I have more time.
Old school web design is so fast.
thanks!
The mini-series from a few years ago is very good and the English subtitles for it were pretty good. (I read each of the 3 major english translations and the Russian version as well and I think the mini-series is better than all 3 english ones).
Did u enjoy it? I started reading it, but stopped early on.
I tried reading the Ginsburg translation and didn't get very far. Found it to be wooden and stilted. Recently I started reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation and I'm having a much better time of it. It has footnotes that explain some of the references, and I'm just finding it much easier to read from a prose-style standpoint.
According to my russian wife who studied both russian and english literature, the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is by far the best. Not only does it provide a great introduction and footnotes, it also manages to capture the spirit of the original.
I found it a highly enjoyable book and, while I'm sure I missed many references, it gave me better understanding of what it must have been like living in the USSR in those times.
I think it would be hard to get through without the discussions and some guidance.
The professor (real not in the book) was pretty good at making it more interesting.
I'm not a great reader though and read mostly non-fiction now. I go slow. I tried to read the "sound and the fury" by Faulkner once and didn't get past the first chapter.
I don't know much about Russian history beyond the usual stuff and I thought it was great. Some of the crazy surreal set pieces are unforgettable.
I think that you need to know context well to enjoy it.
I believe that translation may kill a lot from it
For those looking for more Bulgakov, or who found M+M too opaque but are still curious, The White Guard is a hell of a book. Sharp, beautifully told story about a monarchist family in Kiev in the early days of the revolution.
Heart of a Dog is also very accessible relative to M+M, and considerably more fun. It also features Bulgakov in at what seems to be peak "Honey Badger" mode - you read it, then check the date in disbelief... how he figured he'd get away with writing a book like that in 1925 beggars belief.
Also, The Fatal Eggs, and Journal of a Young Country Doctor are fascinating reads for different reasons - the former is a scathing allegorical attack on the Soviet Union (the eggs being the ideals of communism, the things which hatch from them being the praxis), and the latter is a riveting insight into the pillories of daily life in rural soviet Russia.
Along with Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn also offers deep insight into the soviet mindset, between his better known works (Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, Ivan Denisovich) and his lesser known works (Incident at Krechetovka Station, Matryona's House).
One thing that both excelled at was getting their work published, not purely through samizdat, by making their allegorical allusions clear to those who knew what they were looking for but utterly opaque to the poorly educated soviet censors.
The 20th were the times of NEP [1] (New Economic Policy) where a lot of restrictions were relaxed to boost the economy and the morale after the civil war years. That also made a lot of cultural and public figures to accept new regime more, since it looked as if things kinda getting more normal, maybe not exactly the same as before but Bolsheviks are getting more and more reasonable and wartime excesses are winding down. Little did they now...
After Lenin's death and the ascension of Stalin in late 1920th, though, the program was dismantled and the restrictions returned in both economics and public life. And then amplified to the peak of Great Terror in the 1930th.
1925 wasn't 1935. He'd already published White Guard and staged a play based on it.
There is also a novel about a doctor in rural Russia, as well as a novel about Moliere's life: both of those are not opaque at all, and need next to no Russian context to read them.
"A Young Doctor's Notebook" was also turned into a TV miniseries a few years ago, with Daniel Radcliffe as the young doctor and Jon Hamm as his older self. The series is a bit zany at times, but captures the Russianness and humour of the book very well.
This is a contender for the greatest work of Russian literature in the 20th century. The Bergin/O'Connor translation is a good one. Even if you don't get the references or historical context, you'll still enjoy reading it. Giant talking cat!
As pvg points out, Kevin Moss's notes (http://cr.middlebury.edu/bulgakov/public_html/) will reveal whole new layers of the onion when you re-read the book.
I'm an hour away from finishing the book, and goddamn I cannot get into it at all. It's just a bunch of random stuff happening without much connection. What is the appeal?
Which edition/translation are you reading?
EDIT:
For me, the appeal is in the interplay of the ultra paranoid and cynical life in the Stalinist USSR and the supernatural and goofy exploits of the Devil and his entourage who happen to visit Moscow.
The love story between the two main human characters is just the icing on the cake, but in my opinion not that important.
Not to mention that the "book within the book" about Pontius Pilate provided an entertaining intro to one of the fundamental Biblical stories for the atheist me, although now I tend to skip it when I re-read the book every once in a while.
EDIT2: Forgot to mention that the style it is written in (in Russian) is unique; it's very tongue-in-cheek: respectful to the established order and authorities on the surface but derisively satirical underneath. Nobody else wrote like that.
(After your edits:)
Hmm, yes, I do agree that it is interesting to see how everyone reacts to accusations of "holding foreign currency", but I think I'm missing most of the humour because I just don't know what it was like to live in a Stalinist sociopolitical climate.
I did enjoy the sub-book about Pontius Pilate indeed, and I also agree that the style feels very unique. I think the story with the Devil is just an excuse to orchestrate these unique situations and write the satirical/subversive reactions. I think that's what I don't like, the disjointed narrative without much of an arc, because I'm missing most of the subtext that is the payoff for the scenes.
The closest modern day equivalent to living in Stalinist Russia in the 30s is North Korea. At the slightest suspicion that one was somehow demonstrating disloyalty to the Soviet state one could be hauled away to be tortured and executed or sent to the Siberian Gulag to be slowly worked to death.
Bulgakov's writings, if discovered, would have lead to him being executed. To people who lived in the system, their was an unacknowledged understanding that something bad was happening as people would mysteriously disappear on a regular basis. The movie "The Inner Circle" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103838/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_p... ) and "Burnt By The Sun" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111579/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 ) are good depictions of what life was like during those times. It makes the high anxiety and paranoia of most characters in M & M much more understandable.
but I think I'm missing most of the humour because I just don't know what it was like to live in a Stalinist sociopolitical climate.
I think this is a bit of a red herring - the book is funny throughout and the humour is not dependent on a deep knowledge of the sociopolitical climate (which, incidentally, was not yet quite 'Stalinist'). I first read it in my mid-teens (in Russian) and didn't catch a bunch of that stuff either - but it was funny. Just like you don't need to know an awful lot about 19th century Britain to grasp the wry tone and irony in Austen or Dickens.
Try reading the Burgin/O'Connor translation and see how it goes. It's possible it might still not work for you but an audiobook of some unknown translation is an unfortunately pessimal way to approach this particular work - you're now dealing with not one but two layers of interpretation of a difficult-to-translate book.
This happens to be my favorite book, so I'm sorry to hear that. I was recently recommending it to a Romanian friend (who doesn't read Russian) and I was hoping he would be able to relate to it since he's from an ex-Soviet bloc country.
Ah, I'm not quite sure, it's an Audiobook from Audible.
FWIW, it looks like Audible's version is Karpelson.
For German speakers: Bayerischer Rundfunk has it as a radio drama, free for download. The text is slightly compressed, I think.
But the speakers are first-rate, especially Koroviev in a gorgeous Austrian dialect.
The twist ending!
It's hard to answer this question. Is there any Russian literature you've read and enjoyed?
Oops, there's a twist ending? I might just skip this thread and come back in a few days, then...
I'm afraid I haven't read much other Russian literature, as I prefer scifi, so the closest I got to the Eastern bloc is Lem...
I think my main problem with Master and Margarita is that I don't know much about the context of the era, and it feels like most of the book is subtle jabs at the society and political climate of the time.
As far as sci-fi, you should try Strugatsky books.
Second that, but I'd probably stay away from early books by Strugatskys - they are kind of naive and would only work for a real hardcore fan. Later ones are much deeper.
Bulgakov also did sci-fi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Eggs
I'm not sure it would work in translation though - as the plot goes, it would be kind of simple, especially for our 21th century eyes, but the inimitable Bulgakov style adds a lot.
No, I was messing with you.
Kevin Moss's site linked upthread is a good place to start for context that may make you retroactively enjoy the book more.
It's a closure ending, and by now you understand that any closure to what you've read must involve some sort of twist.
Mandelstam was writing in the XXth century.
Who could be other contenders?
Solzh? Iskander? Rasputin? Nabokov?
The Faculty of Useless Knowledge? Life and Fate? Moscow - Petushki?
Andrei Bely. Nabokov considered Petersburg one of the top four novels of the century (his other three were Ulysses, The Metamorphosis and In Search Of Lost Time).
Didn't expect to find discussion of my favorite writer here at HN. I wonder how does it translate to English... Now I want to get all those translations and compare them. Thanks HN!
Is the translation that important? I'm writing a piece of fiction that occasionally quotes M&M, and consider using a yet another translation if it's so controversial...
For one, many of the translations are just terribly wooden.
But Russian is also very hard to translate to English, for several reasons; it's a heavily idiom-based language, full of common phrases (that every Russian knows) that an author can turn into puns or allusions. If the translator chooses to rewrite using the equivalent English idiom, the original meaning may be lost; whereas if it's translated literally, the reader won't know that it's a common saying that the author has subverted. The same thing goes with words that have multiple meanings, where the ambiguity itself resonates within the phrasing, or where the word has historical subtext or whatever.
But translators also often get stuff wrong. Plenty of people have pointed out very clear errors in the Pevear-Volokhonsky translations that are based on misunderstandings of the original text. Bulgakov also frequently writes on several levels (there's a lot of subtext and humour), and it's often hard to replicate the intended meaning, so translators end up with something that isn't quite right. Here [1] is some discussion with concrete examples.
[1] http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/translation_wars_on...
There are some translations that leave a lot out (because the book was heavily censored). Others don't capture Bulgakov's clever style. Go with Bergin/O'Connor.