![]() ![]() In relation to this, it was apparent to me this time that The Master and Margarita, especially in the early chapters, is full of denunciations and sudden disappearances. you were arrested, interrogated, maybe killed, or shipped off to Siberia. ![]() If you are at all interested in Communism and Stalin, one will be aware of what were the consequences of not toeing the Party line, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or saying what could be construed as the wrong thing i.e. Likewise, the conversation about Jesus, the pride the two men take in their atheism, is a reference to Communism’s drive to discredit religious belief. While having a conversation about the non-existence of Jesus, they are approached by a peculiar gentleman whom they take to be ‘a foreigner’ and perhaps a ‘ spy.’ This isn’t, of course, mere silliness, but is a sardonic wink at Soviet paranoia and the very real fear that one might, by talking to someone one shouldn’t, end up being arrested. However, what I found as I came to reread the book is that, with more experience and with more knowledge, the things that I would have smiled gormlessly at before I am now able to properly appreciate.įor example, The Master and Margarita begins with two men, two literary types, at Patriarch’s Ponds. And so there are things in the text that, yes, as a teenager I may have simply taken on face value, but which, due to my ignorance, may therefore have struck me as frivolous or meaningless. I’ve always loved Russian literature, but my knowledge of Russian culture and history, particularly the period during which Joseph Stalin was in power, is much more comprehensive these days. More specifically, it is due to the age I was and, consequently, how unsophisticated my reading was at that point in my life. The first time I read this novel I liked it, but I did not get as much from it as I did on this occasion. However, after rereading The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous novel about Satan’s visit to Moscow – I have been reminded that being an older and more experienced reader can have its benefits too. I wish, sometimes, that I could somehow go back to being sixteen years old, when I enjoyed pretty much any book I picked up on its own terms, without thinking too much about why and certainly without mercilessly probing the text for weaknesses. I’ve become ultra-sensitive, overly-critical, and, I worry, perhaps somewhat joyless. I’ve written before about how I often lament the fact that I can no longer read with an open heart, without judging and analysing every aspect of what I am reading. ![]()
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