Whether Woland comes to Moscow with evil intentions or not, the chaos he creates certainly highlights the most “sinful” side of society’s character.īulgakov exposes this moral cowardice in a number of ways. The antics of Woland and his gang draw out the populace’s self-interest, greed, and dishonesty, exposing a collective cowardice that strengthens the status quo and all its faults-and in Soviet society, there were many. If courage can be defined as a willingness to take a stand against something in aid of a greater good, most of the Moscow inhabitants of the novel fall well short. The lid opened on a hinge.Mikhael Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita makes a powerful argument in favor of courage over cowardice, describing the latter as “the worst sin of all.” All three of the novel’s storylines-the visit of Woland (Satan) and his entourage to Moscow, the love between the master and Margarita, and Pontius Pilate’s condemnation of Yeshua (Jesus) to execution in Yershalaim (Jerusalem) two thousand years prior-combine to show the power of courage and the terrible consequences of cowardice. Straight away the flesh of the head turned dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl teeth and a golden foot. Let it come true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!’ There is also one which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. However, one theory is as good as another. I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever. You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. But we are now interested in what follows, and not in this already accomplished fact. And fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. ‘The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment. ‘Everything came to pass, did it not?’ Woland went on, looking into the head’s eyes. ‘Mikhail Alexandrovich,’ Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and then the slain man’s eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw, with a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering. Later in the novel, Woland uses Berlioz’s severed head as a ceremonial cup, drinking blood from it during the great ball. Woland predicts Berlioz’s imminent death minutes later, the chairman is decapitated by a tram. Berlioz thus represents Soviet officialdom, faithfully adhering to protocol and not for a moment entertaining the thought that anything might lie outside of the realm of his understanding. The foreigner insists that Jesus was real and that, furthermore, he was there when Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to crucifixion, leading Berlioz to think the visitor is a madman. ![]() As he explains why Jesus never existed, Berlioz is interrupted by a strange foreigner, who claims to be a professor (it’s actually Woland). Berlioz appears in the novel’s opening scene, in which he chastises the poet Ivan Homeless for making Jesus appear too much like a real person in a recent poem. He is a middle-aged man and prides himself on his atheism, rationality, and learnedness. ![]() Berlioz is the chairman of Massolit, the writers’ union and the editor of a literary journal.
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