topics: |  fiction | russia | classic

This is the book that inspired Rushdie's Satanic Verses.  It has had a
wider impact on world literature than almost any other Russian novel of the
20th century.

A different translation from the original by Mirra Ginsberg.  There is also
a version translated by Michael Glenny and by [bulgakov-master-margarita-1997| Richard and Larissa Volokhonsky].
Some comparative fragments:

Oh, yes, we must take note of the first strange thing about that dreadful
May evening. ...At that hour, when it no longer seemed possible to breathe,
when the sun was tumbling in a dry haze somewhere behind Sadovoye Circle,
leaving Moscow scorched and gasping..."
	 [Ginsburg]

"There was an oddness about that terrible day... It was the hour
of the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze..."
	[Glenny]

And here it is worth nothing the first strange thing about that terrible
May evening.  ... At a time when no one, it seemed, had the strength to
breathe, when the sun had left Moscow scorched to a crisp and was collapsing
in a dry haze...
	[Burgin/Tiernan]

Ah, yes, note must be made of the first oddity of this dreadful May
evening. ...  At that hour when it seemed no longer possible to breathe, when
the sun, having scorched Moscow, was collapsing in a dry haze...
       [Volokhonsky's] [books?id=7MABzbrknvwC]

Kirkus

The battle of competing translations, a new publishing phenomenon which began
with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, now offers two rival American
editions of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Mirra Ginsburg's
(Grove Press) version is pointedly grotesque: she delights in the sharp,
spinning, impressionistic phrase. Her Bulgakov reminds one of the virtuoso
effects encountered in Zamyatin and Babel, as yell as the early Pasternak's
bizarre tale of Heine in Italy. Translator Michael Glenny, on the other hand,
almost suggests Tolstoy. His (Harper & Row) version is simpler, softer, and
more humane. The Bulgakov fantasy is less striking here, but less strident,
too. Glenny: "There was an oddness about that terrible day...It was the hour
of the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze..." Ginsburg: "Oh, yes, we must take note of the first strange
thing...At that hour, when it no longer seemed possible to breathe, when the
sun was tumbling in a dry haze..." In any case, The Master and Margarita, a
product of intense labor from 1928 till Bulgakov's death in 1940, is a
distinctive and fascinating work, undoubtedly a stylistic landmark in Soviet
literature, both for its aesthetic subversion of "socialist realism" (like
Zamyatin, Bulgakov apparently believed that true literature is created by
visionaries and skeptics and madmen), and for the purity of its
imagination. Essentially the anti-scientific, vaguely anti-Stalinist tale
presents a resurrected Christ figure, a demonic, tricksy foreign professor,
and a Party poet, the bewildered Ivan Homeless, plus a bevy of odd or
romantic types, all engaged in socio-political exposures, historical debates,
and supernatural turnabouts. A humorous, astonishing parable on power,
duplicity, freedom, and love.

Links

http://www.spinfrog.com/Bulgakov/Review.html The review: Intro to main characters

blurb:
An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master
and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern
Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so
ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's
lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are
so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian
speech. One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue
that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a
fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that
refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two
unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write
a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves
the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for
him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical
depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and
Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.