Why Jung?

My previous post introduced my alternative interpretation of The Master and Margarita: as part of Bulgakov’s process of psychological adaption to and recovery from persecution in the Soviet Union. This post focuses on why I chose the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung as the tool of my interpretation. Jung called the process of psychological…

An Alternative View

My previous series of post provided an overview of scholarly views of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The forthcoming series of posts will lay out my approach to Bulgakov’s novel, an alternate position that complements past scholarship. My interpretation of The Master and Margarita investigates the possible psychological and spiritual function the novel may…

Lingering Scholarly Questions: The Double Novel and its Source

Previous series of posts outlined three areas of scholarly investigation into The Master and Margarita: the novel as Bulgakov’s view on life as an author within the Stalinist Soviet Union; the novel as Bulgakov’s effort to keep continuity with non-Soviet literary influences; the novel as Bulgakov’s philosophical and theological exploration of the human condition. In…

The Master and Margarita as Philosophical and Theological Concern with the Human Condition

My previous post discussed the second category of Bulgakov scholarship: The Master and Margarita as a product of previous literary traditions. I presented an overview of scholarship on Bulgakov’s connection to pre-revolutionary Russian authors (i.e., Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Gogol) and literary traditions (symbolism and romanticism), as well as the link between The Master and Margarita…

The Master and Margarita as a Product of its Literary Precursors

My previous post discussed the first category of Bulgakov scholarship, which focuses on the novel as Bulgakov’s personal commentary of Soviet life. I divided theme into five categories to show the various ways scholars explored The Master and Margarita this topic. This post continues to the second category of Bulgakov scholarship: The Master and Margarita…

Scholarly Interest in The Master and Margarita: Overview

Twenty-six years after Bulgakov’s death, the literary journal Moskva (known for publishing writers suppressed during the Stalinist era) published The Master and Margarita in two installments, the first in November 1966 and the second in January 1967.[1] “‘[U]nlike’” anything published during the four previous decades of Soviet Literature, and “unlike” any contemporary literature as well,…

Introduction: Born from Regression

The catalyst for Bulgakov’s investigation into Christianity, and his desire to write about Christ and the devil, appears to be a May 1926 incident during which the Soviet secret police known as the OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye or Joint State Police Directorate) searched his apartment and confiscated three notebooks of journals and his manuscript…

Overview

On 24 August 1929, Soviet playwright and author Mikhail Afansievich Bulgakov (1891-1940), who wanted nothing more than success as an artist, wrote his brother that his “destruction as a writer had been accomplished [moe pisatel’skoe unichtozhenie]” [1]. Only three years before, after initial Soviet censorship clamped down on his work, Bulgakov began researching Christianity and…

 The most that the critic newly approaching the novel can hope to achieve is to add constructively to the confusion. – W.J. Leatherbarrow