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The Master and Margarita Lecture: 'Manuscripts Don't Burn' (Chapters XXIV-XXXII) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-07 21:03:32
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2026-06
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Content

'This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.'

Today our journey through Mikhail Bulgakov's great novel comes to a powerful close. But the wisdom at the heart of The Master and Margarita will remain with us forever. 

In our discussion, we are meditating upon the relationship between good and evil, resurrection, enduring truths, metafictionality, the connection between story and storyteller, heroism, love, faustian bargains, how manuscripts don't burn, and so much more.

Timestamps:

0:00 ‘manuscripts don’t burn…’

2:00 Bulgakov’s deal with the devil

3:00 how we keep the truth alive

5:00 interdependence of good & evil

7:00 there’s no light without darkness

8:00 resonance of the Faustian legend

9:00 Carl Jung on God’s answer to Job

11:00 Woland & Yeshua’s relationship

13:00 Margarita’s Faustian Bargain

15:00 putting a price on one’s knee

17:00 Master and Margarita reunited

19:00 hallucination, dreams & beliefs

20:00 the master’s manuscript survives

22:00 ‘no papers, no person…’

24:00 returning to the story of Pilate

26:00 sublimity arises from juxtaposition

28:00 how the storyteller is the story

30:00 appreciating painful symbolism

32:00 Pilate tortured by a sense of guilt

34:00 ‘cowardice is the worst vice’

36:00 the decision to have Judas killed

38:00 Judas murdered at Gethsemane

40:00 Jesus and the agony in the Garden

41:00 Pontius Pilate dreams of Yeshua

43:00 ‘now we shall always be together’

45:00 Matthew Levi speaks with Pilate

47:00 ‘the poems I used to write were bad’

49:00 bringing hell’s flames to Moscow

51:00 absurdity, nonsense & wisdom

53:00 ‘Dostoyevsky is immortal!’

55:00 how great artists live forever

57:00 setting fire to the writer’s house

58:00 why the truth needs lies to survive

1:00:00 what would good be without evil?

1:01:00 all vanishes as a great storm breaks

1:02:00 Bulgakov’s allusion to Pushkin

1:04:00 ‘it’s time, my friend, it’s time’

1:05:00 two lovers are together in death

1:07:00 what is life & what is death?

1:09:00 ‘burn, burn, former life…’

1:10:00 the master’s spirit visits Ivan

1:12:00 the rainbow after the storm

1:13:00 how the novels draws to its end

1:15:00 who is the true hero of the story?

1:16:00 how the master sets Pilate free

1:17:00 how great art can change the world

1:19:00 ‘someone was setting the master free’

1:21:00 appreciating the last line & epilogue

1:25:00 your thoughts on Bulgakov’s novel

1:33:00 congratulations on reading this work

Our Next Masterpiece:

Congratulations on reading Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece with so much love. Thank you so much for making this such an incredible experience. We will be preparing for our next Big Read this weekend coming with our introductory 'how to read' for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. So now would be a great time to secure your copy ready for our next adventure through great literature.

Questions to Consider:

1) What did you make of ending of The Master and Margarita?

2) What will you remember most from your journey through the novel?

3) What area connected with Bulgakov are you now most keen to explore?

4) How would you persuade another to read The Master and Margarita? And what advice would you give to facilitate a meaningful reading experience?

And please do share with us your impressions and favourite passages from the end of The Master and Margarita

Congratulations on reading The Master and Margarita, everybody!

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Comments

Christopher Tiernan

I found Steinbeck’s Kate more terrifyingly evil than Bulgakov’s Woland.

CIN27

For this third section what stood out to me was thinking about jobs that require doing evil to good ends. Pontius Pilot explicitly says he has a "bad job" to Ratslayer when he wakes up groggy on the moonlit patio (i wonder if this guilt is part of the reason he hates the city so much). Margarita was willing to take on doing evil things towards a good end in her role as a witch to be with the master again. it makes you wonder how satan feels about his role, if it makes him as tired as Pontius Pilot got and if i re-read the book i wonder if there will be hints this might be true (or on the other hand if its written more so that the devil is a more traditional character that truly likes evil and chaos for their own sake rather than the more sympathetic reading). The theme of doing evil things to try and make good is in another book, "ender's game"... “This time Valentine had grown up enough to know just how much danger the world was in. And she had been Demosthenes long enough that she didn’t hesitate to do her duty.” I guess it's a theme i already like to think about and so it stood out to me in this book too. Im already looking forward to reading it again sometime.

Ylva

What a stunning novel. With me being entirely new to this club, I’m currently catching up on lectures. And having just finished M&M yesterday (my first read), I love seeing everyone’s comments on it. I highly enjoyed the ride. Fever dream is a good description for how reading it felt to me, the only two books that gave me a similarly intense immersion so far being Moby Dick and Crime and Punishment—each in their own way, naturally. I adore the humour and irony in M&M, and still contemplate Pilate’s philosophical question of “what is truth?” The scenes with Margarita were all beautiful; I love how I can feel the sentiment Bulgakov put into her portrayal, and the scenes with her escaping, I found absolutely delightful. It feels like she’s living the dream there, leaving her old life behind that she feels so shackled to, and simply flying away, embracing the subsequent chaos. My favourite chapter at the current moment remains chapter five. The food descriptions, the details of the Masslolit house, meeting the artists, the humour, all the life in there, the chaotic turbulence in the restaurant, the pirate’s introduction,… it all spoke to me deeply, was so much fun to read and a pleasure annotate. What made reading this novel in general so fantastic for me personally was experiencing it alongside other Russian art, listening to Tchaikovsky in between reading breaks, reading some of Chekhov’s stories whilst also working my way through my first reading of War and Peace. It gave the setting an intensely deep and vivid atmosphere. I also found humanisation of the biblical characters refreshing and overall could feel all the years and years of dedication that went into this novels creation. As to my favourite quote: “he almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don’t exist.” Which maybe is an odd favourite to have out of all the fantastic quotes in here, but it feels incredibly symbolic to me, and psychologically powerful. This is a book I’ll return to again and again.

CIN27
>>138475089

Ive thought about the book some more and so wanted to jot down a few more things that have lingered post reading. I agree with other posters' interpretation that Bulgokov (and so also the Master) is a hypocrite and a coward. Like others posted, i think he knew that too. (thus the book ends with him in purgatory, not heaven) For people that got a negative gut-reaction to the book, that seems understandable to me, since with those flaws, his ending the book with the Master going to purgatory with Margot after the slap-stick escapades of Wolland's entourage probably felt both like white-washing the brutality of Stalin's Russia and also apologist regarding the author's culpability as a member of the Russian elite. Despite this, i still think the book is a worthwhile read as it shows how just the right amount of perks and hope can be used hold together an oppressive regime by co-opting elites, internal security and the military where you can and making the ones you can't disappear. I don't think people realize to what extent people will go with the flow, even when there is an "obvious" problem (truth/reality/gaslighting being a theme throughout the book). As an example, there was a social experiment where smoke was slowly pumped into a room of test takers. most people carefully avoided causing a "false alarm" and saying anything, even when smoke got so thick that it reduced the visibility in the room. People continue in oppressive societies like Stalin's Russia because of the human aversion to change and fear of the unknown. The quote "better the devil you know" encapsulates this idea. The US Declaration of Independence acknowledges this tendency, stating that people are more likely to endure suffering under a long-established government than to seek change, as "mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." This is evident today in places like North Korea, where, despite external expectations of revolution, most people prefer enduring hardship to facing the uncertainties and chaos that revolution might bring. People want to go with the group consensus, they don't want to be the nail that is taller than the others because that's the one the hammer is coming for, they don't want to be the one to cry wolf, and they don't like change. Reading stories like Master and Margarita, we tell ourselves we would behaved differently and judge the author as being uncommonly weak but the reality is he was probably a pretty average guy and most of us are probably pretty average as well. Luckily it usually only takes a good example for most people to buck up and do the "right" thing. Hopefully this book (and especially the conversations in the posts above) will be like an inoculation. A small exposure to examples of hypocrisy and cowardice will make us (me) recognize circumstances that requires someone stand up and ask "does anyone else see smoke in this room?"

Linda

For me, this was a thought-provoking and engaging read. Soviet times killed Russian literary output and so it was with this in mind that I approached the book. I read it slowly, all the time asking myself what is the writer telling me about his experiences in a closed society. I pondered is Woland Stalin or Lenin, is The Master based on Maxim Gorky in part etc. In this final lecture’s reading, I think Bulgakov really brings home his messages to us. For instance, at first I read Chapter 25 at face value-Pilate wants to protect Judas but then after Judas is murdered, I found myself baffled and went back to chapter 25 and of course, we were being shown Aesopian language in action. This is where the greatness of the book lies. In amongst the chaos of Woland in Moscow, we see Soviet Russia fully exposed. For those firmly planted in Western realism, it might be hard to cope with, but this book rewards deep thought and acceptance of confusion.

Catherine Pope

I appreciate the caliber of the comments made by the members of this group. Those comments and Ben's lectures have helped my to achieve a much deeper appreciation of this novel, as well as, all the other every other reading project on this site. I am a slow reader and now embrace my slowness! The Master and Margarita is now one my favorites.

Denise Powers

I echo Catherine Pope's comments in that I also appreciate the viewpoints of the members of this group. The numerous perspectives make all the works we study so much richer. I am definitely in the "Love" camp for this book. I love how Bulgakov takes such a serious and philosophical concept as the juxtaposition between good and evil and how they intersect, and manages to mix it with poetic prose (the storm scenes are all sublime!), shaking emotion and a romping good, laugh out loud experience. That is quite an accomplishment! It also speaks to the essense of life: yes, terrible things happen, there are terrible people who make some of those terrible things happen, but at the end of the day, we are creatures who need love and forgiveness. We also need to relax a litte, take some time to be silly and have a good laugh. I thought the theatrics of Behemoth were so well done. It was as if I was following Bulgakov's eye around the scene, as he described the details, and yet, while he was focusing on this or that, he was still building the scenes in a way that it felt immersive: as the 'foreigner' was ass down and feet up in the herring barrel, I could still hear the noise of the commotion, see the other characters and what they were doing, and smell the brine that had spashed into the air. Marvelous! An artist who will not tell the truth is a coward, "the most terrible vice". I have been listening to the audio book Stalin and while the narrative is focused on him, it is terrifying to think of such a manipulative person with so much power: so much adoration from the people. Some of the people. That Bulgakov had the courage to write this and then the courage to burn it and then to resurrect this work is incredible to me. I admire him for that. The interconnection of good and evil has also been very much on my mind. I mentioned in a post in the last lecture that during and after the Ball, I kept expecting Woland to turn really nasty to Margarita and I was surprised when he didn't. I found myself really liking the Woland character. I find his 'getting the bad guy' motives to be quite satisfying, as I am sure that Bulgakov also felt satisfied having all those who had oppressed him, and stood in the way of his art get their share of misery and of burning everything in his wake. But my favourite character is definitely Margarita. She is the opposite to Pilate's cowardliness. She is strong, and willing to do hard things for her values, for her love. Thank you once again, Benjamin, for introducing me to this work. I was completely new to it and it was a wonderful experience for me to immerse myself in it.

Andy Sparks

What a great read! Actually reread but it had been twenty years or so but coming at it fresh made me see so many things and layers thanks to you Ben!

Michele Chouinard

I have to say I loved this book. Often humor can shine a light on evil and bring truth to the surface

SusanJTJ

I found the end of the book very knotted and tangled up, but if Bulgarkov was very ill when he wrote it then that's understandable and it didn't detract from my view of the book as a whole which I really liked. The thread on Pontius Pilate was the most striking for me as a Roman Catholic but I didn't personally find anything about the work sacriligious. The suicide of Judas is so entrenched in my mind, that an alternative explanation of his death was certainly surprising. But the whole context was so fraught, that it does seem a plausible alternative explanation of what happened and it is interesting element of the book. I also liked reading the sections on Margarita when she became a witch just because it was so imaginative and it must have given her great pleasure to smash up the apartment building. Before I read the book I did a lot of the suggested early reading and this helped a lot. If I had not done this preparatory work I would have really struggled to follow it, so anyone embarking on this novel needs to understand a lot of the context it was written in. I would be fibbing if I said that I followed it all, but I enjoyed reading it and never thought once about giving it up.