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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Masters Without Margaritas

8 December, 1998 - 00:00

By Viktor NEDOSTUP

A woman friend of mine was fond of discussing at length what she
read. Then she suddenly developed a fancy for Zen and attended classes
conducted by various masters.

Then it came astrology's turn. She once told me, "It's hard to live
at the cusp of a century. It feels the way lice do in a sheepskin coat
hung in the sun. Much as they like the habitat they have to flee." And
so she got divorced, married again, and left for Australia. I also knew
another mystical master. In between doses he would write some morphinic
prose. Eventually he fled to Germany. Some remained, finding a place in
politics, putting on weight figuratively and literally, and started writing.
Others are decomposing in the sarcophaguses of their own manias, creating
less than mediocre prose and cursing the great unwashed. All this motley
crowd is united by one thing: they were all fond of Bulgakov's Master
and Margarita.

Kyivites have loved the book because it was written by their compatriot
and was not only "universal" but also appeared to have an unexpected Kyiv
text. This is nonsense, but it rates a closer look. The novel is set in
Moscow and the only association with Kyiv is through Berlioz, the one whose
head was cut off by a streetcar, and through Lysa Hora Hill where Margarita
flew. Our brain loves labyrinths, despair, and seductive darkness. Bulgakov
built a brilliant labyrinth in the dark, outside the walls of which creative
pride reins and the ultimate goal is emptiness. It is not nirvana but something
else. It is a very high maya. In the novel everything is correct; poets
write verse, women make love, the insane suffer, and rulers are gnawed
by doubt. But this is not the main thing. Immersed in the novel, the reader
is oblivious to the fact that the author is a master of sensuous knowledge
and that he bestows his intellect on the reader. Man's intellect, this
inexhaustible source of joy, clarity, and divine grace, remains sealed.
Man can live all his life with only virtual feelings, borrowed interpretations,
and someone else's fears, ranging from animal terror to religious trepidation.
Incidentally, Kyivans are given to mystical quests and subtle temptations.
They have fallen into their own trap. Remember the Kyiv school of philosophy.
They all sing like nightingales. I do not mean Bulgakov. The master did
his job and let the Lord judge him in His wisdom. I mean freedom. We have
none. We all want to look good, and we are afraid to be truthful. We talk
about aesthetics and avoid ethics with whorish chastity. Most of us do
not even understand what this is all about. We have in our heads impressions
of labyrinths and our brain is packed with a hereditary mix of age-old
alien ideologies and our own fear, induced by alien devices, forcing us
to seek commonness between everything this and everything that. We do not
even notice that most of our life we are frightened of something, so we
look and look and look for new Masters, just so we do not have to make
our own decisions. We consider ourselves Masters, so we try to find our
Margaritas and failing this we fall into degradation.

We end up with a substitute, where the dark rays of Thanatos are seen
as the hot beam of Eros, when quest and love are crowded out by an inner
narcosis and courage vanishes, supplanted by either greed or apathy.

I think I will stop here. Why? A sage was asked about necromancy. He
said, "Everything is from God. He thus leads astray the ignorant and wrathful."
The Master came and left after building a cobweb labyrinth to be puzzled
out by his disciples. I can only hint that it is a kind of Zen koan of
which Bulgakov had no idea, for he was driven by his own fear of continuity.
If we suddenly ignite completely and go all the way, this cobweb will catch
fire and burn, all the alien devices falling apart, leaving creation. But
I warn you: it is a horrible experience.

PS: In the Yugoslavian version of The Master and Margarita
the role of Jesus is an episodic one, played by a jackass with an obvious
touch of sarcasm. In this sense the production team and cast are capable
of challenging some of Kyiv's cannibalistic postmodernists.


 

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