The Master and Margarita

[Highball Emy]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!

The latest post on my blog is about my favourite book - the Master and Margarita - with a little vintage fashion thrown in! I am a bit of an evangelist for this book, and it would mean a lot to me if as many people as possible could go and take a look - and hopefully pick up a copy of the book on Amazon afterwards!

http://highballemys.blogspot.com/

Thank you!

Love,

Emy
xxx

 

[Chasseur]

Thank you for the link!

Its one of my favorite novels and I come back and read it every couple of years. The scenes with the cat and the NKVD agents having a gun fight is rather priceless.

 

[Highball Emy]

I study Russian because of this book! I actually just got back from living in St. Petersburg for six months - I'm sad that I didn't get a chance to go to Moscow and see his apartment. Apparently, you can even go on a Master and Margarita tour around the city and see where everything happens!

 

[Alex Oviatt]

A great book, indeed! One of my favorites. While TMAM is clearly his masterpiece, The White Guard and Heart of a Dog are well worth reading as well. Anushka has already bought the sunflower oil.....

 

[Harp]

I study Russian because of this book! I actually just got back from living in St. Petersburg for six months - I'm sad that I didn't get a chance to go to Moscow and see his apartment. Apparently, you can even go on a Master and Margarita tour around the city and see where everything happens!

Bulgakov is magnificent. The nude witch and the gal without a stitch, combined sensual, sacred, secular;
vivid imaginative literature makes this Russian classic.

 

[Fading Fast]

I found my way to this book via the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil," which Mick Jagger wrote after being inspired by "The Master and the Margarita."

 

[Harp]

I found my way to this book via the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil," which Mick Jagger wrote after being inspired by "The Master and the Margarita."

A coupla pre-Covid code years since that ugly virus reared its head, I caught a late nite Mississippi Delta
blues session at Kingston Mines here, heard a British accented voice sounded like Mick Jagger,
and it was Mick Jagger. Which is why I guess I thought it sounded like Mick hisself.
Wish I knew about masterful inspiration then, coulda talked more with the "student of the Blues,"
as he explained. Couldawouldashoulda moment. Back when ya coulda go out....

 

[Fading Fast]

A coupla pre-Covid code years since that ugly virus reared its head, I caught a late nite Mississippi Delta
blues session at Kingston Mines here, heard a British accented voice sounded like Mick Jagger,
and it was Mick Jagger. Which is why I guess I thought it sounded like Mick hisself.
Wish I knew about masterful inspiration then, coulda talked more with the "student of the Blues,"
as he explained. Couldawouldashoulda moment. Back when ya coulda go out....

That ⇧ sounds like a really cool experience.

Once you've read the book and then read the lyrics to the song, you see that Mick, as good artists and writers will do, brought his own interpretation of the book to the song.

 

[city slicker]

I enjoyed the book immensely. It was a few years back. There also was a rather lengthy Video of the book in the Russian language. It was on You Tube. I do not know if it is still up but was also very good. I imagine Google by now has placed commercials running every 3 minutes .

 

[Harp]

I had a Russian Lit converse with a Jewish-Russian lady recently and as a non-Christian she rather
enjoyed The Master and Margarita but when I steered verse toward Dr Zhivago and Pasternak she shot
that book down..

Checkov and Dostoyevsky are always available. Tolstoy. Gogol. But Marina admitted some surprise
that an American favored Russian literature. Occasionally, that and similar comment has been received.
Last time it happened I caught a cab from a downtown Chicago hotel where a staff conference had
been held, it was cold and La Salle Street Station of sufficient distance so I could justify the splurge,
and the cabbie, a Lebanese and Beiruit University English Lit baccalaureate decried the fact that
"Americans don't read." I reached inside a Gloverall pocket and pulled out Thomas More's collection,
The Four Last Things; The Supplication of Souls; A Dialogue With Conscience. He said he thought
I was Irish. I scribbled my email address inside the front cover and told him to contact me if he
wished to discuss More or any lit over dinner sometime.

I did the same with Marina. But I told her i was an Irish poet scoundrel.

 

[Fading Fast]

I had a Russian Lit converse with a Jewish-Russian lady recently and as a non-Christian she rather
enjoyed The Master and Margarita but when I steered verse toward Dr Zhivago and Pasternak she shot
that book down..

Checkov and Dostoyevsky are always available. Tolstoy. Gogol. But Marina admitted some surprise
that an American favored Russian literature. Occasionally, that and similar comment has been received.
Last time it happened I caught a cab from a downtown Chicago hotel where a staff conference had
been held, it was cold and La Salle Street Station of sufficient distance so I could justify the splurge,
and the cabbie, a Lebanese and Beiruit University English Lit baccalaureate decried the fact that
"Americans don't read." I reached inside a Gloverall pocket and pulled out Thomas More's collection,
The Four Last Things; The Supplication of Souls; A Dialogue With Conscience. He said he thought
I was Irish. I scribbled my email address inside the front cover and told him to contact me if he
wished to discuss More or any lit over dinner sometime.

I did the same with Marina. But I told her i was an Irish poet scoundrel.

⇧ Fun stories

Checkov and Tolstoy - love; Pasternak - like; Dostoyevsky, one ("The Brothers Karamazov") and done.

 

[Harp]

⇧ Fun stories

Checkov and Tolstoy - love; Pasternak - like; Dostoyevsky, one ("The Brothers Karamazov") and done.

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky most remarkable for their embrace of Tragedy; the rara avis, grandest and most
difficult of visions to capture, and in the nineteenth century gothic romance novels opened inward sweep
of soul that reached its heights with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky; yet only Dostoyevsky scaled the absolute summit and plumbed its absolute depth, none other in modern literature has come closer to the core essence of our collective individual need. Dostoyevsky's grasp of humanity rivals Shakespeare.

Tolstoy possessed a Christian vision that stripped of the supernatural reduced War and Peace to a
bare bones temporal tempest shorn of the transcendant.

Melville set the stage for the novel with his finest cast, Moby Dick, the sea as foundation for mankind's
great moral struggle. Tolstoy worked around the edges, but Dostoyevsky fully embraced the supernatural
transcendant in The Brothers Karamazov, pitting the Grand Inquisitor against Christ, the earthly bread
that fed men's somatic hunger compared to heavenly mana, and, the Inquisitor reference to the depraved
ignoble human race.

Dostoyevsky also possessed oracular talent, forcasting in Karamazov the Communist plague of
the madmen, which he prophesised would fall by the star shone from the East.

The inward struggle of perpetual combat with evil, triumph, eternal redemption.
Where else but in the Bible or Shakespeare is such greatness found?

 

[clementishutin]

I recently reread this and was once again utterly enthralled by the book's strength and beauty. It's a comedic masterpiece that improves with every visit. I chose the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation this time. I would recommend it to first-time readers since it is really flowing and feels quite modern; nevertheless, having read many writers translated by them, you can discern their style and there is a tendency to overtranslate.

 

[Harp]

^There lives a woman in Sochi I have had an incurable crush on for years,
and she reminds me of the witch, her face turned crimson when I told her this,
quickly adding that the blush of the rose is the envy of red wine and the Sun.