Over the black abyss into which the walls had gone, a boundless city lit up, dominated by gleaming idols above a garden grown luxuriously over many thousands of moons. Only the platform with the stone armchair remained. The mountains turned the master’s voice to thunder, and by this same thunder they were destroyed. ‘You’re free! You’re free! He is waiting for you!’ He cupped his hands to his mouth and cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested mountains: The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless and looked at the seated procurator. ‘Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!’ Here Woland turned to the master and said: ‘It’s here, the manuscript! It’s here!’ She dashed to Woland and added in admiration: Margarita trembled and cried out, again shaken to the point of tears: With a bow, the cat gave the top copy to Woland. The cat instantly jumped off the chair, and everyone saw that he had been sitting on a thick stack of manuscripts. ‘Forgive me, but I don’t believe you,’ Woland replied, ‘that cannot be: manuscripts don’t burn.’ He turned to Behemoth and said, ‘Come on. ‘Unfortunately, I cannot do that,’ replied the master, ‘because I burned it in the stove.’ ‘And that - now? It’s stupendous! Couldn’t you have found some other subject? Let me see it.’ Woland held out his hand, palm up. ![]() ‘About what? About what? About whom?’ said Woland, ceasing to laugh. ‘It is a novel about Pontius Pilate.’ Here again the tongues of the candles swayed and leaped, the dishes on the table clattered, Woland burst into thunderous laughter, but neither frightened nor surprised anyone. ‘But tell me, why does Margarita call you a master?’ asked Woland. Mihael Bulgakov himself provides the obvious archetype for the master’s character. The master represents authenticity in art and, in his persecution, the suffering of artists under Stalin’s Soviet regime. ![]() The master is granted eternal peace by Yeshua Ha-Nozri and frees Pontius Pilate from his tortured limbo, before living forever in a small cottage with Margarita (both of them having left their earthly bodies behind). Further to his surprise, Woland has his novel-intact (the master had burned it in the fire). When Margarita, having served as hostess at Satan’s ball, wishes for the master to return to her, he is surprised to find himself reunited with the love of his life. ![]() Stravinsky’s recent clinic, deciding that he is mad, and commits himself to staying there for ever more. Once it’s finished, however, the psychic pain brought by the novel’s rejection by editors and the malicious dismissal by critics causes the master to flee the apartment he shares with his lover. She then encourages him to write his novel about Pontius Pilate, supported by funds from the master’s lottery win, which he throws his entire being into. Margarita and he, explains the master, fell in love at first sight, despite both having spouses already. In hushed tones, he explains the two most important elements in his life: the love he shares with Margarita (whom he refuses to name) and his failed novel. The reader learns most of his back story when the master clambers through Ivan’s window at Stravinsky’s clinic, where he is also a patient. He is a weary man who has given up on life. The master is one of the two titular characters.
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