“Master and Margarita” Bulgakov in brief summary
In the work – two story lines, each of which develops independently. The first action takes place in Moscow during several May days in the 30s. XX century, the action of the second is also in May, but in the city of Yershalaim almost two thousand years ago – at the very beginning of a new era. The novel is constructed in such a way that the chapters of the main storyline are interspersed with the chapters composing the second storyline, and these plug-in chapters are then the chapters from the master’s novel, or the story of an eyewitness of Woland’s events.
One of the hot May days in Moscow, someone appears Woland, posing as a specialist in black magic, but in fact is a Satan. He is accompanied by a strange retinue: the pretty witch Gella, cheeky type Koroviev or Fagot, the gloomy and sinister Azazello and the merry fat man Behemoth, who for the most part appears before the reader in the guise of a black cat of incredible size.
The first to meet
Woland, having appeared at the apartment number 50 of the house 302 bis along Sadovaya street, which the late Berlioz occupied together with the director of the Variety Theater Stepan Likhodeev, and finding the latter in a state of heavy hangover, shows him the same signed by him, Likhodeev, a contract for the performance of Woland in the theater, and then escorts him away from the apartment, and Stepa is in an incomprehensible
To Nikanor Ivanovich Bosom, the chairman of the housing association of house No. 302-bis, is Koroviev and asks Woland to rent apartment No. 50, since Berlioz was killed and Likhodeev was in Yalta. Nikanor Ivanovich after a long persuasion agrees and receives from Koroviev over the fee, due to the contract, 400 rubles, which he hides in the ventilation. On the same day, Nikanor Ivanovich comes with an arrest warrant for the storage of currency, as these rubles have turned into dollars. Stunned Nikanor Ivanovich falls into the same clinic as Professor Stravinsky.
At this time, the director of the Variety Rimsky and the administrator of Varenuk tried unsuccessfully to find the disappeared Likhodeev by phone and are perplexed, receiving from him one by one telegrams from Yalta with a request to send money and confirm his identity, as he was thrown into Yalta by the hypnotist Woland. Deciding that this is a ridiculous joke by Likhodeev, Rimsky, having collected telegrams, sends Varenukha to take them “where necessary,” but Varenukha can not do this: Azazello and Koroviev, taking him by the hand, deliver Varenukha to apartment No. 50, and from the kiss naked witches Gella Varenukha deprived of feelings.
In the evening on the stage of the Variety Theater a performance begins with the participation of the great magician Woland and his retinue, Bassoon with a gun shot causes a rain in the theater, and the whole hall is caught by falling chervontsi. Then the “ladies’ store” opens on the stage, where any woman from among those sitting in the hall can get dressed up and down for free. Immediately a queue is being built in the store, but after the presentation, the chervontsi turn into pieces of paper, and everything purchased in the “ladies’ store” disappears without a trace, forcing gullible women to rush through the streets in one linen.
After the performance, Rimsky linger in his office, and to him is turned by the kiss of Gella to the vampire Varenukha. Seeing that he does not cast a shadow, mortally frightened, instantly graying Roman in a taxi rushes to the station and by express train leaves for Leningrad.
In the meantime, Ivan Bezdomnyi, having met with the master, tells him how he met a strange alien who had killed Misha Berlioz; the master explains to Ivan that he met the Patriarchs with Satan, and tells Ivan about himself. The master was called by his beloved Margarita. Being a historian by training, he worked in one of the museums, when suddenly he suddenly won a huge sum – one hundred thousand rubles. He left work in the museum, rented two rooms in a small house in one of the Arbat lanes and began to write a novel about Pontius Pilate. The novel was almost finished when he happened to meet Margarita on the street, and love struck them both instantly. Margarita was married to a worthy person, lived with him in a mansion on the Arbat, but did not like him. Every day she came to the master, the novel was coming to an end, and they were happy. At last the novel was completed, and the master took it to the journal, but they refused to print it there, however, several devastating articles about the novel, signed by the critics Ahriman, Latunsky and Lavrovich, appeared in the newspapers. And then the master felt that he was falling ill. One night, he threw the novel in the oven, but the alarmed Marguerite, who came running, snatched the last pack of sheets from the fire. She left, taking the manuscript with her to say good-bye to her husband and returning to her beloved for good in the morning, but a quarter of an hour after she left, they knocked at the window, telling Ivan his story, at this point he lowers his voice to a whisper, and a few months later, on a winter night, when he came to his house, he found his rooms occupied and went to a new country clinic where he lives for the fourth month, without a name and surname, just a patient from room number 118.
This morning, Margarita wakes up with a feeling something has to happen. Wiping away her tears, she touches the pages of the charred manuscript, examines the master’s photo, and then goes for a walk to the Alexander Garden. Here Azazello sits down to her and gives her the invitation of Woland – she is assigned the role of queen at the annual ball of Satan. In the evening of the same day, Margarita, stripping naked, rubs the body with the cream that Azazello gave her, becomes invisible and flies out the window. Flew past the writer’s house, Margarita arranges the rout in the apartment of the critic of Latunsky, in her opinion, the ruined master. Then Margarita meets Azazello and leads her to apartment number 50, where she meets Woland and the rest of his retinue.
At midnight, the spring ball of the full moon begins – a great ball at Satan, which invited informers, executioners, corrupters, murderers – criminals of all times and peoples; men are in tailcoats, women are naked. Within a few hours naked Marguerite welcomes guests, substituting a knee for a kiss. Finally the ball is over, and Woland asks Margarita what she wants as a reward for being the hostess of the ball. And Margarita asks to immediately return her master. Immediately appears a master in hospital attire, and Margarita, after consulting with him, asks Woland to return them to a small house on Arbat, where they were happy.
Meanwhile, one Moscow institution begins to be interested in the strange events taking place in the city, and all of them form a logically clear whole: the mysterious foreigner Ivan Bezdomny, the session of black magic in the Variety show, the dollars of Nikanor Ivanovich, and the disappearance of Roman and Likhodeev. It becomes clear that all this is the work of the same gang headed by a mysterious magician, and all traces of this gang lead to apartment number 50.
Let us now turn to the second storyline of the novel. In the palace of Herod the Great, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, interrogates the arrested Yeshua Ha-Nozri, who was sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin for insulting the authority of Caesar, and this verdict is sent for approval to Pilate. Interrogating the arrested person, Pilate understands that before him is not a robber, inciting people to disobedience, but a wandering philosopher preaching the realm of truth and justice. However, the Roman Procurator can not let go of the person accused of a crime against Caesar, and asserts the death sentence. Then he addresses the high priest of the Jewish Caiaphas, who, in honor of the upcoming Easter holiday, can release one of the four convicted criminals to freedom; Pilate asks that it be Ga-Nozri. However, Kaifa refuses him and releases the bandit Var-Ravvan. At the top of the Bald Mountain there are three crosses on which the condemned are crucified. After the crowd of onlookers who accompanied the procession to the place of execution returned to the city, on Bald Mountain there remains only the disciple of Yeshua Levi Matvey, the former tax collector. The executioner stabs the tortured prisoners, and a sudden downpour falls upon the mountain.
The prosecutor summons Afraniya, the head of his secret service, and instructs him to kill Judah from Kiriath, who received money from the Sanhedrin for allowing Yeshua Ha-Nozri to be arrested in his home. Soon, a young woman named Nisa allegedly accidentally meets in the city of Judah and appoints him a meeting outside the city in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he is attacked by unknown people, stabbed him with a knife and selected a purse with money. After a while, Afranius reports to Pilate that Judas is stabbed, and a sack of money – thirty tetradrachms – is thrown into the house of the high priest.
Pilate is brought to Levi Matvey, who shows the prosecutor a parchment with the recorded sermons of Ga-Nozri. “The most serious vice is cowardice,” reads the procurator.
But back to Moscow. At sunset on the terrace of one of the Moscow buildings, the town of Woland and its retinue are bid farewell. Suddenly Levi Matvey appears, who suggests Woland to take the master to himself and reward him with peace. “Why do not you take him to yourselves, into the light?” Woland asks. “He did not deserve the light, he deserved peace,” – answers Levi Matvey. After a while, in the house to Margarita and the master is Azazello and brings a bottle of wine – a gift from Woland. Having drunk wine, the master and Margarita fall without feelings; at the same instant the commotion begins, in the house of mourning: the patient died from room number 118; and at the same moment in the mansion on the Arbat the young woman suddenly turns pale, clutching at the heart, and falls to the floor.
Magic black horses take Woland, his entourage, Marguerite and the master. “Your novel has been read,” says Woland to the master, “and I would like to show you your hero.” For about two thousand years he sits on this platform and sees a moonlit road in his dream and wants to walk along it and talk with a wandering philosopher. novel in one phrase. ” “He is free! He is waiting for you!” – Shouts the master, and over the black abyss the immense city with a garden, to which the moonway stretches, flares up, and on the road this procurator runs swiftly.
“Farewell!” – Shouts Woland; Margarita and the master walk along the bridge over the stream, and Margarita says: “This is your eternal home, in the evening those who you love will come to you, and at night I will take care of your sleep.”
And in Moscow, after Woland left her, the investigation into the criminal gang case continues for a long time, but the measures taken to capture her, do not give any results. Experienced psychiatrists conclude that the members of the gang were an unprecedented force of hypnotists. It takes several years, the events of those May days start to be forgotten, and only Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, the former poet Bezdomny, every year, just before the spring festive full moon comes, appears on the Patriarch’s ponds and sits on the same bench where he first met Woland, and then, after walking along the Arbat, he returns home and sees the same dream, in which Margarita, Master, Jeshua Ha-Nozri, and the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the horseman Pontius Pilate, come to him.
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