Magic and the Supernatural - Lancaster University

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‘I am a Witch and I like it!’
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his intentions? Who is Margarita? And can we talk about black and white magic or
we should consider the fundamental unity of ‘good’ and ‘evil’?
2. Master and Margarita: Manuscripts do not Burn
‘Master and Margarita’ is Bulgakov’s last and his most famous work,
completed shortly before his death in 1940. Due to the censorship of the time, the
novel remained unpublished for more than twenty years. Written in the darkest
days of Stalinist Russia, the work was so controversial that it was first published
only in 1966 in a literal newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta and almost immediately
became an important ‘underground’ literary event in the country behind the iron
curtain. The novel’s astonishing popularity confirmed one of the most famous
aphorisms in the novel: ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.’
In the novel, Bulgakov uses a narrative technique which has come to be known
as ‘magical realism’, incorporating magical elements and illogical scenarios into
otherwise realistic or even ‘normal’ setting.
The novel has a complex plot, woven from three strands that unfold in two
different dimensions; there is the time of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and
there is the time of early Soviet rule in modern Moscow. Intertextuality is one of
Bulgakov’s fundamental devices, so the text is full of biblical, philosophical,
historical and apocryphal allusions. One of the three plots is an apocryphal account
of the trial, death and burial of Jesus Christ which takes place in an imagined town
called Yershalaim. Another plot is about Satan who visits Moscow to satisfy his
curiosity about people’s life in Soviet times. Finally, the third plot unfolds in
Moscow in the 1930s and concerns the tragic story of the Master, an unnamed
writer, and Margarita, his mistress. This part includes the Master’s writing of his
life work, a novel about Pontius Pilate, which constitutes the plot about Jesus
Christ. At the end, both narrative dimensions come together.
Although Bulgakov specified that the Master was the hero of his novel, in
many ways Margarita is equally important. Almost the whole second half of the
novel focuses on her functions and activities, as she is the one who maintains
contact with Satan to be turned into a witch and to host Satan’s ball in order to save
her lover.
All constructs, figures and characters in Bulgakov’s artistic world are
ambivalent. The image of Margarita is no exception. Her image is characterized by
the combination of the dark, the magical, the sensual, the dark and the holy.
3. I am a Witch and I Like It!
Margarita is immediately identified as a witch by the narrator, who introduces
her at the beginning of the second half of the book,
What more did the woman need? Why did her eyes always glow
with a strange fire? What else did she want, that witch with a