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back, even the irrepressible Behemoth quieted down and, his claws sunk into
the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail.
Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit
melancholy little lights somewhere far below - now no longer interesting and
necessary either for Margarita or for the master - alien lights. Night was
outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting
white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.
Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders' cloaks and,
tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when
Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the
appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when,
from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising
to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable
magic garments drowned in the mists.
Hardly recognizable as Koroviev-Fagott, the self-appointed interpreter
to the mysterious consultant who needed no interpreting, was he who now flew
just beside Woland, to the right of the master's friend. In place of him who
had left Sparrow Hills in a ragged circus costume under the name of
Koroviev-Fagott, there now rode, softly clinking the golden chains of the
bridle, a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face. He
rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not
interested in the earth, he was thinking something of his own, flying beside
Woland.
"Why has he changed so?' Margarita quietly asked Woland to the
whistling of the wind.
This knight once made an unfortunate joke,' replied Woland, turning his
face with its quietly burning eye to Margarita. 'The pun he thought up, in a
discussion about light and darkness, was not altogether good. And after that
the knight had to go on joking a bit more and longer than he supposed. But
this is one of the nights when accounts are settled. The knight has paid up
and closed his account.'
Night also tore off Behemoth's fluffy tail, pulled off his fur and
scattered it in tufts over the swamps. He who had been a cat, entertaining
the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim youth, a demon-page, the
best jester the world has ever seen. Now he, too, grew quiet and flew
noiselessly, setting his young face towards the light that streamed from the
moon.
At the far side, the steel of his armour glittering, flew Azazello. The
moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a
trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false. Azazello's eyes were both the
same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in
his true form, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.
Margarita could not see herself, but she saw very well how the master
had changed. His hair was now white in the moonlight and gathered behind in
a braid, and it flew on the wind. When the wind blew the cloak away from the
master's legs, Margarita saw the stars of spurs on his jackboots, now going
out, now lighting up. Like the demon-youth, the master flew with his eyes
fixed on the moon, yet smiling to it, as to a close and beloved friend, and,
from a habit acquired in room no.118, murmuring something to himself.
And, finally, Woland also flew in his true image. Margarita could not
have said what his horse's bridle was made of, but thought it might be
chains of moonlight, and the horse itself was a mass of darkness, and the
horse's mane a storm cloud, and the rider's spurs the white flecks of stars.
Thus they flew in silence for a long time, until the place itself began
to change below them. The melancholy forests drowned in earthly darkness and
drew with them the dim blades of the rivers. Boulders appeared and began to
gleam below, with black gaps between them where the moonlight did not
penetrate.
Woland reined in his horse on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and the
riders then proceeded at a walk, listening to the crunch of flint and stone
under the horses' shoes. Moonlight flooded the platform greenly and
brightly, and soon Margarita made out an armchair in this deserted place and
in it the white figure of a seated man. Possibly the seated man was deaf, or
else too sunk in his own thoughts. He did not hear the stony earth shudder
under the horses' weight, and the riders approached him without disturbing
him.
The moon helped Margarita well, it shone better than the best electric
lantern, and Margarita saw that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind,
rubbed his hands fitfully, and peered with those same unseeing eyes at the
disc of the moon. Now Margarita saw that beside the heavy stone chair, on
which sparks glittered in the moonlight, lay a dark, huge, sharp-eared dog,
and, like its master, it gazed anxiously at the moon. Pieces of a broken jug
were scattered by the seated man's feet and an undrying black-red puddle
spread there. The riders stopped their horses.
Your novel has been read,' Woland began, turning to the master, 'and
the only thing said about it was that, unfortunately, it is not finished.
So, then, I wanted to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he
has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon
comes, as you see, he is tormented by insomnia. It torments not only him,
but also his faithful guardian, the dog.
If it is true that cowardice is the most grievous vice, then the dog at
least is not guilty of it. Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared.
Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.'
`What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face
clouded over with compassion.
'He says one and the same thing,' Woland replied. `He says that even
the moon gives him no peace, and that his is a bad job. That is what he
always says when he is not asleep, and when he sleeps, he dreams one and the
same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and
talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he insists, he never finished
what he was saying that time, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring
month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he never manages to get on to
this path, and no one comes to him. Then there's no help for it, he must
talk to himself. However, one does need some diversity, and to his talk
about the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates
his immortality and his unheard-of fame. He maintains that he would
willingly exchange his lot for that of the ragged tramp Matthew Levi.'
`Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn't that too much?'
asked Margarita.
`Repeating the story with Frieda?' said Woland. 'But don't trouble
yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built
on that.'
'Let him go!' Margarita suddenly cried piercingly, as she had cried
once as a witch, and at this cry a stone fell somewhere in the mountains and
tumbled down the ledges into the abyss, filling the mountains with rumbling.
But Margarita could not have said whether it was the rumbling of its fall or
the rumbling of satanic laughter. In any case, Woland was laughing as he
glanced at Margarita and said:
'Don't shout in the mountains, he's accustomed to avalanches anyway,
and it won't rouse him. You don't need to ask for him, Margarita, because
the one he so yearns to talk with has already asked for him.' Here Woland
turned to the master and said:
'Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!'
The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless
and looked at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands to his mouth and
cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested
mountains:
'You're free! You're free! He's waiting for you!'
The mountains turned the master's voice to thunder, and by this same
thunder they were destroyed. The accursed rocky walls collapsed. Only the
platform with the stone armchair remained. 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. The path of
moonlight so long awaited by the procurator stretched right to this garden,
and the first to rush down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white
cloak with blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in
a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was weeping or
laughing, or what he shouted. It could only be seen that, following his
faithful guardian, he, too, rushed headlong down the path of moonlight.
`I'm to follow him there?' the master asked anxiously, holding the
bridle.
'No,' replied Woland, 'why run after what is already finished?'
There, then?' the master asked, turning and pointing back, where the
recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of its convent, with the
sun broken to smithereens in its windows, now wove itself behind them.
'Not there, either,' replied Woland, and his voice thickened and flowed
over the rocks. `Romantic master! He, whom the hero you invented and have
just set free so yearns to see, has read your novel.' Here Woland turned to
Margarita: `Margarita Nikolaevna! It is impossible not to believe that you
have tried to think up the best future for the master, but, really, what I
am offering you, and what Yeshua has asked for you, is better still! Leave
them to each other,' Woland said, leaning towards the master's saddle from
his own, pointing to where the procurator had gone, 'let's not interfere
with them. And maybe they'll still arrive at something.' Here Woland waved
his arm in the direction of Yershalaim, and it went out.
'And there, too,' Woland pointed behind them, 'what are you going to do
in the little basement?' Here the sun broken up in the glass went out.
'Why?' Woland went on persuasively and gently, 'oh, thrice-romantic
master, can it be that you don't want to go strolling with your friend in
the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening
listen to Schubert's music? Can it be that you won't like writing with a
goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don't want to sit over a
retort like Faust, in hopes that you'll succeed in forming a new homunculus?
There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the
candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will
immediately meet the dawn. Down this path, master, this one! Farewell! It's
time for me to go!'
'Farewell!' Margarita and the master answered Woland in one cry. Then
the black Woland, heedless of any road, threw himself into a gap, and his
retinue noisily hurried down after him. There were no rocks, no platform, no
path of moonlight, no Yershalaim around. The black steeds also vanished. The
master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began straight away,
immediately after the midnight moon.
The master walked with his friend in the brilliance of the first rays
of morning over a mossy little stone bridge. They crossed it. The faithful
lovers left the stream behind and walked down the sandy path.
'Listen to the stillness,' Margarita said to the master, and the sand
rustled under her bare feet, `listen and enjoy what you were not given in
life - peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been
given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting
vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home.
I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love,
those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for
you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the
candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and
eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will
strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to
drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.'
Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the master to their eternal home,
and it seemed to the master that Margarita's words flowed in the same way as
the stream they had left behind flowed and whispered, and the master's
memory, the master's anxious, needled memory began to fade. Someone was
setting the master free, as he himself had just set free the hero he had
created. This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the
astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator
of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.
Epilogue.
But all the same - what happened later in Moscow, after that Saturday
evening when Woland left the capital, having disappeared from Sparrow Hills
at sunset with his retinue?
Of the fact that, for a long time, a dense hum of the most incredible
rumours went all over the capital and very quickly spread to remote and
forsaken provincial places as well, nothing need be said. It is even
nauseating to repeat such rumours.
The writer of these truthful lines himself, personally, on a trip to
Feodosiya, heard a story on the train about two thousand persons in Moscow
coming out of a theatre stark-naked in the literal sense of the word and in
that fashion returning home in taxi-cabs.
The whisper 'unclean powers' was heard in queues waiting at dairy
stores, in tram-cars, shops, apartments, kitchens, on trains both suburban
and long-distance, in stations big and small, at summer resorts and on
beaches.
The most developed and cultured people, to be sure, took no part in
this tale-telling about the unclean powers that had visited Moscow, even
laughed at them and tried to bring the tellers to reason. But all the same a
fact, as they say, is a fact, and to brush it aside without explanations is
simply impossible: someone had visited the capital. The nice little cinders
left over from Griboedov's, and many other things as well, confirmed that
only too eloquently.
Cultured people adopted the view of the investigation: it had been the
work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists with a superb command of
their art.
Measures for catching them, in Moscow as well as outside it, were of
course immediately and energetically taken, but, most regrettably, produced
no results. The one calling himself Woland disappeared with all his company
and neither returned to Moscow nor appeared anywhere else, and did not
manifest himself in any way. Quite naturally, the suggestion emerged that he
had fled abroad, but there, too, he gave no signs of himself.
The investigation of his case continued for a long time. Because, in
truth, it was a monstrous case! Not to mention four burned-down buildings
and hundreds of people driven mad, there had been murders. Of two this could
be said with certainty: of Berlioz, and of that ill-fated employee of the
bureau for acquainting foreigners with places of interest in Moscow, the
former Baron Meigel. They had been murdered. The charred bones of the latter
were discovered in apartment no.50 on Sadovaya Street after the fire was put
out. Yes, there were victims, and these victims called for investigation.
But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the
capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.
Approximately a hundred of these peaceful and useful animals, devoted
to mankind, were shot or otherwise exterminated in various parts of the
country. About a dozen cats, some badly disfigured, were delivered to police
stations in various cities. For instance, in Armavir one of these perfectly
guiltless beasts was brought to the police by some citizen with its front
paws tied.
This cat had been ambushed by the citizen at the very moment when the
animal, with a thievish look (how can it be helped if cats have this look?
It is not because they are depraved, but because they are afraid lest some
beings stronger than themselves - dogs or people - cause them some harm or
offence. Both are very easy to do, but I assure you there is no credit in
doing so, no, none at all!), so, then, with a thievish look the cat was for
some reason about to dash into the burdock.
Falling upon the cat and tearing his necktie off to bind it, the
citizen muttered venomously and threateningly:
'Aha! So now you've been so good as to come to our Armavir, mister
hypnotist? Well, we're not afraid of you here. Don't pretend to be dumb! We
know what kind of goose you are!'
The citizen brought the cat to the police, dragging the poor beast by
its front paws, bound with a green necktie, giving it little kicks to make
the cat walk not otherwise than on its hind legs.
`You quit that,' cried the citizen, accompanied by whistling boys,
'quit playing the fool! It won't do! Kindly walk like everybody else!'
The black cat only rolled its martyred eyes. Being deprived by nature
of the gift of speech, it could not vindicate itself in any way. The poor
beast owed its salvation first of all to the police, and then to its owner -
a venerable old widow. As soon as the cat was delivered to the police
station, it was realized that the citizen smelled rather strongly of
alcohol, as a result of which his evidence was at once subject to doubt. And
the little old lady, having meanwhile learned from neighbours that her cat
had been hauled in, rushed to the station and arrived in the nick of time.
She gave the most flattering references for the cat, explained that she
had known it for five years, since it was a kitten, that she vouched for it
as for her own self, and proved that it had never been known to do anything
bad and had never been to Moscow. As it had been born in Armavir, so there
it had grown up and learned the catching of mice.
The cat was untied and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it's
true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.
Besides cats, some minor unpleasantnesses befell certain persons.
Detained for a short time were: in Leningrad, the citizens Wolman and
Wolper; in Saratov, Kiev and Kharkov, three Volodins; in Kazan, one Volokh;
and in Penza - this for totally unknown reasons - doctor of chemical
sciences Vetchinkevich. True, he was enormously tall, very swarthy and
dark-haired.
In various places, besides that, nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two
Karavaevs were caught.
A certain citizen was taken off the Sebastopol train and bound at the
Belgorod station. This citizen had decided to entertain his fellow
passengers with card tricks.
In Yaroslavl, a citizen came to a restaurant at lunch-time carrying a
primus which he had just picked up from being repaired. The moment they saw
him, the two doormen abandoned their posts in the coatroom and fled, and
after them fled all the restaurant's customers and personnel. With that, in
some inexplicable fashion, the girl at the cash register had all the money
disappear on her.
There was much else, but one cannot remember everything.
Again and again justice must be done to the investigation. Every
attempt was made not only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their
mischief. And it all was explained, and these explanations cannot but be
acknowledged as sensible and irrefutable.
Representatives of the investigation and experienced psychiatrists
established that members of the criminal gang, or one of them perhaps
(suspicion fell mainly on Koroviev), were hypnotists of unprecedented power,
who could show themselves not in the place where they actually were, but in
imaginary, shifted positions. Along with that, they could freely suggest to
those they encountered that certain things or people were where they
actually were not, and, contrariwise, could remove from the field of vision
things or people that were in fact to be found within that field of vision.
In the light of such explanations, decidedly everything was clear, even
what the citizens found most troublesome, the apparently quite inexplicable
invulnerability of the cat, shot at in apartment no.50 during the attempt to
put him under arrest.
There had been no cat on the chandelier, naturally, nor had anyone even
thought of returning their fire, the shooters had been aiming at an empty
spot, while Koroviev, having suggested that the cat was acting up on the
chandelier, was free to stand behind the shooters' backs, mugging and
enjoying his enormous, albeit criminally employed, capacity for suggestion.
It was he, of course, who had set fire to the apartment by spilling the
benzene.
Styopa Likhodeev had, of course, never gone to any Yalta (such a stunt
was beyond even Koroviev's powers), nor had he sent any telegrams from
there. After fainting in the jeweller's wife's apartment, frightened by a
trick of Koroviev's, who had shown him a cat holding a pickled mushroom on a
fork, he lay there until Koroviev, jeering at him, capped him with a shaggy
felt hat and sent him to the Moscow airport, having first suggested to the
representatives of the investigation who went to meet Styopa that Styopa
would be getting off the plane from Sebastopol.
True, the criminal investigation department in Yalta maintained that
they had received the barefoot Styopa, and had sent telegrams concerning
Styopa to Moscow, but no copies of these telegrams were found in the files,
from which the sad but absolutely invincible conclusion was drawn that the
hypnotizing gang was able to hypnotize at an enormous distance, and not only
individual persons but even whole groups of them.
Under these circumstances, the criminals were able to drive people of
the sturdiest psychic make-up out of their minds. To say nothing of such
trifles as the pack of cards in the pocket of someone in the stalls, the
women's disappearing dresses, or the miaowing beret, or other things of that
sort! Such stunts can be pulled by any professional hypnotist of average
ability on any stage, including the uncomplicated trick of tearing the head
off the master of ceremonies. The talking cat was also sheer nonsense. To
present people with such a cat, it is enough to have a command of the basic
principles of ventriloquism, and scarcely anyone will doubt that Koroviev's
art went significantly beyond those principles.
Yes, the point here lay not at all in packs of cards, or the false
letters in Nikanor Ivanovich's briefcase! These were all trifles! It was he,
Koroviev, who had sent Berlioz to certain death under the tram-car. It was
he who had driven the poor poet Ivan Homeless crazy, he who had made him
have visions, see ancient Yershalaim in tormenting dreams, and sun-scorched,
waterless Bald Mountain with three men hanging on posts. It was he and his
gang who had made Margarita Nikolaevna and her housekeeper Natasha disappear
from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigation considered this matter with
special attention. It had to find out if the two women had been abducted by
the gang of murderers and arsonists or had fled voluntarily with the
criminal company. On the basis of the absurd and incoherent evidence of
Nikolai Ivanovich, and considering the strange and insane note Margarita
Nikolaevna had left for her husband, the note in which she wrote that she
had gone off to become a witch, as well as the circumstance that Natasha had
disappeared leaving all her clothes behind, the investigation concluded that
both mistress and housekeeper, like many others, had been hypnotized, and
had thus been abducted by the band. There also emerged the probably quite
correct thought that the criminals had been attracted by the beauty of the
two women.
Yet what remained completely unclear to the investigation was the
gang's motive in abducting the mental patient who called himself the master
from the psychiatric clinic. This they never succeeded in establishing, nor
did they succeed in obtaining the abducted man's last name. Thus he vanished
for ever under the dead alias of number one-eighteen from the first
building.
And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to
an end, as everything generally comes to an end.
Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev
and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered
from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those
changes are, they still ought to be noted.
Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the
clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety,
and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets:
the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious.
Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every
night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly
subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without
his head, was much too painful.
And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable
dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained
with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the
full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking
around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since
he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the
master of ceremonies retired and started living on his savings, which, by
his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.
He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal
popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible
even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance,
never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the
Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice:
`May I help you?' And to the request that Varenukha be called to the
phone, the same voice hastens to answer: 'At your service.' And, oh, how
Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!
Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety.
Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days,
Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a
large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine
altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly
improved his health. They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from
women.
The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky
the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several
years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head
wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the
Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the
Variety by Rimsky's wife. Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his
strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen
the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its
way to the lower latch.
Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children's
marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to
run into the much-esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Semplevarov on matters of
acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed
manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled
mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over
this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady
Apollonovich's relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as
they had been, so they remained, no matter how he tried to improve them.
Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady
Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he
had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for
free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either
paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation.
Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a
still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa
Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a
black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered
a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple
that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: `Serves him
right!'
Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the
popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole
company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with
each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line
were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and
that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.
Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely
nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually
existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed,
nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova,
who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden
trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under
the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The only living person to fly into this
dream was precisely Sawa Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it
only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich's memory owing to his
frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.
So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only
existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by
Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.
Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland,
on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some
reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on
his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the
completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum
of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair
of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back. But, alas, he did not find the
builder's little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a
fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was
living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was
sitting in Rimsky's office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of
Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy. Ivan Savelyevich's
only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight,
because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly
has never in his life met 'such scum as this Aloisy', and he supposedly
expects anything you like from this Aloisy.
However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been
known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course
we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei
Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months
after Woland's appearance in Moscow.
Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in
this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not
for everyone.
Each year, with the festal spring full moon,' a man of about thirty or
thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch's
Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a
researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan
Nikolaevich Ponyrev.
Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on
which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon
breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the
start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the
former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its
height.
Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands
everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal
hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that
there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon.
As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once
hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill
with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and
sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing
can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to
the Patriarch's Ponds.
Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes,
squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.
Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his
place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing
eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.
He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and
steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet
unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon-washed on the side with
the triple bay window and dark on the other.
The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in
the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the
night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one
and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.
He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing
a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan
Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same
dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan
Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly
turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that
they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear
on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart. Here
he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man
will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air
with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp
his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and
rather loudly:
'Venus! Venus! ... Ah, fool that I am! ...'
'Gods, gods!' Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the
fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. 'Here
is one more of the moon's victims ... Yes, one more victim, like me...'
And the seated man will go on talking:
'Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn't I fly off with her? What were you
afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old
cretin! ...'
It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion
bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings
out:
'Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch
malaria? Come and have tea!'
Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a
lying voice:
'I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so
nice! ...'
And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at
the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.
'Lying, he's lying! Oh, gods, how he's lying!' Ivan Nikolaevich mutters
as he leaves the fence. 'It's not the air that draws him to the garden, he
sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up
there! Ah, I'd pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus
is that he's lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch
her! ...'
And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to
notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go
to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the
sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful
cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her,
prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in
alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.
The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep
without apprehensions. After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till
morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to
her.
It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws
pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some
unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his
voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and
has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as
the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and
heaving itself upon the earth, as happens only during world catastrophes.
After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A
broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a
white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk
towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a
disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they
want to reach some understanding.
'Gods, gods!' says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to
his companion. `Such a banal execution! But, please,' here the face turns
from haughty to imploring, `tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell
me, it never happened?'
'Well, of course it never happened,' his companion replies in a hoarse
voice, 'you imagined it.'
'And you can swear it to me?' the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.
`I swear it!' replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some
reason.
'I need nothing more!' the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice
and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind
them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.
Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it
and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances
and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream,
and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances
around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number
one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his
arms out to him and asks greedily:
'So it ended with that?'
'It ended with that, my disciple,' answers number one-eighteen, and
then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:
'Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends... And
I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it
should be ...'
She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches
out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together
with her companion goes towards the moon...
Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on
Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the
room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan
Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.
The next morning he wakes up silent but perfecdy calm and well. His
needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble
the professor - neither the noseless killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth
procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.
[1928--1940]
Epigraph
1. The epigraph comes from the scene entitled 'Faust's Study' in the
first part of the drama Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1842). The
question is asked by Faust; the answer comes from the demon Mephistopheles.
Book One
Chapter1: Never Talk with Strangers
1. the Patriarch's Ponds: Bulgakov uses the old name for what in 1918
was rechristened 'Pioneer Ponds'. Originally these were three ponds, only
one of which remains, on the place where Philaret, eighteenth-century
patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, had his residence.
2. Berlioz: Bulgakov names several of his characters after composers.
In addition to Berlioz, there will be the financial director Rimsky and the
psychiatrist Stravinsky. The efforts of critics to find some meaning behind
this fact seem rather strained.
3. Massolit: An invented but plausible contraction parodying the many
contractions introduced in post-revolutionary Russia. There will be others
further on - Dramlit House (House for Dramatists and Literary Workers),
findirector (financial director), and so on.
4. Homeless: In early versions of the novel, Bulgakov called his poet
Bezrodny (Tastless' or 'Familyless'). Many `proletarian' writers adopted
such pen-names, the most famous being Alexei Peshkov, who called himself
Maxim Gorky (gorky meaning 'bitter'). Others called themselves Golodny
('Hungry'), Besposhchadny ('Merciless'), Pribludny ('Stray'). Worthy of
special note here is the poet Efim Pridvorov, who called himself Demian
Bedny ('Poor'), author of violent anti-religious poems. It may have been the
reading of Bedny that originally sparked Bulgakov's impulse to write The
Master and Margarita. In his Journal of 1925 (the so-called 'Confiscated
Journal' which turned up in the files of the KGB and was published in 1990),
Bulgakov noted: 'Jesus Christ is presented as a scoundrel and swindler...
There is no name for this crime.'
5. Kislovodsk: Literally `acid waters', a popular resort in the
northern Caucasus, famous for its mineral springs.
6. Philo of Alexandria: (20 BC-AD 54), Greek philosopher of Jewish
origin, a biblical exegete and theologian, influenced both the
Neo-Platonists and early Christian thinkers.
7. Flavius Josephus: (AD 57-100), Jewish general and historian, born in
Jerusalem, the author of The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews.
Incidentally, Berlioz is mistaken: Christ is mentioned in the latter work.
8. Tacitus's [famous] Annals: A work, covering the years AD 14-66, by
Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD 55-120). He also wrote a History of
the years AD 69-70, among other works. Modern scholarship rejects the
opinion that the passage Berlioz refers to here is a later interpolation.
9. Osiris: Ancient Egyptian protector of the dead, brother and husband
of Isis, and father of the hawk-headed Horus, a 'corn god', annually killed
and resurrected.
10. Tammuz: A Syro-Phoenician demi-god, like Osiris a spirit of annual
vegetation.
11. Marduk: Babylonian sun-god, leader of a revolt against the old
deities and institutor of a new order.
12. Vitzliputzli: Also known as Huitzilopochdi, the Aztec god of war,
to whom human sacrifices were offered.
13. a poodle's head: In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles first gets to
Faust by taking the form of a black poodle.
14. a foreigner: Foreigners aroused both curiosity and suspicion in
Soviet Russia, representing both the glamour of 'abroad' and the possibility
of espionage.
15. Adonis: Greek version of the Syro-Phoenician demi-god Tammuz.
16. Attis: Phrygian god, companion to Cybele. He was castrated and bled
to death.
17. Mithras: God of light in ancient Persian Mazdaism.
18. Magi: The three wise men from the east (a magus was a member of the
Persian priestly caste) who visited the newborn Jesus (Matt. 2:1--12).
19. restless old Immanuel: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German idealist
philosopher, thought that the moral law innate in man implied freedom,
immortality and the existence of God.
20.Schiller: Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), German poet and
playwright, a liberal idealist.
21. Strauss: David Strauss (1808-74), German theologian, author of a
the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail.
Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit
melancholy little lights somewhere far below - now no longer interesting and
necessary either for Margarita or for the master - alien lights. Night was
outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting
white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.
Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders' cloaks and,
tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when
Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the
appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when,
from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising
to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable
magic garments drowned in the mists.
Hardly recognizable as Koroviev-Fagott, the self-appointed interpreter
to the mysterious consultant who needed no interpreting, was he who now flew
just beside Woland, to the right of the master's friend. In place of him who
had left Sparrow Hills in a ragged circus costume under the name of
Koroviev-Fagott, there now rode, softly clinking the golden chains of the
bridle, a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face. He
rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not
interested in the earth, he was thinking something of his own, flying beside
Woland.
"Why has he changed so?' Margarita quietly asked Woland to the
whistling of the wind.
This knight once made an unfortunate joke,' replied Woland, turning his
face with its quietly burning eye to Margarita. 'The pun he thought up, in a
discussion about light and darkness, was not altogether good. And after that
the knight had to go on joking a bit more and longer than he supposed. But
this is one of the nights when accounts are settled. The knight has paid up
and closed his account.'
Night also tore off Behemoth's fluffy tail, pulled off his fur and
scattered it in tufts over the swamps. He who had been a cat, entertaining
the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim youth, a demon-page, the
best jester the world has ever seen. Now he, too, grew quiet and flew
noiselessly, setting his young face towards the light that streamed from the
moon.
At the far side, the steel of his armour glittering, flew Azazello. The
moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a
trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false. Azazello's eyes were both the
same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in
his true form, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.
Margarita could not see herself, but she saw very well how the master
had changed. His hair was now white in the moonlight and gathered behind in
a braid, and it flew on the wind. When the wind blew the cloak away from the
master's legs, Margarita saw the stars of spurs on his jackboots, now going
out, now lighting up. Like the demon-youth, the master flew with his eyes
fixed on the moon, yet smiling to it, as to a close and beloved friend, and,
from a habit acquired in room no.118, murmuring something to himself.
And, finally, Woland also flew in his true image. Margarita could not
have said what his horse's bridle was made of, but thought it might be
chains of moonlight, and the horse itself was a mass of darkness, and the
horse's mane a storm cloud, and the rider's spurs the white flecks of stars.
Thus they flew in silence for a long time, until the place itself began
to change below them. The melancholy forests drowned in earthly darkness and
drew with them the dim blades of the rivers. Boulders appeared and began to
gleam below, with black gaps between them where the moonlight did not
penetrate.
Woland reined in his horse on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and the
riders then proceeded at a walk, listening to the crunch of flint and stone
under the horses' shoes. Moonlight flooded the platform greenly and
brightly, and soon Margarita made out an armchair in this deserted place and
in it the white figure of a seated man. Possibly the seated man was deaf, or
else too sunk in his own thoughts. He did not hear the stony earth shudder
under the horses' weight, and the riders approached him without disturbing
him.
The moon helped Margarita well, it shone better than the best electric
lantern, and Margarita saw that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind,
rubbed his hands fitfully, and peered with those same unseeing eyes at the
disc of the moon. Now Margarita saw that beside the heavy stone chair, on
which sparks glittered in the moonlight, lay a dark, huge, sharp-eared dog,
and, like its master, it gazed anxiously at the moon. Pieces of a broken jug
were scattered by the seated man's feet and an undrying black-red puddle
spread there. The riders stopped their horses.
Your novel has been read,' Woland began, turning to the master, 'and
the only thing said about it was that, unfortunately, it is not finished.
So, then, I wanted to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he
has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon
comes, as you see, he is tormented by insomnia. It torments not only him,
but also his faithful guardian, the dog.
If it is true that cowardice is the most grievous vice, then the dog at
least is not guilty of it. Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared.
Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.'
`What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face
clouded over with compassion.
'He says one and the same thing,' Woland replied. `He says that even
the moon gives him no peace, and that his is a bad job. That is what he
always says when he is not asleep, and when he sleeps, he dreams one and the
same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and
talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he insists, he never finished
what he was saying that time, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring
month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he never manages to get on to
this path, and no one comes to him. Then there's no help for it, he must
talk to himself. However, one does need some diversity, and to his talk
about the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates
his immortality and his unheard-of fame. He maintains that he would
willingly exchange his lot for that of the ragged tramp Matthew Levi.'
`Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn't that too much?'
asked Margarita.
`Repeating the story with Frieda?' said Woland. 'But don't trouble
yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built
on that.'
'Let him go!' Margarita suddenly cried piercingly, as she had cried
once as a witch, and at this cry a stone fell somewhere in the mountains and
tumbled down the ledges into the abyss, filling the mountains with rumbling.
But Margarita could not have said whether it was the rumbling of its fall or
the rumbling of satanic laughter. In any case, Woland was laughing as he
glanced at Margarita and said:
'Don't shout in the mountains, he's accustomed to avalanches anyway,
and it won't rouse him. You don't need to ask for him, Margarita, because
the one he so yearns to talk with has already asked for him.' Here Woland
turned to the master and said:
'Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!'
The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless
and looked at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands to his mouth and
cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested
mountains:
'You're free! You're free! He's waiting for you!'
The mountains turned the master's voice to thunder, and by this same
thunder they were destroyed. The accursed rocky walls collapsed. Only the
platform with the stone armchair remained. 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. The path of
moonlight so long awaited by the procurator stretched right to this garden,
and the first to rush down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white
cloak with blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in
a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was weeping or
laughing, or what he shouted. It could only be seen that, following his
faithful guardian, he, too, rushed headlong down the path of moonlight.
`I'm to follow him there?' the master asked anxiously, holding the
bridle.
'No,' replied Woland, 'why run after what is already finished?'
There, then?' the master asked, turning and pointing back, where the
recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of its convent, with the
sun broken to smithereens in its windows, now wove itself behind them.
'Not there, either,' replied Woland, and his voice thickened and flowed
over the rocks. `Romantic master! He, whom the hero you invented and have
just set free so yearns to see, has read your novel.' Here Woland turned to
Margarita: `Margarita Nikolaevna! It is impossible not to believe that you
have tried to think up the best future for the master, but, really, what I
am offering you, and what Yeshua has asked for you, is better still! Leave
them to each other,' Woland said, leaning towards the master's saddle from
his own, pointing to where the procurator had gone, 'let's not interfere
with them. And maybe they'll still arrive at something.' Here Woland waved
his arm in the direction of Yershalaim, and it went out.
'And there, too,' Woland pointed behind them, 'what are you going to do
in the little basement?' Here the sun broken up in the glass went out.
'Why?' Woland went on persuasively and gently, 'oh, thrice-romantic
master, can it be that you don't want to go strolling with your friend in
the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening
listen to Schubert's music? Can it be that you won't like writing with a
goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don't want to sit over a
retort like Faust, in hopes that you'll succeed in forming a new homunculus?
There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the
candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will
immediately meet the dawn. Down this path, master, this one! Farewell! It's
time for me to go!'
'Farewell!' Margarita and the master answered Woland in one cry. Then
the black Woland, heedless of any road, threw himself into a gap, and his
retinue noisily hurried down after him. There were no rocks, no platform, no
path of moonlight, no Yershalaim around. The black steeds also vanished. The
master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began straight away,
immediately after the midnight moon.
The master walked with his friend in the brilliance of the first rays
of morning over a mossy little stone bridge. They crossed it. The faithful
lovers left the stream behind and walked down the sandy path.
'Listen to the stillness,' Margarita said to the master, and the sand
rustled under her bare feet, `listen and enjoy what you were not given in
life - peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been
given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting
vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home.
I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love,
those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for
you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the
candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and
eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will
strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to
drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.'
Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the master to their eternal home,
and it seemed to the master that Margarita's words flowed in the same way as
the stream they had left behind flowed and whispered, and the master's
memory, the master's anxious, needled memory began to fade. Someone was
setting the master free, as he himself had just set free the hero he had
created. This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the
astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator
of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.
Epilogue.
But all the same - what happened later in Moscow, after that Saturday
evening when Woland left the capital, having disappeared from Sparrow Hills
at sunset with his retinue?
Of the fact that, for a long time, a dense hum of the most incredible
rumours went all over the capital and very quickly spread to remote and
forsaken provincial places as well, nothing need be said. It is even
nauseating to repeat such rumours.
The writer of these truthful lines himself, personally, on a trip to
Feodosiya, heard a story on the train about two thousand persons in Moscow
coming out of a theatre stark-naked in the literal sense of the word and in
that fashion returning home in taxi-cabs.
The whisper 'unclean powers' was heard in queues waiting at dairy
stores, in tram-cars, shops, apartments, kitchens, on trains both suburban
and long-distance, in stations big and small, at summer resorts and on
beaches.
The most developed and cultured people, to be sure, took no part in
this tale-telling about the unclean powers that had visited Moscow, even
laughed at them and tried to bring the tellers to reason. But all the same a
fact, as they say, is a fact, and to brush it aside without explanations is
simply impossible: someone had visited the capital. The nice little cinders
left over from Griboedov's, and many other things as well, confirmed that
only too eloquently.
Cultured people adopted the view of the investigation: it had been the
work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists with a superb command of
their art.
Measures for catching them, in Moscow as well as outside it, were of
course immediately and energetically taken, but, most regrettably, produced
no results. The one calling himself Woland disappeared with all his company
and neither returned to Moscow nor appeared anywhere else, and did not
manifest himself in any way. Quite naturally, the suggestion emerged that he
had fled abroad, but there, too, he gave no signs of himself.
The investigation of his case continued for a long time. Because, in
truth, it was a monstrous case! Not to mention four burned-down buildings
and hundreds of people driven mad, there had been murders. Of two this could
be said with certainty: of Berlioz, and of that ill-fated employee of the
bureau for acquainting foreigners with places of interest in Moscow, the
former Baron Meigel. They had been murdered. The charred bones of the latter
were discovered in apartment no.50 on Sadovaya Street after the fire was put
out. Yes, there were victims, and these victims called for investigation.
But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the
capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.
Approximately a hundred of these peaceful and useful animals, devoted
to mankind, were shot or otherwise exterminated in various parts of the
country. About a dozen cats, some badly disfigured, were delivered to police
stations in various cities. For instance, in Armavir one of these perfectly
guiltless beasts was brought to the police by some citizen with its front
paws tied.
This cat had been ambushed by the citizen at the very moment when the
animal, with a thievish look (how can it be helped if cats have this look?
It is not because they are depraved, but because they are afraid lest some
beings stronger than themselves - dogs or people - cause them some harm or
offence. Both are very easy to do, but I assure you there is no credit in
doing so, no, none at all!), so, then, with a thievish look the cat was for
some reason about to dash into the burdock.
Falling upon the cat and tearing his necktie off to bind it, the
citizen muttered venomously and threateningly:
'Aha! So now you've been so good as to come to our Armavir, mister
hypnotist? Well, we're not afraid of you here. Don't pretend to be dumb! We
know what kind of goose you are!'
The citizen brought the cat to the police, dragging the poor beast by
its front paws, bound with a green necktie, giving it little kicks to make
the cat walk not otherwise than on its hind legs.
`You quit that,' cried the citizen, accompanied by whistling boys,
'quit playing the fool! It won't do! Kindly walk like everybody else!'
The black cat only rolled its martyred eyes. Being deprived by nature
of the gift of speech, it could not vindicate itself in any way. The poor
beast owed its salvation first of all to the police, and then to its owner -
a venerable old widow. As soon as the cat was delivered to the police
station, it was realized that the citizen smelled rather strongly of
alcohol, as a result of which his evidence was at once subject to doubt. And
the little old lady, having meanwhile learned from neighbours that her cat
had been hauled in, rushed to the station and arrived in the nick of time.
She gave the most flattering references for the cat, explained that she
had known it for five years, since it was a kitten, that she vouched for it
as for her own self, and proved that it had never been known to do anything
bad and had never been to Moscow. As it had been born in Armavir, so there
it had grown up and learned the catching of mice.
The cat was untied and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it's
true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.
Besides cats, some minor unpleasantnesses befell certain persons.
Detained for a short time were: in Leningrad, the citizens Wolman and
Wolper; in Saratov, Kiev and Kharkov, three Volodins; in Kazan, one Volokh;
and in Penza - this for totally unknown reasons - doctor of chemical
sciences Vetchinkevich. True, he was enormously tall, very swarthy and
dark-haired.
In various places, besides that, nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two
Karavaevs were caught.
A certain citizen was taken off the Sebastopol train and bound at the
Belgorod station. This citizen had decided to entertain his fellow
passengers with card tricks.
In Yaroslavl, a citizen came to a restaurant at lunch-time carrying a
primus which he had just picked up from being repaired. The moment they saw
him, the two doormen abandoned their posts in the coatroom and fled, and
after them fled all the restaurant's customers and personnel. With that, in
some inexplicable fashion, the girl at the cash register had all the money
disappear on her.
There was much else, but one cannot remember everything.
Again and again justice must be done to the investigation. Every
attempt was made not only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their
mischief. And it all was explained, and these explanations cannot but be
acknowledged as sensible and irrefutable.
Representatives of the investigation and experienced psychiatrists
established that members of the criminal gang, or one of them perhaps
(suspicion fell mainly on Koroviev), were hypnotists of unprecedented power,
who could show themselves not in the place where they actually were, but in
imaginary, shifted positions. Along with that, they could freely suggest to
those they encountered that certain things or people were where they
actually were not, and, contrariwise, could remove from the field of vision
things or people that were in fact to be found within that field of vision.
In the light of such explanations, decidedly everything was clear, even
what the citizens found most troublesome, the apparently quite inexplicable
invulnerability of the cat, shot at in apartment no.50 during the attempt to
put him under arrest.
There had been no cat on the chandelier, naturally, nor had anyone even
thought of returning their fire, the shooters had been aiming at an empty
spot, while Koroviev, having suggested that the cat was acting up on the
chandelier, was free to stand behind the shooters' backs, mugging and
enjoying his enormous, albeit criminally employed, capacity for suggestion.
It was he, of course, who had set fire to the apartment by spilling the
benzene.
Styopa Likhodeev had, of course, never gone to any Yalta (such a stunt
was beyond even Koroviev's powers), nor had he sent any telegrams from
there. After fainting in the jeweller's wife's apartment, frightened by a
trick of Koroviev's, who had shown him a cat holding a pickled mushroom on a
fork, he lay there until Koroviev, jeering at him, capped him with a shaggy
felt hat and sent him to the Moscow airport, having first suggested to the
representatives of the investigation who went to meet Styopa that Styopa
would be getting off the plane from Sebastopol.
True, the criminal investigation department in Yalta maintained that
they had received the barefoot Styopa, and had sent telegrams concerning
Styopa to Moscow, but no copies of these telegrams were found in the files,
from which the sad but absolutely invincible conclusion was drawn that the
hypnotizing gang was able to hypnotize at an enormous distance, and not only
individual persons but even whole groups of them.
Under these circumstances, the criminals were able to drive people of
the sturdiest psychic make-up out of their minds. To say nothing of such
trifles as the pack of cards in the pocket of someone in the stalls, the
women's disappearing dresses, or the miaowing beret, or other things of that
sort! Such stunts can be pulled by any professional hypnotist of average
ability on any stage, including the uncomplicated trick of tearing the head
off the master of ceremonies. The talking cat was also sheer nonsense. To
present people with such a cat, it is enough to have a command of the basic
principles of ventriloquism, and scarcely anyone will doubt that Koroviev's
art went significantly beyond those principles.
Yes, the point here lay not at all in packs of cards, or the false
letters in Nikanor Ivanovich's briefcase! These were all trifles! It was he,
Koroviev, who had sent Berlioz to certain death under the tram-car. It was
he who had driven the poor poet Ivan Homeless crazy, he who had made him
have visions, see ancient Yershalaim in tormenting dreams, and sun-scorched,
waterless Bald Mountain with three men hanging on posts. It was he and his
gang who had made Margarita Nikolaevna and her housekeeper Natasha disappear
from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigation considered this matter with
special attention. It had to find out if the two women had been abducted by
the gang of murderers and arsonists or had fled voluntarily with the
criminal company. On the basis of the absurd and incoherent evidence of
Nikolai Ivanovich, and considering the strange and insane note Margarita
Nikolaevna had left for her husband, the note in which she wrote that she
had gone off to become a witch, as well as the circumstance that Natasha had
disappeared leaving all her clothes behind, the investigation concluded that
both mistress and housekeeper, like many others, had been hypnotized, and
had thus been abducted by the band. There also emerged the probably quite
correct thought that the criminals had been attracted by the beauty of the
two women.
Yet what remained completely unclear to the investigation was the
gang's motive in abducting the mental patient who called himself the master
from the psychiatric clinic. This they never succeeded in establishing, nor
did they succeed in obtaining the abducted man's last name. Thus he vanished
for ever under the dead alias of number one-eighteen from the first
building.
And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to
an end, as everything generally comes to an end.
Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev
and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered
from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those
changes are, they still ought to be noted.
Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the
clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety,
and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets:
the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious.
Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every
night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly
subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without
his head, was much too painful.
And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable
dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained
with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the
full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking
around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since
he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the
master of ceremonies retired and started living on his savings, which, by
his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.
He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal
popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible
even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance,
never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the
Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice:
`May I help you?' And to the request that Varenukha be called to the
phone, the same voice hastens to answer: 'At your service.' And, oh, how
Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!
Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety.
Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days,
Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a
large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine
altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly
improved his health. They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from
women.
The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky
the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several
years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head
wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the
Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the
Variety by Rimsky's wife. Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his
strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen
the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its
way to the lower latch.
Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children's
marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to
run into the much-esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Semplevarov on matters of
acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed
manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled
mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over
this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady
Apollonovich's relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as
they had been, so they remained, no matter how he tried to improve them.
Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady
Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he
had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for
free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either
paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation.
Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a
still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa
Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a
black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered
a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple
that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: `Serves him
right!'
Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the
popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole
company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with
each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line
were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and
that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.
Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely
nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually
existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed,
nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova,
who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden
trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under
the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The only living person to fly into this
dream was precisely Sawa Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it
only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich's memory owing to his
frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.
So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only
existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by
Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.
Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland,
on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some
reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on
his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the
completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum
of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair
of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back. But, alas, he did not find the
builder's little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a
fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was
living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was
sitting in Rimsky's office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of
Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy. Ivan Savelyevich's
only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight,
because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly
has never in his life met 'such scum as this Aloisy', and he supposedly
expects anything you like from this Aloisy.
However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been
known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course
we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei
Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months
after Woland's appearance in Moscow.
Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in
this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not
for everyone.
Each year, with the festal spring full moon,' a man of about thirty or
thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch's
Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a
researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan
Nikolaevich Ponyrev.
Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on
which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon
breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the
start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the
former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its
height.
Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands
everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal
hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that
there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon.
As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once
hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill
with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and
sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing
can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to
the Patriarch's Ponds.
Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes,
squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.
Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his
place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing
eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.
He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and
steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet
unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon-washed on the side with
the triple bay window and dark on the other.
The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in
the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the
night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one
and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.
He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing
a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan
Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same
dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan
Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly
turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that
they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear
on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart. Here
he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man
will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air
with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp
his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and
rather loudly:
'Venus! Venus! ... Ah, fool that I am! ...'
'Gods, gods!' Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the
fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. 'Here
is one more of the moon's victims ... Yes, one more victim, like me...'
And the seated man will go on talking:
'Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn't I fly off with her? What were you
afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old
cretin! ...'
It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion
bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings
out:
'Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch
malaria? Come and have tea!'
Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a
lying voice:
'I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so
nice! ...'
And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at
the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.
'Lying, he's lying! Oh, gods, how he's lying!' Ivan Nikolaevich mutters
as he leaves the fence. 'It's not the air that draws him to the garden, he
sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up
there! Ah, I'd pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus
is that he's lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch
her! ...'
And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to
notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go
to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the
sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful
cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her,
prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in
alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.
The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep
without apprehensions. After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till
morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to
her.
It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws
pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some
unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his
voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and
has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as
the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and
heaving itself upon the earth, as happens only during world catastrophes.
After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A
broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a
white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk
towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a
disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they
want to reach some understanding.
'Gods, gods!' says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to
his companion. `Such a banal execution! But, please,' here the face turns
from haughty to imploring, `tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell
me, it never happened?'
'Well, of course it never happened,' his companion replies in a hoarse
voice, 'you imagined it.'
'And you can swear it to me?' the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.
`I swear it!' replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some
reason.
'I need nothing more!' the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice
and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind
them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.
Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it
and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances
and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream,
and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances
around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number
one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his
arms out to him and asks greedily:
'So it ended with that?'
'It ended with that, my disciple,' answers number one-eighteen, and
then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:
'Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends... And
I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it
should be ...'
She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches
out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together
with her companion goes towards the moon...
Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on
Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the
room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan
Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.
The next morning he wakes up silent but perfecdy calm and well. His
needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble
the professor - neither the noseless killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth
procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.
[1928--1940]
Epigraph
1. The epigraph comes from the scene entitled 'Faust's Study' in the
first part of the drama Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1842). The
question is asked by Faust; the answer comes from the demon Mephistopheles.
Book One
Chapter1: Never Talk with Strangers
1. the Patriarch's Ponds: Bulgakov uses the old name for what in 1918
was rechristened 'Pioneer Ponds'. Originally these were three ponds, only
one of which remains, on the place where Philaret, eighteenth-century
patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, had his residence.
2. Berlioz: Bulgakov names several of his characters after composers.
In addition to Berlioz, there will be the financial director Rimsky and the
psychiatrist Stravinsky. The efforts of critics to find some meaning behind
this fact seem rather strained.
3. Massolit: An invented but plausible contraction parodying the many
contractions introduced in post-revolutionary Russia. There will be others
further on - Dramlit House (House for Dramatists and Literary Workers),
findirector (financial director), and so on.
4. Homeless: In early versions of the novel, Bulgakov called his poet
Bezrodny (Tastless' or 'Familyless'). Many `proletarian' writers adopted
such pen-names, the most famous being Alexei Peshkov, who called himself
Maxim Gorky (gorky meaning 'bitter'). Others called themselves Golodny
('Hungry'), Besposhchadny ('Merciless'), Pribludny ('Stray'). Worthy of
special note here is the poet Efim Pridvorov, who called himself Demian
Bedny ('Poor'), author of violent anti-religious poems. It may have been the
reading of Bedny that originally sparked Bulgakov's impulse to write The
Master and Margarita. In his Journal of 1925 (the so-called 'Confiscated
Journal' which turned up in the files of the KGB and was published in 1990),
Bulgakov noted: 'Jesus Christ is presented as a scoundrel and swindler...
There is no name for this crime.'
5. Kislovodsk: Literally `acid waters', a popular resort in the
northern Caucasus, famous for its mineral springs.
6. Philo of Alexandria: (20 BC-AD 54), Greek philosopher of Jewish
origin, a biblical exegete and theologian, influenced both the
Neo-Platonists and early Christian thinkers.
7. Flavius Josephus: (AD 57-100), Jewish general and historian, born in
Jerusalem, the author of The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews.
Incidentally, Berlioz is mistaken: Christ is mentioned in the latter work.
8. Tacitus's [famous] Annals: A work, covering the years AD 14-66, by
Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD 55-120). He also wrote a History of
the years AD 69-70, among other works. Modern scholarship rejects the
opinion that the passage Berlioz refers to here is a later interpolation.
9. Osiris: Ancient Egyptian protector of the dead, brother and husband
of Isis, and father of the hawk-headed Horus, a 'corn god', annually killed
and resurrected.
10. Tammuz: A Syro-Phoenician demi-god, like Osiris a spirit of annual
vegetation.
11. Marduk: Babylonian sun-god, leader of a revolt against the old
deities and institutor of a new order.
12. Vitzliputzli: Also known as Huitzilopochdi, the Aztec god of war,
to whom human sacrifices were offered.
13. a poodle's head: In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles first gets to
Faust by taking the form of a black poodle.
14. a foreigner: Foreigners aroused both curiosity and suspicion in
Soviet Russia, representing both the glamour of 'abroad' and the possibility
of espionage.
15. Adonis: Greek version of the Syro-Phoenician demi-god Tammuz.
16. Attis: Phrygian god, companion to Cybele. He was castrated and bled
to death.
17. Mithras: God of light in ancient Persian Mazdaism.
18. Magi: The three wise men from the east (a magus was a member of the
Persian priestly caste) who visited the newborn Jesus (Matt. 2:1--12).
19. restless old Immanuel: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German idealist
philosopher, thought that the moral law innate in man implied freedom,
immortality and the existence of God.
20.Schiller: Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), German poet and
playwright, a liberal idealist.
21. Strauss: David Strauss (1808-74), German theologian, author of a