Master and Margarita: Bulgakov’s Belial is Breaking Boundaries
This book is growing more and more troubling.
So it's Thursday evening and I've already read the next hundred pages. Troubling though it may be, it's wildly entertaining. Walpurgis Night, anyone? I caught the abundance of Faustian poodles, but I don't know enough about twentieth century Russian politics to determine if Satan's Great Ball mimics Goethe's satire. But all that has little to do with what's bothering me, of course. Satan's murder of a human man is the problem.
The violence brought about by the demonic forces in this book has been escalating dramatically since the beginning. It began with Berlioz. Now, as far as we know Satan ultimately did not cause Berlioz's death; he merely predicted it. If we're holding Satan to a Biblical lens, this is reasonable--Acts 16 shows us that demonic forces evidently have the power to successfully predict the future. Several men then disappear nonviolently. Some saw things that had them babbling badly enough to be sent to an asylum, and one was spontaneously teleported a few hundred miles. Satan has gone from predicting misfortune to intentionally causing it. He's Satan, that's what he does. The nonviolent misfortunes shift into Varenukha being assaulted by a demonic posse and placed under some sort of spell. Demons possess and assault people, sure. Acts 19 has one demon-possessed individual mauling seven men. Then Behemoth the talking cat rips Bengalsky's head off. Now, in MOST cases decapitation is a fatal occurrence, but fortunately black magic kept this man's life preserved until his body could be safely restored (even if he went careening off the narrow trapeze of sanity upon which we all teeter). ...Can a demon do that? Doing something fatal to a man without killing him? We know they have extensive powers, but they have a boundary somewhere... In any case, this sets the standard for violence in the book. The standard is then surpassed when demonic Azazello outright murders Baron Meigel.
Every time Satan strikes darker things happen, and every time it pushes the boundaries of what a demon can and can't do. Slaughtering a human? Can a demon do that? As far as I'm aware, we never see a demon kill a human anywhere in the Bible, and God specifically told Satan that Satan could torment Job, but not kill him. This makes sense, from a Biblical standpoint: it would suck if Satan could grab a gun and kill people at a whim. Atheists would die before they had a chance to hear of God, influential Christians would die and have successful ministries cut short. It can, of course, be argued that Satan does do this by influencing humans to go on shootings and such, but that isn't what we see here. There's no human will Satan has to bend beforehand--he just waves a hand to his demonic henchman and a man is dead on the floor, only to awake in the hellish-afterlife-ball-thing and be killed a second time by Abaddon. I doubt God would allow that... assuming there is a God in this world. Are these random scenes of Pilate and heretical non-divine Jesus meant to tell us that in Bulgakov's Russia, there is no God? If Jesus wasn't a redeemer, then it makes no difference whether Satan kills or doesn't kill because all men will wind up in his hellish clutches regardless. This obviously raises questions on where the devil and Hell even came from, but... God is absent in this book despite the escalating violence, just like in Silence and Night. Christian themes are here, but Christ isn't.
Come to think, "The Second Coming" did this too... Running theme for the semester? Research paper material, at the very least.
EDIT: I commented on Sophia and Michael’s posts. And I’m LOLing after reading the comments because I honestly can’t figure out whether anyone reading this got my intended point. It maybe wasn’t a good idea for me to spew a voluminous amount of demonic theorizing with the amount of sleep I was on at the time.
So it's Thursday evening and I've already read the next hundred pages. Troubling though it may be, it's wildly entertaining. Walpurgis Night, anyone? I caught the abundance of Faustian poodles, but I don't know enough about twentieth century Russian politics to determine if Satan's Great Ball mimics Goethe's satire. But all that has little to do with what's bothering me, of course. Satan's murder of a human man is the problem.
The violence brought about by the demonic forces in this book has been escalating dramatically since the beginning. It began with Berlioz. Now, as far as we know Satan ultimately did not cause Berlioz's death; he merely predicted it. If we're holding Satan to a Biblical lens, this is reasonable--Acts 16 shows us that demonic forces evidently have the power to successfully predict the future. Several men then disappear nonviolently. Some saw things that had them babbling badly enough to be sent to an asylum, and one was spontaneously teleported a few hundred miles. Satan has gone from predicting misfortune to intentionally causing it. He's Satan, that's what he does. The nonviolent misfortunes shift into Varenukha being assaulted by a demonic posse and placed under some sort of spell. Demons possess and assault people, sure. Acts 19 has one demon-possessed individual mauling seven men. Then Behemoth the talking cat rips Bengalsky's head off. Now, in MOST cases decapitation is a fatal occurrence, but fortunately black magic kept this man's life preserved until his body could be safely restored (even if he went careening off the narrow trapeze of sanity upon which we all teeter). ...Can a demon do that? Doing something fatal to a man without killing him? We know they have extensive powers, but they have a boundary somewhere... In any case, this sets the standard for violence in the book. The standard is then surpassed when demonic Azazello outright murders Baron Meigel.
Every time Satan strikes darker things happen, and every time it pushes the boundaries of what a demon can and can't do. Slaughtering a human? Can a demon do that? As far as I'm aware, we never see a demon kill a human anywhere in the Bible, and God specifically told Satan that Satan could torment Job, but not kill him. This makes sense, from a Biblical standpoint: it would suck if Satan could grab a gun and kill people at a whim. Atheists would die before they had a chance to hear of God, influential Christians would die and have successful ministries cut short. It can, of course, be argued that Satan does do this by influencing humans to go on shootings and such, but that isn't what we see here. There's no human will Satan has to bend beforehand--he just waves a hand to his demonic henchman and a man is dead on the floor, only to awake in the hellish-afterlife-ball-thing and be killed a second time by Abaddon. I doubt God would allow that... assuming there is a God in this world. Are these random scenes of Pilate and heretical non-divine Jesus meant to tell us that in Bulgakov's Russia, there is no God? If Jesus wasn't a redeemer, then it makes no difference whether Satan kills or doesn't kill because all men will wind up in his hellish clutches regardless. This obviously raises questions on where the devil and Hell even came from, but... God is absent in this book despite the escalating violence, just like in Silence and Night. Christian themes are here, but Christ isn't.
Come to think, "The Second Coming" did this too... Running theme for the semester? Research paper material, at the very least.
EDIT: I commented on Sophia and Michael’s posts. And I’m LOLing after reading the comments because I honestly can’t figure out whether anyone reading this got my intended point. It maybe wasn’t a good idea for me to spew a voluminous amount of demonic theorizing with the amount of sleep I was on at the time.
ReplyDeleteSo, as I am writing this comment Will Brady himself is sitting right next to me and when I asked him what I should comment and he said, "Comment about how wonderful and smart I am". Well Will, even though I agree you are smart, that sadly does not meet my comment quota for my blog post credit. So, on to my actual comment. I agree that in the Bible a demon has not killed a human yet before, but remember to keep in mind that in the context of this book the Bible, or at least the new testament is mostly fiction. While Job is in indeed in the old testament, Mr. Woland has not spoken as to whether or not in the book's reality the events that take place in that are true either. I do really like though what you said at the end about the theme of God being absent throughout the books we have read so far this semester. It is certainly interesting....
You guys are a hoot! But seriously, it can be a tricky thing to assign boundaries to the forces of Hell, simply because we do not have a clear list of what they can and cannot do. According to the show "Supernatural", demons can kill anybody anytime anywhere any way they want, and they don't need permission from God to do it. I think that several demon horror movies also have demons killing humans, but I've never seen one, so I can't say for sure. The point is that our understanding of demonic power is vague at best, but one thing we can be sure of is that it is no match for the power of God. Satan has already lost. The only thing he can do now is cause a little more chaos in the world that is slipping through his fingers.
DeleteWill, bud, I appreciate your insistence into bringing Biblical text into the study of this story, but my friend I think it's a little more than just what you've said, but from an external Biblical perspective. Yes, we do see demon possession in Acts and the "torment, but not kill" order to Satan in regards to Job, but I don't think we can create too many parallels here. As you've said, there seems to be a complete absence of God in this story. I'd venture to say that the characters in this book would search for a silver lining in anything if they've been surrounded by this mass of black magic, so they would eventually create some rational thought with optimism in mind. Sadly, I don't see that ever happening.
ReplyDeleteMy honest belief of the authorship of this book is as follows: Mikhail reads the Bible--Mikhail becomes depressed because he recognizes he is sinful--misinterprets Scripture--believes there is no hope--goes to a nearby pub--gets intoxicated--proceeds to write a book about death and Satan ruling a world by using black magic, invisible witches, a talking cat, and yellow flowers that night--publishes.