The Bright Book of Life by Harold Bloom

MIKHAIL BULGAKOV'S APOCALYPSE was not published until 1966; he was still working on it when he died in 1940 at the age of forty-eight. There are a number of useful translations into English. I will rely here mostly on the one by Michael Glenny (1967) but will sometimes contrast it with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's (2001). That Bulgakov survived at all was because of a vagary of the monstrous Joseph Stalin, who had attended the writer's play The Days of the Turbins, perhaps fifteen times, and who appointed Bulgakov to direct the Moscow Art Theater. When Bulgakov encountered political difficulties again, he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting that he be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Stalin phoned and asked if he really wanted to leave. Bulgakov replied that a Russian writer had to stay in Russia, and thus received further patronage from the dictator.

The Master and Margarita is certainly great fun, but it is very uncanny and mystifying fun. I reread it and cannot keep the kaleidoscope from rotating away. That is as it should be: it is the way of a kaleidoscope. One does not expect a novel to be primarily a magic show. Here is an early encounter between Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, head of the Soviet "literary" bureaucracy MASSOLIT, and the mysterious stranger Professor Woland (Satan) who has arrived in Moscow with an incredible entourage. His band consists first of Koroviev or Fagotto, a fallen angel once master of the heavenly choir, a great illusionist whose name means "bassoon" in Russian and who can translate all languages. Fagotto has forsworn violence and has no sense of humor. Next is a giant cat, Behemoth, who together with Leviathan, was employed by God's voice out of the whirlwind in order to frighten Job into submission. In Hebrew, "Behemoth" means "beasts"; in Russian, a hippopotamus. Aside from his nasty sneering, he is as large as a hog, walks on two feet, can assume human shape, guzzles vodka and food incessantly, likes to wave a pistol and play chess. My favorite is Hella, a gorgeous redhead vampire and succubus who delights in going about naked. Last comes Azazello, the most repellent, whose name recalls Azazel, who, in the Book of Enoch, teaches seductive women to wear jewelry and makeup and men to make weapons. Azazello is cross-eyed, possesses fangs, and is Woland's hitman.