19/09/2021
Ikhail Bulgakov has been working on the novel The Master and Margarita for over 10 years. Many times he changed the plot, removed some characters and added others. In the first version of the manuscript, there was neither the Master nor his beloved, and Mikhail Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny had different names. The prototypes of the heroes were literary characters of other authors, friends and opponents of the writer himself.
Craftsman - Mikhail Bulgakov and Nikolai Gogol
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita" 1
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita" 1
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote the main character of the novel largely from himself. The work mentions the age of the Master: "a man of about thirty-eight years." The same age was with the author when he began work on The Master and Margarita in 1929. The angry articles about the Master and his novel are reminiscent of the accusatory campaign launched against Bulgakov himself. Critics spoke sharply about the story "Fatal Eggs", the novel "The White Guard", the plays "Zoykina's Apartment", "Run", "Days of the Turbins". The author's archives contain extracts from the material "Let's Hit Bulgakovism", which was published in the newspaper "Rabochaya Moskva". In the book, the Master says: "A day later, in another newspaper signed by Mstislav Lavrovich, another article was discovered, where the author proposed to hit it, and hit it hard, on the Pilatch ..."
However, Bulgakov did not endow the Master with the features of his appearance: "shaven, dark-haired, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes and a lock of hair hanging over his forehead." The scene in which the Master burned his novel echoes the biographies of Gogol and Bulgakov himself, who destroyed their works in the fire.
Margarita - Elena Shilovskaya-Bulgakova, Margarita from "Faust" and Queen Margot
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita"
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita"
Mikhail Bulgakov met Elena Shilovskaya at a party with mutual friends. The writer at that time was married to Lyubov Belozerskaya, his new acquaintance was married to the military leader Yevgeny Shilovsky. Despite this, their relationship developed so rapidly that it can be described with a phrase from the novel "The Master and Margarita": "Love jumped out in front of us, like a murderer jumps out of the ground in an alley ... So lightning strikes, so strikes a Finnish knife!"
Like the heroine of the novel, Elena Shilovskaya did not dare to part with her husband, who loved her very much, for a long time. She even gave her word not to see the writer again, which she kept for almost two years. Then I accidentally met Bulgakov on the street and on the same day asked her husband for a divorce.
I would stay with you now, but I don't want to do it this way. I don't want him to remember forever that I ran away from him at night. He has never done me any harm ... I will explain to him tomorrow morning, say that I love another, and will return to you forever.
Michael Bulgakov. "The Master and Margarita"
The literary prototype of the main character of the novel was Margarita from the drama by Johann Wolfgang Goethe "Faust". Gretchen's sincere and selfless love helped Faust escape hell. Thanks to the same love of Margarita, the Master "deserved peace."
In addition, Bulgakov endowed his heroine with the features of a historical personality - the French queen Margaret of Navarre. She was an unusually educated woman for her time: she knew Latin and Greek, became one of the first writers in France.
Let me give you a hint: one of the French queens who lived in the sixteenth century ... would be very amazed if someone told her that I would ... lead her lovely great-great-great-granddaughter in Moscow through the ballrooms.
Mikhail Berlioz - Demyan Bedny
The prototype of Mikhail Berlioz was Demyan Bedny, a Soviet poet, author of many anti-religious poems. Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny talk about one of these works at the Patriarch's Ponds, before meeting Woland.
Berlioz reminds Demyan Bednyi outwardly: "The first of them, about forty years old ... was fat and bald, carried his decent hat with a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were placed supernatural-sized glasses in black horn-rimmed frames." On his own behalf, the author added glasses to Poor's portrait, and turned the characteristic headdress from winter to summer.
According to the plot of the novel, Mikhail Berlioz was the chairman of the fictional literary organization MASSOLIT. Bulgakov invented it as a parody of the writers' unions of that time: the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) and the Workshop of Communist Drama (MASTKOMDRAM). Another prototype of Berlioz was the chairman of the RAPP Leopold Averbach. In the late 1920s, together with Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky and Vladimir Kirshon, he participated in the campaign against Bulgakov, wrote critical articles about his works.
Ikhail Bulgakov has been working on the novel The Master and Margarita for over 10 years. Many times he changed the plot, removed some characters and added others. In the first version of the manuscript, there was neither the Master nor his beloved, and Mikhail Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny had different names. The prototypes of the heroes were literary characters of other authors, friends and opponents of the writer himself.
Craftsman - Mikhail Bulgakov and Nikolai Gogol
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita" 1
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita" 1
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote the main character of the novel largely from himself. The work mentions the age of the Master: "a man of about thirty-eight years." The same age was with the author when he began work on The Master and Margarita in 1929. The angry articles about the Master and his novel are reminiscent of the accusatory campaign launched against Bulgakov himself. Critics spoke sharply about the story "Fatal Eggs", the novel "The White Guard", the plays "Zoykina's Apartment", "Run", "Days of the Turbins". The author's archives contain extracts from the material "Let's Hit Bulgakovism", which was published in the newspaper "Rabochaya Moskva". In the book, the Master says: "A day later, in another newspaper signed by Mstislav Lavrovich, another article was discovered, where the author proposed to hit it, and hit it hard, on the Pilatch ..."
However, Bulgakov did not endow the Master with the features of his appearance: "shaven, dark-haired, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes and a lock of hair hanging over his forehead." The scene in which the Master burned his novel echoes the biographies of Gogol and Bulgakov himself, who destroyed their works in the fire.
Margarita - Elena Shilovskaya-Bulgakova, Margarita from "Faust" and Queen Margot
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita"
Prototypes of the heroes of the novel "The Master and Margarita"
Mikhail Bulgakov met Elena Shilovskaya at a party with mutual friends. The writer at that time was married to Lyubov Belozerskaya, his new acquaintance was married to the military leader Yevgeny Shilovsky. Despite this, their relationship developed so rapidly that it can be described with a phrase from the novel "The Master and Margarita": "Love jumped out in front of us, like a murderer jumps out of the ground in an alley ... So lightning strikes, so strikes a Finnish knife!"
Like the heroine of the novel, Elena Shilovskaya did not dare to part with her husband, who loved her very much, for a long time. She even gave her word not to see the writer again, which she kept for almost two years. Then I accidentally met Bulgakov on the street and on the same day asked her husband for a divorce.
I would stay with you now, but I don't want to do it this way. I don't want him to remember forever that I ran away from him at night. He has never done me any harm ... I will explain to him tomorrow morning, say that I love another, and will return to you forever.
Michael Bulgakov. "The Master and Margarita"
The literary prototype of the main character of the novel was Margarita from the drama by Johann Wolfgang Goethe "Faust". Gretchen's sincere and selfless love helped Faust escape hell. Thanks to the same love of Margarita, the Master "deserved peace."
In addition, Bulgakov endowed his heroine with the features of a historical personality - the French queen Margaret of Navarre. She was an unusually educated woman for her time: she knew Latin and Greek, became one of the first writers in France.
Let me give you a hint: one of the French queens who lived in the sixteenth century ... would be very amazed if someone told her that I would ... lead her lovely great-great-great-granddaughter in Moscow through the ballrooms.
Mikhail Berlioz - Demyan Bedny
The prototype of Mikhail Berlioz was Demyan Bedny, a Soviet poet, author of many anti-religious poems. Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny talk about one of these works at the Patriarch's Ponds, before meeting Woland.
Berlioz reminds Demyan Bednyi outwardly: "The first of them, about forty years old ... was fat and bald, carried his decent hat with a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were placed supernatural-sized glasses in black horn-rimmed frames." On his own behalf, the author added glasses to Poor's portrait, and turned the characteristic headdress from winter to summer.
According to the plot of the novel, Mikhail Berlioz was the chairman of the fictional literary organization MASSOLIT. Bulgakov invented it as a parody of the writers' unions of that time: the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) and the Workshop of Communist Drama (MASTKOMDRAM). Another prototype of Berlioz was the chairman of the RAPP Leopold Averbach. In the late 1920s, together with Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky and Vladimir Kirshon, he participated in the campaign against Bulgakov, wrote critical articles about his works.
Ivan Homeless - Alexander Bezymensky
The poet Alexander Bezymensky was another fierce critic of Bulgakov. He wrote poetry about the revolution and satirical works, and in 1929 he published the play "Shot" - a parody of "Days of the Turbins".
Bezymensky wrote tendentious poems on the topic of the day, always in line with the party line and filled with joyful optimism. As a result, it is nothing more than rhymed journalism.
Wolfgang Kazak. "Lexicon of Russian literature of the twentieth century"
The surname of Alexander Bezymensky is consonant with the pseudonym that Mikhail Bulgakov gave to his character - Homeless. And in a quarrel between the hero and the poet Ryukhin, the author parodied the conflicts between Bezymensky and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
…Necessary,
so that the poet
and in life there was a master.
We are strong
like alcohol in Poltava damask.
Well, what about Bezymensky ?!
So…
nothing…
carrot coffee.
From the poem "Jubilee" by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Bezymensky answered his opponent with no less caustic epigrams: "It was rustling, the Moscow fire was burning ..." Everyone thought it was Mayakovsky! "
Ivan Homeless also had a literary prototype - John Stanton, the hero of Charles Robert Maturin's novel Melmoth the Wanderer. The plot of this work was reminiscent of the storyline of "The Master and Margarita": Stanton met with the living embodiment of the devil, like Homeless and Woland. This meeting led both heroes to a lunatic asylum.
Aloisy Mogarych - playwright Sergei Ermolinsky
Aloisy Mogarych is a minor character in the novel The Master and Margarita, who wrote a denunciation against the Master. He ended up in an insane asylum, and Mogarych settled in his basement near the Arbat.
The author wrote the image of Aloisy Mogarych from the screenwriter and playwright Sergei Ermolinsky. In the late 1920s, Bulgakov and his second wife, Lyubov Belozerskaya, rented a room in Mansurovsky Lane: this place later became the prototype of the basement where the Master lived. Ermolinsky often visited the spouses, made friends with the writer. But in the late 1930s, Bulgakov began to suspect that the playwright was writing denunciations against him to the NKVD.
And a man entered the gate, he went into the house on some business to my developer, then went down to the kindergarten and somehow very quickly made acquaintance with me. He introduced himself to me as a journalist. I liked him so much, imagine that I still sometimes remember him and miss him. Further - more, he began to come to me. I found out that he was single, that he lived next to me in about the same apartment, that he was cramped there, and so on. Somehow I didn’t invite him to me. My wife did not like him to the extreme.
Bulgakov's suspicions were not confirmed. Sergei Yermolinsky was arrested in December 1940 and during the investigation they did not find any documents that he could send to the NKVD. However, Mikhail Bulgakov did not find out about this: he died nine months before Yermolinsky's arrest, in March 1940.
