I've seen The Master and Margarita on various lists of the best Russian novels, overlooked classics, and books with passionate cult followings. It's a "fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life... during the darkest days of Stalin's reign."
Books and movies can feel curiously strained when their comedy falls flat, and that was my experience with The Master and Margarita. The tone seemed off. We can question whether to lay some responsibility on the translation (from Pevear and Volokhonsky), but it can't shoulder the entire blame: the fantastical and satirical elements come from the story and structure not the language. In my view, the Jerusalem chapters are tangential and neither title character nor Woland/Satan has a clear motivation for their behavior - in short, I missed the point. Not even the smoothest prose is going to fix that.
No comments:
Post a Comment