1937-8

The years 1937 and 1938 constituted the final major compositional phase of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, a period in which the book's narrative architecture, title, and distinctive voice were fixed in their definitive form. This reworking followed a long and troubled evolution that had begun in 1929, and it prepared the text for the first typescript, dictated in 1938.

Narrative Transformation and the Removal of the Chronicler

The most consequential change Bulgakov made during 1937-8 was the elimination of the original first-person narrator, a characterized 'chronicler' who had appeared in earlier versions. In his place emerged the fluid, mobile narrative voice that is perhaps the finest achievement of Bulgakov's art. This new narrator moves freely from detached observation to ironic double-voicing to the most personal interjection, a range that allows the novel to shift seamlessly between the satirical Moscow story and the solemn Yershalaim chapters. The closest model for this voice, Bulgakov may have found in Gogol's Dead Souls, and it became the perfect medium for the novel's continuous verbal construction, picking up, parodying, or ironically undercutting the tones of its many characters while maintaining a single, unmistakable presence.

The Definitive Title and Structural Consolidation

It was during this same reworking that Bulgakov finally found the definitive title for the novel: The Master and Margarita. The title's emergence signaled the full integration of the love story and the figure of the master into the novel's center, a development that had been evolving since the first mention of Margarita's name in 1931 and the appearance of the master as a nameless 'Faust' figure in 1932. The Pilate story, which had begun as a single inset chapter in the earliest drafts, was now brought back to the second chapter, where it would remain, and the historical and contemporary sections were woven into their final interlocking structure. The novel's form, which excludes psychological analysis and historical commentary, allows Bulgakov to exploit the theatricality of its great scenes—storms, flight, the attack of vampires, the seance in the Variety Theatre, the ball at Satan's, the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, the crucifixion, the murder of Judas—while maintaining the quickness and pungency of his writing.

Thematic and Stylistic Unity

The 1937-8 reworking also solidified the novel's characteristic verbal unity, in which certain phrases—'Oh, gods, my gods', 'Bring me poison', 'Even by moonlight I have no peace'—migrate from one character to another or to the narrator. The Pilate story itself, successive parts of which are told by Woland, dreamed by the poet Ivan Homeless, written by the master, and read by Margarita, preserves its stylistic unity across these different narrative frames. This technique underscores the continuity of Bulgakov's verbal world and allows the novel to combine the most acute sense of the fragility of human life with confidence in its indestructibility. The three stories—the Moscow satire, the Pilate narrative, and the romance of the master and Margarita—embrace virtually all that was excluded from official Soviet ideology and its literature, exploding the confines of socialist realism and of more traditional novelistic realism alike.

Significance and Legacy

The 1937-8 version was the basis for the first typescript of The Master and Margarita, dictated in 1938, with many changes along the way. Bulgakov made further alterations in the typescript in 1939, the most important of which concerned the fate of the hero and heroine, but the essential narrative voice, structure, and title were established in this final reworking. The novel's form, a consistently free verbal construction true to its own premises, can re-create ancient Jerusalem in the smallest physical detail but can also alter the specifics of the New Testament and play variations on its principal figures, combine the realities of Moscow life with witchcraft, vampirism, and the tearing off and replacing of heads, and describe for several pages the sensation of flight on a broomstick or the gathering of the infamous dead at Satan's annual spring ball. The 1937-8 reworking made all of this possible, fixing the novel's unique blend of satire, fantasy, and philosophical depth.