Magic Black Horses

Figurative Language - Are We Still Talking About Sex? - Horses in the Night - Mist - Night Flight

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March, 2025

Figurative Language

On the next five pages — 🐎 Magic Black Horses, 🍷 To Cease Upon the Midnight With No Pain, ♒️ Rivers, 🍏 Apples, & 🍎 The Road to Damascus — I argue that figurative language can be very effective ❧ in sounding the depth of Russia’s grand error (the invasion of Ukraine), and ❧ in suggesting a path to redemption (reconciliation with Ukraine). Having dyed the Dnipro River with blood, and having bitten Eve’s apple to the core, Russians might still change the direction they’re heading. Perhaps they’ll do this by using common sense, by using compassion, or by using the Christian ideals of Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, who believes that we all should ask forgiveness of each other. However they manage it, we can only hope that Russians stop, reflect, and change their course, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. Or, to put it in Mikhail Bulgakov’s figurative terms, they should turn their magic black horses away from violence in Ukraine, and toward peace in Mother Russia.

Repentance and reconciliation aren’t likely scenarios, at least not at the moment, in March 2025. Most days, such an outcome seems more like an illusion or a delusion, more like the escape Keats’s writes about in “Ode to a Nightingale,” where he hopes to cease upon the midnight with no pain. Yet it’s worth noting that the greatest Russian literature is full of idealistic notions of redemption, from the reformation of Chichikov and Raskolnikov in Dead Souls and Crime and Punishment, to the cosmic redemption Bulgakov suggests in The Master and Margarita.

On this page I look closely at Bulgakov’s image of magic black horses in the final chapter of The Master and Margarita. In an indirect, symbolic way these horses suggest a path forward for Russia. They suggest an acknowledgment of mistakes, and the possibility of a profound cosmic redemption. I argue that this is because of, rather than in spite of aspects of a dark Apocalypse in Bulgakov’s scenario: the Devil and his retinue leave destruction in their wake and fly through the Night on black horses toward the dawn. Into this symbolic landscape of catastrophe and damnation Bulgakov weaves in redemption and forgiveness: the Night flight sounds the depths of darkness and annihilation, yet leads to redemption and light, most deeply indicated by the reconciliation of Pilate (along with his faithful dog) and Christ.

If Pilate can be redeemed, so can Putin. If Germany can repent and atone for WW II & the Holocaust, Russia may one day atone for its brutal assault on Ukraine. I was going to write unforgivable assault, which gets closer to the horrid damage done, yet the word doesn’t work here, since it preempts the idealism Dostoevsky and Bulgakov themselves suggest: nothing is beyond forgiveness & redemption.

The same heavy symbolic language I use to refer to Russia’s war — river of blood, fall from Eden, Apocalypse, magic black horses flying through the Night, the Road to Damascus, Redemption, etc. — can be used for many acts of massive violence. The Eagles suggest as much in their 2007 song “Long Road Out of Eden,” where “the power of the tools” (Eden’s apple as military knowledge) has been used for violent purposes for millennia — from Caesar’s “Appian Way” 2000 years ago to England’s “road to Mandalay,” which presumably refers to the three wars Britain fought against Burma from 1824 to 1865:

Using knowledge ❧ to create the most deadly weapons, ❧ to expand your power, and ❧ to kill others is to bite deeply into the most dangerous, most original, most symbolic apple of them all. And the further you go down the road of massive violence, the harder it is — and the more necessary it becomes — to stop the persecution, and to turn back, like Saint Paul on the legendary and metaphoric Road to Damascus.

Germany, the US, and Russia figure prominently in any updated list of massive violence — a list that includes, but isn’t limited to ❧ slavery and empire throughout human history, ❧ the Mongol invasions, ❧ the colonization of the Americas, ❧ Tasmania, ❧ the Circassian genocide, ❧ the Trail of Tears, ❧ the Belgian Congo, ❧ the Holodomor, ❧ the Holocaust, ❧ Apartheid, ❧ Native schools across North America, ❧ The Cultural Revolution, ❧ The American War against Vietnam, ❧ Pol Pot’s Cambodia, ❧ Afghanistan, ❧ Rwanda, ❧ Chechnya, ❧ Congo, ❧ Iraq, ❧ Darfur, and ❧ Ukraine. The American violence in Indochina & Iraq, and the Russian violence in Chechnya & Ukraine aren’t unique in their brutality; they’re simply the latest in a long, sad list.

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While figurative language is very effective in getting at large-scale violence and atrocity, it can describe anything, from the Whore of Babylon on her demonic mount (below left) to the snooty Sneeches (below right), who stand in a comic way for snobbery and prejudice:

Metaphoric imagery and symbolism can create almost any effect, from comedy to tragedy. Yet they almost always deepen our understanding by uncovering connections, ambiguities, and complexities — especially when metaphor is extended (to create an extended metaphor or conceit) or when multiple symbols create a symbolic landscape (which isn’t usually as tightly interconnected as a conceit). For instance, the symbolic figure of the Whore of Babylon is linked to all kinds of depravity, and the symbolic figure of the Sneech is linked to all sorts of hierarchical social interaction.

In the next couple paragraphs I’ll give a comic example of how simile, metaphor, and conceit work in the opening scene of the Friends episode, “The One with the Sonogram at the End” (S1 E2). I’ll then look at how conceit works in a more complex, tragic, mystical, redemptive mode in the first four paragraphs of Chapter 32: “Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge” of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. 

In both the clip and the excerpt we start with a single thing: a kiss in Friends; mist in Master. The former is a romantic interaction while the latter is part of a poetic landscape. Yet in both cases the original thing expands: the kiss turns into a sexual comedy; the mist becomes part of a natural setting as well as a complex and ambiguous symbol for blindness, deception, suffering, and redemption.

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Are We Still Talking About Sex?

Monica: What you guys don’t understand is, for us, kissing is as important as any part of it.

Joey: Yeah, right!....... Y’serious?

Phoebe: Oh, yeah!

Rachel: Everything you need to know is in that first kiss.

Monica: Absolutely.

Chandler: Yeah, I think for us, kissing is pretty much like an opening act, y’know? I mean it’s like the stand-up comedian you have to sit through before Pink Floyd comes out.

Ross: Yeah, and-and it’s not that we don’t like the comedian, it’s that-that... that’s not why we bought the ticket.

Chandler: The problem is, though, after the concert’s over, no matter how great the show was, you girls are always looking for the comedian again, y’know? I mean, we’re in the car, we’re fighting traffic... basically just trying to stay awake.

Rachel: Yeah, well, word of advice: Bring back the comedian. Otherwise next time you’re gonna find yourself sitting at home, listening to that album alone.

Joey: (pause)... Are we still talking about sex?

In the Friends’ dialogue we see how simile (an explicit comparison) shifts into metaphor (an implicit comparison). Chandler says “kissing is pretty much like an opening act,” explicitly making the comparison. Ross then turns this simile into a metaphor by dropping the explicit comparative like: he says “it’s not that we don’t like the comedian” (like here is a verb meaning appreciate, and no longer a comparative meaning similar to). The comedian now implicitly means kissing.

The metaphor quickly shifts into conceit (also called extended metaphor) in numerous ways. This starts when Chandler says that the men have to sit through the comedian’s act. This gives an additional or extended inter-relational dimension to the metaphor of the comedian’s act. As the audience, we must now imagine the real-life equivalent implied by this forced sitting through: the men feel that they’re forced to do all sorts of romantic things like giving flowers and kissing when all they really want is sex. They don’t want to say this directly, so they extend the metaphor, and thus succeed in implying it without saying it. The tension, basic to sexual relations, creates comedy.

Chandler immediately extends the metaphorical context further when he says that the comedian’s act will be followed by Pink Floyd. This adds a specific musical context to the conceit. Again, as the audience we must imagine how this band’s music correlates to sex in the real world: sex is like the melodious, strange, highly original music of Pink Floyd — distinct from, say, the lushly emotional yet more formulaic music of Celine Dionne.

The situation becomes more and more humorous. Much of this humour comes from the mounting tension created by having to talk about sex in a mixed group. It’s easy for any of them to talk about kissing, since it’s a fairly common act and can be performed in public. Yet when it comes to what comes after kissing they all get increasingly vague. Note that even Rachel is reluctant to say concretely what men really want when they have to sit through the comedian.

The scenario starts off simply, with a shift from simile to metaphor, but then gets more complex when the metaphor becomes a conceit. While initially it’s clear that the comedian is a metaphor for kissing, the meanings become more uncertain — and more humorous.

Viewers must imagine for themselves the real-world equivalents for ❧ going to a concert (having sex), ❧ the reason they bought the ticket (the ulterior motives of the men), ❧ evaluating the concert (evaluating sex), ❧ bringing back the comedian (keeping the romance), and ❧ listening to an album at home (being denied sex and having to find ‘musical pleasures’ by oneself…).

The scene also ends comically, by underscoring how insanely complex the simple business of kissing has become. Not the brightest bulb in the room, Joey asks if they’re in fact still talking about sex.

Joey brings closure to the scene by returning to the original physical topic rather than the metaphors used to occlude it. Joey at first may seem the brunt of the joke, given that he’s comically overwhelmed by metaphorical complexity. Yet he’s also a sort of hero. While the others side-step and avoid the issue, Joey boils it down to its basic point. He also isn’t afraid to say out loud what all of them are thinking. It’s for this reason that he’s a loveable figure, less a buffoon than a wise fool who speaks honestly while those around him escape into metaphor and white lie.

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In both the clip from Friends and the excerpt from Master (below) we start with a single thing or situation — a kiss on a date and mist over swamps. As these things gain a larger metaphoric context, the comic or tragic meanings become more complex and penetrating. We can then more fully appreciate the comedy, bewilderment, and tragedy of our existence. While the types of experience we find in Friends and The Master and Margarita are vastly different, this difference helps us get at what literature — on whatever topic — can do for us: it can take us from our usual world into a larger situation, where we explore life in depth and where we can relate to the human protagonists (rather than being given detached descriptions or analogies). This depth can be of any type or range, from a moment’s comedy in a New York cafe to an ambiguous and redemptive tragedy played out over the night hinterlands of Russia. 

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Horses in the Night

Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita is a magical, biting satire directed at the institutions and rigid doctrines of Soviet Russia.

Bulgakov died in 1940, yet because Master’s contents could easily have sent the well-known author to a prison camp, it was published posthumously in the late 1960s. So much of the novel has a particular historical Soviet context, yet so much of that context applies today — as these recent images might suggest:

Bulgakov’s novel jumps back and forth from Soviet Russia to the days of Pilate and Christ, and suggests that our rigid, mechanical, doctrinal world needs to be injected with an expansive, generous sentiment, represented by both Christ and Pilate. Christ represents loving humility, and Pilate represents the hardened soul, the Roman imperial power that softens its heart and changes its course, like Paul on the Road to Damascus. Of course, as far as we know, Pilate had no such change of heart; yet in Bulgakov’s fantasy, he does.

At the beginning of the final chapter, “Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge,” we see Bulgakov’s metaphoric depth and his unnerving majestic sweep, all wrapped together into an ideal of love and redemption. After having exposed and punished hypocrisy, repression, and abuse in Soviet Moscow, Woland (the Devil) and his motley crew take flight on black horses into the Russian Night. The Master and Margarita join them on their liberating yet deathward flight, one that is darker, grander, and more majestic than the earlier witchy flight Margarita took over the rooftops of Moscow.

The flight of the magic black horses begins in the final paragraph of the penultimate chapter:

The steeds tore off, and the riders rose into the air and galloped. Margarita felt her furious steed champing and straining at the bit. Woland’s cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the evening sky. When the black shroud was momentarily blown aside, Margarita looked back as she rode and saw that there not only were no multicoloured towers behind them, but the city itself had long been gone. It was as if it had fallen through the earth - only mist and smoke were left ...

This flight hints at sombre, serious, cosmic elements: the Devil’s “cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the evening sky,” and the Russian capital seems to have fallen through the earth, with “only mist and smoke” remaining.

The notion that mist remains is important, especially when we get to the beginning of the next chapter. Here it becomes ❧ a realistic setting in nature, ❧ a reminder of what’s been destroyed in the Muscovite apocalypse that lies (and falls) behind them, ❧ a metaphor for our inability to see, and ❧ part of an extended metaphor for an otherworldly redemption.

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Mist

Mist isn’t the same thing as smoke, since it doesn’t come from fire and destruction — i.e. from what the Devil leaves behind him, after his whirlwind tour of Moscow. Mist may be difficult to distinguish from smoke — both are fine particles that can cloud our sight — yet mist is made of a life-giving natural element: water. The same element that has so many positive associations, from source of life to inspirational spring to baptismal font. Water & mist contrasts and complements the destructive fire & smoke that characterizes the Devil and Hell. The “mist and smoke” hint at something more like the baptism by fire. This association may come in handy in regard to the Ukraine War, since the phrase baptism by fire can be used for both martyrs and soldiers…

In the opening paragraph of “Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge,” mist takes on several meanings at once:

Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.

The first thing we’re told about the mists is that they’re “mysterious.” They’re thus a medium which obscures meaning itself. This primary meaning is a subtle one, and might be quickly forgotten when Bulgakov shifts the meaning to mist as worldly weight and burden. It’s worth pausing to stress this mystery, especially since mystery is an essential epistemological element of psychology and theology: ❧ psychologically, much of our human burden lies in the angst of not knowing our own meaning; ❧ theologically, mystery lies close to the heart of ambiguity and alternative perspectives, which open all sorts of divergent possibilities, from disbelief to belief, selfishness to service, death to rebirth, and damnation to redemption.

Keats’ “Sonnet Written Upon The Top Of Ben Nevis" gets at the range of meanings we might give to mist: it symbolizes the inability to understand ❧ ourselves, ❧ the natural world around us, and ❧ theological meanings further afield:

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, — just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,
And there is sullen mist, — even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, — even such,
Even so vague is man’s sight of himself!

The second meaning of mists in the opening paragraph is the fallen world. This term fits with the theological overtones of the chapter title — “Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge” — and also of a novel in which the Devil does God’s work by exposing and punishing the wicked. In this traditional Christian sense, mist is the world after the Fall from Eden. It’s the world of suffering and sin, which is only understood by the weary man, that is, by those who have made their way through its blinding vapours.

Mist is thus an effect, yet it is also the cause of the desire to go beyond this world of suffering. Beyond in this case clearly means death: “with a light heart [the weary man] gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.” The wording is important here, since it suggests that the mists have weight and cling to the earth. Death is hence a lifting-off from the heavy mists, into a wider, airier upper space. That the weary man leaves the mists with a light heart suggests a take-off, a flight up above the “swamps and rivers” of this life.

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Night Flight

Woland’s flight from Moscow takes in the brutalities, punishments, and absurdities of Russian life, represented in the next paragraphs by “the irrepressible Behemoth” (an enormous black demon cat) and by the unspecified “deceptions” which are finally exposed and then destroyed:

The magical black horses also became tired and carried their riders slowly, and ineluctable night began to overtake them. Sensing it at his back, even the irrepressible Behemoth quieted down and, his claws sunk into the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail.

Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit melancholy little lights somewhere far below — now no longer interesting and necessary either for Margarita or for the master — alien lights. Night was outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders’ cloaks and, tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when, from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable magic garments drowned in the mists.

The Night Flight is liberating, yet contains very dark elements. Night becomes a powerful, active figure, a power unto itself, so great that even the powerful horses that lift the weary above the earth and away from their suffering are themselves wearied: the night travellers see “melancholy little lights somewhere far below,” the “magical black horses” become “tired and carried their riders slowly, and ineluctable night began to overtake them.” The lights below are “no longer interesting.” Instead, they are “alien lights […,] specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.” The “ineluctable night” into which they’re travelling finally overtakes them, covering them with its black shawl. This is the shawl of both Night and Woland, the Devil. Yet Bulgakov’s Devil isn’t a traditional Devil. He lacks the pride and bitterness that motivate him to take pleasure in the punishment he metes out. Instead, he appears to work in concert with the God he begrudgingly admires.

We see Woland working hand-in-hand with God on numerous occasions, not least in the astonishing opening scene in which he proves to the atheist communist Berlioz that there is indeed both a God and a Devil. In “Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge,” Woland also comforts Margarita when she asks if God could forgive Pilate, just as she once asked if God could forgive Frieda, a woman who in her suffering kills her own child. Woland responds,

‘Repeating the story with Frieda?’ said Woland. ‘But don’t trouble yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.’

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Bulgakov’s Woland unveils hypocrisy and sin within the larger context of a greater cosmic continuum, where the vast Russian hinterland extends outward from the density of Moscow. From this hinterland of mist and smoke the magic black horses fly ever onward, ever-deeper into the Night of a cosmos that accommodates both good and evil, both God and the Devil. We can see this double movement — toward apocalyptic Night and redemptive Light when the deceptions are exposed to the cavalcade and the tone and imagery shift toward the redemptive. The final paragraph starts with night thickening and the rider’s cloaks being torn from them, yet the atmosphere to which they are then exposed isn’t harsh or freezing. Instead, Margarita feels a “cool wind.” She then opens her eyes and sees “how the appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal.” The images of “melancholy lights” and “saddened sky” are replaced by a change in appearance: “from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising to meet them.”

We reach the culmination of this miniature scene of redemption: in the light of the full moon, all deceptions vanish — even the unstable magic of their garments, which have been flown off them by their flight through the cool wind. Their clothes now fall down into the watery element that symbolized blindness, weariness, and suffering: the mists.

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Next: 🍷 To Cease Upon the Midnight With No Pain

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