Magic Black Horses

A Dangerous Chef-d’œuvre - Mist - Night Flight

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A Dangerous Chef-d’œuvre

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 redemption scene: 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: mist.

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Next: 🍷 Nightingales 1

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