Näidendite andmebaas

The play is not based on documentary material, although the title is the French spelling of the name Mikhail Bulgakov. The author says that different spelling marks relate to fiction and historical truth. Historical references are also explicit in other characters; among them are writers and politicians Fadeyev Tolstoy, and Stalin’s long-awaited phone call. The events take place in Russia during the oppressive period for artists in the 1930s, when Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita, a novel banned from publication by the authorities.

Boulgakoff is about artistic silence forced onto an author who tries to stay honest with himself. But in a contemporary media-centred world, an act becoming art is dependent on the public – the artist that cannot be published does not exist. Still, Bulgakov continued writing and carried on being a writer with an absurd persistence even when the publishing of his works was forbidden. The opening scene in the bedroom of Bulgakov and his wife, Sidonia and everyday actions – conversation on the street, games of billiards, drinks after the opening night, dreamlike scene in Paris, car ride that ends with the protagonist’s death – unfold the creative personality’s metaphysical discontent and subjection to authorities.