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Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov- Russian writer and playwright. Author of novels, short stories, collections of short stories, feuilletons and about two dozen plays.

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kyiv in the family of Associate Professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov (1859-1907) and his wife Varvara Mikhailovna (nee Pokrovskaya). In 1909 he graduated from the Kyiv First Gymnasium and entered the Faculty of Medicine Kyiv University . In 1916 he received a medical degree and was sent to work in the village of Nikolskoye, Smolensk province, then worked as a doctor in the city of Vyazma. In 1915, Bulgakov enters into his first marriage - with Tatyana Lappa. During the civil war in February 1919, Bulgakov was mobilized as a military doctor in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, but deserted almost immediately. In the same year, he manages to visit a doctor of the Red Cross, and then - in the White Guard Armed Forces of the South of Russia. He spends some time with the Cossack troops in Chechnya, then in Vladikavkaz. At the end of September 1921, Bulgakov moved to Moscow and began to collaborate as a feuilletonist with the capital's newspapers ("Gudok", "Worker") and magazines ("Medical Worker", "Russia", "Vozrozhdeniye"). At the same time, he publishes individual works in the newspaper "On the Eve", published in Berlin. From 1922 to 1926 more than 120 reports, essays and feuilletons by Bulgakov were published in Gudok. In 1923 Bulgakov joined the All-Russian Union of Writers. In 1924, he met Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya, who had recently returned from abroad, and who soon became his new wife. In 1928, Bulgakov traveled with Lyubov Evgenievna to the Caucasus, visiting Tiflis, Batum, Zeleny Mys, Vladikavkaz, Gudermes. The premiere of the play Crimson Island is taking place in Moscow this year. Bulgakov came up with the idea of ​​a novel, later called "The Master and Margarita" (a number of researchers of Bulgakov's work note the influence of the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink in the design and writing of this novel, in particular, we can talk about the inspiration of such novels of the latter as "The Golem", which Bulgakov read translated by D. Vygodsky, and "The Green Face"). The writer also begins work on a play about Molière ("The Cabal of Saints"). In 1929, Bulgakov met Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, his future third wife. In 1930, Bulgakov's works ceased to be printed, the plays were withdrawn from the theater repertoire. The plays "Running", "Zoyka's Apartment", "Crimson Island", the play "Days of the Turbins" were banned from the repertoire. In 1930, Bulgakov wrote to his brother Nikolai in Paris about the unfavorable literary and theatrical situation and difficult financial situation. At the same time, he writes a letter to the Government of the USSR with a request to determine his fate - either to give the right to emigrate, or to provide the opportunity to work at the Moscow Art Theater. Bulgakov receives a call from Joseph Stalin, who recommends that the playwright ask to be enrolled in the Moscow Art Theater. In 1930, Bulgakov worked at the Central Theater of Working Youth (TRAM). From 1930 to 1936 - at the Moscow Art Theater as an assistant director, on the stage of which in 1932 he staged "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. From 1936 he worked at the Bolshoi Theater as a librettist and translator. In 1936, the premiere of Bulgakov's "Molière" took place at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1937, Bulgakov worked on the libretto "Minin and Pozharsky" and "Peter I". In 1939, Bulgakov worked on the libretto "Rachel", as well as on a play about Stalin ("Batum"). Contrary to the writer's expectations, the play was banned from publication and staging. Bulgakov's health is deteriorating sharply. Doctors diagnose him with hypertensive nephrosclerosis. The writer begins to dictate to Elena Sergeevna the latest versions of the novel The Master and Margarita. Since February 1940, friends and relatives have been constantly on duty at the bedside of Bulgakov, who suffers from kidney disease. March 10, 1940 Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died. On March 11, a civil memorial service was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the memorial service, Moscow sculptor SD Merkurov removes the death mask from Bulgakov's face.

Creation Bulgakov, in his own words, wrote his first story in 1919. 1922-1923 - the publication of "Notes on the Cuffs", in 1925 a collection of satirical stories "Dyaboliad" was published. In 1925, the story "Fatal Eggs", the story "Steel Throat" (the first of the "Notes of a Young Doctor" cycle) were also published. The writer is working on a story dog's heart", with the plays "White Guard" and "Zoyka's Apartment". In 1926, the play "Days of the Turbins" was staged at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1927, Mikhail Afanasyevich completed the drama "Running". Bulgakov's play "Zoyka's apartment" was on, in 1928-1929 "Crimson Island" (1928) was staged at the Moscow Chamber Theater. In 1932, the production of "Days of the Turbins" was resumed at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1934, the first complete version of the novel was completed "Master and Margarita", including 37 chapters.

Major works* Future prospects (article in the Grozny newspaper) (1919) * Steel throat (1925) * White Guard (1922-1924) * Notes on cuffs (1923) * Blizzard (1925) * Star rash (1925) * Zoya's apartment ( 1925), published in the USSR in 1982 * Cabal of the Hypocrites (1929) * Baptism by Turn (1925) * Fatal Eggs (1924) * Towel with a Rooster (1925) * Missing Eye (1925) * Egyptian Darkness (1925) * Heart of a Dog (1925), published in the USSR in 1987 * Morphine (1926) * Treatise on housing. Storybook. (1926) * Running (1926-1928) * Crimson Island (1927) * The Master and Margarita (1928-1940), published 1966-67. * Bliss (Dream of the engineer Rhine) (1934) * Ivan Vasilyevich (1936) * Molière (The Cabal of the Saints), post. 1936) * Notes of a dead man (Theatrical novel) (1936-1937), published in 1966 * Last days ("Pushkin", 1940)

Bulgakov Encyclopedia: http://www.bulgakov.ru/ Moscow State Bulgakov Museum: http://www.bulgakovmuseum.ru/ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Name: Mikhail Bulgakov

Age: 48 years old

Place of Birth: Kyiv

A place of death: Moscow

Activity: writer, playwright, theater director and actor

Family status: was married

Mikhail Bulgakov - biography

Bulgakov is the author of many famous works, which not only fell in love with filmmakers, but also entered the list of program works studied at school. Many teachers of literature recommend watching the screen version of the story "The Heart of a Dog" and the novel "The Master and Margarita" after studying the author's work.

Childhood, writer's family

Misha was born into a large family, in which, besides him, there were six more children. His father was a professor of theology, and his mother raised children. Mikhail, as the oldest, had to help his mother in everything. And the efforts of the woman were not in vain, since the children in the Bulgakov family were able to glorify and make the surname famous.

Further fate

Mikhail Bulgakov served as a doctor in the First World War, then treated patients in Vyazma, Kyiv, Moscow. And in the capital, his biography is changing dramatically. He tries himself in another role - in literature. At the very beginning of this activity, he wrote feuilletons, later he created plays for the theater, according to which performances are staged on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater and at the Central Theater of Working Youth. One of the major works of the very first, written by Bulgakov, was the novel "The White Guard". He received a lot of devastating critical articles, but this created the incredible popularity and originality of the author's thinking.

Mikhail Afanasyevich will connect medicine more than once with literature, since this topic is very close to him and understandable. And he masterfully owns it, using a satirical view of the existing reality. Not everything was easy for the writer: the novel The Master and Margarita was written until the very death of Bulgakov. The writer is no longer published, he appeals to the government and receives a positive response from Stalin. He allowed Bulgakov to be staged on stage.

Bulgakov's work for the theater

The biography manages the way a person is written in the family. And the writer's plays successfully see the light in the form of performances on the stage of theaters in the capital. And Iosif Vissarionovich personally visited the play "Days of the Turbins" fourteen times. Then the unspoken persecution of the writer began again, and the head of state reinstated the author as a playwright and director. His plays are repeatedly closed, and Bulgakov undertakes dismissal from the theater.

Mikhail Bulgakov - biography of personal life

In Bulgakov's personal life, everything was simple: whom he loves, those women he makes the prototypes of his novels. The writer is very quick in making decisions about his love affairs. So, for example, Tatyana Lappa became his first wife. A poor bride, a modest wedding, no less modest life. The father of the bride helped as much as he could, but there was never enough money. The writer could not and did not want to save: he could hire a taxi for the last pennies, was extremely frivolous and often succumbed to any impulse. Several things dear to Tatyana had to be constantly pawned in a pawnshop.

The last years of Mikhail Bulgakov's life

The writer passed away very quickly. He conceived a work that should not have been banned. They put on a play about Stalin, rehearsals were in full swing, but suddenly everything was sharply ordered to stop. Bulgakov was very worried, his eyesight worsened, congenital renal failure worsened. The pains were unbearable, and Mikhail Afanasyevich began to use morphine. The deterioration did not take long. All of these symptoms were the cause of the death of Mikhail Bulgakov. The writer barely survived until spring.

1891 , May 3 (15) - was born in Kyiv in the family of Associate Professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov and his wife Varvara Mikhailovna (nee - Pokrovskaya).

1901 , August 22 - enters the first class of the First (Aleksandrovskaya) Kyiv gymnasium.

1909 - graduated from the Kyiv First Gymnasium and entered the medical faculty of Kyiv University.

1913 - enters into his first marriage - with Tatyana Lappa (1892-1982).

1916 , October 31 - received a doctor's degree, was sent to work in the village of Nikolskoye, Smolensk province., Then he worked as a doctor in the city of Vyazma.
December - a trip to Moscow.

1918 - returned to Kyiv, where he began private practice as a venereologist in a house on Andreevsky Descent.
December - events take place in Kyiv, later described in the novel "The White Guard".

1919 , February - mobilized as a military doctor in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
He was mobilized into the White Armed Forces of the South of Russia and was appointed military doctor of the 3rd Terek Cossack Regiment.
November 26 - the first publication of M. A. Bulgakov: the feuilleton "Future Prospects" in the newspaper "Grozny".

1920 , January 18 - publication of the feuilleton "In the cafe" in the "Kavkazskaya Gazeta".
February 15 - the first issue of the newspaper "Kavkaz" is published, with Bulgakov becoming an employee.
End of February - Bulgakov falls ill with relapsing fever and remains in Vladikavkaz, captured by the Red Army.
Beginning of April - goes to work as the head of the literary section of the sub-department of arts in the Vladikavkaz Revolutionary Committee (since the end of May he has been in charge of the theater section).
October 21 - premiere of the play "The Turbine Brothers".

1921 , end of June - leaves for Batum. Acquaintance with O. E. Mandelstam.
End of September - moves to Moscow and begins to cooperate as a feuilletonist with the capital's newspapers ("Gudok", "Worker") and magazines ("Medical Worker", "Russia", "Vozrozhdeniye").
Publishes individual works in the newspaper "On the Eve", published in Berlin.
November-December - acquaintance with the typist I. S. Raaben (nee Count Kamenskaya), to whom Bulgakov dictates the first part of Notes on the Cuffs.

1922 , March - works as a reporter in the newspaper "Worker" and in the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Air Force Academy.
Beginning of April - works as a letter processor for the Gudok newspaper.
June 18 - chapters from the story "Notes on the Cuffs" are published in the Literary Supplement to the Berlin newspaper "On the Eve".
October - Bulgakov becomes a feuilletonist in Gudok with a salary of 200 million rubles. Takes part in the activities of the literary circle "Green Lamp".
November - Bulgakov's failed attempt to compile a "Dictionary of Russian Writers" and an announcement on this subject in the Berlin "New Russian Book" lead to the fact that the author comes to the attention of the OGPU.

1923 - joins the All-Russian Union of Writers.
End of May - Bulgakov's acquaintance with Alexei Tolstoy.

1924 - meets Lyubov Evgenievna Belozerskaya (1895-1987), who recently returned from abroad, who in 1925 became his wife.
October - Bulgakov and his wife move to Obukhov Lane. Acquaintance with the prechistensky circle.
The end of December - the first part of the novel "White Guard" is published in the fourth issue of the Rossiya magazine.

1925 , January - publication of the story "La Boheme", the beginning of work on the story "Heart of a Dog".
February - publication of the story "Fatal Eggs" in the sixth issue of the almanac "Nedra".
March 7 - reads "Heart of a Dog" at Nikitinsky subbotniks, which results in a detailed report of a secret informer in the OGPU about the content of the story and the reaction of the public to it.
April 3 - Bulgakov receives an invitation to collaborate with the Moscow Art Theater.
End of April - the second part of the novel "White Guard" is published in the fifth issue of the magazine "Russia".
June - early July - M. A. Bulgakov and L. E. Belozerskaya rest in Koktebel at the invitation of M. A. Voloshin.
Summer - work on the play "The White Guard".
September 1 - reading of the first version of the play to Stanislavsky in his apartment.
September 11 - Bulgakov receives the news that the story "Heart of a Dog" was rejected by L. B. Kamenev.

1926 , January - the conclusion of an agreement with the studio of E. B. Vakhtangov for the play "Zoyka's Apartment"; conclusion of an agreement with the Moscow Chamber Theater for the play "Crimson Island".
May 7 - The OGPU conducts a search at Bulgakov's, as a result of which the manuscript of the story "Heart of a Dog" and the writer's personal diary are seized.
Since October, the play "Days of the Turbins" has been staged at the Moscow Art Theater with great success. Her production was allowed only for a year, but later extended several times. The play was liked by I. Stalin, who watched it more than 14 times.
At the end of October at the Theater. Vakhtangov, the premiere of the play based on the play by M. A. Bulgakov "Zoyka's Apartment" was a great success.
In the Soviet press, an intense and sharp criticism of the work of M. A. Bulgakov begins. According to his own calculations, in 10 years there were 298 bad reviews and 3 favorable ones. Among the critics were influential writers (Mayakovsky, Bezymensky, Averbakh, Shklovsky, Kerzhentsev and others).

1927 , February 7 - Bulgakov participates in a debate on the theme "Days of the Turbins" and "Love Yarovaya" at the Meyerhold Theater.
March - the contract for the play "Heart of a Dog" was terminated and an agreement was concluded for the play "Knights of the Seraphim" ("Running").
August - M. A. Bulgakov and L. E. Belozerskaya move to a separate rented apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street.
December - the publication in Paris of the first volume of the novel "The White Guard" by the publishing house "Concorde".

1928 - Bulgakov and his wife travel to the Caucasus, where they visited Tiflis, Batum, Zeleny Mys, Vladikavkaz, Gudermes.
The premiere of the play Crimson Island took place in Moscow.
The idea of ​​the novel, later called "The Master and Margarita".
The writer begins work on a play about Molière ("The Cabal of Saints").
December 11 - premiere of the play "Crimson Island" at the Moscow Chamber Theater.

1929 February 28 - Bulgakov's acquaintance with Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, nee Nuremberg. Mention of the new novel by M. A. Bulgakov (the future "Master and Margarita") in one of the undercover reports.
March 17 - the last performance of "Zoyka's apartment".
April - removal from the repertoire of "Days of the Turbins".
May 8 - Bulgakov submits to the Nedra publishing house the chapter "Furibund Mania" from the novel "Engineer's Hoof".
The beginning of June is the last performance of Crimson Island.
July 30 - Bulgakov sends a letter of application to I. V. Stalin, M. I. Kalinin and others with a request to leave the USSR and meets with the head of the Main Department of Arts A. I. Svidersky, who informs Central Committee Secretary A. P. Smirnov about this conversation .
October - Bulgakov's books are withdrawn from libraries.
Beginning of work on the play "The Cabal of the Saints".

1930 , February 11 - public reading of the play "The Cabal of the Saints" in the Dramsoyuz.
March 18 - The Main Repertoire Committee bans the play "The Cabal of Saints".
March 28 - Bulgakov writes a letter to the Government of the USSR.
April 18 (Friday of Holy Week) - telephone conversation between M. A. Bulgakov and I. V. Stalin.
May 10 - enters the Moscow Art Theater as an assistant director.
May - the beginning of work on the staging of N.V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls".
October - V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko rejects Bulgakov's version of Dead Souls.

1931 , February - K. S. Stanislavsky joins the rehearsals of "Dead Souls".
October 12 - signed an agreement for the production of "Molière" with the BDT.
November 19 - the decision of the Artistic and Political Council of the BDT on the inexpediency of staging the play "Molière".
Re-starts work on the novel "The Master and Margarita". For the first time, the novel "The Master and Margarita" was published in the magazine "Moscow" in No. 11 for 1966 and in No. 1 for 1967.

1932 - on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater there was a performance of the play "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol staged by Bulgakov.

1934 , June - Bulgakov is admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers.

1935 - performed on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater as an actor - in the role of the Judge in the play "The Pickwick Club" by Dickens.

1936 , February - the premiere of the play "The Cabal of the Saints" ("Molière", a play in four acts, written in 1929) on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater. The performance was staged seven times, and after the article “External Shine and False Content” in Pravda on March 9, 1936, it was banned.

1940 March 10 - Bulgakov died in Moscow, was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. On his grave, at the request of his widow, E. S. Bulgakova, a stone was erected, nicknamed "calvary", which previously lay on the grave of N. V. Gogol.

Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich (1891-1940), writer, playwright.

Born May 15, 1891 in Kyiv in a large and friendly family of a professor, teacher of the Kyiv Theological Academy. After graduating from high school, at the age of 16, Bulgakov entered the university at the Faculty of Medicine.

In the spring of 1916, he was released from the university as a "militia warrior of the second category" and went to work in one of the Kyiv hospitals. In the summer of the same year, the future writer received his first appointment and in the autumn he arrived at a small zemstvo hospital in the Smolensk province, in the village of Nikolskoye. Here he began to write the book "Notes of a Young Doctor" - about a remote Russian province, where powders for malaria, prescribed for a week, are swallowed immediately, give birth under a bush, and mustard plasters are put on top of a sheepskin coat ... While yesterday's student turned into an experienced and determined zemstvo doctor, in events began in the Russian capital that determined the fate of the country for many decades. “The present is such that I try to live without noticing it,” Bulgakov wrote on December 31, 1917 to his sister.

In 1918 he returned to Kyiv. Waves of Petliurists, White Guards, Bolsheviks, Hetman P. P. Skoropadsky swept through the city. At the end of August 1919, the Bolsheviks, leaving Kyiv, shot hundreds of hostages. Bulgakov, who had previously avoided mobilization by hook or by crook, retreated with the Whites. In February 1920, when the evacuation of the Volunteer Army began, he was struck down by typhus. Bulgakov woke up in Vladikavkaz, occupied by the Bolsheviks. The next year he moved to Moscow.

Here, one after another, three satirical novels with fantastic plots appear: "The Diaboliad", "Fatal Eggs" (both 1924), "Heart of a Dog" (1925).

During these years, Bulgakov worked in the editorial office of the newspaper "Gudok" and wrote the novel "White Guard" - about a broken family, about the past years of the "carefree generation", about civil war in Ukraine, about the suffering of man on earth. The first part of the novel was published in the Rossiya magazine in 1925, but the magazine was soon closed, and the novel - for almost 40 years - was destined to remain underprinted.

In 1926, Bulgakov staged The White Guard. “Days of the Turbins” (as the play is called) was staged with great success at the Moscow Art Theater and left the stage only with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when the scenery of the performance was destroyed under the bombing.

"Proletarian" playwrights and critics jealously followed the successes of the talented "bourgeois echo" and took all measures to ensure that the plays already staged ("Zoyka's apartment", 1926, and "Crimson Island", 1927) were removed, and the newly written "Running" (1928) and "The Cabal of the Saints" (1929) did not see the limelight. (It was only in 1936 that the play The Cabal of the Saints, called Molière, appeared on the stage of the Art Theatre.)

Since 1928, Bulgakov worked on the novel The Master and Margarita, which brought him worldwide fame posthumously.

He died on March 10, 1940 in Moscow from a severe hereditary kidney disease, before reaching the age of 49. Few knew how many unpublished manuscripts he had.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was born in Kyiv into a professorial family, so a good education was not a luxury for the future writer, but rather a forced necessity. Despite the fact that most sources claim that Bulgakov came to writing at a mature age, this is not entirely true. From childhood, Bulgakov gravitated toward literature, his sister, already at an advanced age, repeated more than once that having learned to read on her own, even before entering the gymnasium, Bulgakov mastered the Notre Dame Cathedral, and at the age of seven he even created his first own work under titled "The Adventures of Svetlana". In the fifth grade of the gymnasium, the feuilleton “The Day of the Chief Physician” came out from under his pen, the future writer willingly composed epigrams, satirical poems, however, he considered medicine his main vocation and dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Bulgakov and morphine

Mikhail Bulgakov actually trained as a doctor and practiced medicine for quite some time. At the end medical university in 1916, student Mikhail Bulgakov was assigned to Smolensk as a zemstvo doctor, where he went with his first wife Tatyana. A year later, Bulgakov took morphine for the first time. Constant work with diphtheria patients forced the young doctor to take anti-diphtheria drugs, which, in turn, unexpectedly provoked a severe allergy, in order to alleviate the pain, Bulgakov used morphine. According to some reports, he could not give up the saving and deadly drug until the end of his life.

On the very first day of service in the hospital, a woman in labor was admitted to the young doctor Bulgakov, accompanied by her husband, who, waving a loaded pistol, threatened Bulgakov: “If she dies, I will kill you!”. The story, fortunately, ended happily.

Bulgakov and Stalin

A mysterious relationship connected the writer with Joseph Stalin. Stalin was very fond of the Turbins, watched the performance at least fifteen times, enthusiastically applauding the artists from the government box. Eight times the "father of peoples" was at the "Zoyka apartment" in the Theater. E. Vakhtangov. And at the same time, according to historians, Bulgakov’s apartment was searched more than once, the writer was practically a regular at the Lubyanka, and the novel The Master and Margarita was not destined to see the light at all. The presence of such a sworn friend burdened Bulgakov, made it impossible to be heard, and yet there was no way to break out of the vicious circle. Mikhail Afanasyevich compared his relationship with the Leader more than once with friendship with Satan, believing that submission to a tyrant is tantamount to selling the soul to the devil.

missing character

In 1937, on the anniversary of the death of A. S. Pushkin, several acting playwrights presented plays dedicated to the poet to the attention of the general public, Bulgakov was among them. True, unlike his colleagues, he decided to take sophisticated critics with his originality. Considering that a play about Pushkin could well do without one character, he immediately excluded him. Bulgakov believed that the appearance of this actor on the stage will be vulgar and tasteless. The missing character was Alexander Sergeevich himself. This play is played in the theaters of the country to this day.

Treasure in the house of the Turbins

In the novel "The White Guard", Bulgakov quite accurately depicted the house of the Turbins, he took his memories from his youth as a basis - the descriptions fully corresponded to the house where he himself lived in Kiev. True, there was one detail in the novel that did not exist in reality, but, nevertheless, greatly ruined the life of the owners of the house. The fact is that, having familiarized themselves with the work of the writer, the owners almost completely destroyed the building in an attempt to find the treasure described in the White Guard. It is quite natural that the unlucky treasure seekers were left with nothing.

Margarita and her prototype

Mikhail Bulgakov was married three times, but only the third wife, Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, whom the writer took away from an influential official, became not only a true friend, but also a muse to him. Their meeting took place in the apartment of artists Moiseenko. 40 years later, Elena Sergeevna recalled this meeting in this way: “... When I met Bulgakov by chance in the same house, I realized that this was my fate, despite everything, despite the insanely difficult tragedy of the gap ... we met and were close. It was fast, extraordinarily fast, at least on my part, the love of a lifetime.

It is she who is the prototype of Margarita from the famous novel, and the Master, as you might guess, is Bulgakov himself. In the society where Bulgakov revolved, Shilovskaya was treated ambiguously. Of course, the times of the Holy Inquisition have long since sunk into oblivion, but no one could forbid rumors. Mikhail Afanasyevich, and with him Elena, were sincerely afraid. Still, after the appearance of an amazingly realistic text about the devil, which, moreover, was called “Satan” in one of the first editions, coupled with the complete absence of problems with the authorities (in comparison with other artists, Bulgakov lived almost in paradise), the writer and his the spouse was often accused in connection with evil spirits.

History of Woland

The cult novel "The Master and Margarita" was originally conceived as an apocryphal "gospel from the devil", and there was no love line in it at all. Over the years, a simple and at the same time terrible concept became more complicated, transformed, absorbing the fate of the writer like a sponge. Woland, the central character of the work, got his name from Goethe's Mephistopheles. True, in the poem "Faust" it sounds only once, when Mephistopheles asks the evil spirit to part and give him the way: "Nobleman Woland is coming!" In ancient German literature, the devil was called by another name - Faland. It also appears in The Master and Margarita, when the variety show attendants cannot remember the magician's name: "...Maybe Faland?"

By the way, in the first edition, where neither the Master nor Margarita was yet, a full 15 pages were devoted to a detailed description of Woland (now this text is irretrievably lost). Those who happened to get acquainted with the first option had no doubts: only those who know him personally can write such details about the devil.

Primus story

There are many legends about the novel "The Master and Margarita", the longer Bulgakov's creation lives, the more rumors and all sorts of mystical and eerie details. One of the stories associated with the creation of the work is told so often that it is likely that it actually happened. We all remember very well the incredibly charming scene with the cat Behemoth, who displeasedly declared to the citizens shocked by his stern appearance: “I’m not naughty, I’m not touching anyone, I’m fixing the primus stove.” It turns out that at the moment when Bulgakov was once again editing the episode, a fire suddenly started in the apartment on the floor above. They managed to put out the fire in time, but when trying to find the source of ignition, it turned out that the most ordinary stove caught fire in the kitchen of the writer's neighbors.

mysterious death

Just like life, the death of Mikhail Bulgakov is shrouded in mystery. Of course, there is also an official version - the writer died of a hereditary kidney disease, in connection with this, before his death, he was practically blind and experienced unbearable pain, which forced him to start taking morphine again. Often, however, it is claimed that Bulgakov died from an ordinary drug overdose. There is another version, a mystical one: remember the finale of The Master and Margarita, where the Master and his beloved moved into non-existence, where they could spend eternity together, they said that Satan took his "clerk" Bulgakov to himself and in reality, though without a wife.