Who He Is
A historian and translator who won one hundred thousand rubles in a lottery bonus, left the museum, rented two rooms in the basement of a small house near the Arbat and began writing, in isolation, a novel about Pontius Pilate. He refuses his own name and introduces himself by the title his beloved gave him.
I am a master.
The novel he wrote is the Yershalaim plane of the book: after Woland in chapter 2 and Ivan's dream in chapter 16, it is the manuscript itself, reread by Margarita at the end of chapter 24, that carries the story of Pilate in chapters 25 and 26.
Trajectory
In chapter 13 he comes at night through the veranda into Ivan's room at the asylum, hears the account of Patriarch's Ponds and tells his own story: the chance meeting on the street with the woman with yellow flowers, the rejected novel, the articles by Ariman, Latunsky and Mstislav Lavrovich, the fear of the dark, the manuscript (see The manuscript) burned in the stove one October night, and his voluntary commitment to the clinic of Stravinsky (see Stravinsky's clinic).
Love arose before us like a murderer who comes out of nowhere in a side street, and struck us full force.
It is very difficult to do this, because written paper burns against its will.
In chapter 24 he is brought from the asylum to Woland's room, still in his dressing gown and cap, at Margarita's request. Behemoth pulls the intact novel from under his own body, the retinue erases the trace of Aloisy Mogarych, the neighbor who denounced him to take the apartment, and the couple returns to the basement on the Arbat.
Don't cry, Margot, don't make me suffer. I am very ill.
I am sorry, I cannot believe [...], it is not possible. Manuscripts don't burn.
In chapter 29 his fate is decided without his presence, on the terrace, by the message that Matthew Levi brings to Woland.
He did not earn the light, he earned peace
In chapter 30 he drinks Azazello's Falernian, dies with Margarita and says goodbye to Ivan at the hospital; in chapter 31 he feels on the Sparrow Hills the "premonition of lasting peace"; and in chapter 32, before Pilate, he receives from Woland the decision about himself and frees him with a sentence. Then he goes on to the eternal house, while his memory, "pierced with needles," begins to fade.
Poisoner...
He is free! He is free! He is waiting for you!
Over there, over there! There a house and an old servant await you, the candles are already lit, but they will soon go out, because you will meet the dawn at once.
In the Epilogue he returns in Ivan's dreams, beside Margarita.
So it ended, my disciple
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are art, courage and heroism, and forgiveness. Two readings of why he receives refuge (see The House of Refuge) and not light:
It can be read as a return, from another angle, to the cowardice that Yeshua Ha-Notzri condemned: the Master burned his own novel and gave up defending it in the face of persecution, and the retreat, not the work itself, would be what keeps him from the light without denying him rest.
The book says plainly, in chapter 29, that the Master "did not earn the light," and what it offers him in its place, in domestic detail (vines, Schubert, goose quills), is the opposite of Pilate's flowering garden. It is not punishment: in chapter 32 the house is given as a reward, "what Yeshua asked for you." It can be read that Pilate failed out of cowardice before power and waits almost two thousand years for the conversation, and that the Master failed out of weakness before criticism (he burned his own novel) and gains rest, not light: each received what his own failure allowed him to reach.
He enters the book giving up his name and leaves it losing his memory: in chapter 13 he renounces his own name and keeps only the title his beloved gave him; in 32 his memory fades in the same motion in which he finishes the novel by freeing Pilate. What remains between one end and the other, in chapters 30 to 32 and in the Epilogue, is the word "disciple," said to Ivan at the hospital and repeated in the Epilogue's dream.
Relationships
- Margarita: the beloved, who gives him the title of Master and goes to fetch him at the cost of the ball.
- Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny: the neighbor in the asylum to whom he tells the story and whom he calls disciple.
- Woland: who returns the manuscript to him and offers him refuge.
- Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Notzri: the characters of his novel; Pilate is freed by the phrase he shouts, and the refuge is, in Woland's words, "what Yeshua asked for you."
- Latunsky: one of the critics whose articles attacked the novel.
- Matthew Levi: who carries to Woland the request about his fate.
- Azazello: who serves him the Falernian.