Revision as of 21:20, 19 February 2003

Mikhail Bulgakov (May 15, 1891 - March 10, 1940), was a Ukrainian-born Soviet novelist and playwright of the first half of the 20th century.

Works

Even during his life, Bulgakov was famous for his books Notes of a Country Doctor and The White Guard (Белая гвардия). He was, for a short period, the favorite playwright of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was fond of the play Days of the Turbins (Дни Турбиных), which was based on White Guard. Stalin's favor won him a job as a literary bureaucrat, but Bulgakov's writings, including The White Guard, were banned in 1929, and Stalin refused Bulgakov's request for permission to emigrate.

However it is the fantasy/morality novel The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита), published almost thirty years after his death, in 1967, that has granted him critical immortality. Nonetheless, the book was available, samizdat, for many years in the Soviet Union, before the serialization of a censored version in the journal Moskva. In the opinion of many, The Master and Margarita is the best Russian novel of the century and the best of the Soviet novels, although it is difficult to imagine Joseph Stalin approving the novel. The novel spawn several phrases which entered into the daily language of post-Soviet Russio, for example "Manuscripts don't burn". A destroyed manuscript of the Master is an important element of the plot, and in fact Bulgakov had to rewrite the novel from memory after he burned the draft manuscript with his own hands.

Various authors and musicians have credited The Master and Margarita as inspiration for certain works. Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, for example, clearly was influenced by Bulgakov's masterwork. The Rolling Stones have said the novel was key in their song, "Sympathy for the Devil". The grunge band Pearl Jam were influenced by the novel's confrontation between Yeshua Ha-Notsri, that is, Jesus, and Pontius Pilate for their 1998 song, "Pilate".

Life

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev, Ukraine, the oldest son of a professor at a theological seminary. The Bulgakov sons enlisted in the White Army, and in post-Civil War Russia, ended up in Paris, save for Mikhail. Mikhail Bulgakov, who enlisted as a field doctor, ended up in the Caucasus, where he eventually began working as a journalist. Despite his relatively favored status under Stalin's Soviet regime, Bulgakov was prevented from either emigrating or visiting his brothers in the West.

In 1913 Bulgakov married Tatyana Lappa. In 1916, Bulgakov graduated from the Medical School of Kiev University. In 1921, he moved with Tatyana to Moscow. Three years later, divorced from his first wife, he married Liubov' Belozerskaia. In 1932, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Elena Shilovskaia. During this last decade of his life, along with The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov occupied himself extensively with adapting various novels for the stage.

After his death, from an inherited liver disorder, on the 10th of March 1940, Mikhail Bulgakov was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Works

• Notes on Cuffs
• Notes of a Country Doctor (Записки юного врача)
• Days of the Turbins (Дни Турбиных) (play)
• The Cabal of Hypocrites (play)
• Pushkin (The Last Days) (play)
• Batum (play)
• The White Guard (Белая гвардия)
• Fatal Eggs
• Heart of a Dog (Собачье сердце)
• Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита)

External Link

• Bulgakov's letter to the Soviet government