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Rdrama Bookclub Discussion Thread #1 :marseyreading:. “The Master and Margarita” Chap. 1-7

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Greetings dramacels and !bookworms :marseywave2:

As promised, today we are holding our first bookclub discussion thread. We’ll be discussing the first 7 chapters of “The Master and Margarita”, written by the late Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, set in Stalinist Moscow :marseystalin:.

I hope you have enjoyed these first chapters, I certainly did. Based on the numbers of pages read from chapters 1-7, next week discussion will be about chapters 8-17.

I know it was supposed to be at noon E.T. However I’m posting a bit early because I’m off for a family lunch in half an hour, and I don’t want to longpost there.

Have fun with the discussion!

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Man has an encounter with something he can't rationally understand, ends up wandering Moscow in his underwear.

:#marseymanysuchcases:

Good book so far. I can tell the author really does not like censors :carptrophy: I guess Bulgakov hopes to be a kind of Professor W for his readers, shaking up our worldview with wit and trickery.

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I'm still trying to understand what was the reason for Ivan to jump in the river. Hope it's not just a plot device to make him lose the fancy club card (and setup future hijinks).

The cat trying to pay the bus fare made me :marseyxd: for a moment. That's the kinda of shit I would expect from a Terry Pratchett book, and not from some Soviet writer.

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I'm still trying to understand what was the reason for Ivan to jump in the river.

Well he did have a manic episode clearly,

>Ivan looked all around for the fugitive in the dreary, deserted back street, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said to himself firmly, “But, of course, he’s on the Moscow River! Onward!”

>Perhaps Ivan Nikolayevich should have been asked why he thought the professor was on the Moscow River and not somewhere else. But there was, alas, no one to ask him. The foul and odious street was completely deserted.

(with the same unthinking conviction he then headed to Griboedov's).

As for the actual meaning, people read into it a metaphor for baptism, but idk, idk, I think it was just to get him stripped down to underpants and eventually into a psych ward. Notice btw, from chapter 1:

>“Here’s what the sunflower oil has to do with it,” interjected Bezdomny suddenly, evidently deciding to declare war on their uninvited interlocutor. “You haven’t by any chance spent some time in a mental hospital, have you?”

>“Ivan!” softly exclaimed Mikhail Alexandrovich.

>But the foreigner was not the least bit insulted and he burst out with a hearty laugh.

>“I have indeed, I have indeed, and more than once!” he exclaimed, laughing, his unsmiling eye still focused on the poet. “And where haven’t I been! I’m only sorry I never managed to ask the professor what schizophrenia is. So you’ll have to ask him yourself, Ivan Nikolayevich!”

This thing has more lampshades than a Holocaust museum!

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I can see professor @everyone is our official the book club teacher educating the peasants class

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He got fricked with constantly by the politburo censors for his writing. The book was never officially published in lifetime.

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Even when the book was officially published (over twenty years after Bulgakov's death), the USSR heavily censored it and the original manuscript had to be smuggled to the West.

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