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Abstract: In 1932–1933, M. A. Bulgakov created a fascinating portrait of the great French satirist Moliere for the series “The Life of Wonderful People”. In August 1932, under the influence of his work on the biography of Moliere, Bulgakov returned to work on the novel “The Master and Margarita”, interrupted in 1930, and began its second edition. This article is the first attempt to investigate the influence of the novel about Moliere on the creation of the image of the master in the novel “The Master and Margarita” based on a textological analysis of the entire body of the drafts of these works. The author argues that the creation of the image of Moliere is based on Bulgakov’s correlation of the biography of the great French playwright with his own life and creative experience. The novel about Moliere, already in its first edition, uses narrative moves of autobiographical nature, which have already been used by Bulgakov in his earlier texts (diary, autobiographies, letters, and fiction works). In 1933, Bulgakov introduced the image of the master into the novel “The Master and Margarita” and created it on the basis of the elements that he had used in the novel about Moliere: the protagonist is named “master”, his faithful girlfriend is close to him, persecution begins against the main character, because of the persecution, the main character falls ill, a denunciation is made against the main character. As a result of parallel work on two texts, Bulgakov created in the novel “The Master and Margarita” the image of an artist persecuted for political reasons, and the theme of the artist and power, which occupies a dominant position in the novel about Moliere, was also included in the novel. In the course of their study, the authors of the article have worked out a sequence of editions of the novel, reflecting the last creative will of the writer to the fullest extent: the first edition (1928–1930), the second edition (1932–1936), the third edition (1936), the fourth edition (1937), the fifth edition (last handwritten, 1937–1938), and the sixth edition (final, 1938–1940). For the first time, fragments of the drafts of the novel about Moliere have been introduced into scientific circulation.

About the author(s) :

Elena Yu. Kolysheva

Moscow City University (Moscow, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3653-8561

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 16.10.2024; date of publication: 28.03.2025

References:

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