M. Bulgakov’s "The Master and Margarita" in the context of Macedonian fiction (1970s-2010s)
The Macedonian interest to Bulgakov numbers around 50 years. It started in 1970 when “The Master and Margarita” was translated by T. Urosheviḱ and published. Since then, Bulgakov became an inalienable part of the national culture and at the same time Macedonia entered the process of world reception of the Russian classical author of the 20th century. In the Macedonian history of Bulgakov’s reception, two periods stand out, which can be explained by the historical circumstances, 1970-1991, and 1991 until now. During the first period, the Macedonian reception of Bulgakov was an inalienable part of the Yugoslav reception of his works. Quite shortly, he became very popular and was percieved as a member of the same group with Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. The beginning of academic reception of Bulgakov’s oeuvre was marked by the text by V. Urosheviḱ published as an afterword to “The Master and Margarita”. The novel changed the ideas of the Macedonian (and Yugoslav) literary studies about the processes that took place in the Russian literature in the 1920s-1930s, their richness and diversity. The satirical image of socialist Moscow, the correlation of the elements of realism and science fiction, the deep philosophical content of the novel, the comprehension of the literary tradition, the artistic subtext of the work are the main issues that attracted Bulgakov’s scholars. Since the 1990s, “The Master and Margarita” is conceptualized in connection with postmodernism, which has become one of the main artistic movements in Macedonian literature. In the 2000s in the author’s tale of V. Urosheviḱ, “The Bride of the Serpent,” traits are revealed that make it possible to talk about the writer’s creative dialogue with the classic of Russian literature of the twentieth century.