Lesson 1. Interesting passages and hidden meanings

In the night flight, by the light of the moon, Woland's retinue is transformed, and each of them appears in his true form. Koroviev-Fagott turns out to be a somber knight in violet armor: once he made an unfortunate quip about light and darkness and was sentenced to go on jesting longer and more than he had expected. Behemoth turns into a slender youth, a demon page. Azazello takes on the look of a cold, murderous demon of the desert. This is one of the ending's most powerful devices. Throughout the novel the retinue amused and frightened, playing the part of fairground jesters. But the jesting was a mask: behind it stood ancient, tragic beings serving out their terms. The transformation gives all the earlier buffoonery a double bottom (a hidden second layer): behind the laughter lay a reckoning. Woland himself also sheds his earthly guise and appears in his true majesty. Night tears off every mask; that is the law of the ending: everyone becomes who they are.

In the moonlight the characters see Pontius Pilate. For almost two thousand years he has sat in a stone chair on a cheerless platform, tormented by insomnia, with his faithful dog Banga beside him. His punishment is memory and waiting: he cannot forgive himself his cowardice and wants more than anything to speak with the prisoner again and prove that there was no execution. Woland invites the Master to finish his novel with a single sentence, to let his hero go. The Master shouts into the mountains, “Free! Free! He is waiting for you!” and Pilate is at last released. Along the broad moonlit road he rushes upward to Yeshua, and the dog runs beside him. The conversation once broken off will be continued. This resolves the novel's central moral knot. The theme of cowardice, which runs through the whole book, ends in forgiveness. And this forgiveness comes not from God directly but through a human being: through the Master, the author of the novel about Pilate. The creator forgives his creation.

Margarita and the Master are granted peace. Their “eternal home” is described as a quiet haven: a house with a Venetian window, climbing grapevine, cherry trees in bloom, a stream, candles, beloved books. Here the Master will be able to create without fear, and Margarita will guard his sleep. Words are spoken promising that his wounded memory will grow calm. It is important to grasp the meaning of this reward. It is not “paradise” in the church sense, nor the radiant light open to Yeshua. It is peace: tranquility, quiet, a home, love, and the chance to work. For a hounded artist, as Bulgakov himself was, such peace is the highest happiness. The dream of a refuge where no one will touch you, where you can simply live and write, runs through the whole novel. Notice who leads the characters to this refuge: the light (Yeshua's will) sees them on their way, but it is the forces of evil (Woland) that grant them peace. Light and darkness act together here, the very thing Woland and Levi argued about. The ending reconciles the opposites that hold the world together.

The ending draws all the storylines together. The Master's Yershalaim novel gets its last sentence, Pilate's release; the Moscow storyline ends with the retinue's departure; the story of the Master and Margarita, with their finding peace. Two worlds, separated by two millennia, meet in a single moonlit night. Notice the recurring symbolism of the moon. Moonlight in the novel is the light of truth, insight, and forgiveness (unlike the scorching “procuratorial” sun under which the execution took place). It is by moonlight that the masks come off, Pilate is set free, and the road to Yeshua opens. The moon leads the characters home. The main idea of the ending: justice and mercy do exist after all, even if they come by strange paths — through the devil, through death, through two thousand years of waiting. Love proves stronger than suffering, creativity stronger than oblivion, forgiveness stronger than guilt. With this the novel ends, leaving the reader with a quiet, hard-won light.