Dotek věčnosti. Mistr a Markétka Michaila Bulgakova. Romantické enigma románu-gnostického mýtu
A Touch of Eternity. The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov. The Romantic Enigma of a Novel-Gnostic Myth

Summary/Abstract: „The novel-gnostic myth“, M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (1928-1940), a sequel to the novel Petersburg (1912-16, 1922) by A. Bely was the expression of the ethical- -aesthetic anagenesis of Russian literature of the first half of the 20th century. It was born in the riverbed of ‘romantic gnosticism’, synthesizing symbolism, the magic of ‘onirism’, Hoffmannesque ‘capriccio’, the phenomenon of ‘initiation’ and ‘fantastic realism’ of F. M. Dostoevsky with his search for the ‘truth of ages’ and the meaning of human existence. By reflecting the terminal events in human life Bulgakov’s ‘book of life’ turns into a ‘myth of life after death’ (a myth of spiritual ‘rebirth’); its prophetic imagery originates in the sphere of ‘theologia mythica’, a mythical-mystical vision of the world permeated by the sophianity of Christian spirituality. It is a novel with a ‘secret’; its cathartic, respectively, autocathartic substance is ‘metanoia’ (repentance), a mythical-poetic metaphor for the concealed, guilty being of the author himself, which becomes a ‘confession’ of a painful, almost astral desire for salvation, ‘otherness’, and spiritual resurrection in ‘eternity’. The narrative, open to ‘infinity’, is permeated by ‘nostalgia’ for the transcendent. Flowing through it is a ‘dreaming’ of the ‘divine imagination’ and a revolt of the awakened mind against the weight of the moral failings of the time, which negated the soul.

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