Score
420
Genre
Fiction
Place of first edition
Soviet Union
Time of first edition
1966-67 (serialised) / 1973 (uncensored)
Original language
Russian
“A novel-poem or, if you like, a show in which numerous characters intervene, a book in which an almost cruel realism merges or mixes with the highest of possible themes - that of the Passion - could only have been conceived and carried out by a poetically hallucinated brain. It is here that the little-known Bulgakov joins with the deepest literary tradition of his homeland: the messianic vein, the one we find in certain figures of Gogol and Dostoyevsky and in that madman of God who is the almost unfailing co-star of every great Russian melodrama.
[...]
To realize that in 1940 a free spirit could write, if not publish, a work like this is a miracle that everyone must greet with emotion. It is almost certain that Gorki was right when he wrote that Bulgakov was a name "that would remain in literature." But he said this in a private letter and perhaps could do no more.”
Eugenio Montale, Corriere della Sera, April 9, 1967
[...]
To realize that in 1940 a free spirit could write, if not publish, a work like this is a miracle that everyone must greet with emotion. It is almost certain that Gorki was right when he wrote that Bulgakov was a name "that would remain in literature." But he said this in a private letter and perhaps could do no more.”
Eugenio Montale, Corriere della Sera, April 9, 1967
