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One of the foremost Russian writers of the Soviet period, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) has attracted much critical attention. But Edythe Haber is the first to explore in depth his formative years, to probe the roots of his artistic vision. Her study yields a new picture of the novelist and playwright working in tumultuous times, and a fresh understanding of his ultimate masterpiece, The Master and Margarita.

Bulgakov as writer was born out of the chaos of the Russian revolution and civil war. Haber shows how he mines his civil war experience for literary purposes, and how he molds and remolds his protagonist, transforming the tormented intellectual of the earliest fiction into a complex solitary hero. In achieving in his fiction a version of the creative self, an autobiographical hero, Bulgakov redefines such traditional moral categories as courage and honor. Blending biography and literary analysis of motifs, story, and characterization, Haber tracks one writer's answer to the dislocations of revolution, civil war, and early Bolshevism. And from her examination of Bulgakov's satirical writings a vivid panorama emerges of the burgeoning Soviet society. These comic sketches and novellas, blending the fantastic and quotidian, evoke an intellectual's struggle with a hostile new world. In Haber's trenchant and broadly informed analysis we can see how the themes and characters of the early works receive their final permutation--and transcendence--in The Master and Margarita, surely the finest novel produced in Russia since the Revolution.

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An examination of all known prose and dramatic works by Mikhail Bulgakov in the context of his life and times. Early chapters build a biographical profile of the writer, subsequent chapters focus on his works, from his earliest feuilletons and stories, to his major plays and novels. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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In the centennial year of Bulgakov's birth, this breakthrough, comprehensive study examines Bulgakov's magnum opus, "The Master and Margarita", and its wide-ranging literary and non-literary sources. In addition to a thorough textual analysis, the book establishes Bulgakov's indebtedness to the Russian Formalists and Paul Florensky's mystical philosophy, and explores the "gnostic" coloring of Bulgakov's metaphysics. Contents: The Cognitive Aesthetics of Mikhail Bulgakov; The Jerusalem Chapters: Bulgakov's Metaphysics and Existential Ethics; The Epiphany of Evil in the Apocalyptic City: The Devil's "Balagan" on the World's Stage; The Master: Dilemma of a Romantic Artist; Margarita: Love That Errs and Wins; Pilate's Pardon and the Lovers' Eternal Refuge; Ivan Bezdomny, the Master's Disciple: Heavenly Jerusalem, and Bulgakov's Mystical Church. ... Read more

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The ultimate back-stage novel and a brilliant satire by the author of The Master and Margarita on his ten-year love-hate relationship with Stanislavsky, Method Acting and the Moscow Arts Theatre.Amazon.com Review
To those living in the West, the Russian writer MikhailBulgakov is known as a fiction writer, his reputation resting largelyon his greatly-loved novel The Master andMargarita. During his life in the Soviet Union (1891-1940),however, Bulgakov's biggest career successes came as a playwright inthe immensely influential Moscow theater. The novel Black Snow,is Bulgakov's lampoon of that entire pre-war Russian drama scene,complete with a fictional version of his nemesis, the greatStanislavsky (of method acting fame). The book is a writer's storyabout hapless Maxuduv, an unlucky author (not unlike Bulgakov himself)who is torn apart under the insane forces, overcooked egos, andpolitical machinations that rumbled through the world of the theaterat that time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Immensely enjoyable read.
I stumbled across Mikhail Bulgakov completely by accident. I was reading up on Stanislavsky, the reknowned Russian acting teacher, and came across this little book as part of my research.
What followed was surely a possessed spell where I couldn't put it down. While truly biased, as being an actor, by the behind the scenes aspect of the mythological Moscow Art Theatre, I was more overcome by just how appetizing Bulgakov's prose truly is.
Bulgakov's absolute disregard for typical structure and wordflow are what makes him so readable. He truly captures the essence of lonliness and the absurdity any creative feels when they are mining the depths of imagination and the dread that follows with it's exposure.
While it may help to have a foot in the lore of Stanislavsky and the Art Theatre, I DO believe this work can stand on it's own. The only regret, I felt, was when it ended. It's quite abrupt and left me wanting an entire 'second half'.
But, then, as they say in theatre. 'Leave them wanting more.'
A great intro to futher reading of Bulgakov, if, like me, your just stumbling upon him.

A review by Philip Spires
Black Snow is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. This apparent platitude is full of contradiction. The book is perhaps better described as an autobiographical episode, with Bulgakov renamed as the book's central character, Maxudov. It's also a satire in which the characters are precise, exact and often vicious caricatures of Bulgakov's colleagues and acquaintances in the between-the-wars Moscow Arts Theatre, including the legendary Stanislawsky. In some ways, Black Snow is a history of Bulgakov's greatest success, the novel The White Guard, which the theatre company adapted for the stage under the title The Days of the Turbins. The play ran for close to a thousand performances, including one staged for an audience of a single person, one Josef Stalin who, perhaps luckily for Bulgakov, liked it.

Black Snow is also a sideways look at the creative process, itself. Maxudov is a journalist with The Shipping Times and hates the monotony and predictability of his work. Privately he creates a new world by writing a novel in which the author can imagine transcending the mundane. But the product of this and all creation is useless unless it is shared. Only then can it exist. Only then can the author's relief from the self he cannot live with be realised. But when no-one publishes the novel, when no-one shows the slightest interest in it, the author is left only with the isolation that inspired the book, but now this is an amplified isolation and more devastating for it. So he attempts suicide. But he is such an incompetent that he fails. It's the same middle class Russian incompetence that Chekhov celebrated in Uncle Vanya where no-one seems able to aim a shot.

But then this unpublished book is seen by others, for whom it seems to mean something quite different from the author's intention. Instead of a novel, they see it as a play. They ask for a re-write, complete with changes of both plot and setting. Effectively, the only way the work can have its own life, its own existence, is for it to become something that denies the author's own intentions and thus nullifies the reason for writing it. And so Maxudov goes along with things and thus in effect he is back again doing what he does for The Shipping Times, in that he is writing things that others want.

And here is where Black Snow becomes a parody of what was happening later in Bulgakov's own career. He wanted to write a play about censorship and control. This, obviously, was impossible in Stalin's Soviet Union, so he set the play in France, basing it upon the historical reality of Moliere.After four years of tying to prepare the play for performance what finally emerged was a costume drama from which all allusions to censorship had been removed or watered down. So Bulgakov's intended comment on Soviet society was lost. And the play flopped.

So the satirical caricatures are truly vicious. We have an impresario who is incapable of remembering the playwright's name. We have the opinionated arty intellectual, full of biting criticism and dismissive posturing until he realises he is speaking to the author and then he does an instant, blushing volte-face. We have a character that is so sure about every detail of organisation and experience that they are almost always wrong.

Ultimately, Black Snow is about a creative process where a writer can create whatever is imaginable. But then in communicating it, the receivers change it, transform it into what they want it to be. The writer makes the snow black, the recipients read it as black but change it to white and then probably argue whether it has already turned to rain. Black Snow is an enigmatic, super-real and surreal satire.

You need to have felt the USSR regime to understand this...
Bulgakov is certainly one of the best Russian writers, and 'The Theatre Novel' is certainly among his best works. Unfortunately, it's been translated in English as 'Black Snow', which changes the idea of the book quite a great deal - 'Black Snow' is the title of the novel written by Maxudov (the main character), but in this case Bulgakov doesn't mean that we are reading THAT novel. It is quite misleading; Maxudov's 'Black Snow' is NOT 'The Theatre (or Theatral) Novel'.

The novel itself is quite hard to understand; I believe it could be best understood by those who have a good deal of knowledge about the situation Bulgakov is describing. I cannot say I have that, therefore it is not as easy to read this novel as it is to read other works by Bulgakov. However, the novel is definitely a masterpiece - the descriptions, for example, are overwhelmingly vivid and warm, which stands out even more considering that most modern (and pre-modern) novels do not depict that warmth and depth of feeling. The strikingly accurate descriptions of human emotions seem to be a thing that can most often be found in good Russian literature (Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Chekhov...), and that's why you need Bulgakov to use almost half-a-page to list different kinds of people, for example...

The plot of the novel is quite hard to follow - which only illustrates how much of a genius Bulgakov is, as he manages to brilliantly reveal the confusion Maxudov experiences and the absurdity of his world. The feeling of uncertainty never leaves Maxudov. Nor does it leave the reader...

I'd have given this book 5 stars if Bulgakov hadn't also written 'The Master And Margarita'. 'The Theatre Novel' is a great book, but it simply cannot be as great as that one...

Some clarification
Translation of the name of the book is chosen badly.
It is 'Teatral'nyi roman' - not 'Black Snow'!
The latter is the name of the novel which gets written by the narrator and plays an auxiliary role in the story (it is of course a paraphrase on the 'White Guard' - the image of a man running on the snow away from the horsemen is from there).
In part, the subject of 'Teatral'nyi roman' is theatre - theatre which enchants the narrator.

It is the most fluent and polished of all Bulgakov novels, though unfinished; judging by the reviews of the english speakers, the translation apparently lost that virtue.

About its being 'critical of Stanislavsky'. This is simply not the point, although I can understand the English reader, who tries to find some known landmarks. Of course Bulgakov ironizing on behalf of the actors, their ethiquette and life in the theatre, but this just serves to depict the theatre charm.
As the description of the golden horse on the empty scene which Maksudov sees when he first enters the building of the Independent Theatre.

Revealing portrait of Soviet literary and theatrical milieu
In this autobiographical novel, Bulgakov describes his experiences working with the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in the 1930's.The characters and situations are exaggerated to enhance the satire, and it is obviously not impartial, but it is extremely revealing nonetheless.This book, which is critical of Stanislavsky's method and the Soviet theatre scene of the 1930's, gives a moving portrait of a talented, dedicated author working against incredible odds.As usual in Bulgakov, satire is mixed with a serious message.Anyone interested in Bulgakov, the theatre, or Russian cultural history will enjoy this book. ... Read more