Bulgakov begins The Master and Margarita from a metaphysical perch: Berlioz and Ivan Nikolayevich sit on the bench at Patriach’s Ponds in a heated debate about God’s (non)existence in the novel’s first pages. As the professor of dark magic settles between them, the discussion turns to Kant’s proof of God:
‘But permit me to ask you,’ the foreign guest resumed after a troubled silence, ‘what about the proofs of God's existence? As we know, there are exactly five of them […] Bravo! These are exactly the words of the restless old Immanuel on this subject. But curiously enough, he demolished all five arguments and then, as if to mock himself, constructed his own sixth one. ‘Kant's argument,’ the educated editor countered with a subtle smile, ‘is equally unconvincing.’
The novel’s allusion to Kant takes the story briefly through philosophical territory. In his Critique of Practical Reason, he adds the “sixth” proof of God to Thomas Aquinas’s previous five. Kant’s argument derived God’s existence through the presence of human conscience—the fact that people possess a sense of moral order shows that God exists.
This “unconvincing argument” plays neatly to Woland’s advantage. In predicating God upon human morality, Kant’s reasoning sets out an expectation that people follow their consciences. But few, it turns out, do. If Woland’s mischief reveals anything, it is a denial of Kant’s most basic premise. Set on the allure of superficial wealth, Nikanor Ivanovich accepts illicit payments, the unruly crowd at the Variety Theater plays spectator to a beheading, and Griboyedov’s writers revel in dance and drink even after Berlioz’s death. No human morality, no God—Woland’s devilish triumphs become unsettling, firm rebuttals of the Prussian philosopher.
Taking up Woland’s first lines, the story in Chapter 2 opens to a potentially unfamiliar scene with strikingly familiar figures, in an allusion to the biblical Gospels:
In the early morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood-red lining and walking with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, the Procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, came out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
The novel’s allusions to Pontius Pilate and Herod the Great provide biblical grounding in a moment that might otherwise catch the reader off guard. Bulgakov summons the gospel to life through a vivid reimagining of its narratives. The “faintly acrid smoke” hangs in the air, the cavalryman shuffles, and the Procurator clutches his cloak with “blood-red lining”—details not included within the original accounts. The respective references to the governor and king of Judea—both central characters in Ha-Nozri’s life—orient the reader within the biblical narrative’s familiar premises.
Additionally, the references introduce what becomes a pillar of The Master and Margarita. Evocatively rendered, the story of Ha-Nozri’s trial and crucifixion is a religious cornerstone and literary centerpiece. Bulgakov’s interpretation fills in the blank spaces, revisiting the narrative to explore Pilate’s indecision and regrets. His retelling of a familiar story gives it new life and examines human vulnerability anew.
The Master and Margarita is not the only literary work to feature the Devil. When the Master enters in Ivan’s cell in Chapter 13, he concludes that the poet crossed paths with Satan and slips in a brief mention of Goethe’s Faust:
Well, then…for even the face you described, the different eyes, the eyebrows!…You'll pardon me, but perhaps you have never even heard the opera Faust?
As a play about the Devil, Faust is a fitting allusion in Bulgakov’s novel. But The Master and Margarita shares with the 18th-century work more than just its Satanic subject matter—its story of the Master parallels some of the play’s own narrative arc. Like Faust, the jaded scholar who strikes a deal with the Devil for special powers, Margarita bargains with Koroviev and agrees to serve as Woland’s partner at the annual Satanic ball.
Bulgakov adds a twist, though. In the source story, Gretchen—Faust’s lover—saves him from Hell by appealing to divine mercy. In The Master and Margarita, though, Margarita assumes the role of both bargain-driver and the Master’s redeemer. More, she saves her lover through the same pact with Woland. Rather than seeking God, she makes acquaintance with the Devil.
Faust was a play to which Bulgakov himself repeatedly returned, and its imprints are visible throughout the novel. In dealing with redemption, love, and knowledge, The Master and Margarita takes up the familiar story and provides an interpretation of its own.
In a novel where the Devil abducts theater members and streetcars run over editors, even Spanish knights earn a brief mention. Having fled the burning apartment 50, Koroviev and Behemoth pass Griboyedov’s in Chapter 28 and speculate about the literary works being written:
‘Perfectly true,’ Koroviev agreed with his inseparable companion. ‘And a sweet chill numbs your heart to think that a future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or, the devil take me, a Dead Souls may be ripening here, right before your eyes! Eh?’
As the first modern novel, Don Quixote bears a measure of literary resonance with Bulgakov’s story. The Master and Margarita seems to replicate Don Quixote’s picaresque form—episodic narratives following the knight-errant as he travels through the Spanish countryside—in Woland’s own tramp across the city. With characters transported to Yalta or transformed into bubbles, the novel’s absurdity rivals that of a wandering, washbasin-wearing knight who tilts at windmills. In almost the same way Don Quixote’s fiction tests the limits of reality, Woland’s crew upends the everyday. Just shortly after entering Griboyedov’s, Zoroviev and Behemoth set it on fire in a shootout. Part of the appeal in both works is their madcap strangeness.
Don Quixote’s powerful narrative presence informs that in The Master and Margarita as well. Like the narrator who intrudes between the first and second parts of the story, Bulgakov indirectly inserts himself through the character of the Master and addresses the reader. “The author of these truthful lines has himself heard […] of how two thousand persons had come out of a theater stark naked,” Bulgakov confides in his audience. Miguel Cervantes’s literary landmark sets an example for Bulgakov’s in freedom, narrative voice, and the imagination.