The Master and Margarita is no less vivid than fantastical, often employing imagery. That is especially true for Pontius Pilate’s narrative, as he enters the colonnade in Chapter 2 before Ha-Nozri’s trial:
It seemed to the Procurator that the cypresses and palms in the garden gave off the smell of roses, that the accursed whiff of roses was mingled with the odors of the convoy's leather gear and sweat.
This instance—like many others—provides a rich entrance into the biblical world of Yershalayim. Bulgakov immerses the reader into the narrative with an impressive sensory accounting, imagining Pilate’s “white cloak with blood-red lining” and Ha-Nozri’s “dark bruise” just pages later. He recreates a familiar setting through sight and now smell. Pilate’s narrative captures every last detail, from the “shuffling gait of the cavalryman” down to the scent of the convoy’s “leather gear.” The olfactory details—the “whiff of roses” and the “acrid smoke”—communicate an experience that seems more lifelike than the words themselves.
Recasting the famous narrative in this way gives it a sense of personal, earthy intimacy otherwise unavailable in the Bible’s paratactic style. The novel steps—quite literally—into the shoes of its characters, illuminating the quirks of a place and people in evocative fashion. Through Pilate’s narrative, Bulgakov imagines within the biblical gaps to present a familiar story under an entirely new light.
Moments before Ha-Nozri’s crucifixion, a brewing storm descends upon Yershalayim in Chapter 16. Dark clouds gather over Yershalayim, putting on a display of visual imagery as Matthew Levi protests God’s great injustice:
The sun had vanished before it reached the sea in which it drowned every evening. The storm cloud that had swallowed it rose steadily and menacingly from the west. Its edges were already seething with white foam; its smoke-black belly was tinged with yellow. The cloud rumbled and from time to time fiery threads shot out of it. Along the Jaffa road, along the dreary Valley of Hinnom, over the pilgrims’ tents, columns of dust were driven by the sudden wind.
Moments before Ha-Nozri dies, the universe seems to have sent its signs. The novel turns to a wealth of figurative visual details to mark an ominous shift and provide a taste of the supernatural. Storm clouds with “smoke-black” bellies “seeth[e] with white foam” to swallow the sun. “Fiery threads” shoot out along their edges in preview of the “fire” they will spray moments after. Once coupled with the flies settling over Yeshua’s body, the sum of these visual details is an eerie, apocalyptic unease. As columns of dust swirl past tents and Matthew Levi curses God for his cruelty, the novel’s visual imagery creates an impression as though Hell itself has come close to breaking loose, and that—as foretold in some of Yeshua’s own prophecies—the end of time may in fact be drawing near.
At least in the Devil’s book, decapitated heads can make neat party tricks. If Woland puts on the finishing touch to his festivities by bringing a severed head in Chapter 23, Bulgakov caps it off with horror through a moment of gruesome imagery:
Woland raised his sword. At once the flesh and skin of the head darkened and shriveled, then dropped away in pieces; the eyes disappeared; and soon Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes and pearl teeth, mounted on a gold stem. The lid of the skull swung open on a hinge.
The very sight of Berlioz’s head—with still “living, thinking, suffering” eyes—inspires visceral disgust. No less horrifying is the way in which Woland treats it in this sequence, reveling in Berlioz’s mistaken “theory” and proceeding to melt his head. The decapitated flesh of MASSOLIT’s editor “darken[s]” and “shrivel[s],” with pieces falling away to reveal a yellow skull. Like a lid, the skullcap swings open “on a hinge.”
Bulgakov’s ghastly visual account reinforces the novel’s delirious fantasy. Berlioz’s dissolving head is a tough act to follow. As if continuing the performance, Koroviev shoots Baron Meigel in the chest and gathers the blood in a goblet to serve as a drink. In a novel filled with satire and absurd comedy, this scene presses upon the reader the Devil’s sinister force. Despite Woland’s facetiousness, the grotesque imagery of this moment stands as a reminder of his awful powers.