| "To be born again, . . . first you have to die" sings Gibreel Farishta as he and Saladin Chamcha hurdle toward earth at the beginning of The Satanic Verses (3). Indeed, in this literal and metaphorical fall from their pervious lives, exploded along with flight 420 to London,3 they are linked, transformed, metamorphosed, reborn. Chamcha eventually repudiates his adopted, high-brow life as a true Englishman, and becomes bestial in both appearance and mannerisms, while Gibreel assumes a more angelic form, suiting his divine name: Gibreel the Angel. Equally fantastic is the outset of The Master and Margarita. A typical spring afternoon at Patriarch's Ponds turns fatal for Berlioz and Bezdomny when Satan shows up to question their beliefs. The former literally loses his head, while the latter, like Farishta and Chamcha, becomes truly homeless having heard the tale of this mysterious stranger--a tale that passes doubt on the current communist thought sanctions. This story, like its narrator, begins a chain of fantastic events, not unlike surviving a fall from an exploded airplane, precipitating the process of death, rebirth, and self-discovery. |
| The Master and Margarita and The Satanic Verses4 offer pandemic scopes, both geographically and temporally. Generally, each novel contains a heterodox account of the creation of the world's two largest religions and a fantastical present disrupted by phantasmagoric calamities seemingly risen from Hell. Two main times and places frame the action in each work: Master is based in Russia of the 1920s and in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus, and Verses primarily in London and the region around Mecca, called Jahilia,5 about 500 ad.6 Both settings are inexplicably linked throughout both novels. While the heterodox sections would obviously have an impact on the contemporary settings because of their chronological positions, the latter also influence the former settings in a less-temporal and somewhat less-lucid inspirational catch-22. The source of inspiration becomes ambiguous and paradoxical, promoting divine contention for the practitioners of Islam and Christianity, while disputing the very nature of religious and creative inspiration. |
| The heterodox sections of Verses are dreamed by Farishta, while the heterodox sections of Master are parts of a contemporary novel by the master. The reader is fully aware that the heterodox sections of both novels are fictions; nevertheless, that realization fails to diminish their impact upon the contemporary world both in the novels and in the reader's reality. The fact that they are fictions created by Farishta and the master should allow readers to dismiss them as merely fiction, but Rushdie and Bulgakov do not let the readers off that easily. While the heterodox stories are literally created by the master and Farishta, there is a further sense of ambiguity: what inspires Farishta and the master? Just who, or what, inspires the authors of the texts within the texts? |
| The nature of fiction versus fact has been brought into question. Plato states that the artist makes his own reality; would that be a fiction made fact? Suppose, then, he tells a group of people about his creation and they choose to support it; does it not become more solid and tenable--more real? When a society accepts a law, be it divine or otherwise, can it not then be said to have become a reality? A law is a fiction that a majority has chosen to follow, thus making it a fact. Take, for another example, Shakespeare's Hamlet. Whether there was ever an Elsinor or a Prince Hamlet does not diminish the reality of the fiction, the essence of the art. This reality in fiction speaks to and about the human condition in a profound way that instills a need to question further. Yet, where does this profundity come from, and how is it translated to the artist? |
| The mysterious stranger that visits Berlioz and Bezdomny at the beginning of Master is, states the master later, Satan (136). Satan is also alluded to at the beginning of Verses by Farishta's and Gibreel's "angelicdevilish fall" from an "Himalayan height" by the "meteor or lightning or vengeance of God" (5, 4, 3). Satan begins his work with a disrupting violence in both novels: Berlioz dies just as Woland predicts, and Chamcha and Farishta fall from an exploding airplane. His work is to reassert life by introducing the marvelous and dynamic into the rational and mundane (Haber 389-90). Satan represents the creative impulse that ushers in change, rebirth, transformation, and metamorphosis (Arenberg 111). Rather than the Prince of Lies, the satanic element in Rushdie and Bul-gakov awakens the sleeper by inspiring action, testing with temptation, and forcing thought and creativity (Proffer "Genre" 628). Here Satan dispels entropy by forcing activity in Bezdomny, Farishta, and Chamcha. |
| Ostensibly, the story of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua are the contents of the master's novel; Woland narrates the first installment, Ivan Bezdomny dreams the second, and Margarita reads the latter two from the master's restored manuscript. By using Satan as his narrator, Bulgakov suggests the authenticity of the master's novel, given that he was also present when Pilate interviewed Yeshua (Proffer 535). By having Bezdomny dream the second section of the Pilate story, Bulgakov shows the universality of the story; i.e. the truth in the story is present in nature waiting to be divined (Proffer 537-8). This provokes Carol Avins' question: "Where, then, lies the text's origin--in the Master's [and Ivan's] mind or in Woland's experience?" (276). |
| Yet, if Woland is the corrupter of the present belief systems in Russia, e.g. com-pulsory atheism and/or a secret orthodox Christianity, he has infected Bezdomny by his meeting with him and Berlioz in chapters one through three. Woland has given Bezdomny something to ponder, which precipitates homelessness: Bezdomny7 begins to wander away from the intellectual community that he had accepted willingly and ends up having his own dark night of the soul. He, like Farishta and Chamcha, has died to his previous existence by a satanic disruption, and is, thus, ostracized from his former community of writers at MASSOLIT. Later, when Bezdomny meets master, the latter recognizes Satan's influence and concludes that "Both you and I are mad, there's no point in denying it. He gave you a shock and it sent you mad" (137). And, as Satan is the Prince of Lies, one cannot trust him as a reliable narrator, as Proffer suggests (559). Yet the factual truth of his narrative becomes moot, its main purpose is to shake things up in atheist Moscow. |
| The master, however, confirms to Bezdomny that Satan's narrative is fact: "The man you were talking to was with Pontius Pilate, he did have breakfast with Kant and now he has paid a call on Moscow" (137). The master's proof is in his novel: it parallels Woland's narration about Pontius Pilate--a novel the master wrote without having met Woland. This leads one to speculate on the master's inspiration. How, as Gibreel will ask in Verses, did his voice get worked and by whom? |
Similar to Bezdomny, in The Satanic Verses, Gibreel dreams the Mahound sections after his fall, and in so doing, he treads upon sacred ground. Gibreel, a person who has become psychotic after surviving a fall from an exploded airplane, imagines himself as God's postman, the angel Gabriel, who must deliver the word of God to his prophet on earth, i.e. Muhammad (King 149). Yet, somehow his lines become confused and Satan interjects verses into Gibreel's head, leaving the latter, in a state of consternation, to ask: "if the dabba had the wrong markings and so went to the incorrect recipient, was the dabbawalla to blame?" (Verses 331). Later, Gibreel states: Being God's postman is no fun, yaar.
Butbutbut: God isn't in this picture.
God knows whose postman I've been. (Verses 112)
The theme of delivering messages is central to both novels. Another parallel exists be-tween Bezdomny, Farishta, and Chamcha: they are all influential in the public sphere. Bezdomny is a successful poet for MASSOLIT, Farishta makes popular "theologicals" playing divinities from different religions in film, and Chamcha is the man with a 1001 voices on British radio. Yet all three are misdirected--victims of others' agendas. They are all delivering the wrong messages: other peoples' narratives. This new satanic influence inspires a metaphysical contention between previous ideologies and new developments that bring those beliefs into question. How can one stubbornly hold on to one's rational beliefs when a stranger predicts in detail the death of a companion, or when one survives a fall from thirty thousand feet? |
| Dubious otherworldly sources seemingly influence both the master and Gibreel, and both have, in effect, created their own other worlds; yet, at the same time, there is a feeling that these other worlds are not solely the creations of their respective artists. An-other source influences both characters, but this source remains clouded in the fogs of ambiguity throughout both novels. Another similarity between the master and Gibreel is that their sanity is in question--they both suffer alone. The master is ostracized by Latun-sky's vicious review and is denounced by his neighbor Mogarych which drives him to a breakdown and lands him in Stravinsky's clinic nameless: "I no longer have a name . . . I have renounced it, as I have renounced life itself. Let us forget it" (138). Gibreel is an émigré to Great Britain who, like all minorities, is defined by the racist and prejudiced natives and leads him "trying to understand the will of God" (Verses 457); he eventually, having gone downhill throughout the novel--a victim of multiple stories--kills himself and his girlfriend. Farishta cannot reconcile the various masks that society makes him wear, and, in trying to fit all of the sundry definitions, he goes mad. Both Gibreel and the master suffer as artists who have no place within the ranks of a corrupt and depraved society, whether it is Russia of the 1920s or today's London. |
Both "texts" have dubious origins; yet, both texts seem to exist beyond their earthly creators as being both true and sacred (Avins 276). Avins, in response to these issues and apropos to both novels, states that:
One can also view this account, . . . which differs so greatly from that in the Bible, as a heretical version shared by the devil and the modern mortal. These puzzles resist solution and raise broader questions about the relation-ship among the historical, mythic, fictional, and sacred narrative. (276-7)
This ambiguity is never made less opaque in either novel. Conceivably, however, Bulgakov and Rushdie, perhaps, advocate the competence of the individual to decide for himself; the truth should be apparent to the individual who remains true to himself. Therefore, as mentioned above, the factual accounts of the event hardly seem relevant in this light--the individual must decide his own truth. |
| The contention: the individual's narrative versus imposed absolute narrative. If the former represents a product of satanic influence, then what good can come of it? Does Satan present a positive, creative influence, contrary to traditional religious doctrine espouses? A look at the master's and Farishta's heterodox narratives will begin to answer these questions, to elucidate and provide a model for the individual's narrative, and to provide the ontological position of satanic verses. |
