Multiple Narrative Personalities in Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” (post 5), as was also seen in Nabokov’s “Lolita” and James’s “Turn of the Screw”

(For discussions of Nabokov and James, please search past posts.)

At the opening of Part Two of “Master and Margarita,” the narrator’s personality changes. The change begins in the last two sentences of Part One:

“We have no idea whether there were any other strange occurrences in Moscow that night, and we have no intention of trying to find out, since the time has come for us to proceed to Part Two of this true narrative. Follow me, reader!” (p. 181). (Note: At first glance, you might think that “we” refers to the narrator plus the reader, but on rereading, the narrator seems to be referring to himself in the plural.)

In the first two pages of Book Two (Chapter XIX, “Margarita”), the narrator amplifies this tone of voice and point of view:

“Follow me, reader! Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love?…First, let me tell you the secret the Master didn’t want to tell Ivan. His beloved’s name was Margarita Nikolayevna…Even I, a truthful narrator, but a detached observer nonetheless, feel my heart contract when I think of what Margarita went through the next day when she came to the Master’s house and found that he was no longer there…‘Why did I leave him that night?’ [Margarita blamed herself]…All of this was absurd of course, since how would her staying with the Master that night have made any difference? Could she really have saved him? ‘Nonsense!’ we would have exclaimed…” (pp. 185-186). (Note again the slip into self-reference in the plural.)

There are some other places in Part One where the narrator addresses the reader (although never so effusively). For example, in chapter V, the narrator says, “But enough, your eyes, dear reader, are becoming glazed! Follow me!” (p. 47). So this narrative voice has been heard before, but only on occasion and not consistently.

Aside from whether the narrator directly addresses the reader and refers to himself in the plural, the narrator’s knowledge about characters changes. For example, back in Chapter IV, the narrator does not know what characters think: “No one knows what thought possessed Ivan at that moment” (p. 42). Whereas, in Chapter XIX, he even knows what Margarita dreams.

What is the reader to think of such narrative inconsistencies? Were Bulgakov, Nabokov, and James careless amateurs? Either that or they had multiple narrative personalities.

Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita. Trans. Burgin and O’Connor. New York, Vintage International/Random House, 1996.