Margarita's Orgasms: Reading the Erotic in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

Abstract

This article explores The Master and Margarita’s orientation to erotic themes, asking why do readers not think of this novel as erotic. Margarita is “nagaia i nevidimaia” (naked and invisible) during her flight in chapter 21, “Polet.” This description invites a potentially erotic visualization of Margarita, but this invitation is immediately withdrawn by the second description of her as invisible: the erotic reading is immediately subverted by the impossibility of visualizing the invisible. Beginning with this emblematic example, this article shows how Bulgakov’s novel repeatedly raises and disavows the potential for reading it through a prism of sexual desire. This article argues that the acquisition of Margarita’s supernatural power is figured as a sexual climax, and then shows how Bulgakov erotically figures Margarita’s reading of the Master’s novel. Inscribing Bulgakov’s novel into a broader tradition of the European novel’s poetics of intimacy, this article concludes by suggesting that Margarita’s erotic activities play an integral role in the formation of her subjectivity, a formation that is paradoxically disrupted by these erotic activities. As a result, Margarita’s subject formation can be understood as subverting the subjugating power that forms her as subject.