Reviews of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Novel The Master and Margarita in Spain and Latin America

Abstract

The article relates to receptive aesthetics, interpenetration and perception process of national literatures. Literature perception studies require different approaches—comparative analysis of traditional poetic systems, hermeneutic analysis, taking into account the cultural and historical aspect. Specific task of this work is to analyse the reviews of the novel The Master and Margarita written by Mikhail Bulgakov in Latin American criticism; to identify and describe dominant ways of reception of the novel, to draw conclusions about the features of its literary-critical interpretation in Latin America. The penetration of Bulgakov’s works through Spain into Latin America and, in particular, into Mexico is analysed. The paper reveals the peculiarities of Bulgakov's novel reception by the Spanish-speaking literary-critical consciousness. The article states that the perception of Bulgakov's novel in Spain and Ibero—American countries was carried out primarily through the convergence of the images of The Master and Margarita with the cult and iconic images of European culture—Don Quixote, Faust, Mephistopheles, through the genre of the picaresque novel and literary mysticism. Bulgakov's name has become the personification of cultural opposition to totalitarianism since the early 1990s. It is important to note that the creative manner of the writer began to be perceived as innovative for his time, Bulgakov became a recognized discoverer of the artistic method of magical realism, widespread in the literatures of Latin America.