The Motive of Peace in the Works of B. Pasternak and M. Bulgakov

The concept of peace entered into Russian culture from the Bible and became its important spiritual tradition. With the development of secular literature, peace has gradually come out of the sacred field and become the significant aesthetic concept rich in connotation. In their works, Pasternak and Bulgakov reflect on the peace in the field of existence and art, especially the ontological value of family and love, thoughts about history, death and creativity. The concept of memory plays an important role in the artistic world of the two writers. Bulgakovs and Pasternaks books are testimony to rebirth and immortality, which is the way they participate in the sacred cause. The paper analyzes the place and role of the motive of peace in the novels of B. Pasternak Doctor Zhivago and M. Bulgakov The Master and Margarita in their similarities and differences. In this regard, the images of the house, music, creativity as the focus of the artists world are compared, the typological related figures of the beloved muse and the savior are considered, the specificity of the disclosure of the theme of immortality in creativity is noted.

Do Bulgakov’s Hella (Gella), Azazello, Behemoth, and Abadonna Have Ancient Near Eastern Origins?

This paper focuses on the issue of the possible Ancient Near Eastern origins of famous Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s demonic characters, such as the vampire Hella (Gella), the cat-human Behemoth, and the demons Azazello and Abadonna from the novel The Master and Margarita. The nature of the members of Woland’s court have been analysed in several works; however, their roots are usually considered to go back to biblical times and context. Our aim is to try to shed some light on their possibly more ancient origins, since it is a well-known fact that Bulgakov was deeply interested in the Ancient Near East and used several of its elements in his novel. Therefore, in order to establish any potential Ancient Near Eastern impact on the essence of those characters, we need to look into Akkadian and Sumerian mythology and Mesopotamian religious texts (e.g., incantations).

Lexico-grammatical peculiarities of expressing indefinite semantic subject in russian and english

The aim of the study is to investigate the means of representation of the indefinitely expressed subject in Russian and English for the purpose of structuring and classifying the linguistic means of its expression. As the basis for investigation we chose the fictional text of the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita” and its parallel translation to English. In the paper we used the method of semantic analysis, contextual component analysis, comparative analysis and the method of linguistic modelling. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the results of the comparative analysis which show that there exist symmetrical and asymmetrical forms of expressing formally indefinite semantic subject. Symmetrical means of implicit expressing semantic subject is mostly nominalization. Generalized subject can be expressed either symmetrically or asymmetrically by various syntactic constructions in Russian and English. Asymmetrical means of expressing semantic subject can be traced in the syntactic constructions of different kind which are represented by binary oppositions. As a result of the research it has been found that the preferred ways of expressing indefinite semantic subject in Russian are indefinite pronouns; in English – passive constructions.

PRAGMATIC ADAPTATION OF THE COLLOQUIAL SPEECH IN THE TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH OF M. BULGAKOV’S NOVEL “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA” AS A WAY TO OVERCOME THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL BARRIER

Настоящая статья посвящена исследованию особенностей прагматической адаптации разговорной лексики при переводе на английский язык романа М. А. Булгакова «Мастер и Маргарита». Проблема перевода разговорной лексики рассматривается в статье как разновидность межкультурной коммуникации. В работе рассмотрены примеры перевода разговорных и просторечных выражений, использованных в романе. Анализ примеров проводится на основе рассмотрения двух популярных версий перевода романа «Мастер и Маргарита» на английский язык - Майкла Гленни и Ричарда Пивера и Ларисы Волохонской. Актуальность исследования обусловлена тем фактом, что роман М. А. Булгакова остается популярным в англоязычных странах. Исследователи переводов романа М. А. Булгакова, как правило, уделяют основное внимание трудностям перевода реалий, в частности советизмов, как самой отличительной особенности стиля Булгакова. Перевод разговорной и просторечной лексики, как правило, остается за пределами интереса исследователей, хотя именно эта лексика представляет сложности для перевода и создает общий фон романа. В статье анализируются примеры перевода разговорной лексики и устанавливаются наиболее успешные способы перевода. Анализ материала показал, что не существует единого способа передачи лексических просторечий при переводе на английский язык. Значительная часть найденных единиц при переводе передана с помощью относительных эквивалентов и аналогов. This article is devoted to the study of the features of the pragmatic adaptation of colloquial vocabulary when translating the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov into English. The problem of translating colloquial vocabulary is considered in the article as a kind of intercultural communication. The paper considers the examples of the translation of colloquial words and colloquial expressions used in the novel. The analysis of the examples is based on the consideration of two popular versions of the translation of the novel “The Master and Margarita” into English - by Michael Glennie and Richard Peaver and Larisa Volokhonskaya. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the novel by M. A. Bulgakov remains popular in English-speaking countries. Researchers of translations of the novel by M. A. Bulgakov, as a rule, pay special attention to the difficulties of translating realia, in particular Sovietisms, as the most distinctive feature of Bulgakov’s style. The translation of colloquial vocabulary, as a rule, remains beyond the interest of researchers, although it is this vocabulary that presents difficulties for translation and creates the general background of the novel. The article analyzes the examples of the translation of colloquial vocabulary and identifies the most successful ways of translation. The analysis of the material showed that there is no single way to transfer lexical colloquialisms when translating into English. A significant part of the found units is transmitted during translation using relative equivalents and analogues.

Artistic world of the novel The Master and Margarita

“The manuscripts don’t burn,” said Woland, the enigmatic Satan of Bulgakov’s novel. Bulgakov paints a suggestive picture of Moscow, the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, by means of satire, grotesque and fantasy. At all ages, it validly presents the personal offerings of historical tortures, the eternal problem of a man struggling between bounds, a caller, and an unbelieving, fluctuating man. The main characters in the novel are unforgettable: Woland, who is both Satan and a representative of higher justice; the Master, who became the eternal symbol of the Artist opposed to the machinery of power, and - novel in the novel - tells the story of Jesus in a peculiar way.

The Category of Deviation in the Novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

This research deals with revealing various linguistic units: lexemes and collocations within the framework of semantic fields of notional components of the category of deviation that are reflected in the works of professional translators, Michael Glenny, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov in the English language. The author takes the method of conceptual analysis of the linguistic units of expressing different parts of semantic fields of components of the mental unit of deviation in English as the basic one here. Lexemes and collocations are also the focus of a contextual method of reviewing the translators’ approaches to the linguistic units of the work under analysis. Different semantic spheres based on personal and professional experience of Michael Glenny, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky reflect the category of deviation in translations of the novel under study. This category includes the central part and periphery. The central part implies the lexemes and collocations of neutral-bookish style, and the periphery means lexical units of informal style. The author also distinguishes the interpretative field within the semantic fields of the category of deviation. The results given in this article can be a basis for comparative analysis of translations within one language or as a source of a contrastive analysis of literary works.

On the origins of the crowd scenes in the novel “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov

The article deals with the roots of the crowd scenes in “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov, focusing on such motifs of the novel as death's head hawkmoth and theatrical motifs. The origins of the crowd scenes in Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary work are all connected with the mentioned three motifs. The researcher uses information from the little-known literary, historical, and cultural sources. These include, firstly, the occult works of the Fin de siècle writers, such as novels “The Gloomy House Mystery” and “The New Power” written by the “Criminal Novel Master” Aleksandr Tsehanovich (1862-1896); the play “The Fair God” by David Aizman (who has been justly called “Chekhov of the Jews”) (1860-1922); the story “The Succubus” written by the Belgian writer Antoine Louis Camille Lemonnier. “A House in a Delirium” by a German prose writer W.Hollander. Second, these include literary work by a Soviet writer: story “The Condemned” by Mikhail Kozakov. Third, an important role belongs to sketches from the “The Red Panorama” journal: “The Footsteps Leading Westward” by Jānis Larri, “Travelling from Resort to Resort: Yalta” by D. Gorodinskiy. The plots and details of the named works had a great influence on Mikhail Bulgakov and inspired him while writing such chapters of the novel as “Never Talk with Strangers”, “The Seventh Proof”, “The Chase”, “Praise Be to the Rooster”, “News from Yalta”, “Black Magic and Its Exposure”, “Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream”, “The Great Ball at Satan's” and some fragments of the auxiliary plot connected with the figure of Pontius Pilate.

Color as a religious semiotic code and the language means of its expression in the works of M. A. Bulgakov and O. Bоkeev

By means of an intertextual analysis the article considers color as a semiotic code along with its perception by Turkic and Slavic peoples. The subjects of the study are M. Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita and O. Bokeev’s story The Trace of Lightning and its original text in Kazakh.