vi con loco lamento mi insolencia

The end?

Before Sunday passes, a brief overview of the rest of the essays in the The Immense Journey.

The Slit

"Through how many dimensions and how many media will life have to pass? Down how many roads among the stars must man propel himself in search of the final secret? The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible, yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it. We cannot know all that has happened in the past, or the reason for all of these events, any more than we can with surety discern what lies ahead. We have joined the caravan, you might say, at a certain point; we will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or learn all that we hunger to know."

The Flow of the River

"If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water. (...) As for men, those myriad little detached ponds with their own swarming corpuscular life, what were they but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers? I, too, was a microcosm of pouring rivulets and floating driftwood gnawed by the mysterious animalcules of my own creation." 

The Great Deeps

"All of the tremendous differences between living forms have been achieved only by the elaboration of devices for the maintenance of that inner nourishing liquidity in which cells can live and grow within a certain narrow range of tolerance. Nor for nothing has the composition of mammalian blood led to our description as 'walking sacks of sea water.' Nor for nothing did the great French physiologist Bernard comment that 'the stability of the interior environment is the condition of free life.'"

The Snout

"The day of the Snout was over three hundred million years ago. Not long since I read a book in which a prominent scientist spoke cheerfully of some ten billion years of future time remaining to us. He pointed out happily the things that man might do throughout that period. Fish in the sea, I thought, birds in the air. The climb all far behind us, the species fixed and sure. There is something wrong with our worldview. It is still Ptolemaic, though the sun is no longer believed to revolve around the earth. We teach the past, we see farther backward into time than any race before us, but we stop at the present, or, at best, we project far into the future idealized versions of ourselves. We see through human eyes alone. We see ourselves as the culmination and the end, and if we do indeed consider our passing, we think that sunlight will go with us and the earth be dark. We are the end. For us continents rose and feel, for us the waters and the air were mastered, for us the great living web has pulsated and gown more intricate. (...) Perhaps the old road through the marsh should tell us. We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no image except Life, and life is multitudinous and emergent in the stream of time." 

How Flowers Changed the World

"Without the gift of flowers and the infinite diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued to exist at all, would be today unrecognizable. (...) The weight of a petal has changed the face of the world and made it ours."

Man of the Future

"We men of today are insatiably curious about ourselves and desperately in need of reassurance. Beneath our boisterous self-confidence is fear– a growing fear of the future we are in the process of creating." 

Little Men and Flying Saucers

"Darwin saw clearly that the succession of life on this planet was not a formal pattern imposed from without, or moving moving exclusively in one direction. Whatever else life might be, it was adjustable and not fixed. It worked its way through difficult environments. It modified and then, if necessary, it modified again, along roads which would never be retraced. Every creature alive is the product of a unique history. The statistical probability of its precise reduplication on another planet is so small to be meaningless. Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark. But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man. That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long wandering through the attics of the forrest roof, and so great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely and identically human is likely ever to come that way again. (...) In the nature of life and in the principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and beyond, there will be none forever."

The Bird and the Machine

"This is the great age, make no mistake about it; the robot has been born somewhat appropriately along with the atom bomb, and the brain they say now is just another type of more complicated feedback system. The engineers have its basic principles worked out; it's mechanical, you know; nothing to get superstitious about; and man can always improve on nature once he gets the idea. (...) On the other hand the machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird."

All quotes taken from The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley, a Vintage Book edition, 1959.

The hoax, man's lonely and supreme ascent, and the brain

This month seems to have fled past me. Yet before March closes, and feeling April is upon us, I want to speak a little more about Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey. Today, Friday 29th of March, I bring somewhat and briefly into focus 3 essays from the book.
1. The Real Secret of Piltdown
2. The Maze
3. The Dream Animal
These essays caught my attention because each of them deals with lingering scientific issues and pertinent inquiries. All three of the essays are related to one another, specifically in the manner in which they deal with man's lonely and supreme ascent.

Starting with the first one on the list, "The Real Secret of Piltdown" discusses the Piltdown Hoax (the greatest hoax in the history of science). This hoax, subsequently provides the thesis question of the essay, how did man get his brain? Through the arguments of Charles Darwin and his fellow contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, Eiseley expands the matter on the development of the human brain, which is explored through it's variants. A.R. Wallace, a scientist, proponent of natural selection and evolution "challenged the whole Darwinian position on man by insisting that artistic, mathematical, and musical abilities could not be explained on the basis of natural selection and the struggle for existence." This is the challenge that is met head on between Darwin,Wallace and also Eiseley in this essay, keeping the focus on the central point: how, why, when, where is the development of the brain. Add to Loren Eiseley's exploration within the arguments, scientific discoveries and the advancements at the disposal of current scientific inquiries, it suffices to say that the same author adds"today we can make a partial answer to Wallace's question. Since the exposure of the Piltdown hoax all of the evidence at out command– and it is considerable– points to man, in his present form, as being one of the youngest and newest of all earth's swarming inhabitants."

"Man of today, the atomic manipulator, the  aeronaut who flies faster than sound, has precisely the same brain and body as his ancestors of twenty thousand years ago who painted the last Ice Age mammoths on the walls of caves in France."

The next gleam of reason following Eiseley's argument, is the sensible conclusion that "it is man's ideas that have evolved and changed the world about him." From this statement the human being is proved to be a creature dependent on society, unable to develop alone.

"Creature of dream, he has created an invisible world of ideas, beliefs, habits, and customs which buttress him about and replace for him the precise instincts of the lower creatures. (...) The profound shock of the leap from animal to human status is echoing still in the depths of our subconscious minds. It is a transition which would seem to have demanded considerable rapidity of adjustment in order for human beings to have survived, and it also involved the growth of prolonged bonds of affection in the sub-human family, because otherwise its naked, helpless offspring would have perished. (...) Man's competition, it would thus appear, may have been much less with his own kind than with the dire necessity of building about him a world of ideas to replace his lost animal environment.

I am sure it can be derived from the previous paragraphs briefly covering "The Secret of Piltdown", a denotation that these three essays are dense and layered with information. The following two essays are no exception.

Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/29178/media/treeolif.jpg

"The Maze" covers the controversy piqued within the scientific community which followed the publishing of the previous Piltdown essay. It leads to present before the reader the Oreopithecus (the enigma), and his usage for providing the missing link previously deviated by the Piltdown hoax. From here stemmed two divergent schools concerning the search for the the crucial puzzle piece that will unite the tree of life, "the school of the little-man and that of the ape-man." In the end, the Oreopithecus is proven not to lead towards the missing puzzle piece. In the least, it is far less likely for the Oreopithecus to be the evidence that has long been searched for.

"The Dream Animal" picks up the recurrent exploration of "the mystery which enshrouds the rise of the human brain." Loren Eiseley uses   Progeria, premature aging, a curious and relatively unknown disease, to reveal how it is an indication of an internal clock "capable of running fast or slow, shortening life or extending it and, like the more visible portions of our anatomy, being subjected to evolutionary selection." This clock has paved the path for the growth of rare, particular and specialized organs. Included within the bracket of these organs is the human brain. This organ grows with greater rapidity than our nearest living relative, the great apes.

"When we are born, our brain size is about 330 cubic centimeters, only slightly larger than that of a gorilla baby. This is why human and anthropoid young look so appealingly similar in their earliest infancy. A little later, an amazing development takes place in the human offspring. In the first year of life its brain trebles in size. It is this peculiar leap, unlike anything else we know in the animal world, which gives man his uniquely human qualities. When the leap fails, as in those rare instances where the brain does not grow, microcephaly, "pinheadedness", is the result, and the child is then an idiot."

The essay proceeds to place in perspective the minute's clock of what is known of human evolution in comparison to the Astronomical clock, which spans a much, much longer millennia. Will we find the key to our human brain clock?

"For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds. Perhaps he knew, there in the grass by the chill waters, that he had before him an immense journey. Perhaps that same foreboding still troubles the hearts of those who walk out of a crowded room and stare with relief into the abyss of space so long as there is a star to be seen twinkling across those miles of emptiness."

Personally, all three essays offer great insight and information to be pondered. They both dually echo the previous essay spoken of a week or so back, The Secret of Life, as well as answer many lingering questions concerning our human journey. Aside from the density of information in the essays, I want to transmit the enlightenment they provide, the benefit enjoyed while reading them, the delight, the sensible, the educational element found while reading line after line of Eiseley's words.

I know I've filled this article more than usual but I hope I have conveyed wonder, and that you, reader, are infected and propelled to read Loren Eiseley, he is definitely worth the time.

No commercials

"one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind"

The Secret of Life and its' multitudinous alleyways. This last article in The Immense Journey deals with the search for the secret, the key that would unlock the enigma. Within the pages the essay develops is the longing to discover the unanswered questions and the dead ends reached in the trajectory, yet towards the end there gleams a tiny speck of hope for the journey. This search is not merely concerning our origins but the tiny components that make up the earth, ourselves and organic beings around us, spanning eons back into the birth of this planet earth.

"...the wonderful correlation of parts, the perfect adaptiation to purpose, the individually vanished and yet persisting pattern..."

"It seemed clear that life was a material manifestation. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, in the mysterious chemisty of carbon, the long march toward the talking animal had begun."

Honestly, aside from the faulty dead ends described in the article, the misconceptions of having found the key by respected scientists, and the sensationalization of the search by the media, the article circles around the same theme: the search for the key to the secret of life and Loren Eiseley's own attitude and actions towards the search.

 "Nevertheless, as the years passed, the secret remained locked in its living jelly, in spite of larger microscopes and more formidable means of dissection."

One aspect I found interesting is the mention of the media, and how it disproportions the work of scientists and confounds the public. It is sadly comical that the same problems faced today in biology, archaeology, anthropology, physics, and scientific endeavors were being faced early on. Explicitly, media interpretation and the sensationalization of discoveries and scientific endeavors. I have no doubt in my mind that a great percentage of the world population has misconceptions concerning how evolution works, and what has been discovered concerning the evolution of this rock, the human species along with the other species.
This problem is related to the formation of kids in society, much like Michio Kaku and Neil Degrasse Tyson and others vociferate. Like this video:


I will end with some quotes from Loren Eiseley's essay.

"I am sure now that life is not what it is purported to be and that nature, in the canny words of a Scotch theologue, 'is not as natural as it looks.' (...) If the day comes when the slime of the laboratory for the first time crawls under man's direction, we shall have great need of humbleness."

*All quotes are from Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Vintage Books 1959 edition. Title quote by Thomas Hardy, which is included in the end of Eiseley's essay.

The recently departed Mr. Bradbury

Author of numerous books and a contemporary of Loren Eiseley, Ray Bradbury on Loren Eiseley and the book The Loren Eiseley Reader.

The Immense Journey

Who am I kidding? No one needs to see my face frequently on this site. I attempted the video but I have opted, as the FINAL decision, to keep it real and actually write about literature in this literary endeavor of mine. This month is Loren Eiseley month, that is what I've secondly decided.

I've had this book for a few months now, having acquired it by chance and at no cost. It's an old beat up edition but the title lured me into taking it home. (Vintage Books, A Division of Random House)

The Immense Journey: An imaginative naturalist explores the mysteries of man and nature. I began with the last essay in the collection, I started it, again, by chance and with no great expectations. A few sentences later, I was lured into the wonder painted in the pages, with no other option but to devour the rest of the book in a matter of days. The Immense Journey is a collection of essays and was the first book published by Loren Eiseley, around 1946. Loren Eiseley was a native of Nebraska, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a writer, a naturalist, a philosopher, an educator, a humanist and, from what I've recently learned much more.

To say this book surprised me is only skimming the surface. In each essay found in the book, perspectives are challenged as Eiseley retraces the steps of the human animal within the planet it inhabits and calls home. Each essay touches on seemingly minute details involved in the evolution of the planet and subsequently the human species.

The title of the essays are as follows (in order as they appear in the book):
The Slit
The Flow of the River
The Great Deeps
The Snout
How Flowers Changed the World
The Real Secret of Piltdown
The Maze
The Dream Animal
Man of the Future
Little Men and Flying Saucers
The Judgement of the Birds
The Bird and the Machine
The Secret of Life

The entire book is full of vivid imagery that recreates the truth and the possibilities of what once was a young earth. Each essay can be reread with pleasure and at leisure. I highly recommend to those of you who stumble upon this site of mine to find the book, used or new, and read it. And for those that have the book and haven't read it, pick it up and start with one essay. Just one, I doubt anyone would regret this enlightening book.

Therefore, for these brief reasons and more that I will show later, I have chosen to gush over Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey this month. In just a a few days from now I will be writing about the last essay in the collection.

On a side note and to end, there is a Loren Eiseley Society that recently published The Loren Eiseley Reader.

Click on the link, or type this in a search –––––––––––––––––––––––>

A hundred battles, a hundred losses

This month I begin with Ch'ae Man-Shik's short story "A Ready-Made Life" translated by Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton. It was first published in 1934 in the journal Shindonga. As for the writer, he is a novelist, an essayist, and a critic, often considered a satirist. His works are widely known.

As for the short story itself, I came across it as a follower of ktlit.com. A website dedicated to the translation and dissemination of Korean literature.

The story itself immediately opens with an interview. P is an unemployed, educated man being interviewed and denied by K. The context of the drama is within the early 20th century, the dawn of modernization, after the rise of intellectuals and a propagation of education, post-Japanese Imperial Period, during the evident domination of Japan over Korea. Now, from the rejection given to P proceeds a dejected summation of his living situation, the harsh condition in which he is forced to live, eating sparingly, not being able to pay his room rent, leading a meagerly existence, etc. I add that the description and the existential manner in which the character recounts his surroundings and his life has a touch of Dostoyevsky. P is also a divorced man with a son. Although his son does not live with him at the opening of the story, it is made clear that due to his family's inability to continue to care for him, they will be sending P's son over to him in Seoul. Yet they do not know that P is hardly able to support himself as he has not found a job.

Japanese woodblock print, The First Sino-Japanese War. Japan in Korea.
Source: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Wada-Haruki/2934

In the trajectory of the story there are very few characters presented, the two introduced after P, are also unemployed and hopeless, friends of the protagonist. Both have likewise been educated and are intellectual men. The dejection of all the characters is poignantly felt. And the irony is that being educated and an intellectual is a void endeavor leading to unemployment. The stark line between the country as a passing farming nation, and moving unto becoming modernized is evident. The job market is saturated, yet those that have been educated cannot make themselves nor even know how to go about retroceding and forming part of the farming population. The educated intellectuals are displaced.

"Ready-made commodities turned shopworn."

The story can be divided in two seamless parts, the first if the already described rejection during the interview and the description of P's existence, then, P's confrontation with a prostitute.

Drunk and in a bar, P and both of his friends go to a brothel. There P is thrown, by his two friends, towards a young prostitute. He panics and runs out when she is willing to sell her integrity, her sex, for a beggarly price. This leads to a digression on the worth of integrity, in which P spends a considerable time debating.

The story ends in an ambiguous manner. It is clear P does not want his son to be educated and fall into the same trap he himself fell and therefor, what becomes of P as he takes in his son is left open-ended.

Why do I recommend this short story by Ch'ae Man-Shik? Because the themes, albeit during a time that has passed, are still relevant today. The tone of P's hopelessness, the use of education during unstable economic times, the value of a person's integrity in regards to money, are all still current. How much is integrity and virtue worth?

"You can't put your heart into work if your stomach is empty." 

The story itself can be found here, in PDF form. It is well worth a read. 

June

By Connor Lassey. Source:
http://bosguy.com/2012/06/01/happy-pride-2/

Just a few minutes shy of July, I wanted to make a brief summation of June and it's theme. This month has flown by while reading Nobody Passes and Making Gay History, both books have offered different perspectives on Queer discussion. First, the trajectory traced in Making Gay History, offers a view of the LGBT movement in the US from its' commencement, when many lived their lives hidden. In total it covers the 20th century. The book mainly concentrates on the gay and lesbian aspect, transgender and bisexual doesn't enter much into the framework.

My aim for this month was precisely that, present recourses through which one can better glean the Homophile movement, given that it is Pride month. The clearer one understands the diversity inherent within the world we all reside, the higher the possibility for improvement. Given the in-depth point of view in Making Gay History I highly recommend the book, the pace is quick and there is an electric quality within the pace of the story, as the narrative progresses, that truly captures and transports the reader.

With Nobody Passes I wanted to stray further from normative gender expressions. For example, the second one by Nico Dacumos "All Mixed Up With No Place To Go: Inhabiting Mixed Consciousness On The Margins", centers on gender and mixed consciousness. Forget community and niche, the narrator endeavors to reveal to the reader the blurry lines of gender, fitting in and identity. Transgender, butch, bisexual, lesbian, Chicana, immigrant, all these categorizations and more are placed under the microscope and questioned. And what about a queer, black rapper? Ralowe T. Ampu AKA G-Minus speaks of his experience within the Homohop movement, his evolution as an artist. His experiences offer a colorful view of a community that is not widely disseminated; for example, I didn't know about Homohop. This book is replete with mixed angles that challenge normative society, lifting a veil that uncovers a race, the human race, that is proliferated with diversity.

Hence, it is evident that these two books offer good material and food for thought, not only for the Queer community but also for everyone that exists in and around the LGBT collective.

Dubliners, anyone?

Post-Bloomsday. Yesterday was Bloomsday, a day that commemorates James Joyce his book Ulysses and the main character in the book, Leopold Bloom.
A few things that went on this weekend for Bloomsday:
Irish Embassy in Washington
The closing of a bookshop and James Joyce readings
NYTimes recounts

Celebrating Bloomsday.
Source: http://theamerican.ie/dublin-roles-out-events-for-bloomsday/

I'd like to add my small three cents of celebration, plus I love his book of short stories Dubliners. Very much unlike the person who owned the book before me; I found a note that revealed the person's distaste for the book. 

Well, I love the book's gloomyness. It's painted with such fierce and unapologizing reality that is not for every reader. Although, the modern touches are all there, the despair, the loss of faith and hope, the loss of innocence. In the introduction to the book James Joyce writes (an excerpt from a letter): "I am writing a series of epiclets–ten–for a paper. I have written one. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city."* In another letter, "people might be willing to pay for the special odour of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories."* The publication of Dubliners was a nine-year ordeal.* Many rejections followed this collection of short stories. Thankfully, not enough to deter it's appearance on the market. So here I am, talking about this gloomy book, one which I happen to really like. Instead of advocating everyone read the whole of Dubliners I will make a small list of my favorite stories, from there each reader can decide if reading the rest is worth their time. 

Here is the list, with links where they can be read:

Araby

Eveline

A Little Cloud

Clay

A Mother

The full Dubliners can be found here.

With a little time these short stories can be read fairly quick, and with a bit more time each one can be fully savored.

*From the Norton Critical Edition of Dubliners by James Joyce, edited by Margot Norris. 

Having contributed my three cents to Bloomsday I return to the running theme of this month, which is LGBT prose. I am still reading Making Gay History by Eric Marcus and for the next post, this week, I should be reviewing an essay, possibly by Gloria Anzaldua. 

June Pride

After a brief hiatus, in which I took a needed vacation in the City of New York, I am back home and it is June. I debated long and a bit hard on what my focus would be for this month and the conclusion was to take advantage of Pride. June is Pride month and in most parts of the world gatherings are held in celebration of LGBT pride. 

From a 70's Gay Liberation Front poster. Used on the jacket cover of: Duberman,  "Stonewall, 1993.
Source: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/case1.html

And why June? Well, primordially because of an event that took place June 27, 1969 in New York City. The police raided a gay bar in Greenwich Village. After decades and decades of alienation, pain, stigmatization and abuse, the anger of the gay community reached the tipping point. This tipping point is known as the Stonewall Riots. In which the gay community decided to fight back against the system and demand equality and justice. A great article recounting the event in fuller detail is found here. With the knowledge of the events of June 27, 1969 and what proceeded from there, a better picture is formed on the purpose and the aim of the LGBT marches and gatherings. Now, this isn't to say that gay civil rights organizations haven't been around before this event, for there were organizations that preceded the Stonewall riots, such as the Scientific Humanitarian Committee founded in Germany towards the end of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this committee was thwarted by the Nazis. The LGBT community is one that, as evinced from history and recounting, has suffered greatly under the pall of prejudice and alienation. Therefore, this month I will join in adding a small grain to the recognition, the dissemination, and the civil rights movement for equality in regards to the LGBT community. 

The New York Times, June 29, 1969. Source:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/case1.html

New York Post, June 28, 1969.  Source:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/case1.html

*More clippings found here. 

While in New York City I purchased a used book entitled Making Gay History by Eric Marcus. So far, with all the excitement of the trip I've only read part one. The book is a personal oral account of people within the LGBT community. It contains an extensive list of interviewees. Part one precedes the incident of Stonewall and in it the reader meets six interviewees and their experiences in the community. The first one is Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a psychologist who taught at UCLA. She was one of the first to begin a study on gay men, aimed at clarifying whether being "gay" was a disease and shedding light on the community. From the following entries are narratives by people from the community, describing their experiences during a time when LGBT issues where obscure and hidden. 

The first magazine for "gay gals" started in June 1947 in Los Angeles, California by one woman called Vice Versa. 

Chuck Rowland, an excellent organizer who went on to form civil rights groups that included gays, blacks, jews, and women. 

From these two narratives, advanced more intimate accounts of what being gay and coming to terms with that realization meant to three young ladies during the early part of the century. 

The composition of the book makes it approachable and intimate allowing the reader to delve into the recount of the interviewees, making the topic much more accessible. And that is my aim, to delve this month into the LGBT community and expose the parts of history that, for many, have remained concealed. 

Part Two: The Master and Margarita

I know I've been away for what it seems like a little while, but in my defense, these past two weeks have been very hectic. Though I am still just in time, for April is not yet over.

Source:
http://www.manuscriptsdontburn.org/categor/
complicites-the-master-and-margarita/page/4/

The second part of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita opens up with Margarita, this is the first time the reader gets to know Margarita first-hand, in the previous part it is only through what the Master says of her, which is little. We meet her in her own opulent house, being married to a wealthy man, reminiscing about the Master, whom she misses sorely since he disappeared, but we the reader know he's in the mental hospital. In her melancholy she decides to go to the park. There she meets Azazello, one of the devil's entourage. Once she meets him and somewhat tells him her sad story of lost love and injustice done to him, the story proceeds to get even more bizarre, but in an ironic and entertaining way. She becomes a witch, flies to a ritual where she is crowned goddess/queen, meets the devil and the rest of his possee. Along the way, she extracts revenge from the editors and writers that did the Master wrong. Towards the end of the surreal journey, now in the devil's somber chamber, while he plays chess, she pledges her devotion and asks that he bring back the Master. After a brief hesitation he does so, to her and the Master's surprise.

The story ends slightly dubiously, the story of the procurator of Judea is revisited and loose ends are tied, also, the Master and Margarita finally get to their small home we not not where, where they are to live in eternal peace. Ivan Homeless gets the ending of the Master's story and Woland leaves Moscow leaving a trail a destruction inflicted by Behemoth and Koroviev.

Behemoth and Koroviev during the famous séance. Source:
http://my.opera.com/mustainev/blog/2012/03/09/master-and-margarita-by-mikhail-bulgakov-2

Margarita the witch flying to her coronation. Source:
http://www.cafleurebon.com/galbanum-and-other-strangers-master-
and-margarita-by-michael-bulgahov-vol-a-nuit-draw/

I have reduced the second part of the book to the barest words but truly the book is a delight. First, because for those that enjoy fantasy, they will get a good does of that. Woland's magic tricks, the séance, everything he and his entourage do takes the reader's level of belief to a further level. Add to that the eerie, grotesque, yet enchanting ball that is held in Margarita's honor, where all the dead are risen from their graves and their stories are retold as they pay homage to the queen Margarita. The characters are all so colorful and poignant. I especially loved getting to know Margarita and seeing her transform into a witch. And the Master, towards the end, when he is almost reaching his eternal abode of peace, how he is described as he says farewell to the city and life he has known is reminiscent of a messiah.

"'Forever! That's a lot for a man to grasp,' whispered the Master, licking his dry, cracked lips. He listened carefully to what was going on in his soul. For a moment, his excitement seemed to turn into a feeling of deep, mortal insult. But the sentiment was fleeting. It vanished to be replaced by proud indifference and finally settled into an expectation of eternal peace. [...] 'Well, then, 'Woland said to him from high up in the saddle, 'are all the accounts settled? Have all the goodbyes been said?' 'Yes, it is over,' the Master said, calming down,  and looked directly into Woland's face without fear. [...] It had all fallen through the earth, leaving nothing but fog."

Secondly, the book is an enlightening delight because the reader is constantly faced with the weighing of good and evil. What does it mean to be evil? And likewise, what does it mean to be good? Tying this up with Mikhail Bulgakov's time and the context within which he created this book, the nation's insecurity and mistrust as everything around them was changing, the obligation to follow the imposed norm, the disappearances, all the nuances that plagued Moscow during his time as Stalin rose to power is evident. Also, another important aspect of the book is it's questioning of faith, on the veracity of faith and belied versus of non-belief. There is an interplay within these two extremes throughout the novel that ends with more questions than answers.

I highly recommend this book, it was an exciting, intriguing and revealing read. Also, there are so many awesome pictures relating to The Master and Margarita that I couldn't help posting at least three.

Part One: The Master and Margarita

-What are you, then?  -I am part of that power that always wishes evil and always performs the good. -Goethe, Faust

Source: http://www.davno.ru/soviet-posters/propaganda/poster-12.html

Continuing with Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Part one of the novel opens up with Ivan the poet, called Homeless, discussing the veracity of the existence of Jesus. Berlioz, "chairman and editor of Moscow's largest literary journal" is asking that Ivan rewrite a poem so that it disqualifies the existence of Jesus. Immediately, Woland comes into the scene alone. This commences his entrance into Moscow along with his colorful entourage. Remember, faith and religion are not allowed in Moscow from early on in the 20th century, during Stalin's reign. The voice from the beginning is actively engaging and the chapters jump from one chaotic scene to the next as Woland and his retinue challenge and disorder the inhabitants of Moscow. Disappearances occur, which very much aligns with what was in reality happening during Bulgakov's time. If a person was found to be a hinderance on the government and its' aims, said person would "disappear". Intertwined with this present Moscow (1920's) is the retelling of Jesus's judgement in Judea but, as opposed to the New Testament perspective, from the point of view and interpretation of Pontius Pilate.

This double outline illustrated from the beginning reveals a constant interplay of beliefs which evolves within the story. Which brings to the forefront, what is truth? What is faith? Faith is suggested as a mental illness. The supernatural is also intermixed with these questions, as Woland continues to suspend the readers' and the characters' belief by means of his and his retinue's magic and trickery. Many of the characters introduced are arrested, sent to a mental hospital, transported mysteriously somewhere far, or just disappear.

"if there is no God, then may I ask who governs man's existence and all world order?"[...]"In order to govern, one needs to have a definite plan for some reasonable length of time. Allow me to ask you how man can govern anything considering that not only is he unable to plan for even a laughably short period, say a thousand years, but that he cannot even vouch for tomorrow?" -Woland

Source:
 http://www.davno.ru/soviet-posters/propaganda/poster-12.html

Woland, whom the reader, a few chapters in, can identify as the devil is also painted differently. Contrary to the preconceived concept of whom the devil is and his ruthless maleficence, this devil challenges disbelief and lacks ruthlessness, for even though a few characters do loose their lives, one is lead to see the reason behind that loss and what led to it.

Following the first chapter, Ivan Homeless is entered into a mental hospital, where he meets the Master. He is the creator and writer of the story of Pontius Pilate, it is his book banned and his writing career truncated due to the subject matter of his book, the retelling of Jesus' judgement from the view of Pilate, the judge. What struck me, among many other things in this excellent novel, is how faith, pre-notions and traditions are questioned. Jesus is not portrayed as divine either, merely as a humble rabble rouser, and vice versa, the devil is not entirely evil according to orthodox conviction.

Part one, rather than highlight one specific protagonist, sets the plot which leads to the second part and the introduction of Margarita. The action is quick and precise, and the writer is in continual sporadic conversation with the reader throughout, which in turn engages the attention.

"What other oddities transpired in Moscow that night we know not, and we certainly will not pry, especially since it is time for us to move on to the second part of this truthful narrative. Follow me, reader!"