Thresholds and Passageways. Stepping Through the Gates of the Other World
Thresholds and Passageways. Stepping Through the Gates of the Other World

Summary/Abstract: In Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” some of the characters are able to pass from the profane world i.e. their everyday Moscow reality into the sacred (supernatural) one and vice-versa. Of course only a few ‘chosen’ characters are able to step into the other world, only those who somehow have served it, or deserve it. Passage is only possible in special times and on special places which share the features of the archetypal image of the centre of the world. Several objects, parts of the human abode, such as mirrors, fireplaces, windows gain importance as being kinds of a ‘threshold’ passing through which characters can get into the sacred world. They represent the boundary between the two worlds, but at the same time they serve as a passageway between them. Bulgakov chooses these thresholds making use of popular belief and literary tradition, thus making more expressive the fictive world of the novel. The article is a survey of the mirrors or mirroring surfaces (as water for example), fireplaces, windows and French windows stepping or getting through which does not only mean a simple changing of place but also marks the getting into a completely different world, ruled by other rules than those valid in the world of the atheistic Muscovites of the novel.

• Details
• Contents