Trivia Quiz for “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov

Trivia Quiz for The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

(written 1928-1940; published posthumously in 1966)

For West Seattle “Classic Novels (and Movies)” book club, 1/22/23

A. The Literary Hybrid: Satire + Origin Tale + Cityscape + Supernatural Adventure

1. A Biting Satire. As a doctor, writer, and member of the intelligentsia, Mikhail Bulgakov witnessed first-hand the terrors of the Stalinist regime (1927-1953), and, assuming his work would never get published, he pokes fun at many aspects of the era’s impact on ordinary lives.  Which one of the following is not criticized in the novel?

a. the government-sanctioned housing shortage in Moscow

b. the “politically dangerous” issue of having foreign currencies in your possession

c. the total absence of censorship, which gave rise to a media free-for-all promoting anarchy, xenophobia, and mob rule

d. the graft, bribe-taking, and other unscrupulous behaviors practiced by official Soviet bureaucrats

2. An Ambiguous Easter Novel. Bulgakov’s biographer calls this book an “Easter novel” for all but one of the following reasons. Which one of the following does not occur in The Master and Margarita?

a. The novel describes the day when Procurator Pontius Pilate proceeded over the trial in which Jesus was condemned to death on the cross, and the following days.

b. The novel is an evangelical’s spiritual autobiography, in which he describes finding faith on a special Easter.

c. The story takes place in the springtime.

d. The novel has 33 chapters (or 32 plus an epilogue about an afterlife): the same age as Jesus when he died.

3. A Cityscape. Even those who have never ventured to Moscow will develop some familiarity with the city by the end of this novel, due to its precise locations and relatively small focus. Which one of the following sites is not a center of the action?

a. Patriarch’s Ponds

b. Griboyedov House

c. The Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace of the Imperial Family)

d. Sparrow Hills

4. Strange occurrences and supernatural travel run through the second part of the book, in which all but one of the following events transpire. Identify it.

a. Margarita becomes a witch and flies across the night sky.

b. A cat demands, “Passport !” and stretches out a chubby paw to receive it.

c. Margarita attends a ball where she meets a number of criminals, poisoners, and madmen from history.

d. The Master’s novel is published to great acclaim in a foreign country far from Moscow.

B. A Strange Worldview

5. Characters blurt out phrases that sound outlandish, but merely reflect political realities of the time. Which one of the following is not from The Master and Margarita ?

a. “Money … should be kept in the State Bank, in special, moisture-free safe-deposit boxes, and not in your aunty’s cellar where the rats can get at it!”

b. “Have you come to arrest me?”

c. “Take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country.”

d. “One really shouldn’t make big plans for oneself, dear neighbor.”

6. Laughter: the Ultimate Weapon? Bulgakov’s humor emerges slyly in this novel; which one of the following is not an example?

a. “And it was then, as the chairman insisted afterwards, that the miracle took place: the wad of bills crawled into his briefcase all on its own.”

b. “The foreigner leaned back on the bench and practically squealed with curiosity as he asked, ‘You mean you’re atheists?!’ … “Oh, how delightful!”

 c. “Neither the conductress nor the passengers were amazed by the most important thing of all, namely, that a cat was not merely getting on a streetcar, which wasn’t so bad, but that he intended to pay his fare!”

d. Woland’s show includes a “Ballet of the Bureaucrats” wherein clerks become angels and dance in unison.

7. Advice on living, or how not to disappear. Which maxim is not from Bulgakov’s book?

a. “Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life.”

b. “Today I’m unofficial, but tomorrow I might be official! And vice versa, of course, or even something worse.”

c. “Insults are the usual reward for good work.”

d. “What are smart people for, if not to untangle tangled things?”

C. Miscellaneous Insights

8. Death is a central theme and end of this book. Which one of the following is not from The Master and Margarita?

a. “Chess became an incurable addiction that tormented him until the day of his death.”

b. “A round dark object was propelled under the railing … it began bouncing over the cobblestones of Bronnaya Street. It was Berlioz’s severed head.”

c. “’Crash! Bang! Over falls the baron!’” ‘I was practically hysterical,’ put in the cat, licking a spoonful of caviar.”

d. “Needless to say, truly mature and cultivated people did not tell these tales about an evil power’s visit to the capital.”

9. Mikhail Bulgakov was also a playwright and some dialogue is remarkable. Which one of the following is not from his novel?

a. “’I shouldn’t be blamed too severely—after all, it’s not everyday you meet up with an evil power!’ / ‘That’s for sure! How nice it would be if it were everyday!’”

b. “What more can a bear want?” [the mother asks]. / “Love, I think to myself, like the warmth in the cowshed of all those breathing cattle with a common goal—survival.”

c. “’The sturgeon’s not the issue.’ /  ‘How can it not be the issue if it’s spoiled?’ / ‘They sent us sturgeon that’s second-grade fresh’ said the bartender.”

d. “’When people have been stripped of everything, as you and I have been, they look to otherworldly powers for salvation! Well all right, I’m willing to do it.’ / ‘That’s it, now you’re your old self again’.”

10. The message? Which of the following is not a quote from this book?

a. “And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to an end, just as, in general, all things do.”

b. “It’s worth everything isn’t it, to keep one’s intellectual liberty; not to enslave one’s powers of appreciation, one’s critical independence?”

Answers

1. c.

2. b.

3. c. The Hermitage Museum is in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

4. d.

5. c. That quote is from Bram Stoker, Dracula.

6. d.

7.a. That quote is from Charles Dickens, Bleak House.

8. a. That quote is from Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.

9. b. That quote is from Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening.

10. b That quote is from Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.

***

Come back in February for the quiz on Vanity Fair (1847-48) by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.

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On bad surprises and apologies (and good-byes to Iris)

Iris, circa 2001

Much has happened since I last wrote. This week brought some bad surprises and a lesson which I will share with you.

1. Real estate surprise: bad

On Monday, some potential buyers made their second visit to our home. We were naturally excited as second visits are considered precursors to offers. However, it is now Friday and they have neither made an offer nor provided any feedback. (btw: Please, readers, if you are shopping for a new home, remember to pass along feedback. An hour and a half in someone’s house may not seem like a lot to you, but the owners had to clean, stop what they were doing, and go out while you were there.  They —like us—are likely anxiously awaiting your reply.)

Well, we are not really waiting any longer because we suspect we know why those people will not buy our house. To make a long and awful story short, here is the email I sent to our agent after the people left, on Monday night:

“Important update: Today’s people found what looked like the mummified remains of a raccoon in the attic crawl space. I just went in and brought it out and alas, it is Iris. Our long-lost black cat. She disappeared years ago and was clearly not feeling well. I think she went in there to hide and die in peace. We looked and looked, but I guess we never looked at the right spot.

There is not much sign of a struggle. Poor Iris.  I’ll take a picture to prove it was a cat, if you want, but we will bury the corpse. Please pass along that message so that they do not think we have rodents in our attic.”

Awful, right?!

Later that evening when I was up here in my little attic study meticulously grading sophomore essays and blog posts (argh), I suddenly realized that the place where Iris died was directly behind where I sit at my desk–about ten feet and two walls behind me. Isn’t that interesting?

Sweet little six-toed Iris. She was the cat who came with us to France and had that amazing accident in Angers–she fell more than six stories from our apartment balcony to the parking level below–and suffered nothing more than a disjointed jaw. The veterinarian said they see such things all the time. A dog or a person would certainly not survive. But cats go into l’effet parachute after the third or fourth floor (it has to be high enough), and it slows their fall almost magically.

Poor Iris. May she now rest in peace.

2. Teaching surprise: bad

This week I found myself issuing a veiled threat to some sophomores about what I thought was their disrespectful attitude toward my deadlines. On Tuesday, I said something like, “If your performance report is more than 10 days late—I don’t care if it is 11 days late or 111 days late—your final grade for that performance will be reduced by an entire grade. I know who you are! Turn in those reports!”

On Wednesday, one of the students came to see me and told me that he could not find any trace of such a deadline on the syllabus. He apologized profusely for bringing the discrepancy to my attention. And I felt HORRIBLE.  He was right; I had discarded that policy months ago when realizing that it did nothing to improve learning and only increased the students’ already heavy burdens.  (btw: Notre Dame is a very anxious world. To see the students walking around, earbuds plugged in and cell phones in hand, you’d think they had the weight of the world on their 19-year-old backs, and were dealing with international crises on a regular basis. That their anxiety is largely self-induced does not make it any less real.)

3. Ending the week on a good note: the lesson

After realizing my blunder, my stomach churned, my head ached, and I sat down immediately to apologize to the class via email. I apologized again the next day in class. The students got a reminder of the fallibility of authority figures, and I implored them to never hesitate asking questions because faculty members—like authority figures of all kinds—often make mistakes. I think we’re all ok. I know I felt better.

Before bed last night, I was reading Subhadramati’s Not Being Good: A Practical Guide to Buddhist Ethics, and came across the following quotes which sum up this week’s lessons.

“Apologizing is a spiritual act because it is a deliberate letting go of self” (110).

“This painful regret, in turn, becomes an incentive to act more skillfully in the future” (106).

***

Hope springs—or rather crawls out cautiously—anew.

 

 

Ichiro or the yellow cat: who would you rather be?

This semester we played some games in my classes to raise students’ awareness of their environment and how they react to it. This is one.

Teacher pulls out of a bag a bobblehead and a yellow Japanese cat figure, puts them on a table, and asks: “Who would you rather be, the best hitter of the era, Ichiro Suzuki, who led the Seattle Mariners in 2001? Or this yellow cat piggy bank?”

Students laugh. “Ichiro of course.”

The teacher: “Are you sure? Watch his head. Being an unaware human, he is a victim of the Mind. Thus when something bad comes along [Give the head a hard tap], he’s out of control.  [The head continues to bounce randomly, for a good three minutes or so.]. It is the cat we should emulate. The cat, with a low center of gravity, cannot be tipped over.”

This relates to all manner of actions. As Peter Ralston writes,

When our feeling-attention is put in the center region, the intellect does not dominate our actions and perceptions.  … Centering calms the mind, making it clear and powerful, unquestioning and unknowing, thus allowing access to a domain of spontaneous appropriate actions.

Begin by getting in touch with the center region on a physical level. Concentrate on the feet, when you stand in line or do a standing meditation. Notice how the feet constantly relate and readjust in relationship to the earth. It is the transference of weight from one foot to another that allows most of our actions and power. Adjust the waist and legs to accomodate a force. Keep you tailbone tucked under. Support your back and head from below. Remember that gravity is not just a mere “fact of the planet.” It is a profound force and possibility.

Consider this deeply.*

***

*Peter Ralstson, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, 10-15.

I will consider it deeply as I head out now for a walk with Honey Girl!