The first stage of reception of M.A. Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita in Spanish-speaking literature

The subject timeliness is determined by the high interest of modern humanities to the problems of reception theory, theory of translation and dialogue of cultures. The special detailed analysis of the first Spanish-speaking literary critical reception of M. A. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita has been made for the first time in national literature studies. The author sets the goal to discover specific reception features of Bulgakov's novel in Spanish-speaking culture. The first Spanish version of the novel was released in Spain by the publishing house ''Alianza'' in 1968. It was translated by Amaya Lacasa Sancha. It is important to note a rather late learning of the literary critical reception of Bulgakov's novel. The first work in the prolusion form written by the Spanish writer, critic and translator J. L. Gimenez-Frontm refers to 1989. The first major research of the novel has appeared only in 2012. B.S. Giudici Fernandez's book El Maestro y Margarita: novela etica was released by the publishing house of the university of Leon ''Area de publicaciones" (Spain). So, literary critical reception of Bulgakov's novel by Spanish-speaking culture and literature in the late 20th - early 21st centuries can be considered the first stage of its reception. Spanish-speaking writers and critics consider The Master and Margarita by M. A. Bulgakov in a broad literary context pointing out the relation between The Master and Margarita and such world literature works as The Brothers Karamazov by F. Dostoyevsky, Faust by Goethe, One Hundred Years of Solitude by G. Garcia Marquez, Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift, The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais. Following the Russian researchers Spanish speaking writers and critics consider The Master and Margarita as an autobiographic novel where the portrait of the protagonist, Master, personifies Bulgakov himself because the author and his character are similar in expressing their state of mind and feelings, the character study of Margarita symbolizes the third Bulgakov's wife and the situation of literary repressions towards Master after a part of his novel released. They also consider the novel in the evangelic context where Yeshua Ha-Notsri is identified with Jesus Christ. The specific reception feature of Bulgakov's novel in Spanish-speaking world is represented in social and political interpretation. According to the researchers' opinion the socio-economic and political situation of the USSR in the 1930s is described in the novel: the terror, political repressions, bureaucracy, inner world of Moscovites and their interpersonal relationships. From researchers' point of view only the devil who personifies the idea of continuity of the good and the evil in the philosophic and aesthetic interpretation could confront the political regime and fight against it.

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