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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE OF THE INITIATION NOVEL IN 20TH-CENTURY RUSSIAN LITERATURE—MIKHAIL BULGAKOV’S THE MASTER AND MARGARITA ee LÉNA SZILÁRD ABSTRACT! In accordance with the poetics of the genre of the initiation novel (invented by Andrey Bely), at the core of the plot of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita lies the road to the spiritual enlightenment (via illuminativa) of Ivan Ponyrev. At the beginning of the novel, Ponyrev is presented as a stupefied Soviet poet who uses the pseudonym "Bezdomny," or "Homeless," a typical type of pseudonym of the time. In the epilogue, however, he is a historianphilosopher who, having been freed of the manipulative influences of the social environment, which made him go to a mental asylum, is led by the lunar light, a symbol of cosmic order. The impulse to Ivan’s ascension is given by his encounter with the “overturned master” Woland, who opens up the via purgativa by punishing “the pseudomaster” Berlioz and taking Ivan to meet the nameless Master in the clinic headed by Doctor Stravinsky (a mental institution where consciousness is being cleared). The symbolism of the hero’s path in Book I is saturated with the signs of Freemasonry. Book II, on the other hand, by accentuating the details of the road as a via illuminativa, emphasizes the transition to Rosicrucianism. The shift from the symbol of the mimosa (Freemasonry) to the symbol of the rose, Rosicrucianism) is of paramount importance. The epilogue of the novel, by hinting at the probability of the perspective of the via unitiva, makes the following principal idea explicit: Ivan Ponyrev is the student of the nameless Master, so he is on the road to realizing 1 Mikhail Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, München, POSEV, 1969. + 273 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 273 6 2020. 06.15. 11:04:24
