Essays on literary works - 2024

The Fate of the Artist (on the example of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “Faust”)

There’s a thing that happens when you realize the artist is the only one who actually notices the world bleeding. It’s not noble. It’s not romantic. It’s like being the only person at a rave who sees the fire exit blocked and knows that nobody’s making it out. Everyone else is dancing. You're screaming into a disco ball.

That’s The Master and Margarita. That’s Faust. That’s every tormented, brilliant, unlucky creator who ever tried to turn the sludge of existence into something that sparkles—even if it meant selling a piece of themselves. Or, you know, their whole damn soul.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master: the ghostwriter of God, or just a sad dude in a basement?

Let’s start with Bulgakov’s Master, who’s not even the master of the story. Like, he’s called “Master” but can’t get published, can’t catch a break, can’t even keep his lover safe. Peak delulu energy. The man writes a revolutionary retelling of Pontius Pilate’s moral crisis and then promptly burns it in a stove. Ever seen a genius light their life on fire for “integrity”? Yeah. That.

But here’s the kicker: Bulgakov’s whole novel is like a Russian nesting doll of artistic anxiety. It’s satire. It’s theology. It’s surrealist kink. And at the twitching heart of it? The idea that making great art in a totalitarian state means you either vanish into obscurity or get devoured. Canceled before cancel culture had a TikTok.

There’s Woland—the satanic daddy of existential chaos—who shows up in Moscow and exposes everyone’s hypocrisy like a drag queen with a truth serum. Margarita, the wild woman who literally becomes a witch to save her man. And the Master, slinking in the shadows, shivering in fear of his own manuscript. Honestly, it’s giving “depressed auteur gets ghosted by society.”

But Bulgakov knew. Oh, he knew. This wasn’t just a sad story. It was a self-drag. The Master is Bulgakov, whispering into a blacked-out phone line, praying someone in the future would pick up.

Spoiler: we did. And it’s heartbreaking.

Faust: man sells soul for vibes (and gets roasted anyway)

And then there’s Goethe’s Faust—the OG influencer who thought he could out-hack the algorithm of existence. He’s over it. Books? Boring. Magic? Meh. Science? Been there, summoned that. So he makes a deal with the literal devil (Mephistopheles, aka Satan’s sarcastic little intern) to feel something. Anything.

Imagine being so intellectually horny you barter your eternal soul for a slightly more interesting Tuesday. That’s Faust. Big "burnt out grad student in a post-enlightenment crisis" energy.

But here’s what hits: Faust isn’t evil. He’s just… starving. For meaning, sensation, transcendence. (Sound familiar?) He’s the kind of guy who’d meditate with crystals and doomscroll Reddit at the same time, asking himself, what even is fulfillment in the age of infinite content? Except, you know, in Latin.

The real tragedy? Even with all that cosmic clout, he still can’t save Gretchen—the girl he loves, ruins, abandons, and mourns in the space of two acts. So like... congrats, dude. You traveled through time, conversed with witches, chased the sublime—and still ended up crying over a girl who died in a jail cell because of you. Brutal.

Faust is what happens when ambition becomes addiction. When artistic hunger curdles into ego. When the pursuit of beauty erases the people you were supposed to love.

Yikes. But also, same.

Being an artist is kind of a curse. Like, literally.

Let’s be real: both Bulgakov and Goethe are not writing self-help books here. They’re dragging us through the mud to show us what happens when you try to create something true in a world that punishes authenticity. And the artist? The true one, the honest-to-God (or Devil?) mad visionary? They get obliterated.

But not before giving us something immortal.

That’s the toxic magic. Art is always bleeding from somewhere. The Master ends up in a metaphysical suburb of death, granted “peace” instead of “light.” Which sounds kind of like being shadowbanned by the universe. Meanwhile, Faust gets saved, somehow, by a deus-ex-maternal-love moment that even Goethe admitted was kind of a reach. Still, both artists pay the price. Love, truth, legacy? You don’t get them all. Pick two. Maybe.

Fast-forward to now: is the artist still screwed?

Look around. In 2025, the artist isn’t burned at the stake—they just get drowned in algorithms. No state censorship, just shadow monetization. You can post your magnum opus on Medium and get 3 likes from bots. You can stream your soul on Spotify and never crack 1,000 plays. You can literally bleed your mind into your work and still get out-ranked by ChatGPT writing listicles about productivity hacks.

So yeah, the artist is still very much... not okay.

But also? They’re everywhere. Writing fanfic. Making TikToks. Designing absurdly niche memes that hit harder than any op-ed in The Atlantic. Faust is the burned-out guy making vaporwave playlists about lost futures. The Master is the anonymous genius running that weirdly poetic Twitter alt. Margarita is every girl who said “f**k it” and made her own mythology.

Bulgakov’s Moscow. Goethe’s study. Today’s feed. Same story. Different skin.

Final thought (but not a conclusion, because ew): maybe the artist’s fate isn’t to win. It’s to witness.

Not to dominate. To illuminate.

To hold a mirror—shattered, weird, TikTok-filtered—up to a world too loud to notice its own silence. To keep noticing. Feeling. Screaming into disco balls.

And maybe that’s enough.

Or maybe not. But what else are we going to do? Sell our souls for mid-tier dopamine hits? Burn our books before they go unread?

Wait—don’t answer that.

#artisdeadlongliveart