TY - JOUR
AU - SEMEKA-PANKRATOV, ELENA
AB -  ELENA SEMEKA-PANKRATOV Working on a problem of decoding various symbols in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, I tried to explain the symbolism of natural phenomena, the sun and the moon in particular, in archetypal mythopoetic terms, looking at the problem from the point of view of 'life/death' opposition. The ambivalence of these symbols and the ideas hidden behind them led beyond the frame of the dual opposition and pointed to a third element that seemed to be the crucial key to the whole question. The solution came unexpectedly, and, paradoxically as it may seem, was directly related to the death of Roman Jakobson (18961982). It came with clear and unshakable certainty that 'there is no death ... we shall see the pure stream of the water of life' as, according to Bulgakov, Yeshua Ha-Nozri had said (p. 342),l and that our death is our beginning. The binary opposition 'life/death' was transformed into the most ancient mythologeme of cyclic recurrence, the never-ending triad 'life/ death/life' (i.e., immortality). Everything fell in its place, and with it the main theme of The Master and Margarita became evident: it is victory over death, or immortality. The article The sex of 
TI - The sun and the moon in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita: Life, death, and resurrection
JF - Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique
DO - 10.1515/semi.1991.84.3-4.185
DA - 1991-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/de-gruyter/the-sun-and-the-moon-in-bulgakov-s-the-master-and-margarita-life-death-x8h0JPIVUq
SP - 185
EP - 218
VL - 84
IS - 3-4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -