ABSTRACT
Dreams, dreamers and dream worlds figure prominently in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, as well as throughout his writing. Indeed, some of Bulgakov’s works consist almost exclusively, or even wholly, of dreams. For example, Bulgakov’s poema “Chichikov’s Adventures” opens with a prologue: “What a strange dream…It was as if a prankster Satan had opened the doors into the kingdom of shadows, with its entry illuminated from above with an everlasting light and a sign which read ‘Dead souls’” (II, 230)1 and concludes with the hero’s return into wakefulness in the epilogue: “…of course I woke up. And there was nothing: no Chichikov, or Nozdrev, and most importantly of all, no Gogol…” (II, 242). Bulgakov’s play Flight unfolds eight dreams, which make up the four acts of this work (III, 216-78). Bulgakov’s writing also contains some extraordinarily violent dreams, as illustrated, for instance, in “To My Secret Friend” where the narrator dreams of Petlyura’s men assaulting a Jew who is guilty of nothing. Witnessing the savage attack in hiding, the narrator seemingly experiences his own death in the course of this dream (IV, 551).
