“The life of Mr. de Moliere” in the context of the development of the theme “artist and power” in the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov

In 1932–1933, M. Bulgakov simultaneously worked on a novel about Moliere for the series “Life of Remarkable People” and the second edition of his future novel “The Master and Margarita”. In our opinion, the creation of the images of King Louis XIV and Moliere had a tremendous impact on the formation of the theme “the artist and power” in the novel “The Master and Margarita”. This article is the first attempt to investigate the influence of the novel “The Life of Mr. de Moliere” on the development of the theme “the artist and power” in the novel “The Master and Margarita” based on the creative history and the textual analysis of the designated works. In our work, we rely on the system of the novel editions that we have found and its main text, reflecting the last creative will of the author to the fullest extent: the first (1928–1930), the second (1932–1936), the third (1936), the fourth (1937), the fifth (the last handwritten one, 1937–1938), the sixth (the final one, 1938–1940). For the first time, the fragments of the novel drafts about Moliere are introduced into the scientific circulation. The draft texts of the two novels are presented be means of dynamic transcription, which will make the process of the writer’s creation work visible and allow us to see the formation of the author’s conception. Graphic conventions are used for this purpose: 1) a piece of text crossed out by the writer – [text] (italics), 2) an insert during the writing process – text (bold font), 3) a later insert – {text} (bold font), 4) a later insert crossed out – {text} (italics and bold font), 5) a conjecture – <text> (italics), 6) reliability of the transmitted author’s text – <sic>, 7) the end of a page and the transition to the next one indicated by two straight vertical lines – ||. When quoting draft texts, we preserved the author’s spelling and punctuation.