Faust

• The Master and Margarita contains numerous references to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. (even the epigraph that introduces the book is from Faust).
• In Faust, Faust essentially sells his soul to Mephistopheles (the Devil) in exchange for knowledge of all things, and the idea of selling ones soul to the Devil is referenced many times in the novel. In Stravinsky’s mental hospital, the Master flat out asks Homeless if “[he has] never heard of the opera Faust?” (page 152). At times, the Master even seems to suggest that he himself made a Faustian bargain in order to write his “manuscript." He says that after working on his manuscript “[he] was no longer in possession of [himself],” and the Master even checks himself into a mental hospital he feels so destroyed from working on the novel. This is just one of many possible Faustian references in the novel.