Rostislav Popskiystoneturtle.livejournal.comUkrainian artist Rostislav Popsky was born in Shepetivka, Khmelnytsky region. After finishing an institute (interestingly, not an art one, but of management and law) he worked for a time as a drawing teacher and then went into government service. However, after a short time he received an offer to illustrate Janusz Korczak’s The Adventures of King Matt the First, after which he parted with government service and returned to his beloved occupation.
Here is what he himself writes about how the Bulgakov cycle appeared: “I decided to do some drawing on the theme of The Master and Margarita. The idea, plainly speaking, is not new and far from original, but what can you do if the pictures keep accumulating and demand a way out... I understand perfectly that everyone has his own Bulgakov, his own vision of the characters, meanings, and so on. This work is in general impossible to illustrate once and for all, and therefore this drawing (and the ones that follow, should such occur) is not an illustration to the novel, but rather a fixing on paper of those images that arise in the head in the process of reading.”
Look at the extraordinary illustrations he managed to make with an ordinary pen on ordinary A4 sheets.
“In the sky, sensing the evening coolness, black birds were silently tracing lines...”
“Stepa unstuck his glued-together eyelids and saw that he was reflected in the pier glass in the form of a man with hair sticking out in all directions, with a swollen face covered with black stubble, with eyes swollen shut, in a dirty shirt with collar and tie, in long johns and socks. Thus he saw himself in the pier glass, and beside the mirror he saw an unknown man dressed in black and in a black beret.”
And here is the staircase of the ill‑fated house 302‑bis. Apparently the buffet attendant fleeing from the naughty apartment has just rushed down it—see, on the landing lies the dropped beret with a feather. Note the cat’s shadow on the wall.
Korovyov and Behemoth
“The séance is over! Maestro! Hack us a march!”
The Master’s memories of meeting Margarita
The Master’s illness
“Everything was over, and there was nothing more to talk about, Ha‑Notsri was going away forever, and there was no one to cure the procurator’s terrible, evil pains; there is no remedy for them except death. But it was not this thought that struck Pilate now. The same incomprehensible anguish that had already come on the balcony pierced his whole being. He at once tried to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: it seemed dimly to the procurator that he had left something unsaid to the condemned man, or perhaps had failed to hear something...”
“Screwing up his eyes, Levi awaited the fire that would fall on him from the sky and strike him himself. That did not happen, and, without unclenching his eyelids, Levi went on shouting sarcastic and insulting speeches to the sky. He cried out about his complete disillusionment and that there exist other gods and religions...”
Afranius and Pilate
Azazello’s cream
“The little light came right up close, and Margarita saw the illuminated face of a man, long and black, holding in his hand that very little lamp. Those who had already had the misfortune in these days to fall into his path, even by the weak tongue of light in the lamp, of course would at once have recognized him. It was Korovyov, also Fagott.”
Woland’s globe.
By the way, in this drawing Woland is depicted in the likeness of Viktor Avilov, famed for playing his role on stage.
“At sunset high above the city on the stone terrace of one of the most beautiful buildings in Moscow...”
“Even the magical black horses grew weary and bore their riders slowly, and the inescapable night began to overtake them.”
