Paolo Nori Tells the Story of The Master and Margarita
Sympathy for the Devil
THEATRE TOUR 2026

When, in 1967, Einaudi published a novel by a Russian writer who had died in 1940 and was unknown to us, Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, Eugenio Montale wrote that we were faced with “a miracle that everyone must greet with emotion.”

The following year, in 1968, the Rolling Stones recorded a song, Sympathy for the Devil, which Mick Jagger wrote after reading The Master and Margarita.

This very sympathetic devil, who in the novel is called Woland, meets Matthew Levi, the emissary of good, in the center of Moscow. Matthew does not hide his contempt for him, and Woland tells him:

“You speak as if you knew nothing of shadows, nor of evil. But try, if you can, to ponder this question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if the shadows disappeared? People and things cast shadows. Look at the shadow of my sword. And the shadows of trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the entire globe bare, removing all its trees and all living beings, because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You are a fool.”

The Master and Margarita is the great novel by a great Russian writer born in Ukraine who, in March 1930, wrote to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR:

“Going through my newspaper clippings, I found that over the ten years of my literary career I had received 301 reviews from the Soviet press, of which 3 were favorable and 298 hostile and insulting.”

It is a novel about good and evil, justice, and the relationship between art and literature; perhaps it is the most contemporary of the great Russian classics of the twentieth century, and it tells us more about ourselves than we would like to know.

After Crime and Punishment, I will try to tell the story of this miracle in 90 minutes—and let’s see what happens.