Creativity: The Path to Authenticity (on the Example of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Novel “The Master and Margarita”)

The article reveals the prospects of personal intellectual freedom through dealing with phenomena of creativity and authenticity of author’s life. The image of “Unknown Motherland” represents these prospects as the most significant in­tention of the creative mind. This is how M. Proust calls it, and this becomes sig­nificant for M.K. Mamardashvili in his reflections on the vocation and fate of the artist, on the authenticity of art. The “Unknown” is interpreted as reality itself, which acquires special features in its creative reflection and recreation by the author. Creativity as the path to Authenticity is reconstructed on the example of the autobiographical text of N.A. Berdyaev, which clarifies the greatness and tragedy of the creative spirit; M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of the author and the hero; reflections of Yu.M. Lotman on the Home as an element of cultural space. As an artistic example, the author of the article considers the plot and situations of the main characters of the novel by M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Mar­garita”. The search for an “Unknown Motherland” as the Authenticity in these situations is associated with the image and path to human dignity, to honor, goodness, courage, to the Master who is able to surpass his fears, doubts, despair and be the author. From a personal perspective, the “Unknown Motherland” refers to both the past, which needs to be understood and revealed, and the possi­ble, the future, the other, with which key value aspirations and meanings are as­sociated. They are not destined to be turned into reality in their integrity and completeness, they are an effort in time, turning into the tragedy of the con­frontation between the artist and everyday life, the artist and the authorities, the artist and the masses. Creativity is revealed as a deep experience and longing of the author for the harmony of culture and personality, for another world, an­other cultural space, another author and even another reader who is able to con­sider in the work truly great cultural meanings and their distant contexts.