[...] However, exaggeration can have many aspects and can provoke different reactions within us. For example, in "Diavoliada", at first we are amazed by the transformations of the warehouse keeper Skeleer, quickly followed by surprise or awkwardness, giving way to an anxiety that grows increasingly and that the end of the story, instead of making it recede, amplifies it. In "Fatal Eggs", on the other hand, the satire of bureaucracy and the extremes of the new regime intertwine with horror and disgust; an error, which in another case would be rather trivial, instantly takes on such dimensions that it could be given countless symbolic or parabolic interpretations. In a state farm, instead of chicken eggs, reptile eggs are sold; the destruction that follows could be allegorically considered as nature's revenge against civilization, as a parody of all human history, as an ironic stance of the author towards the logic of the auspicious and the ominous, as an acceptance, finally, of the absurd as the only reality. Using the grotesque, Bulgakov leaves himself defenseless against exaggeration, literally playing with fantasies, visions, hopes, logical classifications, and myths. Everything becomes ingredients of an endless, relentless farce, a game within the narrative game, where the author's tricks keep us constantly uneasy; and not exclusively when we are in the adventure of reading.

Alexis Ziras