I can't stand important things.
I'm in total agreement with Turfan F here.. I'm not sure what's served by league-tables of this kind... especially when there are no criteria. To me it seems an exercise in futility.
"Important" to whom? To me? To undergraduates? To society as a whole?
Anyone for Composers Objectively Rated?
Whilst THE MASTER & MARGARITA is a book I can reread endlessly, I think that its "importance" has gone through a series of metamorphoses that the author cannot have planned:
i) as a challenge to soviet censorship (as an unpublished, unread text) - unknown both inside and outside the USSR
ii) as a testament to the uncrushable resilience of a creative spirit (as an unpublished, unread text)
iii) as an infamously banned book believed to be in illicit circulation (as an unpublished, unread text)
iv) as an illicit object whose possession could result in being jailed (as an unpublished, unread text)
v) as a critique of an existing regime's insane excesses (as an illicitly circulated
samizdat text)
vi) as a bravura work of black comedy
vii) as a religious allegory (in a country in which religion was repressed as a State policy)
viii) as the symbol of the systematic destruction of the career of its author by the State (and as a microcosm of this within the text)
ix) as a rallying-call against censorship in the gradual thaw of soviet hard-line policy
x) as an example of the viciousness, stupidity and pettiness of soviet censorship (as a now-published text)
xi) as a compulsory work on school curricula (as a now-published text)
xii) as the work on which the most high-budget mini-series ever made for Russian TV was based
xiii) as a historical document used to teach "how it was back then" to a new generation who feel ashamed of their country's past and have no wish to be associated with it
The level of "importance" probably never changed greatly - but the
reason for the "importance" changed beyond all recognition.
By comparison there's Anatoly Rybakov's CHILDREN OF THE ARBAT. What? Yes, you may well ask. In Russia it is more well-known (as a banned book) than DR ZHIVAGO, mainly because Rybakov was sent to the Gulag for it (neither Bulakov nor Pasternak endured more than being shut-out of professional life, although this was bad enough). The "importance" of Children Of The Arbat was that it, too, challenged soviet censorship. (It's the story of a promising Honours student who is sent to the Gulag for making an unwise practical joke at his college after a few drinks). As literature, it's bilge, and very poorly written - the characters aren't even cardboard. The importance was the topic alone.
