What do Pushkin and Woland have in common? At first sight, nothing. But here is the chain of “tightly packed syllogisms” that binds these figures together.
The image of Woland created by Bulgakov embodies qualities that cannot be joined in a real person: power, perfect knowledge, boundless understanding, and a striving for justice. Is there another figure in Bulgakov’s work — one almost real — possessed of such qualities? There is. It is Mikhail Semyonovich Shpolyansky, a secondary character in “The White Guard”: versifier, orator, saboteur, “forerunner of the Antichrist” — a truly demonic figure. It seems, by the way, that Bulgakov himself felt a certain fear of him, and perhaps of his real prototype, the writer, screenwriter and literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky. Describing Shpolyansky’s appearance, Bulgakov says he was uncannily like Eugene Onegin.
So the thread leads us to “Eugene Onegin”. And whom does Onegin himself resemble? By common consent — not only of writers and readers but of painters too (see K.I. Rudakov’s illustration to the novel, 1936) — Onegin embodies a whole range of the traits of character, appearance and psychology of Pushkin himself.
May we conclude from this that the characters of Pushkin and of Woland have essential features in common? To my mind the answer is obvious. Both figures are makers, creators and — in part — destroyers. One need only recall Alexander Sergeyevich’s various escapades and the “charming pranks” of Woland and his retinue. Both looked upon the world from above. Here is how Bulgakov describes the Pushkin monument: “a metal man stands on a pedestal, his head slightly bowed, and looks indifferently down the boulevard”…
So in Onegin’s features we see a reflection of Pushkin’s personality, and in Woland’s a reflection of Bulgakov’s. And here is what I should like to note at the close. The lives of the figures in my account — Pushkin, Onegin, Bulgakov, Woland — do not withstand a collision with love. Does this not confirm the presence of demonic features in their characters?..
