Leonid Andreyev by Ilya Repin.
I was browsing Librivox yesterday (Walpurgis Night, the night witches party on Mt. Brocken) when I found something that blew my socks off. Satan’s Diary is a play written by Leonid Nikolayevich Andreyev; he began writing it just before his death in 1919.
Andreyev had fled the revolution, which he helped foster in Moscow, sick with foreboding about what would happen when the Bolsheviks solidified their power. Satan’s Diary is Andreyev’s expression of that political prescience.
Before I go on to explain the significance of Andreyev’s final play, I’d like to remind you of what Bulgakov wrote about the Bolsheviks in that same year, 1919.
Now, when our unfortunate native land lies at the uttermost depths of the shame and misery into which it has been plunged by ‘the great social revolution’, many of us are increasingly dogged by the same thought.
The time has come when we must pay for our past. The heroic Volunteer Army is ripping the Russian earth piece by piece out of Trotsky’s grasp.
Particularly poignant, given the recent IMF loan that Kyiv has indentured itself with:
And we, representatives of a hapless generation, dying still with the status of miserable bankrupts, will have to say to our children:
‘Pay, pay honorably, and remember eternally the social revolution.’
Now, bear in mind that Leonid Andreyev is one of the most respected writers of Russia’s Silver Age; he’s not an obscure playwright. Some of his plays were produced by the Bolshevik golden-boy Meyerhold and Andreyev was a protégé of Gorky. Here’s a summary of what Satan’s Diary is about:
He portrayed Satan coming to this earth to amuse himself and play. Having assumed the form of an American multi-millionaire, Satan set out on a tour through Europe in quest of amusement and adventure. Before him passed various forms of spurious virtues, hypocrisies, the ruthless cruelty of man and the often deceptive innocence of woman. Within a short time, Satan finds himself outwitted, deceived, relieved of his millions, mocked, humiliated, beaten by man in his own devilish devices.
Remind you of anything? If this doesn’t jog your memory, please read my posts on Master and Margarita, and it’s follow-up, Is the Devil a German?
I’m excited about this play because I’ve never seen it referenced in any Bulgakov scholarship as being inspiration for Master and Margarita. (Perhaps this is a deficency in English-language scholarship only.) To my mind, this silence suggests the play says something too dangerous for modern ‘experts’ to touch. Given Andreyev’s feelings about the Bolsheviks; American involvement funding the Bolsheviks; and that Andreyev’s character ‘Satan’ takes on the guise of an American billionaire who is tricked out of his loot– well, let’s say my hairs are standing on end. Manuscripts don’t burn.
Maidan, Maidan, Maidan.
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How does Andreyev’s Satan’s Diary begin? The Devil tells us that thinkers end up in insane asylums. Sorta like Master and Margarita’s Bezdomnie.
Andreyev’s Devil has possessed a 38-year old American billionaire called Henry Wondergood. (Not Woland) Wondergood is a hardened man of worldly experience, he is a merchant (banker?!).
Why does Satan choose this vessel? For the joy of play and vanity: Satan is an artist who loves the stage. (Not a mysterious stage performer, like Woland.)
Ask any question you wish and Satan will answer you in English, French, Italian or German– any of your human languages. (He is a polyglot and knows a great many languages– like Woland!)
The devil is drawn to Rome, the Eternal City, along with his demon-companion Erwin Toppy, an extravagantly-dressed but stupid secretary who has a pastor-like face (not like a choir master named Fagot).
Despite all the fun Andreyev’s Satan has through Wondergood’s body, the Prince of Lies is unhappy and dissatisfied. More than anything, the Devil just wishes to be alone. (To put balm on his knee, which was injured by a remarkable witch on Mt. Brocken a long, long time ago?)
I’m going to do something a little different this time: I’m going stick my neck out and post on this play as I hear/read it. The last time I got this excited was when I found out Bulgakov’s ‘Spring Ball of the Full Moon’ was based on a party thrown by the American multi-millionaire Ambassador Bullit at Spaso House, the American Ambassador’s home in Moscow.
Let’s learn more about Andreyev’s political views, and any influence he might have had on Bulgakov’s later writing, as I work through the text. Dead men will speak!
