LF
Wears a New York (NL) hat.
Ivan Nickolaevich Ponyryov (who uses the pseudonym Bezdomny, which means "homeless", as a writer of poetry) is a peripheral character in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita. A full English translation can be accessed here. Bezdomny appearances bookend the novel, which revolves around the appearance of the devil in Moscow (as a dapper, refined gentleman, and isn't he always these days). The book was written between 1928 and 1940 - Bulgakov died in 1940, having mostly finished his novel, but it didn't actually see the light of day until 1966, when it was serialized, in an edited version, in Moscow magazine. The edits may have softened the blow but it was still a subversive, anti-establishment work, and it quickly became a contemporary classic, passed around and discussed by the Russian intelligentsia. It supposedly holds a particular high place in the psyche of the Russian people - it has been adapted a handful of times into other media, but there are stories (like with Don Quixote) of a curse on them, including one version that was filmed in 1994 and, like the original novel, was buried, this time for copyright reasons, although DVD versions have since appeared.
This is a pretty comprehensive site about the novel, if anyone is interested.
(Mikhail Bulgakov)
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