Characteristic
Ivan Bezdomny is a member of MASSOLIT. Unlike his colleagues, he was initiated into the secret of the Master, aware of the torment of Pontius Pilate. A characteristic feature of this hero is ignorance. It was for this that he was punished. However, this punishment was not as cruel as what, for example, overtook Berlioz.
At the beginning of the novel “The Master and Margarita,” Ivan Bezdomny is an inconspicuous figure. And in some ways unattractive. After all, he is not only “Homeless”, but also “thoughtless”. Ivan is the last student of Mikhail Berlioz, listening to his ideologically correct remarks.
The author treats this character with some degree of sympathy. And therefore allows him to correct himself, to get rid of stupidity and self-confidence. In the epilogue, several paragraphs are dedicated to Ivan. The reader sees that this is a completely different person. Let us remember the events that occurred in the poet’s life.
"under the pseudonym Homeless"
We first meet this character at the very beginning of the novel in the company of his mentor Mikhail Berlioz.
The first of them, dressed in a gray summer pair, was short, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat like a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were glasses of supernatural size in black horn-rimmed frames, the second was a broad-shouldered, reddish, shaggy young man in a checkered cap twisted at the back of his head - he was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewed white trousers and black slippers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, called MASSOLIT for short, and editor of a thick art magazine, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.
So, Ivan Ponyrev, who has the pseudonym Bezdomny. The author's first and last name and especially his pseudonym were not chosen by chance. It is under his pseudonym that readers will most remember this character. To understand what kind of historical personality Bulgakov hid in the poet, you need to pay attention to the topic of Berlioz’s conversation with Bezdomny.
This speech, as we later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet to write a large anti-religious poem for the next book of the magazine... It is difficult to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolaevich down - whether the visual power of his talent or complete unfamiliarity with the issue on which he was going to write - but Jesus in his portrayal turned out well completely like a living character, although not an attractive one.
Meeting at the Patriarchal
There are two storylines in Bulgakov's novel. Each of them develops independently. The actions of both the first and second take place in May, but in different eras. Ivan Bezdomny in The Master and Margarita is the first resident of Moscow in the thirties to meet Woland, except for Berlioz, who died under the wheels of a tram.
Once a poet composed an anti-religious poem dedicated to Jesus Christ. At Patriarch's Ponds, Ivan Bezdomny met with Mikhail Berlioz to discuss the work. According to the chairman of MASSOLIT, the poem by the young writer required improvements. In it, the author ridiculed Jesus Christ and presented him to readers in the image of a negative hero. And he had to prove that this person did not exist at all.
The chairman of MASSOLIT gives a short lecture to a poorly educated colleague on the topic of world history and cultural studies. Meanwhile, he dreams of a trip to Kislovodsk, which, as we know, he is not destined to make. An unfamiliar foreigner unexpectedly intervenes in the dialogue between Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny, after which incredible events begin to occur in Moscow.
Enemies of the Master
Ivan’s new acquaintance does not really like the members of MASSOLIT - representatives of the literary elite. And he has good reason for that. It is their fault that the novel was not published. Because of them, he burned the work he had been creating for so long. And it is they who are to blame for the fact that the Master is in a mental hospital. After futile attempts to publish the novel, he had nothing left: no first name, no last name, no future. Ivan Bezdomny in the novel “The Master and Margarita” is a typical representative of the elite literary world. And this world is hated not only by the hero of the novel, but also by the author himself.
In "Griboyedov"
After meeting with Woland and his henchmen, Ivan tries to understand what happened. He makes a chaotic search for villains, which leads nowhere, then goes to “Griboyedov”. Ivan comes to a restaurant with a candle in his hands and an icon on his chest, says rude things to his colleagues, and shows aggression. Writers have the impression that after the tragic events that happened to Mikhail Berlioz, the young man’s consciousness became clouded.
Schizophrenia
After a story about a meeting with a professor who once talked with Pontius Pilate and later had breakfast with Kant, Bezdomny is mistaken by those around him for a madman and imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital. However, other heroes also end up here, including the chairman of the partnership.
Let's return to the first chapter of the novel. The reader knows that Ivan’s temporary madness is nothing more than a punishment for stupidity, insolence, and self-confidence. “If only we could take this Kant to Solovki,” Bezdomny shouts indignantly, not knowing that the philosopher has been dead for more than a hundred years. Then the badass poet asks the strange interlocutor a question, the audacity of which goes beyond any boundaries of decency provided for by the rules of communication with the forces of the other world.
“Have you ever been to a mental hospital?” asks Ivan. To which Woland calmly reports that he had to, but he forgot to ask the professor about what schizophrenia is. Ivan has to find out. A few hours later, Bezdomny finds himself in Stravinsky’s clinic.
Meet the Master
During the first days of his stay in a psychiatric hospital, Ivan begins to see clearly. At the clinic, the poet meets the Master, who ended up here because of Pontius Pilate. However, like Ivan Bezdomny. The only difference is that the young writer learned about the fifth Roman procurator of Judea from an eccentric consulting professor. Nobody told the master anything. Everything he wrote in the novel was his guesses and assumptions, which later turned out to be extremely reliable.
Master Ivan told about his life. The former poet learns that his new acquaintance knows five languages, is a historian by training, and once worked in one of the capital's museums. One day he won a large sum, after which he rented a room in a good area and began work on a novel about Pontius Pilate. Ivan, of course, also learns about the woman with whom his night interlocutor once met on Tverskaya.
The Poet's Madness
After Berlioz's death, Ivan could no longer deny the existence of God and the Devil. He tried to find understanding among his colleagues, wrote a statement about the causes of Berlioz’s death to the police, but no one believed him. He was considered insane and admitted to a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. There Ivan meets the Master, they are lying in neighboring chambers. Through their conversations, the poet finds solace and also realizes how bad his poems really were. He understands that his creativity was dictated by the demands of the party, and not by his own spiritual impulses. Ivan makes a promise to the Master not to write poetry anymore.
Ivan's split
The Master does not mention his name. But this is not so important. Meeting this man completely changed the life of Ivan Bezdomny. He realized that his works were monstrous and decided never to write again. The old Ivan did not distinguish good from evil, did not have his own point of view. Everything he did was dictated by society.
The author speaks only in passing about the further fate of Ivan Bezdomny, or more precisely, Ponyrev (this is the real name of our hero). The epilogue says that he became a historian and is not interested in poetry. True, once a year the professor’s soul is tormented by vague anxiety and worry, as if a reminder of what happened.
Meeting with Woland and death of Berlioz
The reader meets Ivan already in the first chapter of the novel. He and his mentor Berlioz are discussing an essay they have just written on a religious topic. In it, the poet presented Jesus in a negative light, which, according to Berlioz, made a big mistake. Mikhail Alexandrovich believed that it was necessary to completely deny the existence of the Son of God. It should be noted that MASSOLIT was a socialist organization, whose members were obliged to write essays of the corresponding ideology. In this regard, it becomes clear why Berlioz defended his point of view so fiercely.
A foreigner (Woland) joined the conversation and refuted Berlioz’s statements. The stranger claimed to have witnessed those events. The writers considered him crazy. Then Woland predicted the death of Berlioz and emphasized that nothing could be changed. Mikhail Alexandrovich objected to the foreigner. He believed that man creates his own destiny, but he could not avoid death. Berlioz was hit by a tram, and this fact changed the fate of Ivan Bezdomny forever.
"Melmoth the Wanderer"
Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, like his other works, is filled with reminiscences. This does not mean at all that the work of the Russian writer was reduced to repetitions of traditional literary motifs. His works were relevant and touched on the most painful points of his contemporary society. They have not lost their relevance today. In the image of Ivan Bezdomny, literary scholars see similarities with the character in the novel “Melmoth the Wanderer,” written by Charles Maturin.
The hero of this work also ends up in a psychiatric hospital. Unlike the Homeless Man, he also sells his soul to the devil. Maturin's character is sent to an insane asylum, and this happens after a reckless pursuit of the messengers of Satan and a series of strange actions. In the hospital, he first goes on a rampage, then becomes submissive, believing that this will make it easier for him to escape.
Professor Ivan Ponyrev
It is worth saying that in the early edition of Bulgakov’s novel, it is not the Master who appears to Ivan in a psychiatric hospital, but Woland himself. The homeless man has common features with the hero of the English writer. But his image is deeper. After the meeting at the Patriarch's, Ivan seems to be cleansed. He had fame, position in society. He abandoned all this after he learned from the Master the story of Pontius Pilate.
The truth is open to everyone who has the courage to seek it. Perhaps this idea became the main one when creating the image of Ivan Bezdomny. The former poet, of course, did not write a continuation of the novel about Yeshua. Moreover, he later conveniently forgot about what he heard from the Master. However, he improved, became better, sincere.
Prototypes
As mentioned above, there were many thousands of people like Ivan Bezdomny in the Stalinist USSR. However, this character also had direct prototypes. First of all, Efim Pridvorov, a Soviet poet who entered literature under the pseudonym Demyan Bedny, is considered such. Both have very similar real names and pseudonyms, generally similar biography, level of education, worldview and level of “poetic talent.” Efim Pridvorov was a very poor, but extremely prolific poet, who was eagerly published by Soviet magazines due to the “proletarian” nature of his works.
Another prototype is considered to be Alexander Bezymensky, a Soviet Jewish poet, whose surname also brings to mind Bezdomny. There was another poet with a similar pseudonym - Ivan Pribludny (real name - Yakov Ovcharenko). In literature, the prototypes of Homeless are considered to be the student from Goethe’s poem “Faust,” as well as Stanton from Maturin’s novel “Melmoth the Wanderer.”
It is also known that at an early age Bulgakov worked for the newspaper Gudok. There, the pseudonym Bezdomny was borne by his colleague, although other sources claim that Bulgakov himself signed this way.
Alexander Bezymensky
There are many prototypes of Ivan Bezdomny. Some researchers even saw in his image a hint of Sergei Yesenin, believing that the scandalous scene in the Griboedov restaurant was based on a very real episode. Many critics consider the prototype of Bezdomny to be Alexander Bezymensky, a poet popular in the twenties. This writer actively opposed the “Days of the Turbins” and even wrote a parody of Bulgakov’s work. Bezymensky's work, in turn, was ridiculed more than once by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Other versions
Ivan Pribludny is also considered the prototype of Ivan Bezdomny, or one of them. This poet belonged to Sergei Yesenin’s circle. He was a well-known personality in Moscow literary circles and had a reputation as a joker and a merry fellow. His popularity was brought not by his merits in literature, but by his friendship with the great poet and participation in brawls organized by the famous “bawdy and brawler.” Perhaps only the fights in the restaurant speak in favor of this version. Bezdomny organized something similar after the death of Berlioz in Griboyedov.
Some other representatives of literary Moscow in the twenties are considered prototypes of Bulgakov’s hero. The most common version says that the author of the cult novel created the image of a mediocre poet under the impression of the personality of Demyan Bedny.
The most implausible thing is that the prototype of Homeless is Sergei Yesenin himself. It is based only on the stay of Bulgakov’s hero in the hospital. The great Russian poet, as you know, visited such institutions more than once. However, this is where the similarities that Ivan Bezdomny may have with Yesenin end. The characteristics of this character indicate primarily the absence of a poetic gift. This man ended up in literature by accident. He writes to order and does it mediocrely. The Homeless Man also admits this to the Master during their nightly conversations. This image has nothing in common with the great Russian poet, who, in addition to his unique talent, also had extremely painful pride. By the way, some Bulgakov scholars consider Sergei Yesenin to be the prototype of the Master himself.
It is possible to decipher Bulgakov’s novel endlessly, which is what researchers have been diligently doing for more than half a century. But a writer’s work is, first of all, a reflection of his life experience. Therefore, events or people known to him in life cannot help but appear in whole or in part on the pages of his immortal work.
The role of the character in the plot
According to some literary critics, it is Ivan Bezdomny who is the main character of Bulgakov’s novel. After all, in it the author expressed the hope that a person who is part of Soviet society is capable of being reborn. However, Bezdomny believes in the Savior only on days when events directly related to the appearance of Satan and his minions take place in Moscow.
The nugget poets raised by the revolution, according to Bulgakov, were too far from understanding the connection between man and Christian ideas. And the fact that they will someday become the creators of a new national culture is nothing less than a utopia.
Ivan Bezdomny as one of the main characters in M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”
Roman M.A. Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" begins with the fact that the chairman of MASSOLIT, Berlioz, proves to the young poet Ivan Bezdomny that Jesus Christ never existed in reality. In essence, Berlioz convinces his young colleague that God does not and cannot exist. The consequences of this conversation for Bezdomny turn out to be very disastrous - he witnesses the death of Mikhail Alexandrovich and ends up in a clinic for the mentally ill. It is here that this character has an epiphany - a meeting with the master, acquaintance with his novel makes Bezdomny understand his mediocrity and the need to abandon “poetry.” As a result, after leaving Stravinsky’s clinic, the hero turns into an employee of the Institute of History and Philosophy, Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev. But once a year, on the spring full moon, madness still visits the hero. And then he again met with the master and the heroes of his novel - Yeshua Ha-Nozri and Pontius Pilate. And then he again begins to be tormented by the questions that troubled the masters in their time, who are still destroying Pilate. Once a year, Ponyrev sees two satellites on the “wide lunar road”. One of them is “in a white cloak with bloody lining,” with a face that is either arrogant or pleading. He asks for an oath that there was no “vulgar execution”, and receives it from a young man “in a torn tunic and with a disfigured face: “You imagined it... I swear.” And then the pacification of the man in the cloak transfers to Ivan. The master who appeared assures: “This is the end, my student.” And the author promises that “until the next full moon, no one will disturb the professor. Neither the noseless murderer of Gestas, nor the cruel procurator of Judea, the horseman of Pontius Pilate.” For the first time, Ponyrev encountered these questions at the Patriarch’s Ponds, but the hero’s raw mind was simply unable to “digest them.” One minute he was talking to Berlioz, and a minute later all that was left of him was his head... And a certain foreign consultant had just clearly said, in Russian, that Jesus existed, was executed, that there is the seventh “most reliable” proof of the existence of the devil, and in the same instant - disappeared. The whole world of the young poet collapsed in those minutes at the Patriarch’s. So why did Ivan Bezdomny find out about Yeshua and meet with Woland? To suffer once a year from unexplained melancholy and again fall into the peace of unconsciousness? It is absolutely clear that, according to the writer’s plan, this hero is involved in the events in Russia and Judea described in the novel. Bulgakov shows that new times created a new young man, but, by the will of fate, pain and doubt, sin and the redemption of eternity entered into him. This made him feel disunited, crucified between times. And he was able to change, but only as much as his nature allowed him. The figure of Ivan Bezdomny is extremely important in the novel simply because this hero, unlike other leading characters, remained on Earth. The trials he went through were not caused by a meeting with demonic forces, but by the chaos reigning in his soul and head, as in the heads and souls of most people of the 20th century. Bulgakov shows that Ponyrev is also burdened by the “ancient Pilate’s sin,” and he is unable to make a direct choice between good and evil, and he is worthy of sympathy and mercy. He is only able to instinctively push away from the demon of evil and temptation, which is why he broke down so quickly and obediently obeyed the established routine of life. In the finale, however, Ivan Bezdomny's theme sounds like a "prophecy of hope." After all, he is still attracted to the master and Yeshua, he is tormented by an unclear, painful melancholy. She awakens in him, as in the Roman procurator, a disturbing memory of either duty, or guilt, or the most important meaning, lost through negligence. Thus, Ivan Bezdomny is one of the main characters in Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”. The writer sends this character on a journey of search, knowledge of truth, which cannot be known and understood by any one person, but is subject only to a higher principle. With the help of the figure of Homeless, Bulgakov shows that the search for truth requires the combined efforts of consciousness, the awakening of the soul and tireless wakefulness. That is why the author of the novel draws associative connections from the “only disciple” of the master who left the Earth to the evangelists and Christ, comparing Ponyrev with Matthew Levi.
