Talk:Woland

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Untitled[edit]

I don't see how Wayland Smith is related. Is it just a certain spelling of his name? Link should probably be removed. Fuzzform (talk) 21:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it. No identity between Woland and Wayland was asserted, and there is nothing particularly devilish about the Wayland/Weyland character. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 00:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Junker Voland[edit]

I pared this confused stub down to one sentence. Here's how the first paragraph went:

Woland, a German name for Satan appears in several variants of the old Faust legends under the names Valand, Woland, Faland, and Wieland. In his drama (see Faust, Part 1 and Faust, Part 2), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once refers to the devil as "Junker Woland".

Well, actually Goethe never says a word on his own behalf in Faust. The character Mephistopheles does dress as a Junker, and at one point, during the Walpurgisnacht, he orders people in a dense crowd to make way for "Junker Voland" (not Woland). Obviously it is not his "real" name. Mikhail Bulgakov seems to have riffed on that moment in creating a Mephisto-like character in his novel and giving him the name Воланд (Voland), usually transcribed "Woland" (with a "W"). So Woland-with-a-W should only refer to Bulgakov's character, not to Goethe's Mephistopheles. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 03:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Voland-with-a-V (and variants) is an old regional German word for the devil. But this article is prob. not the place to mention that trivial fact. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 03:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it is, because: a) there are no distinct V and W letters in Russian, so the Voland/Woland choice was made by individual translators, long after the author's death, and with little to no possible contact with experts across the Iron Curtain, b) the character is clearly demonic, c) it is implied that he is in fact Satan. 83.167.100.243 (talk) 02:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes yes yes. Moreover the letter "W" is relatively new - the germanic VV was a ligature only. It is almost pointless to do too much analysis around the distinction between V and W ;-) The first german translation of "Master and Margarita" used "Voland", a newer translation uses "Woland". The first traslator possibly argued with the closeness to Goethe's Faust (the reason has not been not clearly told). The second translator argues that Bulgakov explicitly specified the letter W, namely in the description of the visiting card. Moreover, in Master and Woland the initial letters are symmetrically opposed. Even more: in the first translation, numerous changes had to be made to the original in the enumeration of names with V in Griboyedev (all German-sounding!): In the Russian original they are Waschner, Wagner, Wainer, Wegner, Winter and Wulf. With the change to Voland with V, this inevitably had to be changed. One took Vater, Viktor, Vogel, Viebig, Valentin and Valja. Other names, and these are no longer clearly German. In a nutshell: it is clearly Bulgakov's will to write Voland with W. The change to V forces severe changes in content. - Interesting suff :-) --79.236.148.219 (talk) 17:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Photo[edit]

For the photo in the Woland infobox, there should be information on the actor's name and which stage production it is from. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 13:39, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]