So, I've read Master and Margarita again. It was a suggestion of mine for a reading club I joined recently, It was up to me to decide the next read, and that book just popped into my mind. I was actually cheating a bit because I had read it before and truth be told, I am a massive fan.
When you read a book again, it's very much like when you watch a film again. You tend to focus on details you hadn't noticed or paid attention to before.
This time round, one of the details that I obsessed about was the poodle motif in Voland's walking stick, It appears twice later on, at Satan's ball, as a heavy pendant and as a gold embroidery on a large pillow. And it's cute, sure, but delicately Faustian as well.
In Faust, Mephistopheles follows Faust home in the guise of a black poodle. Upon discovering who the poodle was in reality, Faust says; "Das war also des Pudels Kern!" Or, "This is what was inside the poodle."
The poodle is a veiled confirmation of Satan's identity. Berlioz and Ivan, the first people he encounters in Moscow, failed to see it. I did also, the first time round.
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