SOURCE: Weeks, Laura D. “In Defense of the Homeless: On the Uses of History and the Role of Bezdomnyi in The Master and Margarita.” Russian Review 48, no. 1 (January 1989): 45-65.

In the following essay, Weeks considers images and influences related to the character of Ivan “the homeless” in Bulgakov's novel.

From his first appearance at Patriarchs' Ponds to his final moonlit stroll along the side streets off the Arbat, Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, alias “John the Homeless,” remains one of Bulgakov's most controversial characters. He has been identified variously as the “Ivanushka Durachok” of Russian fairy tales,¹ a type of iurodivyi or “holy fool,”² a parody of Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov,³ and an ironic allusion to the proletarian poet Bezymenskii.⁴ His moral integrity and his relationship to the Master have been subject to radically different interpretations, with such critics as Proffer, Milne, and Avins on the negative end of the scale...