Talk:Woland

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)

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)

Junker Voland

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)

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)

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)