In almost the same way idiom and irony cross paths, Nikanor Ivanovich bumps into the strange man with the pince-nez and jockey cap as he checks on apartment 50 at the start of Chapter 9:
‘Why, he’s gone, he’s gone already!’ shouted the interpreter. ‘Oh, he is way out by now! The devil knows how far he is!’ and the interpreter waved his hands like a windmill.
This moment breaks down the colloquial idiom and uncovers its strange irony in the process. Used humorously or for dramatic effect, the Devil is often a source of figurative flair and exaggeration. Here, a phrase of exasperation and ignorance—“the devil knows”—becomes literally true as Koroviev explains away Styopa’s disappearance. Having transported Styopa to the Yalta’s sun-warmed jetties, Woland ironically happens to know his victim’s whereabouts.
Bulgakov supplements the exchange with still more irony. Koroviev—party with the Devil—somewhat self-references in his performance of confusion. There is dramatic irony, too. Ivanovich does not know that he has just wandered into the Devil’s clutches even though the reader does. The scene layers a perplexing set of ironies and coincidences upon each other: the building chairman finds himself speaking with a member of the Devil’s crew (who himself speaks about the Devil).
Dramatic irony writes itself throughout Chapter 17 as Vasily Stepanovich shuffles from one dysfunctional commission building to the next. A visit to Prokhor Petrovich’s office—in which he meets a bodiless suit signing papers—sends him just as quickly to the other branch, where he finds all its employees burst out in uncontrollable fits of song. The wailing young lady gives an account of the events:
‘And today, at lunch time, the director comes in…
…and brings in by the hand some son of a bitch,’ the girl went on. ‘Heaven knows where he picked him up-in tight checkered pants, with a cracked pince-nez, and…generally…an impossible smug!...
Having seen Berlioz decapitated, Styopa Likhodeyev abducted, and Varenukha knocked out, the reader immediately recognizes this episode as the handiwork of none other than Woland. The “tight checkered pants” and “cracked pince-nez”—Koroviev’s signature features—give him away from the very start of the account. The Devil lies in the details, unbeknownst to the likes of the distraught young lady and Anna Richardovna.
The Master and Margarita uses dramatic irony to take the comedy of chaos to its height. Moments like these emphasize the distance between the savvy reader and clueless character, providing a god-like vantage point from which to laugh along at the confusion. Woland begins the story with a claim about human fallibility, and these ironic instances merely verify it. They draw attention to the characters’ limitations, granting the reader access to what everyone else does not see. Like the members of Woland’s own crew, Bulgakov and his audience share an inside joke at the characters’ expense.
Maximilian Andreyevich enters apartment 50 with high hopes and a strange acquaintance. Meeting a tomcat and a crying stranger in Chapter 18, Berlioz’s uncle feels a sudden upwelling of emotion, in a moment laden with paradox and irony:
Berlioz’s uncle was sincerely moved by the stranger’s conduct. “And they say there are no good people left in the world today!" he thought, feeling that his own eyes were beginning to smart.
The encounter is ironic on situational and dramatic levels. There is Maximilian’s obliviousness to the grieving stranger’s identity as Woland’s accomplice, a fact all too well known to the reader. But Bulgakov creates an additional irony in the uncle’s rush to conclusions. Claiming Koroviev’s performative grief as proof that “good people” still exist in the world, Maximilian mistakes the Devil (no less) as a force for goodness. He assigns morality to a figure that is perfectly antithetical to virtue.
This is a telling confusion that underscores the anomie of Soviet-era Russia and contributes to the novel’s moral ambiguity. Maximilian’s admission creates a paradox in which the Devil happens to be better than the people themselves. Koroviev—at least by his superficial impressions—seems no worse than Maximilian and his guarded, property-motivated gestures of bereavement. People, not the Devil, exchange their clothing, accept illegal payments, and pilfer diamond-encrusted horseshoes. By some accounts, Woland even surpasses humans in grace. He reunites the Master with his lover, granting them a peace and fulfillment that Soviet society’s snobbish literary circles could not. Ironically appraising humanity, Bulgakov makes way for complexity.