The Hoffman complex in M.A. Bulgakov’s novella “The Diaboliad”

The article continues a series of studies related to the analysis of the Hoffmann tradition in Russian literature. The work of M.A. Bulgakov is considered as a significant stage in the development of the “Hoffmann text of Russian literature”. Using the methodology of the “Hoffman complex” in M.A. Bulgakov’s novella “The Diaboliad” (1923), elements of E.T.A. Hoffman’s poetics are highlighted, and their transformations in the artistic world of the Russian writer are analyzed. The conclusion is made that the features of Hoffmann’s poetics in Bulgakov’s story “The Diaboliad” are manifested in an appeal to Hoffmann’s style (destructive irony and grotesque), in the problem of mechanization of man and society, which is realized in the motives of puppetry, in the use of techniques of the living the inanimate and substituting the living for the inanimate (created using techniques of synecdoche, charactonyms, sound and animalistic metaphors, color symbols) and infernal mirror complex (images-symbols of eyes, mirrors and glass), which helps to create a grotesque image of the chan-cellery-hell and the image of Kalsoner (goes back to the Hoffmann images of Dapertutto, Copellius). Hoffmann’s traditions in Bulgakov’s story are also associated with understanding the problem of duality and the category of insanity, which are actualized as a result of a violation of the course of objective time in the mind of a character (temporal rift) who is in a situation of an emotional shock, under the influence of which the perception of reality is characterized by a special fantastic type of thinking, when the objective laws of the world order and logic are violated, and the perception of the world is bifurcated which leads to the appearance of a duality (the interweaving of real and unreal).