Who He Is
A tall man with a broken pince-nez from Woland's retinue, who introduces himself as Woland's interpreter and, at the Variety Theatre, also as Fagot. He is the one who negotiates apartment 50 (see apartment 50) with Nikanor Ivanovich and who receives Margarita for the ball, and in chapter 32 the Moon (see the Moon) reveals beneath him a dark knight who pays for "an unfortunate joke" with a pun on light and darkness.
In the negotiation over the apartment with Nikanor Ivanovich, in chapter 9:
What does it mean to be an official or an unofficial representative? It all depends on the point of view from which you look at the object. All of it, Nikanor Ivanovich, is relative and unstable.
Trajectory
In chapter 3 a fellow in a checkered suit points Berlioz to the turnstile and introduces himself as a former conductor, still nameless; in chapter 4, now with a cracked pince-nez, he helps the foreigner escape from Ivan.
In chapter 7 he appears in the mirror of Stiopa Likhodeyev; in chapter 9 he receives Nikanor Ivanovich seated at the table of the late Berlioz, rents apartment 50 for a week, presses an extra wad of rubles into his hand, and then denounces him by phone, pretending to be a neighbor: the wad turns into dollars (see the foreign money) and Nikanor is arrested. In chapter 12, at the black magic session, he is on stage beside Woland and Behemoth.
In chapter 17 he himself, in checkered trousers and a broken pince-nez, poses as a conductor and leaves the staff of an administrative branch singing in chorus, unable to stop, and in chapter 18 he is the one who receives Poplavsky in apartment 50 with theatrical weeping.
In chapter 22 he receives Margarita with an oil lamp, explains the fifth dimension that lets a ballroom fit inside the apartment, and the condition that the hostess of the ball be named Margarita. In chapter 24, after the ball, he tosses the Master's file into the fireplace, decreeing that whoever has no documents does not exist, and erases Aloisy Mogarych from the residence register.
In chapter 28 he reappears with Behemoth in central Moscow: at the Torgsin store he speaks in defense of the "poor hungry man," and at the Griboyedov House the pair sign in under the swapped names of two nineteenth-century critics, Panayev and Skabichevsky. In chapter 29 he returns to the terrace with Behemoth, who brings a goblet, a scorched apron, and a salmon.
Korovyov's speech does not defend theft, it lays out the criterion for entry, and the target is not the seller: it is the customer who can pay.he is wearing a lilac dress suit, he is bloated from so much salmon, but he has foreign money, and ours, what about ours?!
In chapter 31 he competes with Behemoth over who whistles louder on the Sparrow Hills, and his whistle uproots an oak and splits the earth all the way to the river. In the Epilogue, the Moscow investigation blames everything on a gang of hypnotists, and the suspicion falls on him.
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Appearance and reality and Money and wealth. The reading of chapter 28 on the Torgsin scene:
This is the novel's most directly documentary scene: the Torgsin stores existed, they sold food to anyone who handed over gold, silver, or foreign currency (see the foreign money), and they operated during the famine. Bulgakov's satire invents nothing, it simply puts two demons in line and lets the criterion speak for itself.
Korovyov works with paper: Nikanor Ivanovich's contract and receipt, the wad that turns into dollars, the Griboyedov House identification book signed under swapped names, the Master's file, which he throws into the fire along with the line that whoever has no documents does not exist, and Mogarych's residence record. The Epilogue's investigation, built from testimony and records, ends by pinning the suspicion precisely on him.
Relationships
- Woland: whose interpreter he claims to be.
- Behemoth: his partner in the fires of chapter 28 and in the whistling contest.
- Azazello and Hella: the rest of the retinue.
- Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy: the building chairman he has arrested over dollars.
- Margarita: to whom he explains the rules of the ball.