figure
The Devil (Beseda pyanogo s trezvym chertom)
also: чёрт, дьявол
A shabby, unpaid minor civil servant of hell -- "official for special assignments" to Satan -- who confesses that temptation has become obsolete because modern people no longer need infernal help to sin; a comic deflation of the folk-legend devil into Russian bureaucratic vocabulary.
Reading notes
- A Drunk Man's Conversation with a Sober Devil §1 devil
A stock figure of Russian folk-comic and Gogolian tradition, here deliberately deflated into a shabby, unpaid civil servant rather than a figure of dread.