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The Devil (Sapozhnik i nechistaya sila)
also: нечистая сила, чёрт в синих очках, the customer in blue spectacles, Чёрт Иваныч, Devil Ivanych
A gloomy, sallow-faced customer in big blue spectacles who turns out to have a horse's hoof instead of a foot; he offers Fyodor the cobbler a Faustian soul-for-wealth bargain, delivers on it in a bureaucratic, contract-minded manner, and drags him to hell at the bargain's end -- revealed as a dream when Fyodor wakes; at story's close identifies his day job as a maker of fireworks ("a pyrotechnist"), a comic-mundane punchline undercutting the infernal frame.
Reading notes
- The Cobbler and the Devil §15 a horse's hoof
The cloven or horse-like hoof beneath human dress is the standard folk-tale and iconographic tell of the Devil in disguise across Russian and broader European tradition, confirming to the reader (and belatedly to Fyodor) what kind of customer this is.
- The Cobbler and the Devil §16 the unclean power
"Nechistaya sila" (literally "unclean power/force"), a standard Russian folk euphemism for the Devil and his agents, avoided by name out of superstition; it also supplies the story's title. Fyodor's instinct to cross himself and flee, followed by his calculated decision not to, plays directly against this folk-superstitious backdrop.
- The Cobbler and the Devil §21 Devil Ivanych
A mock-respectful form of address (using a jokingly assigned patronymic, as one would for a person of standing) that Fyodor improvises once he decides to deal openly with his customer as the Devil; it is a joke-name, not a proper name the Devil is ever otherwise called by.
- The Cobbler and the Devil §63 I make Bengal lights and rockets. I'm a pyrotechnist
The story's punchline: after all the infernal trappings, the Devil turns out (or claims) to have an utterly mundane day job making fireworks -- Bengal lights (colored theatrical/festive flares) and rockets -- a comic deflation typical of Chekhov's handling of folk-supernatural material, echoed elsewhere in his Christmastide pieces.