Ariman

Ariman is a literary critic in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita who, together with Latunsky and Mstislav Lavrovich, publishes a scathing article attacking the master's novel about Pontius Pilate, thereby playing a key role in the campaign of harassment that drives the master to despair and mental collapse.

Identity and Role

Ariman is one of the critics who, along with Latunsky and Mstislav Lavrovich, forms part of the literary establishment that persecutes the master after he attempts to publish his novel about Pontius Pilate. The master, a historian by training who had won a hundred thousand roubles and quit his museum job to write the novel, first encounters the world of official literature when he submits his manuscript to an editor. The editor, unable to decide on his own, refers the work to the editorial board, specifically naming Ariman, Latunsky, and Mstislav Lavrovich as the ones who must acquaint themselves with it. When the master returns two weeks later, the editorial secretary Lapshennikova returns the manuscript, telling him the publisher is provided with material for two years ahead and the question of printing his novel "did not arise." Shortly after this rejection, the master opens a newspaper and sees an article by Ariman, in which the critic warns all and sundry that the master had attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ.

The Campaign Against the Master

Ariman's article is the first public attack on the master's novel. The master, reading it, is initially able to laugh at the first such articles, but as more appear, his attitude changes. He enters a second stage of astonishment, sensing "some rare falsity and insecurity" in every line of these articles, despite their threatening and confident tone. He feels that the authors are not saying what they want to say, and that their rage springs precisely from that. This is followed by a third stage of fear — not fear of the articles themselves, but of other things totally unrelated to them or to the novel. The master begins to be afraid of the dark, and as he is falling asleep, he feels as though "some very cold and pliant octopus was stealing with its tentacles immediately and directly towards my heart." He has to sleep with the light on. The campaign of criticism, in which Ariman is a central figure, thus directly precipitates the master's mental illness.

Relationship to the Master's Fate

Ariman's attack is part of a broader literary persecution that also includes articles by Mstislav Lavrovich, who recommends "striking, and striking hard, at Pilatism and at the icon-dauber who had ventured to foist it into print," and by Latunsky, whose article is entitled "A Militant Old Believer" and is described by the master as far more vicious than the others. The master's beloved, Margarita, upon reading these articles, becomes furious and declares she will poison Latunsky. The cumulative effect of this campaign drives the master to burn his manuscript in the stove of his basement apartment, an act of despair that he later regrets. The master is eventually committed to Professor Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic, where he meets Ivan Homeless and tells him his story. Ariman, as one of the critics who set this chain of events in motion, represents the oppressive force of official Soviet literary ideology that crushes independent artistic expression.

Narrative Significance

Ariman appears only through the master's recollection of his persecution, never as a character in the novel's present action. His name is mentioned alongside Latunsky and Mstislav Lavrovich as part of the literary establishment that the master encounters when he tries to publish his novel. The master's description of the critics' articles — their falsity, insecurity, and the sense that the authors are not saying what they want to say — reveals the ideological constraints under which Soviet literary criticism operated. Ariman's attack, by driving the master to mental illness and the destruction of his manuscript, demonstrates the power of official criticism to destroy a writer's life and work, a theme that resonates with Bulgakov's own experiences of literary persecution in the 1930s.