Make way, Squire Voland comes.
A name of Satan, derived probably from the Latin Volo, through the Italian Volante, expressive of that agile quality of the old deceiver, whereby he is always “going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it.”—Job i. 7. See Reichard’s Geister Reich, vol. i. p. 397. But I rather suspect this appellation is connected with the office of the evil one, as chief of the flies, and other volatile tormentors. In the French edition of the popular story the devil is called “Le Diable volatique,” c. vi.;—or, better still, the devil is so called as being “the prince of the power of the air,” and therefore a flying spirit. “Mon Valet, dis moi quel esprit es-tu?—Mon Maistre Faust, je suis un esprit Volant, qui ay mon cours dans l’air sous le ciel”—in the same French history of Doctor Faust.
Who then is that?—’Tis Lilith.
Lilith, from Lil, darkness, is the name of night-monster (translated screech-owl in Isaiah xxxiv. 14), who, under the deceitful form of a beautiful woman, was believed by the Jews to be most injurious to parturient women, and very often to occasion the death of young persons before they were circumcised. Buxtorf, in his Lexicon Talmudicum, gives a tolerably good account of these Hebrew Lamiæ; but the most complete and satisfactory information on this, as on all other subjects connected with ancient and modern superstition, is to be found in Horst, Zauber-Bibliothek, part vi. pp. 42 and 86.
Proctophantasmist.
It is universally agreed that Nicolai, a noted Berlin publisher, who flourished about the middle and towards the end of the last century, is the person meant here. From his biography by Göcking, he appears to have been a man of remarkable mental activity and considerable literary significance in his day; but, like the Brandenburg sands on which he was located, his ideas seemed to have been somewhat flat and prosaic, and totally inadequate to grasp the significance of the great master spirits of thought, who were now asserting their rightful place on the platform of German literature. Notwithstanding the prosaic character of his mind, he became subject to a disease of seeing apparitions in clear daylight (see Dr. Hibbert’s book on apparitions), an abnormal action of the optic nerves, which was cured by the application of leeches to the part of the body on which the unfeathered biped finds it comfortable to sit. Hence the name, from the Greek πρωκτός.
Intermezzo.