The Master and Margarita
[43] What is truth?: Pilate’s question to Christ in the Gospel of John (18:58).
[44] the Mount of Olives: A hill to the east of Jerusalem. At the foot of this hill is Gethsemane (“the olive press”), just across the stream of Kedron. It was here that Christ was arrested (Matt. 26:56, Mark 14:52, Luke 22:59, John 18:1). These places will be important later in the novel.
[45] the Susagate: Also known as the Golden gate, on the east side of Jerusalem, facing the Mount of Olives.
[46] riding on an ass: The Gospels are unanimous in describing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem riding on an ass (Matt. 21:1—11, Mark 11:1—11, Luke 19:28— 58, John 12:12-19).
[47] Dysmas ... Gestas ... Bar-Rabban: The first two are the thieves crucified with Christ; not given in the canonical Gospels, the names here come from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (part of which is known as “the Acts of Pilate”), one of Bulgakov’s references during the writing of the novel. The third is a variant on the Barabbas of the Gospels.
[48] Idistaviso : Mentioned in Tacitus’s Annals (2:16) as the site of a battle between the Romans and the Germani in AD 16, on the right bank of the Weser, in which the Roman general Germanicus defeated the army of Arminius.
[49] another appeared in its place: Pilate’s nightmarish vision is of the aged emperor Tiberius (42 BC-AD 57), who spent many years in seclusion on the island of Capri, where he succumbed to all sorts of vicious passions. The law of lese-majesty (offence against the sovereign people or authority) existed in Rome under the republic; it was revived by Augustus and given wide application by Tiberius.
[50] Judas from Kiriath: Bulgakov’s variant of Judas Iscariot is developed quite differently from the Judas of the Gospel accounts, though they have in common their betrayal and the reward they get for it from the high priest.
[51] Lit the lamps: According to B. V. Sokolov’s commentary to the Vysshaya Shkola edition of the novel (Leningrad, 1989), the law demanded that lights be lit so that the concealed witnesses for the accusation could see the face of the criminal. This would explain Pilate’s unexpected knowledge.
[52] Bald Mountain: Also referred to in the novel as Bald Hill and Bald Skull, the site corresponds to the Golgotha (“place of the skull”) of the Gospels, where Christ was crucified, though topographically Bulgakov’s hill is higher and farther from the city. There is also a Bald Mountain near Kiev, Bulgakov’s native city.
[53] Kaifa: Bulgakov’s variant of the name of the high priest Caiaphas, mentioned in the Gospels and in historical records.
[54] Kaifa politely apologised: Going under the roof of a gentile would have made the high priest unclean and therefore unable to celebrate me coming feast.
[55] Bar-Rabban or Ha-Nozri?: The same choice is offered in the Gospel accounts (see Matt. 27:15—25, Mark 15:6—15, John 19:59—40).
[56] there floated some purple mass: According to B. V. Sokolov, there existed a legend according to which Pilate died by drowning himself. That may be what Bulgakov has in mind here.
[57] equestrian of the Golden Spear: The equestrian order of Roman nobility was next in importance to the Senate. Augustus reformed the order, after which it supplied occupants for many administrative posts. The name Pilate (Pilatus) may derive from pilum, Latin for ‘spear”.
[58] Metropol: A luxury hotel in Moscow, built at the turn of the century, decorated with mosaics by the artist Vrubel. Used mainly by foreigners during the Soviet period, it still exists and has recently been renovated.
[59] about a dozen extinguished primuses: The shortage of living space after the revolution led to the typically Soviet phenomenon of the communal apartment, in which several families would have one .or two private rooms and share kitchen and toilet facilities. This led to special psychological conditions among people and to a specific literary genre (the communal-apartment story, which still flourishes in Russia). The primus stove, a portable one-burner stove fuelled with pressurized benzene, made its appearance at the same time and became a symbol of communal-apartment life. Each family would have its own primus. The old wood- or (more rarely) coal-burning ranges went out of use but remained in place. The general problem of "living space”, and the primus stove in particular, plays an important part throughout the Moscow sections of The Master and Margarita.
[60] two wedding candles: In the Orthodox marriage service, the bride and groom stand during the ceremony holding lighted candles. These are special, large, often decorated candles, and are customarily kept indefinitely after the wedding, sometimes in the corner with the family icon.
[61] the Moscow River amphitheatre: Ivan takes his swim at the foot of what had been the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was dynamited in 1931. The remaining granite steps and amphitheatre were originally a grand baptismal font at the riverside, popularly known as “the Jordan”. The cathedral has now been rebuilt.
[62] Evgeny Onegin: An opera by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky (1840—93), with libretto by the composer’s brother Modest, based on the great “novel in verse” of the same title by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). Its ubiquity, like the orange lampshades, suggests the standardizing of Soviet life. Tadana, mentioned further on, is the heroine of Evgeny Onegin.
[63] Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov. (1795-1829), poet, playwright and diplomat, best known as the author of the comedy Woe From Wit, the first real masterpiece of the Russian theatre.
[64] Perelygino: The name is clearly meant to suggest the actual Peredelkino, a "writers” village” near Moscow where many writers were allotted country houses. It was a privileged and highly desirable place.
[65] Yalta, Suuk-Su ... (Winter Palace): To this list of resort towns in the Crimea, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan, Bulgakov incongruously adds the Winter Palace in Leningrad, former residence of the emperors.
[66] dachas: The Russian dacha (pronounced DA-tcha) is a summer or country house.
[67] coachmen: Though increasingly replaced by automobiles, horse-drawn cabs were still in use in Moscow until around 1940. Thus the special tribe of Russian coachmen persisted long after their western counterparts disappeared.
[68] saboteur: Here and a little further on Ivan uses standard terms from Soviet mass campaigns against “enemies of the people”. Anyone thought to be working against the aims of the ruling party could be denounced and arrested as a saboteur.
[69] Kulak: (Russian for “fist”) refers to the class of wealthy peasants, which Stalin ordered liquidated in 1930.
[70] the First of May: Originally commemorating the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, this day later became a general holiday of the labour movement and was celebrated with particular enthusiasm in the Soviet Union.
[71] a metal man: This is the poet Pushkin, whose statue stands in Strastnaya (renamed Pushkin) Square. The snowstorm covers ...” is the beginning of Pushkin’s much-anthologized poem The Snowstorm”. The reference to “that white guard” is anachronistic here. The White Guard opposed the Bolsheviks (‘reds”) during the Russian civil war in the early twenties. Pushkin was fatally wounded in the stomach during a duel with Baron Georges D”Anthes, an Alsatian who served in the Russian Imperial Horse Guard. Under the Soviet regime the term “white guard” was a pejorative accusation, which was levelled against Bulgakov himself after the publication of his novel. The White Guard, and the production of his play, Days of the Turbins, based on the novel. In having Riukhin talk with Pushkin’s statue, Bulgakov parodies the ‘revolutionary” poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), whose poem Yubileinoe was written “in 1924 on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth.
[72] people began to disappear: Here, as throughout The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov treats the everyday Soviet phenomenon of ‘disappearances” (arrests) and other activities of the secret police in the most vague, impersonal and hushed manner. The main example is the arrest of the master himself in Chapter 13, which passes almost without mention.
[73] Here I am”.: Bulgakov quotes the exact words (in Russian translation) of Mephistophel
es” first appearance to Faust in the opera Faust, by French composer Charles Gounod (1818-95).
[74] Woland: A German name for Satan, which appears in several variants in the old Faust legends (Valand, Woland, Faland, Wieland). In his drama, Goethe once refers to the devil as “Junker Woland”.
[75] findirector: Typical Soviet contraction for financial director.
[76] an enormous wax seal: Styopa immediately assumes that Berlioz has been arrested, hence his ‘disagreeable thoughts” about whether he may have compromised himself with the editor and thus be in danger of arrest himself.
[77] Azazello: Bulgakov adds an Italian ending to the Hebrew name Azazel (“goat god”), to whom a goat (the scapegoat or “goat for Azazel”) bearing the sins of the people was sacrificed on Yom Kippur by being sent into the wilderness to die (Leviticus 16:7—10).
[78] chairman of the tenants’ association: This quasi-official position gave its occupant enormous power, considering the permanent shortage of living space, which led to all sorts of crookedness and bribe-taking. Bulgakov portrays knavish house chairmen in several works, having suffered a good deal from them in his search for quarters during the twenties and thirties. This chairman’s name, Bosoy, means “Barefoot”.
[79] speculating in foreign currency : The Soviet rouble was not a convertible currency, and the government therefore had great need of foreign currency for trade purposes. Soviet citizens were forbidden to keep foreign currency, and there were also several “round-ups” of gold and jewellery during the thirties. Speculating in currency could even be a capital offence. This situation plays a role in several later episodes of the novel.
[80] Varenukha: His name is that of a drink made from honey, berries and spices boiled in vodka.
[81] A super-lightning telegram: Bulgakov’s exaggeration of the “lightning telegram”, which did exist.
[82] A false Dmitri: The notorious impostor Grigory (“Grishka”) Otrepev, known as “the false Dmitri”, was a defrocked monk of the seventeenth century who claimed the Russian throne by pretending to be the prince Dmitri, murdered son of Ivan the Terrible.
[83] rocks, my refuge...: Words from the romance ‘refuge”, with music by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), inspired by Goethe’s Faust.
[84] take it there personally: Another oblique reference to the secret police. By now the reader should recognize the manner.
[85] Louisa: The character Louisa Miller, from Schiller’s play Intrigue and Love, a fixture in the repertories of Soviet theatres.
[86] A state bond: Soviet citizens were “asked” to buy state bonds at their places of work. As an incentive, lotteries would be held every so often in which certain bond numbers would win a significant amount of money. Secure places being scarce in communal living conditions, the master evidently kept his bond in his laundry basket.
[87] Latunsky ... Ariman ... Lavrovich: Russian commentators see the name Latunskv as a fusion of the names of critics O. Litovsky and A. Orlinsky, who led the attack on “Bulgakovism” in the mid-twenties, after the first performances of Bulgakov’s play Days of the Turbins. Ariman (Ahriman), name of the principle of evil in the Zoroastrian religion, has also been identified by commentators with L. L. Averbakh, general secretary of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), one of Bulgakov’s fiercest opponents. And Lavrovich is thought to be V. V. Vishnevsky, who forced the withdrawal of two of Bulgakov’s plays from the repertory of the Moscow Art Theatre.
[88] an article by the critic Ariman: It was common practice in Soviet literary politics to mount a press campaign against a book after denying it publication. The same happened at the end of the fifties with Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
[89] A Militant Old Believer: The Old Believers broke with the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century, in protest against the reforms of the patriarch Nikon. The term is thus used rather loosely by Latunsky. In the mid-twenties, Bulgakov was similarly attacked as “a militant white guard”.
[90] in the same coat but with the buttons torn off: This laconic reference is the only indication of where the master spent those lost three months. It was customary to remove belts, shoelaces and buttons from the apparel of those “held for questioning”.
[91] after first visiting another place: Noteworthy is not only the impersonality of the interrogation that follows, but the combination in the interrogating voice of menace and “tenderness” (a word Bulgakov uses frequently in this context). The same combination will reappear in Nikanor Ivanovich’s dream – an extraordinary rendering of the operation of secret police within society, which also suggests the “theatre” of Stalin’s trumped-up ‘show trials” of the later thirties.
[92] Quinquet lamps: A specially designed oil-lamp, named for its French inventor, in which the oil reservoir is higher than the wick. Like carbon arc lamps in apartment hallways, they were a means of saving electricity.
[93] All sitting?: Bulgakov plays on the meanings of the Russian verb sidet: “to sit” and also “to sit in prison”.
[94] The Covetous Knight: One of Pushkin’s “little tragedies”, written in 1830, about the demonic and destructive fascination of gold.
[95] As a young scapegrace ... some sly strumpet: The first two lines of the baron’s opening monologue in scene two of The Covetous Knight.
[96] And who’s going to pay the rent – Pushkin?: This “household” way of referring to Pushkin is common in Russia, showing how far the poet has entered into people’s everyday life, though without necessarily bringing a knowledge of his works with him.
[97] There great heaps... of gold are mine: Lines from Hermann’s aria in Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades, based on the story by Pushkin (the lines, however, are by Modest Tchaikovsky).
[98] Glorious sea, sacred Baikal: A prerevoludonary song about Lake Baikal, sung by convicts at hard labour. It became popular after the revolution and remained so throughout the Soviet period.
[99] cisco: A northern variety of whitefish caught in Lake Baikal.
[100] Barguzin: A local personification of the north-east wind.
[101] Shilka and Nerchinsk: Towns on the Shilka River east of Baikal, known as places of exile.
[102] Lermontov studies: Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41), lyric poet and novelist of the generation following Pushkin.
[103] Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev: Bulgakov, however, loved Kiev, his birthplace, as the descriptions of the city and of Vladimir’s Hill here and in The White Guard make clear. Prince Vladimir (or St Vladimir), grand prince of Kievan Rus, gave firm foundations to the first Russian state and in 988 converted his people to Christianity.
[104] Passport!: The internal passport, a feature of Russian life in tsarist times, was abolished after the revolution, but reinstated by Stalin in 1932. It was the only accepted means of identification and had to be carried at all times. The precinct number that the cat gives later (412th) is absurdly high, even for a big city.
[105] Everything was confusion...: The second sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, proverbial in Russia.
[106] a church panikhida: A special service of the Orthodox Church for commemoration of the dead.
[107] leech bureau: Leeches have been used medically since ancient times as a means of blood-letting, thought to lower blood pressure and cure various ailments. A rather primitive treatment in this context.
[108] Margarita: The name Bulgakov gives to his heroine recalls that of Gretchen (diminutive of Margarete), the young girl ruined by Faust in Goethe’s drama. It may also recall Marguerite de Valois (1555—1615), wife of French king Henri IV, known as “la reine Margot” (several times in later chapters Margarita will be called Margot and even Queen Margot).
[109] the dread Antonia Tower: A fortress in ancient Jerusalem which housed the Roman garrison in the city and where the Roman procurator normally stayed on official visits. It was named by Herod the Great in honour of the Roman general and triumvir Mark Antony (85-50 AD), who ruled the eastern third of
the empire.
[110] Hasmonaean Palace : Palace of the Hasmonaean or Maccabean dynasty, rulers of Judea in the second century BC, who resisted the Seleucid kings Antiochus IV and Demetrius Soter.
[111] the Manege: Originally a riding academy built after the war with Napoleon, the building was later used as a quondam concert hall. Abandoned after the revolution, it served in Bulgakov’s time as a garage and warehouse for the Kremlin, but has now been restored as a permanent ait-exhibition space.
[112] a candelabrum ... seven golden claws: Woland’s two candelabra are satanic parodies of the menorah made by the Jews at God’s command during their wandering in the wilderness (Exodus 25:51-9, 57:17-24). A seven-branched candelabrum also stands on the altar of every Christian church.
[113] a beetle artfully carved: The Egyptians saw the scarabaeus beetle as a symbol of immortality because it survived the annual flooding of the Nile. The ritual use of carved stone scarabs spread to Palestine, Greece and Italy in ancient times.
[114] Hans: Like Jack, Jean, or Ivan in the folk-tales of their countries, the Hans of German tales is generally the third son of the family and considered a fool (though he usually winds up with the treasure and the princess for his bride).
[115] Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella: Sextus Empiricus (second—third century AD), Greek philosopher, astronomer and physician, was a representative of the most impartial scepticism. Martianus Capella, a Latin author of the fifth century AD, wrote an encyclopedia in novel form entitled The Marriage of Mercury and Philology.
[116] this pain in my knee ... Mount Bracken: Satan’s lameness is more commonly ascribed to his fall from heaven. Mount Brocken, highest of the Harz Mountains in Germany, is a legendary gathering place of witches and devils, and the site of the Walpurgisnacht (as in Goethe’s Faust) on the eve of the First of May.
[117] Abaddon: Hebrew for ‘destruction”. In the Old Testament it is another name for Sheol, the place where the dead abide (Job 26:6, 28:22; Psalms 88:11). In the New Testament, it is the name of the “angel of the bottomless pit” (Revelation 9:11).