[118] waltz king: Unofficial title of the Viennese composer Johann Strauss (1825-99)
[119] Vieuxtemps: Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-81), Belgian virtuoso violinist, made his debut in Paris at the age of ten. He travelled the world giving concerts, taught in the conservatory of Brussels and for some rime also in the conservatory of St Petersburg, where he was first violinist of the imperial court.
[120] Monsieur Jacques: Identified by L. Yanovskaya as Jacques Coeur (c.1595-1456), a rich French merchant who became superintendent of finances under Charles VII. He did make a false start in life in association with a counterfeiter before embarking on his legitimate successes, and was indeed suspected of poisoning the king’s mistress, Agnes Sorel, but was quickly cleared. He was neither a traitor to his country nor an alchemist.
[121] Earl Robert: Identified by L. Yanovskaya as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (?1532-88), a favourite of Elizabeth I of England, whose wife, Amy Rosbarts, did die in suspicious circumstances, though not by poisoning but by falling downstairs.
[122] Madame Tofana: La Tofana, a woman of Palermo, was arrested as a poisoner and strangled in prison in 1709. The poison named after her, aqua tofana, had in fact been known since the fifteenth century and is held responsible for the deaths of some 600 persons, including the popes Pius III and Clement XTV and the Duke of Anjou.
[123] a Spanish hoot: A wooden torture device.
[124] Frieda: Her story is reminiscent of that of Gretchen in Faust. B. V. Sokolov finds Bulgakov’s source in The Sexual Question, by Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel, who tells a similar story of a certain Frieda Keller.
[125] The marquise: Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (1650-76), a notorious poisoner, was decapitated and burned in Paris.
[126] Madame Minkin: Nastasya Fyodorovna Minkin, mistress of Count Arakcheev (1769-1854), military adviser to the emperor Alexander I. A notoriously cruel and depraved woman, she was murdered by her household serfs in 1825.
[127] the emperor Rudolf: Rudolf II Hapsburg (1552-1612), German emperor, son of Maximilian II, lived in Prague, took great interest in astronomy and alchemy, and was the protector of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.
[128] A Moscow dressmaker: The heroine of Bulgakov’s own play, Zyka’s Apartment, which describes a brothel disguised as a dressmaker’s shop.
[129] Caligula: Gaius Caesar (AD 12-41), nicknamed Caligula (“Little Boot”, was the son of Germanicus and succeeded Tiberius as emperor. Half mad, he subjected Rome to many tyrannical outrages and was eventually assassinated.
[130] Messalina: (AD 15-48), third wife of the emperor Claudius, was famous for her debauchery.
[131] Maliuta Skuratw. Nickname of the Russian nobleman Grigory Lukyanovich Skuratov-Belsky, the right-hand man of Ivan the Terrible, who made him head of the oprichnina, a special force opposed to the nobility, which terrorized Russia, burning, pillaging and murdering many people. He is said to have smothered St Philip, metropolitan of Moscow, with his own hands.
[132] one more... no, two!: B. V. Sokolov identifies these two unnamed new ones as former People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, Genrikh G. Yagoda (1891 -1938) and his secretary, P. P. Bulanov. Yagoda, a ruthless secret-police official who fabricated the ‘show trial” of the “right-wing Trotskyist centre”, was later arrested himself and condemned to be shot, along with his secretary, Bukharin, Rykov and others, in Stalin’s third great ‘show trial” of 1938.
[133] the Kamarinsky: A popular Russian dance-song with ribald words.
[134] A salamander-conjurer: The salamander enjoyed the reputation during the Middle Ages and Renaissance of being able to go through fire without getting burned.
[135] the same dirty, patched shirt: According to one of Bulgakov’s sources, M. N. Orlov’s History of Man’s Relations with the Devil (St Petersburg, 1904), Satan always wears a dirty shirt while performing a black mass.
[136] it will be given to each according to his faith: A common misapplication of Christ’s words, “According to your faith be it done to you” (Matt. 9:29).
[137] wandered in the wilderness for nineteen days: A comic distortion of well-known examples: the period of wandering is usually a round figure forty days or forty years – and the usual sustenance is manna or locusts and wild honey (see Numbers 35:58, Amos 5:25, Matt. 5:1-4).
[138] manuscripts don’t burn: This phrase became proverbial among Russian intellectuals after the publication of The Master and Margarita, an event which in itself seemed to bear out the truth of Woland’s words.
[139] Aloisy Mogaiych: An absurd combination of the Larinate Aloisius with the slangy “Mogarych”, the word for the round of drinks that concludes a deal, which happens to have the form of a Russian patronymic.
[140] bruderschaft: A special pledge of brotherhood drunk with interlaced right arms, after which the friends address each other with the familiar form ty.
[141] Falemo: A rich and strong red wine, named for the ager falemus in the Roman Campagnia where it was produced in ancient rimes (not to be confused with the white Falerno now produced around Naples).
[142] Caecuba: Also a strong red wine, product of the ager caecubus in southern Larium.
[143] the feast of the twelve gods: The twelve senior gods of the Roman pantheon: Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, Diana, Ceres, Venus, Mars, Vesta, Mercury and Minerva.
[144] lares: A word of Etruscan or Sabine origin, referring to the nameless protective deiries of the house and hearth in Roman religion.
[145] messiah: From the Hebrew mashiah, meaning “the anointed one”, referring to the redeemer and deliverer of Israel to be born of the royal house of David, prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah and others, and awaited by the Jewish nation. Christians believe that this prophecy was fulfilled in Christ (christos being Greek for “the annointed one").
[146] were they given the drink before being hung on the posts?: Thought by some commentators to be a legal mercy granted to the condemned to lessen the suffering of crucifixion, as Pilate means it here, though in the Gospels it has more the appearance of a final mockery. Jesus also refuses to drink it (see Matt. 27:54, Mark 15:25).
[147] among human vices he considered cowardice one of the first: This saying, not found in the Gospels, is of great thematic importance for the novel. Bulgakov himself, according to one of his friends, regarded cowardice as the worst of all vices, “because all the rest come from it” (quoted in a memoir in Vospominaniya o Mikhaile Bulgakove, Moscow, 1988, pp. 589-90). Interestingly, all references to this “worst of vices” were removed from the original magazine publication of the novel.
[148] thirty tetradrachmas: The “thirty pieces of silver” mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (26:15) as Judas’s reward from the high priest for betraying Jesus. A tetradrachma was a Greek silver coin worth four drachmas and was equivalent to one Jewish shekel.
[149] Now we shall always be together: Yeshua’s words are fulfilled in the Nicene creed: “... one Lord Jesus Christ ... who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate ...” — words repeated countless times a day for nearly two thousand years in every liturgy or mass. Later in the novel, Pilate will say that nothing in the world is more hateful to him than “his immortality and his unheard-of fame”.
[150] the son of an astrologer-king ... Pila: Details found in the poem Pilate by the twelfth-century Flemish poet Petrus Pictor (noted by Marianne Gourg in her commentary to the French translation of the novel, R. Laffont, Paris, 1995). The name of Pila thus becomes the source of the procurator’s second name.
[151] En-Sarid: Arabic for Nazareth.
[152] Valerius Gratus: According to Flavius Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 2), Valerius Gratus was procurator ofJudea starting from sometime around AD 15, and was thus Pilate’s immediate predecessor.
[153] might he not have killed himself?: Here Pilate prompts Aphranius with what is in fact the Gospel account of Judas’s death (Matt. 27:5).
[154] baccuroth: Aramai
c for “fresh figs”.
[155] the pure river of the water of life: “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).
[156] the Hotel Astoria ... bathroom: A large hotel on St Isaac’s Square in Petersburg, where Bulgakov and his wife used to stay when visiting the city.
[157] starka: An infusion of a pale-brown colour, made from spirits, white port, cognac, sugar, and apple and pear leaves.
[158] a currency store: A phenomenon of Soviet life, currency stores emerged in the early thirties, offering a great variety of goods (in the midst of the general impoverishment and uniformity of Soviet life) in exchange for foreign currency. They were supposed to be exclusively for foreigners, but were also patronized by privileged Russians who had access to currency or special coupons (Bulgakov himself occasionally had currency from sales of his books abroad and could avail himself of this privilege). There was in fact a currency store at the comer of the Arbat and Smolensky Square.
[159] Harun al-Rashid: (?766—809), Abassid caliph of Baghdad, known in legend for walking about the city at night disguised as a beggar, familiarizing himself with the life of his subjects. He became a hero of songs and figures in some tales from The Thousand and One Nights.
[160] Palosich!: A spoken contraction of the name Pavel Yosifovich.
[161] Kerch Herring: Much-prized fish from the Crimean city of Kerch, on the Sea of Azov.
[162] Bitter, bitter!: There is an old Russian custom of shouting “Bitter!” every now and then during the banquet after a wedding. The newly-weds are then expected to kiss so as to make it sweet.
[163] Dead Souls: The only novel by the “father of Russian prose”, Nikolai Gogol (1809—52). Its influence on The Master and Margarita is pervasive. Bulgakov made an adaptation of Dead Souls for the Moscow Art Theatre in the thirties, while at work on his own novel.
[164] Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia: Three of the nine Greek muses, of tragedy, lyric poetry and comedy respectively.
[165] The Inspector General: A comedy by Nikolai Gogol, one of the masterpieces of the Russian theatre.
[166] Evgeny Onegin: Koroviev’s comically slighting reference is to Pushkin’s poem, not to Tchaikovsky’s opera.
[167] Sojya Pavlovna: The citizeness happens to have the same name as the heroine of Griboedov’s Woe From Wit. It may have been this connection that landed her such a desirable job.
[168] Panaev: Two Panaevs made a brief appearance in Russian literature: V. I. Panaev (1792-1859) was a writer of sentimental poetry; I. I. Panaev (1812-62), on the contrary, was a liberal prose-writer and for a time an editor of the influential journal. The Contemporary.
[169] Skabichevsky: A. M. Skabichevsky (1858-1912) was a liberal critic and journalist.
[170] balyk: A special dorsal section of flesh running the entire length of a salmon or sturgeon, which was removed in one piece and either salted or smoked. Highly prized in Russia.
[171] Resting his sharp chin on his fist... Woland stared fixedly: Woland seems almost consciously to adopt the pose of Rodin’s famous sculpture known as the Thinker, actually the central figure over his Gates of Hell.
[172] to Timiriazev: That is, to the statue of the botanist and founder of the Russian school of plant physiology, Kliment Arkadyevich Timiriazev (1845— 1910), on Tverskoy Boulevard near the Nikitsky Gates.
[173] Peace be unto you: Bulgakov playfully gives this common Hebrew greeting (a translation of Shalom aleichem) to his demon. It was spoken by the risen Christ to his disciples (Luke 24:56, John 20:26) and is repeated in every liturgy or mass.
[174] Devichy Convent: Actually the Novodevichy Convent, founded by Basil III in 15 24, on the spot where, according to legend, maidens {devitsy) were gathered to be sent as tribute to the Mongols. Nikolai Gogol’s remains were transferred there in the 1950s, and many members of the Moscow Art Theatre are also buried there, including Bulgakov himself.
[175] Sparrow Hills: Hills on the south-west bank of the Moscow River, renamed “Lenin Hills” in the Soviet period.
[176] the festal springfall moon: The first full moon after the vernal equinox, which determines the date of the feast of Passover and thus of Easter.
Table of Contents
* Book One *
Chapter 1. Never Talk with Strangers
Chapter 2. Pontius Pilate
Chapter 3. The Seventh Proof
Chapter 4. The Chase
Chapter 5. There were Doings at Griboedov’s
Chapter 6. Schizophrenia, as was Said
Chapter 7. A Naughty Apartment
Chapter 8. The Combat between the Professor and the Poet
Chapter 9. Koroviev’s Stunts
Chapter 10. News From Yalta
Chapter 11. Ivan Splits in Two
Chapter 12. Black Magic and Its Exposure
Chapter 13. The Hero Enters
Chapter 14. Glory to the Cock!
Chapter 15. Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream
Chapter 16. The Execution
Chapter 17. An Unquiet Day
Chapter 18. Hapless Visitors
* BOOK TWO *
Chapter 19. Margarita
Chapter 20. Azazello’s Cream
Chapter 21. Flight
Chapter 22. By Candlelight
Chapter 25. The Great Ball at Satan’s
Chapter 24. The Extraction of the Master
Chapter 25. How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath
Chapter 26. The Burial
Chapter 27. The End of Apartment No.50
Chapter 28. The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth
Chapter 29. The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided
Chapter 30. It’s Time! It’s Time!
Chapter 31. On Sparrow Hills.
Chapter 32. Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
(Series: # )
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