Life of Jesus, considered the Gospel story as belonging to the category of
myth.
22. Solovki: A casual name for the 'Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps'
located on the site of a former monastery on the Solovetsky Islands in the
White Sea. They were of especially terrible renown during the thirties. The
last prisoners were loaded on a barge and drowned in the White Sea in 1959.
23. Enemies? Interventionists?: There was constant talk in the early
Soviet period of 'enemies of the revolution' and 'foreign interventionists'
seeking to subvert the new workers' state.
24. Komsomol: Contraction of the Union of Communist Youth, which all
good Soviet young people were expected to join.
25. A Russian emigre: Many Russians opposed to the revolution emigrated
abroad, forming important 'colonies' in various capitals - Berlin, Paris,
Prague, Harbin, Shanghai - where they remained potential spies and
interventionists.
26. Gerbert of Aurillac: (958-1005), theologian and mathematician,
popularly taken to be a magician and alchemist. He became pope in 999 under
the name of Sylvester II.
27. Nisan: The seventh month of the Jewish lunar calendar, twenty-nine
days in length. The fifteenth day of Nisan (beginning at sundown on the
fourteenth) is the start of the feast of Passover, commemorating the exodus
of the Jews from Egypt.
Chapter 2: Pontius Pilate
1. Herod the Great: (?75 BC-AD 4), a clever politician whom the Romans
rewarded for his services by making king of Judea, an honour he handed on to
his son and grandson.
2. Judea: The southern part of Palestine, subject to Rome since 65 BC,
named for Judah, fourth son of Jacob. In AD 6 it was made a Roman province
with the procurator's seat at Caesarea.
3. Pontius Pilate: Roman procurator of Judea from aboutAD 26 to 56.
Outside the Gospels, virtually nothing is known of him, though he is
mentioned in the passage from Tacitus referred to above. Bulgakov drew
details for his portrayal of the procurator from fictional lives of Jesus by
P. W. Farrar (1851-1905), Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, and by Ernest Renan
(1825-92), French historian and lapsed Catholic, as well as by the
previously mentioned David Strauss.
4. Twelfth Lightning legion: Bulgakov translates the actual Latin
nickname (julmi-nata) by which the Twelfth legion was known at least as
early as the time of the emperors Nerva and Trajan (late first century AD),
and probably earlier.
5. Yershalaim: An alternative transliteration from Hebrew of the name
of Jerusalem. In certain other cases as well, Bulgakov has preferred the
distancing effect of these alternatives: Yeshua for Jesus, Kaifa for
Caiaphas, Kiriath for Iscariot.
6. Galilee: The northern part of Palestine, green and fertile, with its
capital at Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinnereth). In Galilee at
that time, the tetrarch (ruler of one of the four Roman subdivisions of
Palestine) was Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. According to the
Gospel of Luke (25:7-- 11), Herod Antipas was in Jerusalem at the time of
Christ's crucifixion.
7. Sanhedrin: The highest Jewish legislative and judicial body, headed
by the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem. The lower courts of justice
were called lesser sanhedrins.
8. Aramaic: Name of the northern branch of Semitic languages, used
extensively in south-west Asia, adopted by the Jews after the Babylonian
captivity in the late sixth century BC.
9. the temple of Yershalaim: Built by King Solomon (tenth century BC),
the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonian invaders in 586 BC. The
second temple, built in 557- 515 BC, rebuilt and embellished by Herod the
Great, was destroyed by Titus in AD 70. No third temple has been built. One
of the accusations against Jesus in the Gospels was that he threatened to
destroy the temple (see Mark 15:1-2,14:58). It may be well to note here that
Bulgakov's Yeshua is not intended as a faithful depiction of Jesus or as a
'revisionist' alternative to the Christ of the Gospels, though he does
borrow a number of details from the Gospels in portraying him.
10. Hegemon: Greek for 'leader' or 'governor'.
11. Yeshua: Aramaic for 'the lord is salvation'. Ha-Nozri means 'of
Nazareth', the town in Galilee where Jesus lived before beginning his public
ministry.
12. Gamala: A town north-east of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, not
traditionally connected with Jesus.
13. Matthew Levi: Compare the Matthew Levi of the Gospels, a former tax
collector, one of the twelve disciples (Matt. 9:9, Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27),
author of the first Gospel. Again, Bulgakov's character is not meant as an
accurate portrayal of Christ's disciple (about whom virtually nothing is
known) but is a free variation on the theme of discipleship.
14. Bethphage: Hebrew for 'house of figs', the name of a village near
Jerusalem which Jesus passed through on his final journey to the city.
15. What is truth?: Pilate's question to Christ in the Gospel of John
(18:58).
16. 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.
17. the Susa gate: Also known as the Golden gate, on the east side of
Jerusalem, facing the Mount of Olives.
18. 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).
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. Kaifa: Bulgakov's variant of the name of the high priest Caiaphas,
mentioned in the Gospels and in historical records.
26. Kaifa politely apologised: Going under the roof of a gentile would
have made the high priest unclean and therefore unable to celebrate the
coming feast.
27. 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).
28. 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.
29. 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'.
Chapter 3 The Seventh Proof
1. 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.
Chapter 4: The Chase
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
Tatyana, mentioned further on, is the heroine of Evgeny Onegin.
Chapter 5. There were Doings at Gribwdov's
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. dachas: The Russian dacha (pronounced DA-tcha) is a summer or
country house.
5. 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.
Chapter 6: Schizophrenia, as was Said
1. 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.
2. Kulak: (Russian for 'fist') refers to the class of wealthy peasants,
which Stalin ordered liquidated in 1930.
3. 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.
4. 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.
Chapter 7: A. Naughty Apartment
1. ... 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.
2. Here I am': Bulgakov quotes the exact words (in Russian translation)
of Mephistopheles' first appearance to Faust in the opera Faust, by French
composer Charles Gounod (1818-95).
3. 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'.
4. findirtctor: Typical Soviet contraction for financial director.
5. 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.
6. 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).
Chapter 9. Korowiev's Stunts
1. 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'.
2. 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.
Chapter 10: News from Yalta
1. Varenukha: His name is that of a drink made from honey, berries and
spices boiled in vodka.
2. A super-lightning telegram: Bulgakov's exaggeration of the
'lightning telegram', which did exist.
3. 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.
4. rocks, my refuge...: Words from the romance 'Refuge', with music by
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), inspired by Goethe's Faust.
5. take it there personally: Another oblique reference to the secret
police. By now the reader should recognize the manner.
Chapter 12: Black Magic and Its Exposure
1. Louisa: The character Louisa Miller, from Schiller's play Intrigue
and Love, a fixture in the repertories of Soviet theatres.
Chapter 13. The Hero Enters
1. 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.
2. Latunsky ... Ariman ... Lavrovich: Russian commentators see the name
Latunsky as a fusion of the names of critics 0.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.
3. 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.
4. 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'.
5. 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'.
Chapter 14: Nikanor Ivamvich's Dream
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. All sitting?: Bulgakov plays on the meanings of the Russian verb
sidet: 'to sit' and also 'to sit in prison'.
4. The Covetous Knight: One of Pushkin's 'little tragedies', written in
1830, about the demonic and destructive fascination of gold.
5. As a young scapegrace . . . some sly strumpet: The first two lines
of the baron's opening monologue in scene two of The Covetous Knight.
6. 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.
7. 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).
Chapter 17: An Unquiet Day
1. 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.
2. cisco: A northern variety of whitefish caught in Lake Baikal.
3. Barguzin: A local personification of the north-east wind.
4. Shilka and Nerchinsk: Towns on the Shilka River east of Baikal,
known as places of exile.
5. Lermontov studies: Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41), lyric poet and
novelist of the generation following Pushkin.
Chapter 18: Hapless Visitors
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Everything was confusion... The second sentence of Tolstoy's Anna
Kannina, proverbial in Russia.
4. a church panikhida: A special service of the Orthodox Church for
commemoration of the dead.
5. 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.
Book Two
Chapter 19: Margarita
1. 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).
2. 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 ac), who ruled
the eastern third of the empire.
3. 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.
4. 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 art-exhibition
space.
Chapter 22: By Candlelight
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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).
Chapter 23: The Great Ball at Satan's
1. waltz king: Unofficial title of the Viennese composer Johann Strauss
(1825-99)
2. 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 time also in
the conservatory of St Petersburg, where he was first violinist of the
imperial court.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. a Spanish hoot: A wooden torture device.
7. 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.
8. The marquise: Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers
(1650-76), a notorious poisoner, was decapitated and burned in Paris.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. A Moscow dressmaker: The heroine of Bulgakov's own play, Zyka's
Apartment, which describes a brothel disguised as a dressmaker's shop.
12. 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.
13. Messalina: (AD 15-48), third wife of the emperor Claudius, was
famous for her debauchery.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. the Kamarinsky: A popular Russian dance-song with ribald words.
17. A salamander-conjurer: The salamander enjoyed the reputation during
the Middle Ages and Renaissance of being able to go through fire without
getting burned.
18. 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.
19. 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).
Chapter 24: The Extraction of the Master
1. 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).
2. manuscripts don't bum: 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.
3. 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.
4. bruderschaft: A special pledge of brotherhood drunk with interlaced
right arms, after which the friends address each other with the familiar
form ty.
Chapter 25: How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath
1. Falemo: A rich and strong red wine, named for the ager falemus in
the Roman Campagnia where it was produced in ancient times (not to be
confused with the white Falerno now produced around Naples).
2. Caecuba: Also a strong red wine, product of the ager caecubus in
southern Larium.
3. 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.
4. lares: A word of Etruscan or Sabine origin, referring to the
nameless protective deiries of the house and hearth in Roman religion.
5. 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").
6. 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).
7. ... 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.
Chapter 26: The Burial
1. 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.
2. 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'.
3. 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.
4. En-Sarid: Arabic for Nazareth.
5. Valerius Gratus: According to Flavius Josephus, in Antiquities of
the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 2), Valerius Gratus was procurator of Judea
starting from sometime around AD 15, and was thus Pilate's immediate
predecessor.
6. 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).
7. baccuroth: Aramaic for 'fresh figs'.
8. 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).

Chapter 27: The End of Apartment No.50
1. 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.
2. starka: An infusion of a pale-brown colour, made from spirits, white
port, cognac, sugar, and apple and pear leaves.

Chapter 28: The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Palosich!: A spoken contraction of the name Pavel Yosifovich.
4. Kerch Herring: Much-prized fish from the Crimean city of Kerch, on
the Sea of Azov.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia: Three of the nine Greek muses, of
tragedy, lyric poetry and comedy respectively.
8. The Inspector General: A comedy by Nikolai Gogol, one of the
masterpieces of the Russian theatre.
9. Evgeny Onegin: Koroviev's comically slighting reference is to
Pushkin's poem, not to Tchaikovsky's opera.
10. 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.
11. 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'.
12. Skabichwsky: A. M. Skabichevsky (1858-1912) was a liberal critic
and journalist.
13. 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.
Chapter 29: The Fate of the Master and Margarita is decided
1. 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.
2. 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.
Chapter 30: It's Time! It's Time!
1. 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.
Chapter 31: On Sparrow Hills
1. Sparrow Hills: Hills on the south-west bank of the Moscow River,
renamed 'Lenin Hills' in the Soviet period.
2. Devichy Convent: Actually the Novodevichy Convent, founded by Basil
III in 1524, 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.
Epilogue
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.