6
a Spanish boot: 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: Made-Madeleine d‘Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630 — 76), a notorious poisoner, was decapitated and burned in Paris.
9
Madame Minkin: Nastasya Fyodorovna Minkin, mistress of Count Arakcheev (1769-1834), 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, Zoyka’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
Malfuta Skuratov: 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 33:38, Amos 5:25, Matt. 3:1-4).
2
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.
3
Aloisy Mogarych: An absurd combination of the Latinate 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
Falerno: A rich and strong red wine, named for the ager falernur 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 Latium.
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 deities of the house and hearth in Roman religion.
