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 pre-revolutionary 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 Karenina, 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 (1553-1615), 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 (83-30 BC), 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 25:31-9, 37:17-24). 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.
