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 Empiricur, 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 Brocken: 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. 1395- 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 XIV and the Duke of Anjou.
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.
