23. The Great Ball at Satan's

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An oval-framed picture of a black poodle

The poodle appears often in this chapter, and the attentive reader knows why: in Goethe's Faust the devil Mephistopheles appears to Faust as a poodle.

Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest

In her diary Elena Sergeevna, Bulgakov's spouse, describes, on April 23, 1935, a reception - which she calls "a ball"- at the American embassy in the Spaso House.

"I have never seen such ball in my life. They were all carrying tail coats, there were only a few jackets and smokings.

They danced in a room with columns lit by streams of light coming from a gallery; behind a gate which separated them from the orchestra, there were living pheasants and other birds. We had dinner at small tables in a huge dining room with, in a corner, living baby bears, goats and roosters in cages. During dinner, musicians played the accordeon.

In the room where we had dinner, the table where we were sitting was covered with a green transparant cloth lit from inside. There were armfuls of tulips and roses. I do not mention the abundance of food and champagne. On the upper floor (it is a big and luxurious mansion) they had arranged a room with a grillroom for shashlik and people were doing Caucasian dances.

We wanted to leave the place at half past three but they did not allow us to leave. We left at half past five in one of the cars of the embassy. A certain Shteiger, I believe, a man whom we do not know but whom all Moscow knows and who can always be found when there are foreigners, joined us in the car. He was sitting next to the driver and we were in the rear. It was already daylight when we arrived home.”

The tulips are also mentioned in this chapter, like many other eccentric details characterizing the parties of the American ambassador William Bullit (1873-1953), and which are described in a colourful way by  Charles Thayer, one of the embassy’s officials, in his book Bears in the Caviar (1951). The man Shteiger, mentioned by Elena Sergeyevna, was Boris Sergeevich Shteiger (1892-1937), the "stool pigeon" who was the prototype for Baron Meigel in the novel.

Click here for a comprehensive description of the Spaso house

Hallelujah

Again - for the third time in the novel - Hallelujah by Vincent Youmans (1898-1946) is played. We saw it before in Griboedov (chapter 5) and at doctor Kuzmin’s house (chapter 18).

Click here to read more about Hallelujah

An absolutely enormous fireplace

In my country we put our shoe next to the chimney on the eve of December 6 for the arrival of Santa Claus - not  the US-import Father Christmas, but Saint Nicolas (280-342), the former bishop of Myra. In Russia the chimney was an important ritual place as the path to another world. It was both the entrance and the exit for supernatural beings including devils and witches like in Christmas Eve written by Gogol. The soul disappeared through the chimney-pot after death.  In the novel’s 1936 version Margarita enters Berlioz’ appartment through the chimney too.

Tailcoaters … and naked women with them

The men in tailcoat and the women naked - this was apparently the dresscode at Satan's ball. The invitation which the Bulgakov’s got for the reception at the American embassy in 1935 had a handwritten note joined to it with the text "Tailcoat or black suit." It is quite unlikely that any of the women were naked there.

The guests at the ball

Click here for a description of the guests at the ball

A Spanish boot

A Spanish boot is a wooden instrument of torture. It was some kind of mould which was put around the leg and constantly tightened. When a witch refused to confess, her legs were broken with this horrible tool.

Doctor James Fian, a schoolmaster in Saltpans (Scotland) was a male witch who was under the suspicion of high treason against the king. He would eventually be burned 1591 in Edinburg. He described how he was “put through the most violent and the most cruel pain in the world, namely the Spanish boot”, which made that “his legs were crushed and flattened, and the bones and the flesh were so bruised that the blood and the bone marrow splashed out of it in huge quantities”.

Spray the walls of the office with poison

The episode in which characters spray the walls of an office with poison is based on actual accusations that came to light in March 1938 in the trial of the so-called Anti-Soviet Block of Rights and Trotskyites, also called the Trial of the 21 including, among others, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888-1938), Aleksei Ivanovch Rykov (1881-1938), Nikolai Nikolayevich Krestinsky (1883-1938) and Henrich Grigoryevich Yagoda (1891-1938).

Yagoda had been removed as head of the NKVD in 1936 and - supposedly fearing implication in the murder of Kirov (in 1934) - he had ordered his secretary Pavel Petrovich Bulanov (1865-1938) to spray the walls of the office of his successor Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1895-1940) with poison. Yagoda and Bulanov were sentenced to be shot. Bulgakov understood all the farce of the fabricated charges, and Yagoda and Bulanov join the ranks of the imaginary poisoners at the ball. Of course Yagoda's name could not be mentioned in print after his removal.

Two hamadryads with manes like lions played grand pianos

Hamadryads are Greek mythological beings that live in trees. They are a specific species of dryads, which are a particular type of nymphs. Hamadryads are born bonded to a specific tree. If their tree died, the hamadryad associated with it died as well. For that reason, dryads and the gods punished any mortals who harmed trees.

The Kamarinsky

The word kamarinskaya is derived from the name of the city of Kamarino. The камаринская (kamarinskaya) is a Russian dance song with a short, always repeated tune and quite coarse words. One version sounds as follows: “What an odd guy are you, peasant of Kamarino, how you stumble down the street. I run to the booze shop with a headache, because a peasant can’t live without booze.” or else: “Oh you son of a bitch, muzhik (peasant) from Kamarino…”

When on weddings the kamarinskaya is sung or danced, people don’t care much of the right steps. The grotesque steps, the twitching of the shoulders, the ugly and sometime disgusting movements - it’s all part of the game.

In 1848, the Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857) wrote the symphonic poem Kamarinskaya in which he introduced this popular Russian tune.

Click here to listen to an instrumental version of the kamarinskaya

A salamander-conjurer who did not burn in the fireplace

At the ball Margarita sees a salamander-conjurer who did not burn in the fireplace. In medieval lore salamanders were thought to survive fires.

Another interesting connection is that the fireproof salamander was the symbol of the French king François I (1494-1547), who was the grandfather of Marguerite de Valois (1551-1615) and the brother of Margarita van Navarra (1492-1549).

On this platter a man's severed head with the front teeth knocked out

Berlioz’ head on a platter recalls of course the biblical story of Salome who demanded to see the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

The skull being used as a cup recalls the story of the last pagan Russian prince of the land of Rus, Prince Svyatoslav I of Kiev (942-972),

The prince was caught in ambush and killed by the Pechenegs (nomad people from Turkish origin) when he wanted to cross the cataracts near Chortitsa in 972. The Primary Chronicle - a Russian manuscript from the 12th century describing the history of the land of Rus in a christian fashion - mentions that Kuriy, the khan of the Pechenegs, made a chalice from his skull.

It will be given to each according to his faith

The words of Woland: ”It will be given to each according to his faith” are a rather free interpretation of Matthew 9:29: “According to your faith be it done unto you”.

Baron Meigel

The real prototype for Baron Meigel's character is, without any doubt, Baron Boris Sergeevich Shteiger (1892-1937). In the '20's and '30's he worked in Moscow at the Наркомпрос (Narkompros) or the People's Commissariat for Enlightening, Department Visual Arts and simultaneously as an agent of the NKVD. In 1937 he was arrested and shot. Shteiger is mentioned several times in the diary of Elena Sergeevna. He was often found at US Embassy functions and he reported on foreigners connected with the theater, and on Soviet citizens having contacts with the embassy.

Click here for a comprehensive description of baron Meigel



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