Гости на балу

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All guests at Satan's ball have some common characteristics. They're all dead, of course, and with the exception of the musicians, they all did something which made them go to hell - or which could have made them go to hell. The advantage of them being dead was that Bulgakov did not have to disguise their names. Here's a selection. The Frieda character got a page of her own because, other than the other guests at the ball, she will return in the novel later.

Johann Strauss

The waltz king is, of course, the Viennese composer Johann Strauss jr. (1825-1899). His father, Johann Strauss sr. (1804-1849), was quite famous himself as the composer of the Radetzky Marsch. But his son Schani would rapidly become more famous with unforgettable waltzes as An der schönen blauen Donau, the Kaiserwalzer and Wiener Blut and with the operettes Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron. In the era of Johann Strauss jr. the Viennese Waltz was not played in theatres or concert halls like it happens today, but mainly in dance halls, at receptions or at other mundane events.

Henri Vieuxtemps

Vieuxtemps is Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881), a Belgian virtuoso violinist from Verviers. At the age of ten he made his debut in Paris, where he was introduced by a virtuoso violinist of my hometown Leuven, Charles Auguste de Bériot (1802-1870). He travelled the world giving concerts, taught in the conservatory of Brussels and for some time, from 1846 to 1851, also in the conservatory of Saint-Petersburg, where he was first violinist of the imperial court and first soloist of the Royal Theatre. He was very successful with his own compositions too, among which 7 concertos, chambre music and compositions for violin and piano. It was common practice to hire musicians from all over the world to play at important receptions like the ones at the Spaso House.

Monsieur Jacques

Monsieur Jacques is Jacques Coeur (1395-1456), a rich French merchant who became superintendent of finances under Charles VII (1403–1461). He granted important loans to the king to finance his wars. The start of his career wasn't very lucky because, before he became successful, he was associated with a counterfeiter. And later he was accused of an attempt to poison Agnes Sorel (1422-1450), the king's mistress.

He was condemned to death, which later was changed into a lifelong banishment and a money fine. His properties were confiscated so that the king did not have to refund his loan. Later Louis XI would posthumously rehabilitate Jacques Coeur. In The Master and Margarita Korovyev called him a country traitor and an alchimist, but in fact he was not. He built a splendid castle in his native town Bourges

Earl Robert

Earl Robert, "a queen's lover" according to Korovyev, is Robert Dudley (1532-1588), count of Leicester and a childhood friend of the British queen Elisabeth I (1533-1603). He was the fifth of thirteen children. His spouse, Amy Robsart (1534-1560), died in mysterious circumstances but not, as suggested by Bulgakov, due to poisoning. In reality it was after falling down a flight of stairs.

Many rumours were going on about a liaison between Dudley and the queen. Many believed that Dudley had killed his wife to marry Elisabeth. Ironically enough, Amy's dead made a marriage impossible because Elisabeth was strongly influenced by the public opinion. She placed Count Robert in command of the army - he had to defeat the Spanish Armada - but he died soon after.

Signora Tofana

Signora Tofana is Teofania di Adamo (1653-1719). She was one of three poisoners with the same name from the 17th century. The poison having her name, aqua tofana, probably contained arsenic and deadly nightshade, also called Belladonna and one of the most toxic plants found in the Western hemisphere. Children have been poisoned by eating as few as three berries. Aqua tofana is a colourless and tasteless liquid, therefore an ideal mean to kill spouses or family members.

We don't know much of the first Teofania, except that she came from Palermo and that she got executed under the regime of viceroy Ferdinando Alfa de Ribera for various poison murders. Teofania di Adamo herself was from Naples, and would have got the recipe from the first Tofana. She would have been driven by man-hate and would have sold the poison too - in bottles with the portrait of Saint-Nicolas. Here poison would have killed at least 600 people, including the Duke of Anjou and the popes Pius II and Clemens XIV. The third Tofana, Giulia operated in Rome and would have been the sister or the daughter of the second. She would have been sentenced to death, and executed at the Campo di Fiore.

The marquise

Marquise de Brinvilliers is Marie-Madeleine Dreux d'Aubray (1630-1676), a notorious poisoner who, with the help of her lover, army captain Godin de Sainte-Croix (?-1672), killed her father, her brother and her two sisters in order to get their inheritances. She would have used the notorious aqua tofana for it. There are rumours that she also killed poor people whom she frequently visited at hospitals. She was condemned to the trial by water (the forced drinking of sixteen pints of water - her torturing can be seen on the drawing at the right), followed by decapitation and cremation.

Madam Minkin

Madame Minkin, or in full Nastasha Fyodorovna Minkina, was the housekeeper and lover of Count Aleksey Araksheyev (1769-1854), military advisor of czar Alexander I. She was an extraordinarily cruel and pernicious woman - one day she burned, blinded by jealousy, the face of a maid with curling tongs. Her own personnel revolted against her and killed her in 1825. Aleksey Araksheyev himself had little to learn from his mistress. The woman farmers on his country Gruzino near Novgorod were obliged to give birth to at least one child per year, and because he was font of the singing of the nightingales he let hang all the cats on his territory.

The emperor Rudolf

Emperor Rudolf or Rudolf II of Habsburg (1552-1612), German emperor and son of Maximilian II (1527-1576), lived in Prague and was the patron of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johann Kepler (1571-1630). In 1572 Brahe discovered a new star in the Cassiopeia constellation. He described this event in his book The Stella Nova. Later he became famous because it appeared to be a supernova. It proved that the atmosphere of the stars as it was described by Aristotle wasn't constant. Johann Kepler was an assistant of Tycho Brahe. He became known for his elaboration of the laws of the movements of planets. Isaac Newton (1643-1727) would use his discoveries for the development of his gravity law.

The Moscow dressmaker

The Moscow dressmaker is Zoya Denisovna Pelts, the heroin of Bulgakov's own theatre play Zoya's apartment. Zoya managed a brothel under the guise of a dressmaker's shop. Her girls were so-called models and she was obsessed by the wish to change the Soviet Union for Paris. The prototype for this character could be a certain Adèle Adolfovna Trostzhana, who would have had a brothel disguised as a boutique. Bulgakov read an article on her trial in the newspaper in October 1924.

Caligula

Caligula is the nickname of Gaius Caesar (12BC-41). He was the youngest son of Germanicus and Agrippina Senior, and he succeeded Tiberius as the emperor of Rome. People called him mentally ill, because he put Rome through many tyrannical brutalities and got eventually killed. Caligula was raised in a military camp. He was popular among the soldiers and there he got his nickname Caligula (soldier's boot), from the Latin caligae. In his own time nobody used this nickname, it got only popular because historians used it all the time.

Messalina

Messalina, in full Valeria Messalina (15BC-48) was the third wife of the Roman emperor Claudius (the successor of Caligula). She was the daughter of Domitia Longina and Valerius Messalla Barbatus. She was from a respectable Roman family, but she was known for her immorality. Once she would have challanged a notorious Roman prostitute, Scylla, to a sex competition. Scylla gave up after 25 men, but Messalina persisted until daybreak. Eventually she was executed because Claudius heard that she had organised a conspiracy against him. Later her daughter Claudia Octavia would become the first wife of emperor Nero.

Maliuta Skuratov

Maliuta Skuratov with his "truly fiery beard" is the nickname of the Russian nobleman and notorious historical character Grigory Lukyanovich Skuratov-Belsky (?-1573), de right-hand man of Иван Грозный (Ivan Grozny) or Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584), the first Russian czar. Czar Ivan had proclamed so-called Опричнинн (oprichiny), which were sections of the empire under his direct rule. Skuratow was in command of the oprichniks, a special corps that terrorized the oprichini with fire-raisings, plunderings and murders. With his own hands he strangled the Orthodox archbishop Philip II (1507-1569).

The last two guests

The last two guests are not explicitely named in the novel. But from the dialogue between Margarita and Korovyev we learn that it are the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs - and chief of the secret police - Genrich Grigoryevitch Yagoda (1891-1938) and his secretary Pavel Pavlovich Bulanov (1895-1938). Both fell into disgrace and they were accused for having sprinkled the walls of the office of Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov (1936-1938), Yagoda's successor, with poison. In 1938 they were sentenced to be shot during a show trial that got very famous, and for which they had been questioners themselves. Yagoda was a notorious gambler and womanizer.



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