My friend, ten minutes after picking me up at 30th Street Station yesterday: Hey, tomorrow do you want to walk around The Woodlands and visit the grave of the person whose parties inspired Satan’s Ball in The Master and Margarita?
Me: …YES.
William C. Bullitt was the first American ambassador to the USSR, serving in that role from 1933 to 1936. After a 1934 Christmas party whose entertainments included a trio of sea lions (one of which later escaped into the streets of Moscow), he decided to host a Spring Festival in 1935 that would be an even more spectacular extravaganza. Mikhail Bulgakov and his wife Elena Sergeevna were among the five hundred guests. Elena recorded her impressions of the event in her diary:
“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 accordion.
“In the room where we had dinner, the table where we were sitting was covered with a green transparent 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 grill room 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.”
(In addition to Bullitt being an inspiration for Woland, the Shteiger mentioned in the last paragraph was Boris Sergeevich Shteiger, who was the basis for Baron Meigel in the novel.)
(source with lots more entertaining details from the ambassador’s party planner, recent academic source)
Behemoth was kidnapped from the Bulgakov Museum last week, but he’s ok: http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-bulgakov-cat-20180809-story.html#
Glad Behemoth made it home safely, and also LOLing at this line from the article about the novel: “Many believe it to be a satirical look at life under the communist system.” Like? What else? Would it be?
A satirical look at life under Pontius Pilate?
Mooncustafer 