Lesson 1. Interesting passages and hidden meanings

Satan's great ball is the climax of the Moscow chapters. At midnight the guests come out of the gaping fireplace in the form of hanged men and skeletons coming back to life. They are sinners of the past raised for one night: poisoners, counterfeiters, murderers, procuresses, tyrants. Margarita, naked and in royal regalia, stands at the top of the staircase greeting each one, offering her knee to be kissed, smiling at everyone. It is a grand and terrible panorama of the world's history of evil passing before the heroine's eyes. The ball is her test: to endure an endless line of criminals without flinching and remain an even-tempered, gracious queen. Her knee and arm swell from the kisses and the pain: the price of royal dignity.

Many guests are not invented but historical and literary poisoners and villains (for example, Madame Tofana is mentioned, the woman who gave her name to the famous poison “aqua Tofana”). Bulgakov fills the ball with real “names of evil,” turning it into an encyclopedia of crime. Many scholars link the lavish, infernal ball itself, with its torches, fountains of champagne, and naked queen, both to the writer's impressions of a luxurious reception at the American embassy in Moscow and to the tradition of depicting the satanic sabbath in world art. This is not mere fantasy but a complex alloy of history, literature, and personal observation: the novel's typical “double bottom” device.

Among the guests, Frieda stands out: a woman who once smothered her newborn child with a handkerchief and buried it. As punishment, for thirty years now she has been handed that same handkerchief every morning: an eternal, relentless reminder of her guilt. Margarita is filled with compassion for her. After the ball Woland offers her a reward: any wish. Here is a key moment of the novel: instead of asking for the Master at once, Margarita asks that Frieda no longer be given the handkerchief. She gives up her own gain to ease another's pain: true mercy, without calculation. Woland says he himself “cannot” do it (it is not his department) but lets Margarita free Frieda herself. The act proves she deserves love and salvation. Only then may she ask for the Master.