“You are no longer interested in anyone's destiny but your own...”

• On page 11, these words from the stranger summarize Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," a satire on Russian social rank and the falsity of social climbing. Later on, Bulgakov makes another reference to this story with the character Praskovya Fyodorovna, who is the nurse in M&M, but has the same name as Ivan Ilyich's wife.