[99] The poet is Pyotr A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878), a friend of Pushkin's; the lines, slightly adjusted by Lebyadkin, come from Vyazemsky's poem "To the Memory of the Painter Orlovsky" (1838).
[100] In Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol refers to an as yet unwritten "Farewell Story" of which he says: "I swear, I did not invent or think it up; it sang itself out of my soul..." The story remained unwritten.
[101] Gavriil Derzhavin (1743-1816) was one of the greatest Russian poets of the eighteenth century. Lebyadkin refers to his ode "God" (1784), which contains the line: "I am king—I am slave, I am worm—I am god!"
[102] Grigory ("Grishka") Otrepev, known as "the False Dmitri," was a defrocked monk who claimed the Russian throne by pretending to be the lawful heir, the prince Dmitri, murdered in childhood through the intrigues of Boris Godunov (1551-1605), who thus made himself tsar. In 1605, by order of the patriarch Job, the impostor Grigory Otrepev was anathematized and cursed "in this age and the age to come" in all the churches of Russia. The "seven councils" is a hyperbolic reference to the ecumenical councils of the Church, held between 325 and 787 A.D.
[103] Dostoevsky wrote down these terms for church objects in his Omsk notebook, but without giving definitions of them. The "swinger" is probably a censer; the second item, which we translate as "swatter," remains mysterious; the "deacon's girth" is no doubt a deacon's stole or orarion, often richly decorated. Icons, as of St. Nicholas the Wonder-worker, are often covered with precious casings of silver or gold ornamented with jewels. "Similor" (originally a French word) is a yellow brass used in making cheap jewelry.
[104] There is an excellent short treatise on the classical duel à volonté ("at will") in Vladimir Nabokov's commentary to his translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (abridged edition, Princeton, 1981, volume II, part two, pp. 43-45).
[105] Corporal punishment for all ranks of the population, including clergy and boyars (a privileged order of Russian aristocracy), existed in the Muscovite kingdom from its very beginnings in the fourteenth century.
[106] Dueling was officially outlawed and therefore could be punished by the authorities, though they might choose to overlook it.
[107] This conversation reflects certain skeptical attitudes towards the new courts established by the legal reform of 1864, which replaced the former courts, separate for each rank of society, with general courts for all ranks, open to the public, allowing for trial by jury, the use of lawyers, and free discussion in the press.
[108] See Part One, Chapter One, note 20.
[109] The question of women's equality emerged in Russia at the end of the 1850s. During the 1860s it was much discussed in the press. Dostoevsky saw the emancipation of women as one instance of the restoration of human dignity in general, and regarded it as very important.
[110] See Part One, Chapter One, note 23.
[111] Fra Diavolo (1830) is a comic opera by the French composer Esprit Auber (1782-1871), based on the life of an Italian brigand.
[112] "Foolsbury" (Glupov in Russian) is the subject of The History of a Certain Town, a satirical history of Russia by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89).
[113] In fact, Dostoevsky based this episode with the book-hawker on an actual incident reported in the press.
[114] The "Marseillaise" (see Part One, Chapter One, note 24) is a marching song, "Mein lieber Augustin" is a beer-hall waltz, in Lyamshin's musical parody symbolizing the triumph of German philistinism over the spirit of the French Revolution. The actual Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) was started and lost by Napoléon III.
[115] Jules Favre (1809-80), French politician and republican, called for the deposing of Napoléon III in 1870, and negotiated the treaty of Frankfurt (10 May 1871), which ended the Franco-Prussian War. For Bismarck, see Part One, Chapter Two, note 4.
[116] Properly, Château-Yquem, the greatest of sauternes.
[117] According to Anna Grigorievna, the visit to Semyon Yakovlevich in Demons is partly based on Dostoevsky's own visit to a well-known holy fool (yurodivy) in Moscow, Ivan Yakovlevich Koreisha.
[118] The Russian merchant class was divided in its habits of dress; some retained the long-skirted coat and full beard of the traditional Russian merchant, others adopted so-called German fashions (frock coat, waistcoat, tie) and went clean-shaven.
[119] The Senate in Petersburg was the highest judicial as well as legislative body in imperial Russia.
[120] The question "What is the meaning of this dream?" is ultimately a paraphrase of a line from Pushkin's poem "The Bridegroom" (1825). In the 1860s it became a journalistic cliché applied metaphorically to various events of the day. Dostoevsky here restores it to its literal meaning, with very funny effect.
[121] The "little Cossack" (kazacbok) is a dance imitative of military steps.
[122] See Genesis 25:29-34. Esau, the elder son of Isaac, sells his birthright to his brother Jacob for "a mess of pottage," that is, a bowl of lentil soup.
[123] Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue (1802-72) was a French historian and man of letters, author of historical compilations.
[124] That is, news of the emancipation of the serfs on 19 February 1861.
[125] Dostoevsky again parodies the utilitarian aesthetics of the nihilists, particularly of N. G. Chernyshevsky (see Part One, Chapter One, note 23), who declared in his university dissertation entitled The Relations of Art to Reality (written in 1853, defended on 10 May 1855): "Artistic creations are lower than the beautiful in reality." The public debate occasioned by Chernyshevsky's defense of his thesis was considered the first manifestation of the "intellectual trend of the sixties."
[126] "The die is cast!" (Latin); words uttered by Julius Caesar when he defied the Roman Senate by bringing his legions across the Rubicon in 50 b.c. and marching on Rome.
[127] Lines from Pushkin's poem "Once There Lived a Poor Knight" (1829).
[128] A quotation from Pushkin's poem "A Hero" (1830).
[129] Karl Vogt (1817-95), German naturalist, was a defender of the biological theory of transformism (as were Lamarck and Darwin). Jacob Moleschott (1822-93), Dutch physiologist and philosopher, was an advocate of materialism, as was the German philosopher Ludwig Biichner (1824-99), brother of the playwright Georg Buchner. Their writings were a sort of bible of the materialist worldview for young Russians of the 1860s.
[130] Dostoevsky is thinking of Herzen's account of Pavel A. Bakhmetev, in a chapter on the young generation in his book From My Life and Thoughts (1852-55). Bakhmetev, a wealthy young nobleman of revolutionary sympathies, supplied the émigrés with funds for propaganda, most of which went eventually to the subject of the next note.
[131] Sergei Gennadievich Nechaev (1847-82), nihilist theoretician and murderer, whose activities together with the court proceedings arising from them were one of Dostoevsky's sources for the writing of Demons, was the founder of a revolutionary society called "The Committee of the People's Summary Justice of 19 February 1870." The society's tracts and documents bore an oval seal showing an axe with the name of the committee written around it.
[132] "The Shining Light" is Dostoevsky's parody of a poem by Nikolai Ogaryov (see Part One, Chapter One, note 2), entitled "The Student." Ogaryov had originally written the poem for a friend who had died in 1867, but then he met Nechaev in Geneva two years later and was so taken with him that he added the dedication "to young friend Nechaev" when the poem was printed as a tract.