48. a poem to a Kalmyk girl…: Verses Pushkin jotted down on the occasion of his meeting with the “Circe of the steppe” described early in chapter 1:
The Kalmyk Girl
Farewell, my dear Kalmyk girl!
Thwarting all my plans,
Drawn on by my laudable habit,
I almost followed your kibitka
Off into the steppe.
Your eyes, of course, are narrow,
Your nose flat, your brow wide,
You do not babble in French,
Your legs are not squeezed into silk,
You do not crumble your bread
English-style by the samovar,
You do not admire Saint-Mars,
Give little value to Shakespeare,
Do not fall into reverie,
Since there’s not a thought in your head,
You do not sing: Ma dov’é,
Do not leap in the galop at dances.
Who cares? For a whole half-hour,
While they were hitching my horses,
My mind and heart were taken
With your gaze and your savage beauty.
Friends, is it not all one
For your idle soul to be lost
In a splendid hall, the dress circle,
Or in a nomadic kibitka?
49. General Burtsov: Ivan Grigorievich Burtsov (1794–1829) took part in the Napoleonic Wars and was then involved in the early stages of the Decembrist movement, but withdrew before the uprising. Imprisoned for six months all the same, he was then transferred to the Caucasus, where he served with distinction in the wars with the Persians and the Turks and was killed in action. Pushkin had made Burtsov’s acquaintance years earlier, while he was still at the lycée in Tsarskoe Selo (see note 41 to The Captain’s Daughter).
50. our Volkhovsky: Vladimir Dmitrievich Volkhovsky (1798–1841), Pushkin’s fellow student at the lycée, joined the Decembrists and as a result was sent in 1826 to serve on Paskevich’s staff in the Caucasus.
51. Mikhail Pushchin: Mikhail Ivanovich Pushchin (1800–1869), brother of one of Pushkin’s closest friends at the lycée, and like his brother a Decembrist, was broken to the ranks in 1826 and sent to serve in the Caucasus. By the time of their meeting in Tiflis, he had been made an officer again and served with the army engineers.
52. Semichev: Nikolai Nikolaevich Semichev (1792–1830), also a Decembrist. After six months in prison, he was sent to the Caucasus as a captain in the Nizhegorodsky grenadier regiment. At one point, when Pushkin recklessly threw himself into combat, General Raevsky sent Semichev to drag him away from the front line.
53. young Osten-Sacken: A captain of the Nizhegorodsky grenadiers, the younger brother of Dmitry Erofeevich Osten-Sacken (1789–1881), who at that time was chief of staff of the Detached Caucasus Corps under Paskevich. The Osten-Sackens were a distinguished Baltic German family.
54. Yazidis…devil worshippers: The Yazidis are Kurdish-speaking people settled from ancient times in what is now northern Iraq. Their monotheistic religion has ties to Zoroastrianism; its somewhat Manichaean vision of good and evil has led other monotheists to persecute them wrongly as “devil worshippers.”
55. Colonel Frideriks…General Muravyov…Colonel Simonich: Colonel B. A. Frideriks (1797–1874), mentioned earlier, commanded the Erevan Light Cavalry Regiment. General Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1794–1866) was Raevsky’s immediate superior, and, like Raevsky and Osten-Sacken, sympathized with the Decembrists serving in the Caucasus, which displeased Paskevich, who eventually had them all dismissed from the army. Count Ivan Osipovich Simonich (1792–1851), from Dalmatia, fought on the French side in the Napoleonic Wars, was captured by the Russians in 1812, and later joined the Russian army. In the Caucasus he commanded the Georgian grenadier regiment; in 1836 he was sent as Russian minister to Persia, replacing the murdered Griboedov.
56. Salvator Rosa: Italian Baroque painter (1615–1673), considered a “proto-Romantic” because of the dramatic lighting effects of his landscapes and portraits.
57. Hakki Pasha: Ismail Hakki Pasha (1798–1876) was a Turkish general and statesman, later briefly the governor of Arzrum.
58. Colonel Anrep: Roman Romanovich von Anrep (d. 1830), of a noble Swedish-Russian family, commanded an uhlan regiment in the Caucasus and was a close friend of Paskevich. A few years earlier, he and Pushkin had paid court to the same girl.
59. Franks: In Armenia Roman Catholics were referred to as “Franks,” a custom that dated back to the time of the Crusades.
60. the poet Yuzefovich: Mikhail Vladimirovich Yuzefovich (1802–1889) was a cavalry captain and aide-de-camp to Raevsky. He left memoirs of his meetings with Pushkin during the campaign of 1829.
61. Arnauts: Turkish for Albanians.
62. the battle of Poltava: See note 11 to The Moor of Peter the Great. Pushkin gives the date according to the old (Julian) calendar, which was still used in Russia. By the Gregorian calendar it was July 8.
63. Theodosius the Second: Theodosius II (401–450) became emperor of the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire in 408, at the age of seven.
64. Hajji-Baba…calf’s ears…: Pushkin is drawing on the three-volume novel The Adventures of Hajji-Baba of Ispahan, by the former diplomat James Justinian Morier (1780–1849), published in London in 1824, and in Russian translation in 1830. In the third volume, the Persian ambassador, whom Hajji-Baba serves as secretary, catches a courier who has stolen from him while passing through Arzrum. The ambassador orders the courier’s ears cut off, against the local governor’s protests, but the servants trick the ambassador, giving him two pieces of goat meat instead.
65. Tournefort…the city: Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1708), botanist and traveler, makes this observation in the eighteenth letter of his Relation d’un voyage en Levant (“An Account of a Journey to the Levant,” 1717).
66. the time of Godfrey: Godfrey de Bouillon (1060–1100), directly descended from Charlemagne, lord of Bouillon and later Duke of Lower Lorraine (Lotharingia), took part in the first crusade in 1095, and in 1100 was made “king of Jerusalem.” He died there in the same year. Godfrey became the subject of a number of medieval French chansons de geste, and Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) made him the hero of his epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (1581).
67. composed by the janissary Amin-Oglu: A fictitious personage; the verses are by Pushkin himself.
68. Sukhorukov: Vasily Dmitrievich Sukhorukov (1795–1841), officer in the Cossack guards regiment and military historian, was close to the Decembrists. After the uprising, the rich materials he had collected on the Don Cossack army were taken from him and never returned, and he was removed from his regiment and sent to serve in the Caucasus. There he gathered materials for a history of the campaign of 1829, but these, too, were confiscated in 1830. On his return to Petersburg, Pushkin tried unsuccessfully to recover them.
69. Bey-bulat, the terror of the Caucasus: In 1825 Bey-bulat Taymazov led the Caucasian mountaineers in a revolt against the Russians, but in 1829 he went over to the Russian side.
70. Mr. Abramovich: Pushkin gives only the initial A. The Russian editors of the 1975 edition followed here give the name Abramovich this first time, following the suggestion of the ethnographer Evgeny Gustavovich Veydenbaum in his Travels in the Northern Caucasus (1888), though others say that the cavalry captain Abramovich was not serving in the Caucasus at that time.