9. Adelina Patti (1843–1919), Italian opera singer, was one of the great sopranos of her time, known especially for her performances of Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi.
10. Cf. Hamlet, II, 2, 562: “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba …?”
11. The phrase, become proverbial, is from Part I, chapter 8 of Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol (1809–52).
12. Chatsky is the hero of the comedy in verse Woe from Wit (1822–23), the first real masterpiece of the Russian theater, by Alexander S. Griboedov (1795–1829).
13. Having the civil service rank of privy councillor, third of the fourteen degrees established by Peter the Great and equivalent to the military rank of general, Nikolai Stepanovich is also entitled to be addressed as “Your Excellency.”
14. Nikolai Stepanovich lists some of the homeliest and most comforting staples of Russian peasant cooking, including kasha, most often made from buckwheat.
15. Seminary education was open to poorer people who could not afford private tutors or expensive schools, and did not necessarily mean that the student was preparing for a church career.
16. The first line of the poem “Reflection,” by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41).
17. N. A. Dobrolyubov (1836–61) was a radical literary critic of the earnest materialist sort, with a prominent forehead and tubercular pallor.
18. A. A. Arakcheev (1769–1834), all-powerful minister under emperors Paul I and Alexander I, was an extreme reactionary and strict disciplinarian.
19. “Final argument” (Latin). The full phrase, ultima ratio regum (“the final argument of kings”), was the motto Louis XIV had engraved on his cannons.
20. 2 Kings 2:23.
21. There are several important Orthodox feast days during the summer months: the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29, the feast of the Transfiguration on August 6, and of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Assumption) on August 15. However, Chekhov also commonly refers to ordinary Sundays as feast days.
22. A distortion of the opening line of the old Latin students’ song Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus (“Let us make merry while we are young”).
23. N. I. Krylov (1807–79) was a famous Russian jurist. Revel is the old name of Tallinn, capital of Estonia.
24. A quotation from the fable “The Eagle and the Hens,” by the Russian poet and fabulist I. A. Krylov (1768–1844).
25. Berdichev, a town in the Ukraine, is synonymous with deep provinciality.
26. Actual illustrated magazines of the time.
27. A reference to the Russian law requiring the use of internal passports for citizens traveling within the country. At the time, Russia was the only European country to have such a system.
28. These words (Gnôthi seauton in Greek) were inscribed on the pediment of the oracular temple of Apollo at Delphi; Socrates adopted them as his personal motto.
GUSEV
1. Captain Kopeikin is the hero of an inset story in Gogol’s Dead Souls. Midshipman Dyrka (his name means “hole”) is referred to in Gogol’s play The Marriage.
2. A Turco-Tartar people who settled on the Black Sea in the ninth century A.D. They were exterminated by the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus in 1123. For Pavel Ivanych the word simply means primitive, savage people.
3. The proper preparation for death for an Orthodox Christian. The sacrament of anointing with oil is in fact a sacrament of healing, but has come to be considered a part of the “last rites.”
4. Germans, being Lutherans, were not thought of as Christians in the Russian popular mind.
5. The prayer “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya pamyat’) is sung at the end of the Orthodox funeral service and the panikhida.
PEASANT WOMEN
1. The words “where there is no sickness or sighing” come from the panikhida, the Russian Orthodox memorial service.
2. Holy Week is the week preceding Easter, during which the events of Christ’s Passion are remembered. Thursday is a day of particular holiness when the Last Supper is commemorated.
3. In Russia “Trinity” is another name for Pentecost, the feast that falls on the fiftieth day after Easter and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit.
4. Churches and homes are traditionally decorated at Pentecost with green branches and flowers, symbolizing the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit.
5. He means “the fiery Gehenna,” synonymous with Hell in Jewish and Christian tradition. The words are somewhat closer in Russian. The actual Gehenna is the Hinnom valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, which in ancient times was a refuse dump where fires constantly smoldered.
THE FIDGET
1. See note 6 to “Small Fry.”
2. A dacha is a summer residence for city dwellers—a cottage, part of a big house, or a whole house, depending on a person’s means. “Going to dacha” also signifies the whole way of life in the summer.
3. A. Mazzini (1845–1926) was an Italian opera singer.
4. The words come from the poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance,” by Nikolai Nekrasov (see note 2 to “A Boring Story”), which became very popular in its musical setting.
5. V. D. Polenov (1844–1927) was a Russian landscape and historical painter.
6. L. Barnay (1842–1924) was a German actor.
7. Osip is the servant of Khlestakov, impostor-hero of Gogol’s comedy Revizor (“The Inspector General”).
IN EXILE
1. See note 21 to “A Boring Story.”
WARD NO. 6
1. These “calendars” included edifying little stories and helpful advice as well as the days of the year.
2. See note 7 to “Small Fry.”
3. The Swedish Order of the Polar Star was also awarded in Russia.
4. The zemstvo was an elective provincial council with powers of local government; it came to be very important for reform-minded Russians in the latter nineteenth century.
5. See note 3 to “Easter Night.”
6. The 1860s in Russia were a period when liberalism became radicalized and the material and practical were exalted above the ideal.
7. See note 2 to “A Boring Story.”
8. “In the future” (Latin).
9. The French biochemist Louis Pasteur (1822–95) and the German doctor and microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910) were pioneers in the study of microbes and contagious diseases. Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacillus.
10. Mt. Elbrus in Georgia, at 18,481 feet, is the highest peak of the Caucasus and the highest mountain in Europe.
11. An old-fashioned method of treatment for various respiratory ailments, which consisted in applying a number of small heated glasses to the patient’s back. The heat would cause suction and draw the blood to the surface.
12. In The Brothers Karamazov (Part I, Book 1, chapter 4) Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov does indeed produce a variant of Voltaire’s famous saying: Si Dieu n′ existait pas, il faudrait l’ inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”).
13. The Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic (412?–323 B.C.) came to Athens from his native Sinope as a penniless vagabond and was so scornful of wealth and social convention that he lived in a barrel.
14. Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A.D.), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, taught the wisdom of self-restraint and indifference to both pleasure and pain.
15. See Matthew 26:39 (also Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42).
16. The itinerary includes some of the standard tourist sights in Moscow. The Iverskaya icon of the Mother of God was an ancient miracle-working icon which, in Chekhov’s time, was kept in a specially built chapel between the arches of the Iversky Gate at the entrance to Red Square; it disappeared soon after the revolution. Zamoskvorechye is the part of Moscow across the river from the Kremlin. The Rumiantsev Museum was the first public museum in Russia, opened in the early nineteenth century in Pashkov House; it contained anthropological collections, books, manuscripts, antiquities, and paintings.