17. A reference to the phrase “and out of me burdock will grow,” spoken by Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), which became proverbial in Russia (see note 3 to “A Boring Story”).
18. “Bad tone” (French), meaning socially unacceptable.
19. See Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”
THE BLACK MONK
1. Lines from Evgeny Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), used in the opera of the same name composed by P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840–93).
2. Gaetano Braga (1829–1907), Italian cellist and composer, was best known for his salon composition La Serenata, which was arranged for various instruments.
3. The words are a quotation from Poltava, a long poem by Pushkin. Kochubey, who appears in the poem, was a wealthy Ukrainian landowner.
4. “Let the other side be heard” and “sufficient for an intelligent man” (Latin).
5. See John 14:2.
6. “A sound mind in a sound body” (Latin), from the tenth Satire of the Roman poet Juvenal (c. 65–128 A.D.).
7. A two-week fast period preceding the feast of the Dormition on August 15.
8. Polycrates (d. 522 B.C.), tyrant of Samos, after enjoying forty years of happiness, became worried that his luck would not hold out. He thought he might bribe fate by throwing a precious ring into the sea, but it was found in the belly of a fish and brought back to him. Soon after that Samos was taken by the Persian general Orontes, and Polycrates was crucified.
9. See the first Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, 5:16.
10. July 20.
11. Kovrin confuses two stories here: Herod ordered the slaughter of all the male children under two years old in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16–18); the Egyptian “first-born” were smitten by the Lord as a sign to Pharaoh that he should let Moses lead the people of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12:29–32).
ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE
1. See note 11 to “Ward No. 6.”
2. The feast of St. John the Theologian, author of the fourth Gospel, is celebrated on May 8, and the feast of the relics of St. Nicholas (see note 5 to “Easter Night”) on May 9, commemorating the “rescue” of the saint’s relics a few days before the Turkish invasion of Myra in the eleventh century and their safe transfer to the Italian town of Bari, where they now lie.
THE STUDENT
1. Good Friday, commemorating the Passion of Christ, is a day of total fast.
2. Rurik (d. 879), a Viking chief, was invited by the people of Novgorod to become their prince, thus founding the first ruling dynasty of Russia; Ivan IV, the Terrible (Ioann is the Old Slavonic form of the name), born in 1530, ruled Russia from 1547 to 1584 and was the first to adopt the title of tsar; Peter I, the Great (1672–1725), the first to adopt the title of emperor, extended the power of Russia considerably and built the new capital of St. Petersburg.
3. According to an old Russian superstition, a person not immediately recognized by face or voice is destined to become rich.
4. A composite reading of twelve passages from the four Gospels describing the Crucifixion is part of the matins of Holy Friday, sometimes referred to simply as “the Twelve Gospels.” The student gives his own summary of some of the readings in what follows.
ANNA ON THE NECK
1. Not a real pilgrimage, but a visit to a monastery, where hotel rooms could be had more cheaply than elsewhere.
2. The Order of St. Anna, named for the mother of the Virgin Mary, was founded in 1735 by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, in honor of his wife Anna Petrovna, daughter of the Russian emperor Peter the Great. It had four degrees, two civil and two military: the decoration for the first civil degree was worn on a ribbon around the neck, for the second, in the buttonhole.
3. Shchi (cabbage soup) and kasha (buckwheat gruel) were the most common Russian peasant dishes.
4. The Order of St. Vladimir, named for St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev (956?–1015), who converted Russia to Christianity in 988 A.D., was founded by the empress Catherine the Great in 1782 and was generally awarded for long-term civil service.
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE
1. N. A. Amosov (1787–1868) was an artillery officer and engineer. He invented a kind of stove that functioned pneumatically, which was introduced on the market in 1835. An Amosov heating system was installed in the imperial Winter Palace in Petersburg, bringing the inventor a reward of 5,400 acres of land.
2. See note 4 to “Ward No. 6.”
3. A sign of protest; it was considered improper for a girl or woman to go out without covering her head.
4. Baikal is a sea-sized freshwater lake in Siberia famous for the depth and purity of its water; the Buryat are an Oriental nationality inhabiting the region around Baikal.
5. A folk motif: the hero cannot recover his lost beloved until he wears out a pair of iron shoes.
6. See note 19 to “Ward No. 6.”
7. For Rurik see note 2 to “The Student.” Petrushka, the peasant servant of Chichikov, hero of Gogol’s Dead Souls, “liked not so much what he was reading about as the reading itself, or, better, the process of reading, the fact that letters are eternally forming some word, which sometimes even means the devil knows what” (Volume I, chapter 2).
8. A health spa in central France, known for its mineral waters.
9. A line from the fable “The Crow and the Fox,” by I. A. Krylov (see note 24 to “A Boring Story”). The end of the fable is well known: the crow fails to hold on to the God-sent piece of cheese.
THE MAN IN A CASE
1. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–89) was a liberal journalist and satirist best known for his dark novel The Golovlevs and his satirical history of Russia, The History of a Certain Town.
2. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–94) was a liberal historian, author of The History of Civilization in England (1857–61), in which he formulated the idea that the development of civilization leads to the cessation of war between nations. There was also a George Buckle (b. 1857), a biographer and editor of the English magazine Life.
3. Fish is “lenten” but butter is not—thus Belikov strikes a middle path. In addition to the four major fast periods during the year (the Advent fast before Christmas, the Great Lent before Easter, the Peter and Paul fast, and the Dormition fast), Wednesdays and Fridays are also fast days in the Orthodox Church.
GOOSEBERRIES
1. Cantonists were sons of career soldiers, who were assigned to the department of the army from birth and educated in special schools at state expense.
2. Bast is the pliant inner bark of the linden tree, which when stripped from the outer bark was put to a variety of uses in Russia, as material for roofing, shoes, wagon covers, and so forth.
3. An altered quotation from the poem “The Hero,” by Alexander Pushkin; it should read, “Dearer to me than a host of base truths is the illusion that exalts.”