33. The allusions are to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the burning of the Tuileries (and much of the Louvre) in Paris under the Commune (1871).
34. Pétroleurswere incendiaries who used oil or kerosene ( pétrole) to start fires.
35. The reference is to the poem “ Frieden” (“Peace”), from the cycle Die Nordsee(“The North Sea”) in Das Buch der Lieder(“The Book of Songs”), by the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), which describes Christ’s return to earth and the regeneration of people under his love. Versilov (or Dostoevsky) changes the North Sea to the Baltic.
36. Versilov is probably referring to the soliloquy that opens Act V, Scene ii of Othello (“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul”), not Othello’s last speech in lines 338–56 of the same scene (“Soft you! A word or two before you go”). “Evgeny at Tatyana’s feet ” refers to stanza XLI in the eighth and final chapter of Pushkin’s novel in verse Evgeny Onegin. The episode from Les Misérables(Part Two, Book Three) describes the meeting of the little girl Cosette with the escaped convict Jean Valjean.
37. It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table while waiting for the coffin to be prepared.
38. A panikhidais a memorial service for the dead, which may be held before as well as after the actual burial service.
39. See Part Two, note 25. The Old Believers, in their wish to hold on to all that had characterized the Russian Orthodox Church before the reforms of the patriarch Nikon, managed to preserve some of the finest old Russian icons.
40. See Part Two, note 28. As is often the case with Arkady’s allusions, the story of Abishag has no relation at all to what he is describing here.
41. A vogue for spiritualism, or spiritism, as it was originally called, swept through upper-class Europe, including the courts, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when mediums and table-rapping séances became socially respectable. Tolstoy also refers mockingly to the vogue for spiritism in Anna Karenina, which was written at the same period as The Adolescent.
42. The von Sohn murder trial caused a stir in Petersburg in 1869– 1870. The elderly von Sohn was murdered in a brothel to the dancing and singing of the prostitutes; he was then put in a trunk and shipped to Moscow as baggage. Dostoevsky refers to the case again in The Brothers Karamazov.
43. An imprecise quotation of a line spoken apropos of Chatsky by the old lady Khlyostova in Woe from Wit(see Part One, notes 38 and 39).
44. Militrisa is the daughter of King Kirbit in The Tale of PrinceBova, a sixteenth-century Russian version of Beuves d’Hanstone, a thirteenth-century French chanson de gestethat was widely spread in Europe. Dostoevsky refers to the same tale again in The Brothers Karamazov.
45. In the Orthodox Church, Great Lent is the forty-day period of fast that precedes Holy Week (see Part Two, note 31). Preparation for communion at Easter would include eating lenten meals (no meat, eggs, or dairy products), confessing, and attending the services of Lent and Holy Week.
46. During the Bridegroom services that fall on the first three days of Holy Week, the hymn is sung which gives these services their name: “Behold! the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching . . .”
47. Molchalin is the trivial and servile private secretary in Woe from Wit(see Part One, notes 38 and 39). Dostoevsky mentions Molchalin in his Diary of a Writerfor October 1876 (Chapter One, section 3), and adds parenthetically, “Some day I am going to dwell on Molchalin. It is a great theme.”
48. Nikolai Semyonovich is referring to Chapter Three, stanzas XIII–XIV, of Evgeny Onegin, where Pushkin says he may cease to be a poet and “descend to humble prose” in order to describe the “traditions of a Russian family, / love’s captivating dreams, / and manners of our ancientry,” and so on (Nabokov translation). Pushkin already speaks with a hint of irony here of the kind of novel that Nikolai Semyonovich advocates, and that Leo Tolstoy would go on to write. Dostoevsky was, of course, writing precisely the opposite kind of novel, and therefore appreciates Pushkin’s irony, which escapes both Tolstoy and Nikolai Semyonovich.
49. The radical socialist communards seized control of Paris following the insurrection of March 18, 1871, when the Prussians lifted their siege of the city after the defeat of France. They were overthrown in May of the same year.
50. Mother Mitrofania (Baroness Praskovya Grigoryevna Rosen in the world), the superior of a convent in Serpukhov, was convicted of passing counterfeit promissory notes for enormous sums and of forging a will, and sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia. According to the memoirs of Dostoevsky’s friend, the lawyer A. F. Koni, she was a woman of great intelligence and of a strongly masculine and practical character. Her trial caused a sensation in Petersburg.
ENDNOTES
1 “Organic collectivity” here is a translation of the nearly untranslatable Russian word sobornost, meaning a free, inner, organic “unity in multiplicity.” It is a central term in Russian religious philosophy, which drew much inspiration from Dostoevsky. A profound exploration of the meaning of sobornost, and one extremely pertinent to The Adolescent, is to be found in The Spiritual Foundations of Society, by the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank, translated by Boris Jakim (Ohio University Press, 1987).
2 Dostoevsky’s title in Russian is Podrostok, which means “adolescent.” Constance Garnett altered it to A Raw Youthin her translation, and that title has also been used most often in English critical writings on the novel.
3 See note to p. viii.
4 My poor boy!
5 Well!
6 Isn’t it so?
7 Eh, but . . . I’m the one who knows women.
8 They are charming.
9 I know everything, but I don’t know anything worthwhile.
10 But what an idea!
11 Dear boy, I love God . . .
12 It was stupid.
13 ;A residence.
14 There’s another one!
15 Unknown.
16 This infamous story!
17 What is not cured by medicines, will be cured by iron; what is not cured by iron, will be cured by fire.
18 The strictly necessary.
19 Hate in love.
20 Throughout the world and other places.
21 All genres . . .
22 We always come back.
23 You understand.
24 Say, my friend.
25 Spelling it all out.
26 When you speak of a rope [in the hanged man’s house].
27 This little spy.
28 Monstrous.
29 You’ll sleep like a little king.
30 On the way out.
31 But . . . that’s charming!
32 Well, finally . . . finally let’s give thanks . . . and I bless you!
33 Bad tone.
34 What the devil!
35 One fine morning.
36 Pawn shop.
37 Let’s break it off there, my dear.
38 That goes without saying.
39 Distortion of French renseignée, “informed.”
40 It’s comical, but that’s what we’re going to do.
41 But let’s drop that.
42 That depends, my dear!
43 For your pretty eyes, my cousin!
44 Be it said between us.
45 Very proper.
46 The poetry in life.
47 What a charming person, eh? The songs of Solomon . . . no, it’s not Solomon, it’s David who put a young girl in his bed to warm him in his old age. Anyhow, David, Solomon . . .