[105]Arbenin: protagonist of Mikhail Lermontov’s play Masquerade; the protagonist of A Hero of OurTime (1840) is Pechorin.
[106]all five:Dmitri confuses the number of cardinal points with the number of continents, considered to be five in the nineteenth century.
[107]the rite of holyunction, in the Orthodox Church, a sacrament of healing, consisting of anointing with oil and remission of sins, administered to the sick and the dying.
[108]on behalf of all and for alclass="underline" a liturgical formula often repeated or alluded to in B.K.
[109]falling asleep:in Orthodox understanding, death is a “falling asleep in the Lord.”
[110]prosphora:a small, round yeast bread specially prepared for the sacrament of the Eucharist; the Greek word means “offering.”
[111]blessed: the Russian word blazhennyican mean either “blessed” or “silly, odd,” as in the English phrase “blessed idiot.”
[112]Holy Week:the last week of Lent, between Palm Sunday and Easter; each of the days is called “Great and Holy.”
[113]Laodicea:a council of the Church held in Laodicea (modern Latakia, Syria) in the mid fourth century a.d.
[114]Pentecost:the feast celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles (Acts 2:1-4), fifty days after Easter.
[115]in theform of a dove:the Holy Spirit appeared “like a dove” only once, at Christ’s baptism in the Jordan (see Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22).
[116]Elijah: Luke 1:17 (Revised Standard Version).
[117]the gates of hell: Matthew 16:18.
[118]Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht: “Madame, I want no thanks.” From Schiller’s ballad “The Glove” (1797).
[119]And in all nature . . .:lines from Pushkin’s poem “The Demon” (1823).
[120]Chernomazov:Arina Petrovna inadvertently brings out the implicit meaning of Alyosha’s surname: chernyis Russian for “black”; however, in the Turkish and Tartar languages, karaalso means “black” (the root, maz,in Russian conveys the idea of “paint” or “smear”).
[121]Now I’m likeFamusov...: Famusov, Chatsky, and Sophia are characters in A. S. Griboyedov’s celebrated comedy Woe from Wit(1824), in which the last scene takes place on a stairway.
[122]Aninvincible power . . .: the Russian original was heard and written down by Dostoevsky in Moscow ca. 1839. Smerdyakov sings the last stanza a bit further on.
[123]You opened her matrix:a biblical expression (see Exodus 13:2, 12; 34:19); Grigory often uses such language, and Smerdyakov has picked up some of it, e.g., “nativity” just before.
[124]father of the present one:Napoleon 1 was the uncle, not the father, of Napoleon III.
[125]Petrovka:a street in the center of Moscow.
[126]sticky little leaves . . .:allusion to Pushkin’s poem “Chill Winds Still Blow” (1828).
[127]professions de foi:“professions of faith.”
[128]a tinge of nobility:a borrowing from Pushkin’s epigram “A tsar was once told . . .” (1825): “Flatterers, flatterers, try to preserve / A tinge of nobility even in your baseness.”
[129]And how believest thou...: this first half of Ivan’s question comes from the Orthodox order for the consecration of a bishop; in response the bishop-elect recites the Creed.
[130]an old sinner . . .:Voltaire. The quotation comes from his Epistles,111, “To the Author of a New Book on the Three Impostors” (1769); cf. note 3 to page 24 in section 1.1.4.
[131]the Word . . .:see John 1:1-2.
[132]John the Mercifuclass="underline" a saint, patriarch of Alexandria (611-19). The episode comes, however, from Flaubert’s “La Légende de Saint-Julien - l’Hospitalier” (1876), “Saint Julian the Merciful” in Turgenev’s Russian translation (1877). Ivan significantly substitutes the name John (Ioann, in Russian, i.e., Ivan) for Julian: Flaubert’s Julian is a parricide.
[133]they ate...: see Genesis 3:5.
[134]as Polonius says ... .Hamlet,1.3.129 (we have substituted an appropriate line from the passage Dostoevsky quotes in Russian translation).
[135]image andlikeness: here, as just earlier, Ivan plays perversely on Genesis 1:26 (“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”).
[136]on its meek eyes:from “Before Evening,” a poem from the cycle About the Weather(1859) by Nikolai Nekrasov.
[137]Tartars:see note 5 to page 27 in section 1.1.5.
[138]A little girl...: this and the preceding story are both based on actual court cases. Dostoevsky discussed the first at length in Diary of a Writer(1876); the defense attorney there, V. D. Spassovich, is thought to be a possible model for Fetyukovich in B.K.
[139]Ieven forget where I read it:the story actually appeared in the Russian Herald(1877, no. 9), where B.K. was also published serially The article was entitled “Memoirs of a Serf.“
[140]the liberator of the people:Alexander II, tsar from 1855 to 1881; the emancipation of the serfs was the most important of his many reforms.
[141]paradise ... fire from heaven:Ivan combines biblical and Greek motifs, the paradise of Genesis with the revolt of Prometheus, who “stole fire from heaven” against the will of Zeus.
[142]the hind lie down with the lion:a variation on Isaiah 11:6,65:25.
[143]Just art thou...: a variation on several biblical passages: cf. Revelation 15:3-4, 16:7,19:1-2; Psalm 119:137.
[144]Ihasten to return my ticket:allusion to Schiller’s poem “Resignation” (1784).
[145]and for alclass="underline" echoes an Orthodox liturgical phrase (cf. note 2 to page 164 in section 2.4.1).
[146]the onlysinless One:Christ. The words come from the Hymn of the Resurrection sung at Matins in the Orthodox Church.
[147]Le bon jugement. . .:“The Compassionate Judgment of the Most Holy and Gracious Virgin Mary.”
[148]pre-Petrine antiquity: before the reign of Peter the Great, tsar of Muscovy (1682-1721), then emperor of Russia (1721-25), who moved the capital from Moscow to Petersburg.
[149]The Mother of God Visits...: a Byzantine apocryphal legend, translated into Old Slavonic in the early Russian middle ages.
[150]Icomequickly: the “prophet” is St. John; see Revelation 3:11,22:7,12,20.
[151]Of that day . . .:see Mark 13:32, Matthew 24:36.
[152]Believe . . .: from the last stanza of Schiller’s poem ”Sehnsucht” (“Yeaming,” 1801). The Russian version, translated here, differs considerably from the original.
[153]ahorrible new heresy: Lutheranism.
[154]A great star . . .:misquotation of Revelation 8:10-11: the star Wormwood.
[155]God our Lord . . .:the exclamation “God is the Lord, and has revealed himself to us” is sung at Matins and in the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church. Ivan misunderstands the Old Slavonic (the language of the Russian Church) to the point of reversing its meaning—a not uncommon mistake.
[156]Bent under the burden . . .:the last stanza of F. I. Tyutchev’s poem “These poor villages . . .” (1855).
[157]In (he splendid auto-da-fé...: a somewhat altered quotation from A. I. Polezhayev’s poem “Coriolanus” (1834). The Portuguese auto da fémeans “a (judicial) act of faith,” i.e., the carrying out of a sentence of the Inquisition, usually the public burning of a heretic.