20. The details of this murder are again drawn from an actual incident reported in the newspapers—the murder of the tradesman Suslov by a peasant named Balabanov, who repeated the same prayer before taking Suslov's silver watch.
21. The exchanging of crosses was a custom symbolizing spiritual brotherhood.
22. Dostoevsky, who suffered from epilepsy himself, sometimes experienced moments of such "illumination" just before a fit and said that they were "worth a whole life."
23. Cf. Revelation 10: 6: "that there should be time no longer" (King James version).
24- According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad (c.570-632) was awakened one night by the archangel Gabriel, who in the process brushed against a jug of water with his wing. Muhammad then traveled to Jerusalem, from there rose into the seven heavens where he spoke with angels, prophets, and Allah, visited the fiery Gehenna, and came back in time to keep the jug from spilling.
25. These confused thoughts are connected with details of the Zhemarin murders (see part two, note 7).
26. The terrace of Lebedev's dacha, as of many country houses, is something between a room and an open veranda: a large, unheated space with many windows, with a door leading to the inner rooms, but also an outside door and steps leading down to the garden. The action of much Russian literature and drama takes place on such terraces.
27. The first Russian state was founded at Novgorod by Rurik, chief of the Scandinavian rovers known as Varangians, in 862, on the invitation of the local Slavic populace. The millennium of Russia was celebrated on September 8, 1862.
28. The poem in question is by Pushkin. The version Dostoevsky quotes is untitled and appears in "Scenes from Knightly Life" (1835), one of Pushkin's "little tragedies." It is Pushkin's revision of a longer version written in 1829.
29. A misquotation from Pushkin's poem "To ***" (1825); it should read "like a genius of pure beauty."
30. "A.N.D." is also incorrect, as we shall see further on. The knight wrote "A.M.D." on his shield, which stood for Ave Mater Dei("Hail Mother of God").
31. The phrase "there's no need to go breaking chairs," which is proverbial in Russia, comes from The Inspector General(1836), the famous comedy by Nikolai Gogol (1809-52), in which the mayor says of the schoolteacher, "Of course Alexander the Great is a hero, but why go breaking chairs?"
32. P. V. Annenkov's edition of Pushkin, the first to be based on a study of the poet's manuscripts, was published in seven volumes in 1855-57. Dostoevsky owned it and quotes the verses on the "poor knight" from it.
33. The term "nihilism," first used philosophically in German ( Nihilismus)to signify annihilation, a reduction to nothing (attributed to Buddha), or the rejection of religious beliefs and moral principles, came via the French nihilismeto Russian, where it acquired a political meaning, referring to the doctrines of the
younger generation of socialists of the 1860s, who advocated the destruction of the existing social order without specifying what should replace it. The great nineteenth-century Russian lexicographer Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl (1801-72), normally a model of restraint, defines "nihilism" in his Interpretive Dictionary of the Living Russian Languageas "an ugly and immoral doctrine which rejects everything that cannot be palpated." The term became current in Russia after it appeared in the novel Fathers and Sons(1862), by Ivan Turgenev (1818-83), where it is applied to the hero, Bazarov. The nihilist literary critic D. I. Pisarev (1840—68) was a great disparager of poetry, especially of Pushkin and his "cult of women's little feet."
34. See part two, note 7, and part one, note 38.
35. The opening words in Latin of Psalm 130: "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, Lord," sung in Catholic funeral services; the meaning here is "May they rest in peace."
36. The quotation is from Act II, scene ii, of Griboedov's Woe from Wit(see part one, note 30).
37. See part one, note 30. "The Stormcloud" was written in 1815.
38. The commentator in the Academy of Sciences edition has established that this epigram is a takeoff on "Self-assured Fedya," by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89), a satirical epigram on Dostoevsky himself, published in The Whistle,No. 9 (1863).
39. The quoted phrase is an allusion to Vera Pavlovna's farewell to her mother, in the radical novel What Is to Be Done"?(1863), by N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-89).
40. Probably a reference to the famous doctor S. P. Botkin (1832-89), physician to Alexander II and to Dostoevsky himself.
41. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65) was one of the principal French socialist theorists of the nineteenth century, author of the memorable phrase "Property is theft." His libertarian socialism was opposed to Marxism.
42. The line about Princess Marya Alexeevna is a paraphrase of the final line of Famusov's last monologue, in act IV, scene xv, of Griboedov's Woe from Wit(see part one, note 30).
43. Ippolit is thinking of Christ.
44. Cf. Revelation 8:10-11.
45. Keller is referring to a real man: Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a Jesuit and a famous preacher in the age of Louis XIV, though never an archbishop. In the first case, however, he is actually making a pun on bordeaux wine and the Russian word burda,which
means "swill"; only in the second case does he come to the more appropriate question of "confession."
PART THREE
1. Russian seminary education was open to the lower classes and was often subsidized by state scholarships. Seminarians were thus not necessarily preparing for the priesthood. Many Russian radicals of the 1860s were former seminarians, like Joseph Stalin later. Dostoevsky wrote in a notebook around this time: "These seminarians have introduced a special negation into our literature, too complete, too hostile, too sharp, and therefore too limited."
2. See part one, note 12, and part two, note 31. Mikhail Vassilievich Lomonosov (1711-65) was a peasant who came on foot from Arch-angelsk to Petersburg in order to study; he became a great poet and scientist, and, like both Pushkin and Gogol after him, is often called "the father of modern Russian literature."
3. Pavel Afanasyevich Famusov is the father of the heroine in Griboedov's Woe from Wit(see part one, note 30).
4. See part one, note 13.
5. Provoked by the young Frenchman's attentions to his wife, Pushkin challenged Georges d'Anthès to a duel; having the first shot, d Anthès may have fired sooner than he intended to, and his bullet hit Pushkin in the stomach; the wound proved fatal.
6. General Epanchin is trying to use the French expression ne pas se sentir dans son assiette,literally "not to feel that you are in your plate," meaning "to be out of sorts."
7. Dueling was forbidden in Russia until 1894, when it was made legal for army officers. Taking part in a duel was severely punishable by law, and a lieutenant like Keller risked being broken to the ranks and thus acquiring the "red cap" of the common foot soldier.
8. Ippolit is recalling the song of the archangel Raphael (11. 243-244), from the "Prologue in Heaven" that begins the monumental drama Faust,by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): "Die Sonne tont nach alter Weise/In Brudersphàren Wettgesang. . ."("The sun resounds as of old/In rival-singing with his brother spheres").