'Tsar Cannon' and. . .'Tsar Bell': two well-known sights in the Moscow Kremlin. The Bell was cast in I733-5, the Cannon in the sixteenth century.
St. Saviour's Temple: this church (in Russian, Khram Khrista Spasitelya) was built between 1837 and 1883 on the left bank of the Moscow River, south-west ofthe Kremlin, as a memorial to the Napoleonic wars of 1812-14.
Rumyantsev Museum: situated in Mokhovoy Street in the centre ofMoscow, the Museum was built in 1787, and the core ofthe exhibits consisted of collections given to the State by Count Nicholas Rumyantsev (died 1826). Testov's: a well-known Moscow restaurant.
ARIADNE
Volochisk: name of the actual Russian frontier station m Volhynia Province.
Max Nordau: Max Simon Nordau (1848-1923), Hungarian author of the philosophical work Entartung (Degeneration; English translation, I 895) and other works.
Weltmann: A. F. Weltmann [Veltman] (i8oo-7o), minor Russian novelist and poet.
75 Devichy: part of south Moscow, the area of the Novodevichy Convent.
the Slav Fair Hotel. a large hotel in central Moscow at which Chekhov sometimes stayed.
the Hermitage Restaurant: in Moscow in Trubny Square, not to be confused with the Hermitage Variety Theatre in Moscow or the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. 79 Abbazia: [Opatija]: a seaside resort on the west shore ofthe Bay of Fiume. It was Austrian before 1914 and is now part of Yugoslavia.
So Fiume: [Rijeka]: North Adriatic port, now part of Yugoslavia.
It belonged to Hungary before 1914. 8 I Merano: health resort in the southern Tyrol in the Italian
province of Bolzano. 88 Boleslav Markevich: B. M. Markevich ( 1822-84), a minor novelist who held ultra-conservative political views. Turgenev: I. S. Turgenev (181 —1'3), the well-known Russian novelist.
A DREARY STORY
92 Kavelin: K. D. Kavelin (18 г 5-85), the Russian philosopher. Nekrasov: N. A. Nekrasov (i 82 1-78), the Russian poet.
Gruber: V. L. Gruber (1814-90), anatomist and professor at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy from 1858. Babukhin: A. I. Babukhin (1835-91), Russian histologist and physiologist, founder of the Moscow school ofhistology. Skobelev: M. D. Skobelev (1843-82), the famous Russian general who led a punitive expedition against Kokand in central Asia (i 875--<i) and distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8.
Perov: V. G. Perov (1833-82), the Russian painter. Patti: Adelina Patti (1843-1919), the operatic singer.
Chatsky . . . Woe from Wit: Chatsky is the hero of the verse play Woe from Wit (1822-4) by A. S. Griboyedov (1795-1829).
Ufa: city near the Urals, now capital of the Bashkir Autonomous Republic.
I IO Yalta: town and health resort on the southern coast of the Crimea.
I I 3 kasha: the word describes various forms of gruel and porridge. I I 5 Kharkov: large city in the Ukraine.
How sadly I regard . . . : the first line of the lyric Thought (I838) by the Russian poet M. Yu. Lermontov (18I4-41).
Dobrolyubov: N. A. Dobrolyubov (I836-6I), leading Russian radical literary and social critic.
125 Arakcheyev: General Count A. A. Arakcheyev (Г769-1834), favourite of Alexander I of Russia, who became a symbol of extreme tyranny.
Go, up, thou bald head: a biblical quotation, 2 Kings 2: 23.
Nikita Krylov: N. I. Krylov (I807-79), Professor ofRoman Law at the University of Moscow.
Reveclass="underline" German name ofpresent Tallinn, capital ofthe Estonian Republic.
An eagle on occasion . . .: the lines come from the fable The Eagle and the Hens (i 808) by the Russian fabulist I. A. Krylov (c. 1769-
I 844).
I 3 7 Berdichev: Ukrainian town about a hundred miles south-west of Kiev.
I 3 8 World Illustrated: Vsemirnaya illyustratsiya, a St. Petersburg weekly, founded 1869.
The Meadow: Niva, a weekly illustrated magazine for family reading, St. Petersburg (i87o-r9i8).
passport system: a Russian citizen was required to possess a passport for purposes of internal as well as external travel.
NEIGHBOURS
143 Her Excell.: the honorific 'Your Excellency' (vashe prevoskhod- itelstvo) was reserved to holders of ranks three, four and five in the official Table of Ranks (see note to p. r), and to the wives and widows of these high officials.
I 48 If you should ever need my life, then come and take it: Chekhov later used this sentence in his play The Seagull (i 896). See further The Oxford Chekhov, vol. ii, pp. 264, 338 and 356.
152 Pisarev . . .: D. I. Pisarev (i84o-68), the Russian politico- literary thinker and critic.
Darwin: Charles Darwin (1809-82), the English naturalist. . . . that weird marriage a la Dostoyevsky: Chekhov must have had in mind such episodes as the marriage of the satanic hero Stavrogin to the idiot girl Mary Lebyadkin in the novel Devils (1871-2) by F. M. Dostoyevsky (1822-81).
I 54 Khoma Brut: a character inthe story Vyinthe collection Mirgorod (1835) by N. V. Gogol.
AN ANONYMOUS STORY
Intermediary editions: The Intermediary (Posrednik) was a publishing house founded in St. Petersburg in I 88 5 for the dissemination of popular works, including the folk tales ofLeo Tolstoy.
Znamensky Square: the large square at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare in St. Petersburg.
Yeliseyev's: the most luxurious food store on the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg.
Gogol or Shchedrin: N. V. Gogol (1809-52) and M. Ye. Saltykov (1826-89, who wrote under the pseudonym 'Shchedrin' and is often known as 'Saltykov-Shchedrin') were the two leading Russian satirists, and—with Chekhov himself—humorous writers of the nineteenth century.
the fairly senior rank which he held: literally: the 'rank of actual state councillor' (deystvitelny statsky sovetnik): grade four in the Table of Ranks.
Nevsky Prospekt: the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg. the Senate: see note to p. 35^
Prutkov: 'Kozma Prutkov' was the collective pseudonym used by the poet and playwright A. K. Tolstoy in conjunction with the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov between I 8 5 I and I 884 for the publication of satire directed against Russian officialdom.
WhWhat does the morrow hold for me?: Lensky's words in Canto VI, verse xxi of Eugene Onegin by A. S. Pushkin. The song to which reference is made here is Lensky's aria from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin's novel.