The Adolescent (63 page)

45.
See II Samuel 11. Uriah the Hittite was the husband of Bathsheba; King David arranged for him to be killed in battle, so that he could take his wife.

46.
A line from the poem “Vlas,” by Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–1878), an old acquaintance and longtime ideological opponent of Dostoevsky’s, editor of the journal
Notes of the Fatherland
at the time that
The Adolescent
was appearing in it. The poem describes a greedy and pitiless peasant who ends his days as a wanderer collecting money for churches. Dostoevsky wrote about the poem in his
Diary of a Writer
for 1873, quoting many passages, including this same line, which he describes as “wonderfully well-put.” Incidentally, Vlas wore iron chains “for his soul’s perfection” as he went on his wanderings.

47.
Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades,” published in 1834, is one of the key works of Russian literature; in its atmosphere and in the character of its hero, Hermann, it prefigured the depiction of Petersburg in the works of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Andrei Bely, and others.

48.
The reference is to the equestrian statue of Peter the Great by the French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–1791), which stands on Senate Square in Petersburg, and to Pushkin’s poem “The Bronze Horseman,” which describes the same statue come to life in the delirium of its hero.

49.
An allusion to shares in the “Brest-Graev” railway, referring to an actual forgery scandal of the day, involving shares in the Tambov-Kozlov line. The forger, Kosolov, prototype of Dostoevsky’s Stebelkov, was prosecuted by A. F. Koni (see note 14).

50.
The quotation is from Pushkin’s poem “The Black Shawl” (1820).

51.
It was indeed possible to rent not a whole room but only a corner of a room, which would be partitioned off by a hanging sheet or the like.

52.
See Hamlet’s soliloquy about the player (Act II, Scene ii, ll. 553–563): “Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect / A broken voice, and his whole function suiting / With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! / For Hecuba? / What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba / That he should weep for her?” The comparison does not quite fit Kraft’s case.

53.
See Luke 15:11–32, the parable of the prodigal son. Arkady totally confuses the meaning of the parable.

54.
Rurik (d. 879), chief of the Scandinavian rovers known as Varangians, founded the Russian principality of Novgorod at the invitation of the local populace, thus becoming the ancestor of the oldest Russian nobility. The dynasty of Rurik ruled Russia from 862 to 1598, when it was succeeded by the Romanovs.

55.
Court councillor was seventh in the table of ranks established by Peter the Great, equivalent to the military rank of major.

56.
A condensed quotation of Matthew 5:25–26 (King James Version).

57.
Céladon, the hero of the pastoral novel
Astrée
, by Honoré d’Urfé (1607–1628), is a platonic and sentimental lover.

58.
See Luke 15:32 (King James Version). This is now Arkady’s third reference to the parable of the prodigal son. In the parable, however, these words are spoken of the son by the father; Arkady reverses the relations.

59.
The lines are from Pushkin’s poem “The Hero” (1830).

60.
The fig (
figue
in French,
fica
in Italian) is a contemptuous gesture made by inserting the thumb between the first and second fingers of the fist; also used in verbal form, as in the saying, “I don’t care a fig.” Obsolete in English, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, its use has continued in Russia, where a special covert form known as “a fig in the pocket” was developed, especially among intellectuals, as a sign of dissent during Soviet times.

PART TWO

1.
Borel’s restaurant in Petersburg, named for its French founder, was already famous in Pushkin’s time. The plural implies “Borel and the like.”

2.
Titular councillor was ninth in the table of ranks, equivalent to the military rank of staff-captain. The type of the titular councillor entered Russian literature in the person of the wretched copying clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, hero of Gogol’s story “The Overcoat.”

3.
That is, under the emperor Nicholas I (1796–1855).

4.
The Duma referred to in this case is the city council, elected from the nobility.

5.
The first railway in Russia, the Tsarskoe Selo line from Petersburg to Pavlovsk, was opened in 1838. Tsarskoe Selo (literally “Tsar’s Village”) was an aristocratic suburb about fifteen miles south of Petersburg; Pavlovsk, named for the emperor Paul (1754– 1801), who had a palace there, is slightly further south.

6.
The Cathedral of St. Isaac in Petersburg was begun in 1819 and completed in 1858, on plans by the French architect Auguste Ricard de Montferrand (1756–1858).

7.
Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800), who served under Catherine the Great (1729–1796), was the only Russian military man to bear the title of generalissimo until Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) awarded himself the title during World War II. Suvorov’s successes against the French revolutionary army in Italy gained him the additional titles of count of Italy and prince of Rimini, but they were not hereditary.

8.
Zavyalov was a Russian merchant and manufacturer.

9.
King Charles XI of Sweden (1655–1697) was said to have had a vision of an assembly in a brightly lit hall in which unknown men were cutting the throats of a great number of young people under the eyes of a fifteen-year-old king seated on his throne. The vision was spread through the Russian court under Alexander I (1777–1825) by the Swedish ambassador, a freemason by the name of Stedding.

10.
See Part One, note 7. According to a popular anecdote, the “somebody” was in fact the emperor Alexander I himself.

11.
Pavel Bashutsky (1771–1836) was an officer who fought in the campaigns against the French, was promoted to general, and from 1814 until his death served as military commandant of Petersburg.

12.
Alexander Chernyshov (1785–1857), who distinguished himself at Austerlitz and as a partisan leader in 1812, went on diplomatic missions for Alexander I, was made a count by Nicholas I, and served as minister of war from 1827 to 1852.

13.
A quotation from Luke 8:17 (King James Version).

14.
See Matthew 4:3, Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, where the devil asks him to prove he is the son of God by turning stones into bread.

15.
See Part One, note 33.

16.
According to legend, during the reign of the third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius (seventh century B.C.), the three sons of Horatius fought for Rome against three champions of the city of Alba Longa, in the presence of the two armies, to decide which of the two peoples would command the other. The only survivor of the six was one of the Horatii, who thus gave the victory to Rome.

17.
See Part One, note 11.

18.
Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) was the most influential liberal critic and Westernizer of his time, an advocate of socially committed literature. He championed Dostoevsky’s first novel,
Poor Folk
(1845), and exerted a strong influence on the young writer, but they soon disagreed and parted ways. Dostoevsky’s inner debate with Belinsky continued throughout his life.

19.
Bolshaya Millionnaya is an older name for the present Millionnaya Street, which runs through what was then an aristocratic neighborhood between the Summer Garden and Palace Square in Petersburg.

20.
See Part One, note 47.

21.
The period of Tartar occupation of Russia, known as the “Tartar Yoke,” in fact lasted from the conquest of 1237–1240 to around 1480, when Prince Ivan III of Moscow removed the last traces of Muscovite dependence on the khanate of the Golden Horde.

22.
That is, from
Lucia di Lammermoor
, an opera by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848).

23.
According to the Gospels, the court of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem convicted Christ of blasphemy, which carried a sentence of death, and turned him over to the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate for sentencing. Pilate, who found no fault in him, washed his hands of the guilt and, yielding to the demands of the crowd, gave him over to be crucified.

24.
The princely family of Rohan, one of the most ancient and illustrious in France, has as its motto,
Premier ne puis, second ne daigne, Rohan suis
(“I cannot be first, I scorn to be second, I am Rohan”).

25.
In 1720, Peter the Great abolished the position of patriarch, the administrative head of the Orthodox Church, chosen by and from the clergy, and established a standing council to administer Church affairs, presided over by a lay procurator appointed by the emperor himself. The term “schismatic” (
raskolnik
) refers to the so-called Old Believers, who split off from the Orthodox Church in disagreement over the reforms of the patriarch Nikon in the mid-seventeenth century.

26.
Russian borrowed the word “keepsake” (
kipsek
) from English. It was the trade name of a literary annual or miscellany, finely bound and illustrated, intended for gift-giving.

27.
Soden is a German watering-place at the foot of the Taunus Mountains, ten miles west of Frankfurt-am-Main. Bad-Gastein is a watering-place near Salzburg in Austria.

28.
The biblical Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, is a collection of mystical-erotic bridal poems written down in about the third century B.C. The opening of the first Book of Kings tells how King David in his old age took a young virgin, Abishag the Shunammite, to his bed to keep him warm and minister to him, though he “knew her not” (I Kings 1:1–15).

29.
The French writer Paul de Kock (1794–1871) was the author of innumerable novels depicting petit-bourgeois life, some of them considered risqué.

30.
Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov (1629–1676), tsar of Russia, was the father of Peter the Great.

31.
Holy Week is the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.

PART THREE

1.
In Petersburg, owing to its northern latitude, the sun sets in midafternoon during the winter.

2.
The two-week fast preceding the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29.

3.
Kutya
(accented on the last syllable) is a special dish offered to people in church at the end of a memorial service, and in some places on Christmas Eve, made from rice, barley, or wheat and raisins, sweetened with honey.

4.
This day of commemoration of the dead, also known as
Krasnaya gorka
(“Pretty Little Hill”), falls on the Tuesday following Saint Thomas’s Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter. The Russian name probably comes from the custom of decorating the graves (“little hills”) for the occasion.

5.
In Part Three of both editions of
The Adolescent
published during Dostoevsky’s lifetime, the name of this character changes from Darya Onisimovna to Nastasya Egorovna. The same shift occurs in the notebooks for the novel, and evidently slipped from there into the final draft and hence into print. We follow the definitive Russian edition in preserving the change.

6.
See Part Two, note 5.

7.
Saint Mary of Egypt, a fifth-century saint greatly venerated in Orthodoxy, was a prostitute who was miraculously converted and spent the last forty-seven years of her life in the desert, in prayer and repentance.

8.
The merchant’s name, though a plausible one in Russian, is suggestive of his character: it means “cattle slaughterer.”

9.
There are twelve great feasts in the Orthodox liturgical year.

10.
A “holy fool” (or “fool in God,” or “fool for Christ’s sake”—
yurodivy
in Russian) is a saintly person or ascetic whose saintliness is expressed in a certain “folly” of behavior. Holy fools were known early in Christian tradition. However, the term may also be applied to a harmless village idiot.

11.
A distorted quotation of the Epistle of Jude: “hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” (Jude 23).

12.
Cenobitic order means a life in common (from the Greek
koinobion
, “common life”) for all the monks in a monastery, as opposed to the “idiorhythmic” life in which each monk is responsible for his own maintenance.

13.
In the Orthodox Church, young children are allowed to take communion without prior preparation, but after a certain age they are expected to prepare, like adults, by attendance at services, confession, and fasting.

14.
In Orthodox piety, the “gift of tears” is a sign of profound spiritual development. In
The Brothers Karamazov
the elder Zosima will say: “Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears.”

15.
In the Book of Job, God in his wager with Satan allows him to destroy Job’s seven sons and three daughters. Having won the wager by proving Job’s righteousness, God gives him another seven sons and three daughters. It is never said, however, that Job “forgot the former ones.”

16.
A nobleman convicted of a crime would be stripped of his legal and hereditary rights, but it was possible to have them restored in return for service to the state, for instance, in one of the new Russian “colonies” in Turkestan, which was being settled at the time.

17.
Arkhangelsk is in the northwest of Russia on the White Sea; Kholmogory is a small village about fifty miles south of Arkhangelsk on the Dvina River.

18.
The German title
Kammerjunker
(“gentleman of the bedchamber”) was adopted by the Russian court. It was a high distinction for a young man.

19.
This is an example of the long fellow’s (or Dostoevsky’s) absurd humor: the French often substitute a
w
for a
v
in writing German or Russian names, but the
w
is still pronounced as a
v
. However, Arkady’s name transliterated into French would be “Dolgorouky,” not “Dolgorowky.” What’s more, the long fellow obviously pronounces his fanciful version “Dolgorovky,” which is why Arkady thinks he has said “Korovkin.”