The Idiot (108 page)

2
‘The East and South were long ago depicted’:
An inexact quotation from Lermontov’s poem ‘The Journalist, the Reader and the Writer’ (1840).

3
I saw a painting like that at Basle once:
Probably the painting by Hans Fries (1450 — 1520) depicting the severing of the head of John the Baptist (part of the ‘Johannes-Triptych’), in the Basle City Art Museum.

1
‘Now I am going out among people ... but a new life has begun’:
Cf. John 8:28, John 9:4.

2
the Holbein Madonna in Dresden:
The Prince is referring to a copy of the
Darmstadt Madonna
(1526) by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497 — 1543) at the Dresden Art Museum. Dostoyevsky saw this in 1867.

1
. a small, dark-brown beard ... civil service:
A decree of Nicholas I (2 April 1837) forbade civil servants to wear moustaches or beards.

2
Avis au lecteur:
‘Warning to the reader’.

3
the Novaya Zemlya infantry regiment:
The fantastical nature of the regiment is emphasized by the fact that its name is borrowed from a line in Griboyedov’s satirical play
Woe from Wit.

4
Mon mari se trompe:
‘My husband is mistaken’.

1
se non è vero:
The first part of an Italian saying that continues: ‘è ben trovato’ (‘if it’s not true, it’s well conceived’).

2
Athos, Porthos and Aramis:
The general has in mind the heroes of Dumas’s
The Three Musketeers.

3
Kars:
A town in north-eastern Turkey that was besieged by Russian forces during the Crimean War of 1853 — 6.

4
the lndépendance:
The newspaper
lndépendance Belge,
which appeared in Brussels from 1830 to 1937, and reported on political life and cultural events in Western Europe. Dostoyevsky was a reader of the newspaper.

5
C’est du nouveau:
‘It’s something new’.

1
Lermontov’s drama Masquerade ... little more than a child:
The play was in fact written in 1835, when Lermontov was twenty-one. Kolya is referring to the insult delivered to Prince Zvezdich by Arbenin in Act 2, scene 4.

2
valet de carreau:
The Russian expression,
bubnovyi valet,
is a literal translation of this term; like the French idiom, it means ‘scoundrel’, ‘shady character’. It was found in Russian translations of Molière.

3
Rira bien qui rira le dernier:
‘He who laughs last laughs longest’.

1
Pirogov telegraphed Paris ... in order to examine me:
General Ivolgin gives a fantastically distorted interpretation of a real-life event. On 1 June 1855 the great Russian surgeon N. I. Pirogov (1810 — 81), who was in charge of first aid to the wounded soldiers of Sebastopol, went back to St Petersburg because of his indignation at the lack of attention shown by the Russian military command to issues of medical care. He returned to Sebastopol in September. Auguste Nélaton (1807 — 73) was a famous French surgeon; he never visited Russia.

2
pour passer le temps:
‘To pass the time’.

3
Down there in Moscow ... it was in the press:
An allusion to the trial of the murderer Danilov (a nineteen-year-old student; his victim was a moneylender), reported in the newspapers during 1866, as the first chapters of
Crime and Punishment
were being printed.

1
The mighty Lion ... yielded:
An inexact quotation of the first two lines of Krylov’s fable
The Ageing Lion
(1925). Ferdyshchenko is thinking of the last line of the fable, where a donkey is referred to.

2
petit jeu: A parlour game, ‘forfeits’.

1
the circumstances in which bouquets of white and pink camellias are to be used in turn:
The heroine of Alexandre Dumas’s novel
La Dame aux camélias
goes walking with white camellias on some days of the month and red camellias on others. After her death, her beloved sees to it that white and red camellias are placed on her grave in corresponding order.

2
de la vraie souche:
‘Of the true stock’.

1
Marlinsky:
The pseudonym of the Decembrist author A. A. Bestuzhev (1797 — 1837), whose style was characterized as ‘taut, lofty and impassioned’ by the literary critic Belinsky, who noted the ‘absence of all naturalness’ in the writer’s language. Dostoyevsky’s ironic remark is made in the context of the popularity of Marlinsky’s works among readers from a military background, from which his characters were also drawn.

2
vershoks:
A vershok is roughly two inches.

1
the Yekaterinhof pleasure gardens:
Yekaterinhof was a park with a palace, situated in the south-western part of St Petersburg, dating from 1711. In the 1820s it became one of the capital city’s finest parks, containing a fashionable restaurant where musical events were held. The Pavlovsk pleasure gardens, or ‘Vauxhall’, were situated beside one of the first railway stations in Russia, and the word
vokzal
gradually came to acquire its modern meaning of ‘railway station’.

2
the zemstva:
Local government institutions, led by the gentry, set up as part of the land reform of 1864.

3
Izmailovsky Regiment:
The St Petersburg Debtors’ Prison (
dolgovoye otdelenie)
was located in the first ‘company’ of this military district, at no. 28, which was owned by the Tarasov family. In 1867 Dostoyevsky himself was threatened with incarceration there.

1
the strange, hot gaze of someone’s eyes:
the Russian critic R. G. Nazirov traces the theme of Rogozhin’s eyes to Dickens’s
Oliver Twist
(1838), where Sykes is pursued by the eyes of the murdered Nancy.

2
Peski:
The name means ‘Sands’. A part of the city inhabited by tradesmen, clerks, craftsmen, cabmen and other members of the lower middle class. The Rozhdestvensky streets got their name from the nearby eighteenth-century Church of the Nativity (Rozhdestvo).

3
the murder of the Zhemarin family in the newspaper:
In 1868 Dostoyevsky read a story in the newspaper The Voice about the murder in Tambov of a family of six by an eighteen-year-old student. Dostoyevsky considered the murderer, Vitold Gorsky, a typical representative of ‘nihilist’ youth.

4
the wise words of the legislator ... courts:
A reference to Alexander II’s manifesto of 19 March 1856, ‘On the Cessation of War’, with an inexact quotation from a passage about the future of Russia after the peace with Turkey.

5
palki:
‘Sticks’ — a card game.

6
the Countess Du Barry:
Marie-Jeanne Du Barry (1743 — 93), a favourite of Louis XV of France, executed by order of the revolutionary tribunal on 8 December 1793. She begged for mercy on the scaffold, to no avail.

7
She agreed with me ... penny:
Cf. Revelation 6: 1 — 8.

8
Pavlovsk:
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the suburb of Pavlovsk became the favourite summer resort of the St Petersburg middle classes.

1
skopets:
A member of a religious sect, practising castration, founded in the second half of the eighteenth century by a peasant in the province of Oryol named Kondraty Selivanov. Many skoptsy lived in the large cities of Russia, where they occupied the status of merchants and had a reputation for amassing wealth because of their ‘incapacity for all other enjoyments‘, according to a contemporary observer.

2
The House of Hereditary Distinguished Burgher Rogozhin:
Rogozhin’s house is thought to have been No. 33 Gorokhovaya Street.

3
Solovyov’s History: The History of Russia Since the Most Ancient Times
by S. M. Solovyov (1820 — 79) began to appear in 1851. By 1867 seventeen volumes of it had been published.

4
there once was a Pope who got angry with an Emperor:
A reference to Heine’s poem ‘Heinrich’ (1822, first translated into Russian in 1843).

5
crossing yourself with two fingers:
The reference is to the customs of the Staroobryadtsy (‘Old Ritualists’), a traditionalist sect that did not accept the ecclesiastical reforms of the early sixteenth century, and was particularly active during the time of Patriarch Nikon (1652 — 8), who pronounced an anathema on the two-fingered sign of the cross, and introduced the three-fingered sign.

1
arsbins:
An arshin was approximately equivalent to 2 feet.

2
a certain S — :
It is thought that this may be a reference to N. A. Speshnev (1821 — 82), who was one of Dostoyevsky’s fellow Petrashevists, and whose views had a strong materialist and atheist tendency.

1
‘there sbould be time no longer’:
Cf. Revelation, 10:1 — 7.

2
the organ:
Here, probably a barrel organ.

1
Russian Millennium Day:
This was celebrated on 8 September 1862.

2
an ‘image of pure beauty’:
A reference to Pushkin’s poem dedicated to A. P. Kern (‘K ***’, 1825).

1
one shouldn’t break the chairs:
The words derive from Gogol’s comedy
The Inspector General
(1836). ‘He is, of course, the hero Alexander the Great, but why break the chairs?’

2
the senselessness of some Pushkin ... pieces:
The references are to writings and statements of nihilist authors and publicists such as Zaitsev, Pisarev and Zaichnevsky during the 1860s.

1
a weekly humorous paper:
Probably
Iskra
(‘The Spark’), which was published in St Petersburg from 1859 until 1873.

2
‘fresh is the legend, but hard to believe’:
a quotation from Griboyedov’s comedy
Woe from Wit
(Act 2, scene 2).

3
Krylov’s Cloud:
See Krylov’s fable ‘The Cloud’ (1815).

4
In Schneider’s coat ... fleeces students bare:
It has been established that this ‘epigram’ is a parody of a satirical poem about Dostoyevsky by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

1
his client, who bad murdered six people in one fell swoop:
Another reference to the murderer Vitold Gorsky and his victims. See above part 2, chapter 2, note 3.

2
A girl grows up in a house ... farewell:
An allusion to the scene in Chernyshevsky’s novel
What Is to Be Done
(1863), in which Vera Pavlovna parts from her mother (chapter 2, XX). A droshky is an open horse-drawn carriage with four wheels.

3
B — n himself.
The famous Russian physician S. P. Botkin (1832 — 89), who treated Dostoyevsky.

1
Proudhon:
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809 — 65), the French socialist economist and sociologist, the founder of Anarchism, whose writings were widely read in the Petrashevsky Circle.

2
the American War:
The American Civil War of 1861 — 65.

3
Princess Marya Alexevna won’t scold:
A reference to the concluding words of Famusov’s final monologue in Griboyedov’s
Woe
from
Wit
(Act 4, scene 15): ‘Ah! Good Lord! What will she say, /Princess Marya Alexevna!’

4
And I haven’t been able to leave ... conviction:
Here Ippolit expresses themes analogous to those of Lermontov’s poem ‘Thoughts’ (1838).

1
he suddenly had a dreadful desire to leave everything here:
Cf. John 8:23.

2
the French Archbishop Bourdaloue:
Louis Bourdaloue (1632 — 1704), a Jesuit and one of the most popular preachers during the reign of Louis XIV. There is a play on ‘Bordeaux’ (the wine) here.

1
poods:
A pood was equivalent to 16.38 kilos.

2
she had exceeding respect ... advice:
Alexandra’s name is derived from Greek
aleksindris,
meaning ‘protection, succour’.

3
pre-Famusov:
A reference to the hero of Griboyedov’s satirical play
Woe from Wit.

1
D‘Anthès:
Baron Georges D’Anthès, a Frenchman in the Russian army who spent too much time with Pushkin’s wife. Pushkin challenged him to a duel, was fatally wounded and died on 29 January 1837.

2
pay for the bottles:
A calque of the French idiom
payer bouteille.

3
the red cap:
I.e. a soldier’s cap. Duels were illegal in Russia until 1894, when they were permitted for army officers. From 1845, the punishment for duelling included reduction to the ranks.

1
zakuski:
Snacks, light refreshments, usually consumed with vodka.

2
‘in the sky the sun resounded’:
A reference to the beginning of the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ in Goethe’s
Faust:
‘Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise/In Brüdersphären Wettgesang’.