Stories

surface.

12. In The Brothers Karamazov (Part I, Book 1, chapter 4) Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov does indeed produce a variant of Voltaire’s famous saying: Si Dieu n? existait pas, il faudrait l’ inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”).

13. The Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic (412?–323 B.C.) came to Athens from his native Sinope as a penniless vagabond and was so scornful of wealth and social convention that he lived in a barrel.

14. Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A.D.), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, taught the wisdom of self-restraint and indifference to both pleasure and pain.

15. See Matthew 26:39 (also Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42).

16. The itinerary includes some of the standard tourist sights in Moscow. The Iverskaya icon of the Mother of God was an ancient miracle-working icon which, in Chekhov’s time, was kept in a specially built chapel between the arches of the Iversky Gate at the entrance to Red Square; it disappeared soon after the revolution. Zamoskvorechye is the part of Moscow across the river from the Kremlin. The Rumiantsev Museum was the first public museum in Russia, opened in the early nineteenth century in Pashkov House; it contained anthropological collections, books, manuscripts, antiquities, and paintings.

17. A reference to the phrase “and out of me burdock will grow,” spoken by Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), which became proverbial in Russia (see note 3 to “A Boring Story”).

18. “Bad tone” (French), meaning socially unacceptable.

19. See Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”

THE BLACK MONK

1. Lines from Evgeny Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), used in the opera of the same name composed by P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840–93).

2. Gaetano Braga (1829–1907), Italian cellist and composer, was best known for his salon composition La Serenata, which was arranged for various instruments.

3. The words are a quotation from Poltava, a long poem by Pushkin. Kochubey, who appears in the poem, was a wealthy Ukrainian landowner.

4. “Let the other side be heard” and “sufficient for an intelligent man” (Latin).

5. See John 14:2.

6. “A sound mind in a sound body” (Latin), from the tenth Satire of the Roman poet Juvenal (c. 65–128 A.D.).

7. A two-week fast period preceding the feast of the Dormition on August 15.

8. Polycrates (d. 522 B.C.), tyrant of Samos, after enjoying forty years of happiness, became worried that his luck would not hold out. He thought he might bribe fate by throwing a precious ring into the sea, but it was found in the belly of a fish and brought back to him. Soon after that Samos was taken by the Persian general Orontes, and Polycrates was crucified.

9. See the first Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, 5:16.

10. July 20.

11. Kovrin confuses two stories here: Herod ordered the slaughter of all the male children under two years old in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16–18); the Egyptian “first-born” were smitten by the Lord as a sign to Pharaoh that he should let Moses lead the people of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12:29–32).

ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE

1. See note 11 to “Ward No. 6.”

2. The feast of St. John the Theologian, author of the fourth Gospel, is celebrated on May 8, and the feast of the relics of St. Nicholas (see note 5 to “Easter Night”) on May 9, commemorating the “rescue” of the saint’s relics a few days before the Turkish invasion of Myra in the eleventh century and their safe transfer to the Italian town of Bari, where they now lie.

THE STUDENT

1. Good Friday, commemorating the Passion of Christ, is a day of total fast.

2. Rurik (d. 879), a Viking chief, was invited by the people of Novgorod to become their prince, thus founding the first ruling dynasty of Russia; Ivan IV, the Terrible (Ioann is the Old Slavonic form of the name), born in 1530, ruled Russia from 1547 to 1584 and was the first to adopt the title of tsar; Peter I, the Great (1672–1725), the first to adopt the title of emperor, extended the power of Russia considerably and built the new capital of St. Petersburg.

3. According to an old Russian superstition, a person not immediately recognized by face or voice is destined to become rich.

4. A composite reading of twelve passages from the four Gospels describing the Crucifixion is part of the matins of Holy Friday, sometimes referred to simply as “the Twelve Gospels.” The student gives his own summary of some of the readings in what follows.

ANNA ON THE NECK

1. Not a real pilgrimage, but a visit to a monastery, where hotel rooms could be had more cheaply than elsewhere.

2. The Order of St. Anna, named for the mother of the Virgin Mary, was founded in 1735 by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, in honor of his wife Anna Petrovna, daughter of the Russian emperor Peter the Great. It had four degrees, two civil and two military: the decoration for the first civil degree was worn on a ribbon around the neck, for the second, in the buttonhole.

3. Shchi (cabbage soup) and kasha (buckwheat gruel) were the most common Russian peasant dishes.

4. The Order of St. Vladimir, named for St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev (956?–1015), who converted Russia to Christianity in 988 A.D., was founded by the empress Catherine the Great in 1782 and was generally awarded for long-term civil service.

THE HOUSE WITH THE