back in its place, man.
“Could my Father not provide me
With hosts of winged legions? Then,
Having touched not a hair upon my head,
My enemies would scatter without a trace.
“But the book of life has reached a page
Dearer than all that’s sacred.
What has been written must now be fulfilled.
Then let it be fulfilled. Amen.
“For the course of the ages is like a parable,
And can catch fire in its course.
In the name of its awful grandeur, I shall go
In voluntary suffering to the grave.
“I shall go to the grave, and on the third day rise,
And, just as rafts float down a river,
To me for judgment, like a caravan of barges,
The centuries will come floating from the darkness.”
NOTES
The notes that follow are indebted to the commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak in volume 4 of the Complete Collected Works in eleven volumes published by Slovo (Moscow, 2004). Biblical quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from the Revised Standard Version.
Book One
PART ONE
1. Memory Eternal: The chanted prayer of “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya Pamyat), asking God to remember the deceased, concludes the Orthodox funeral or memorial service (panikhida) and the burial service. Pasternak places it here to introduce the central theme of the novel. Psalm 24:1 (“The earth is the Lord’s …”) and the prayer “With the souls of the righteous dead, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant” come at the end of the burial service.
2. The Protection: Dating events by church feasts was customary in Russia (as elsewhere) until the early twentieth century, and even later. Pasternak alternates throughout the novel between civil and religious calendars. The feast of the Protective Veil (or Protection) of the Mother of God falls on October 1. The Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian state until 1917, followed the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, which have a difference of thirteen days between them. Thus October 1 by the Julian calendar is October 14 by the Gregorian calendar, and the October revolution of 1917 actually broke out on November 7.
3. The Kazan Mother of God: This feast, which commemorates the miracle-working icon of the Virgin found in Kazan in 1579, is celebrated on July 8/21.
4. zemstvo: A local council for self-government introduced by the reforms of the emperor Alexander II in 1864.
5. Tolstoyism and revolution: “Tolstoyism,” an anti-state, anti-church, egalitarian social doctrine of the kingdom of God on earth, to be achieved by means of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, was developed in the polemical writings of Leo Tolstoy and his disciples in the last decades of the nineteenth century. A number of revolutionary movements appeared during the same period in Russia, some more or less Marxist, others populist.
6. Soloviev: Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) was a poet, philosopher, and literary critic. His work, of major importance in itself, also exerted a strong influence on the poetry of the Russian symbolists and the thinkers of the religious-philosophical revival in the early twentieth century.
7. the capitals: The old capital of Russia was Moscow; St. Petersburg, founded by the emperor Peter the Great in 1703, became the new capital and remained so until the 1917 revolution. Exclusion from both capitals was a disciplinary measure taken against untrustworthy intellectuals under the old regime and again under Stalin.
PART TWO
1. The war with Japan …: The Russo-Japanese War (February 10, 1904—September 5, 1905), fought for control of Manchuria and the seas around Korea and Japan, ended in the unexpected defeat of Russia at the hands of the Japanese. The Russian situation was made more difficult by increasing social unrest within the country. On January 22, 1905, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” the Orthodox priest Gapon led a large but peaceful procession to the imperial palace in Petersburg to present a petition asking for reforms in the government. The procession was fired upon and many people were killed. Further disturbances then sprang up all across the country and spread to the armed forces. In August 1905 the emperor Nicholas II allowed the formation of a State Duma (national assembly). But the Duma’s powers were so limited that it satisfied none of the protesting parties, and in October came a general strike, as a result of which the emperor was forced to sign the so-called October Manifesto, which laid the foundations for a constitutional monarchy. This satisfied the Constitutional Democratic (CD) Party and other liberals, but not the more radical parties.
2. Yusupka … Kasimov bride: It was common until recently for Tartars like Gimazetdin Galiullin to work as yard porters in Russian apartment blocks. Gimazetdin’s son Osip (Yusupka) will play an important role later on. The Kasimov Bride (1879) is a historical novel by Vsevolod Soloviev (1849–1903), brother of the philosopher (see part 1, note 6). In the fifteenth century, the town of Kasimov, now in Riazan province, was the capital of the Kasimov Tartar kingdom.
3. Wafangkou: At the battle of Wafangkou (June 14–15, 1904), the Russian forces of General Stackelberg, who was attempting to relieve Port Arthur, were roundly defeated by the Japanese under General Oku.
4. Your dear … boy: An altered quotation from Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades (1890), with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the story by Alexander Pushkin.
5. a manifesto: The October Manifesto of 1905 (see note 1 above).
6. a papakha: A tall hat, usually of lambskin and often with a flat top, originating in the Caucasus.
7. Gorky … Witte: Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), a major figure in Russian literature and in the radical politics of the time, was one of a group of writers who wrote to inform the chairman of the council of ministers, Count Sergei Witte (1849–1915), of the peaceful character of Father Gapon’s demonstration on January 22, 1905 (see note 1 above). Witte, who brilliantly negotiated the peace with Japan in September 1905, was also the author of the October Manifesto.
8. The Meaning … Sonata: Leo Tolstoy’s story The Kreutzer
