St. Peter's fast: the fast from Trinity until St. Peter's day, June 29 (Julian Calendar); depending on when Trininty fell, the fast could last from 8 days to 6 weeks
eat Lenten oil: oil that has no animal fat
Mount Athos: a Greek Orthodox monastery in Greece; no females, even female animals, are premitted there
twelve great holy days: the 12 major holidays of the Russian Orthodox Church
Molokanism: a religious sect that arose around 1765; their name comes from their practice of drinking milk during Lent
Day of Forgiveness: the last Sunday before Lent, when Orthodox Russians asked each other to forgive them
voice crying in the wilderness: Isaiah 40:3
Alexander I: Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) became Tsar in 1801
Old Believer: someone who adhered to the ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church as practiced before the 17th century reforms
Flagellant: a religious sect that arose in the 17th century; they repudiated priests and much of the Orthodox Church, and tended to favor clean, white clothes
thy brother: Matthew 5:24
camel: see Matthew 19:24
Marya's poor orphans: the Office of the Instituions of the Empress Mariya was a foundation in memory of the Empress Mariya Feodorovna (1759-1829) which administered girls' schools and orphanages throughout Russia
Yegory's Day: April 23
I didn't know you, so you'll be rich: Russian folklore is that failure to recognize a person whom one knows means that the person will become rich
Due in Sahalin: Due was a small coal-mining town; Sakhalin, in the Russian Far East, was an island used as a penal colony
Gulf of Tartary: body of water separating Sakhalin from the mainland
Yashka: an insulting nickname, similar to the names masters used for their serfs
settler: convicts usually had to stay in the area of the prison even after completing their sentences; other settlers were exiles who never actually served prison time
* * *
Ariadne
by Anton Chekhov
ON the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa to Sevastopol, a rather good-looking gentleman, with a little round beard, came up to me to smoke, and said:
'Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? Whenever Germans or Englishmen get together, they talk about the crops, the price of wool, or their personal affairs. But for some reason or other when we Russians get together we never discuss anything but women and abstract subjects -- but especially women.'
This gentleman's face was familiar to me already. We had returned from abroad the evening before in the same train, and at Volotchisk when the luggage was being examined by the Customs, I saw him standing with a lady, his travelling companion, before a perfect mountain of trunks and baskets filled with ladies' clothes, and I noticed how embarrassed and downcast he was when he had to pay duty on some piece of silk frippery, and his companion protested and threatened to make a complaint. Afterwards, on the way to Odessa, I saw him carrying little pies and oranges to the ladies' compartment.
It was rather damp; the vessel swayed a little, and the ladies had retired to their cabins.
The gentleman with the little round beard sat down beside me and continued:
'Yes, when Russians come together they discuss nothing but abstract subjects and women. We are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter nothing but truths and can discuss only questions of a lofty order. The Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity even in a farce. We're just the same: when we have got to talk of trifles we treat them only from an exalted point of view. It comes from a lack of boldness, sincerity, and simplicity. We talk so often about women, I fancy, because we are dissatisfied. We take too ideal a view of women, and make demands out of all proportion with what reality can give us; we get something utterly different from what we want, and the result is dissatisfaction, shattered hopes, and inward suffering, and if any one is suffering, he's bound to talk of it. It does not bore you to go on with this conversation?
'No, not in the least.'
'In that case, allow me to introduce myself,' said my companion, rising from his seat a little:
'Ivan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner of a sort. . . . You I know very well.'
He sat down and went on, looking at me with a genuine and friendly expression:
'A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau, would explain these incessant conversations about women as a form of erotic madness, or would put it down to our having been slave-owners and so on; I take quite a different view of it. I repeat, we are dissatisfied because we are idealists. We want the creatures who bear us and our children to be superior to us and to everything in the world. When we are young we adore and poeticize those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms. Among us in Russia marriage without love is despised, sensuality is ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women are beautiful, poetical, and exalted; and if the Russian has been for years in ecstasies over Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble is that when we have been married or been intimate with a woman for some two or three years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again -- disappointment, again -- repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undeveloped, cruel -- in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably inferior to us men. And in our dissatisfaction and disappointment there is nothing left for
