Dead Souls - By Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol Page 0,185
country, I think that they would have been less prone to take offence at the coldness of my attitude, but would have sacrificed their feelings and their personality to their superior convictions. For hardly can it be that I failed to note their overtures and the loftiness of their motives, or that I would not have accepted any wise and useful advice proffered. At the same time, it is for a subordinate to adapt himself to the tone of his superior, rather than for a superior to adapt himself to the tone of his subordinate. Such a course is at once more regular and more smooth of working, since a corps of subordinates has but one director, whereas a director may have a hundred subordinates. But let us put aside the question of comparative culpability. The important point is, that before us all lies the duty of rescuing our fatherland. Our fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of alien tongues, but from our own acts, in that, in addition to the lawful administration, there has grown up a second administration possessed of infinitely greater powers than the system established by law. And that second administration has established its conditions, fixed its tariff of prices, and published that tariff abroad; nor could any ruler, even though the wisest of legislators and administrators, do more to correct the evil than limit it in the conduct of his more venal tchinovniks by setting over them, as their supervisors, men of superior rectitude. No, until each of us shall come to feel that, just as arms were taken up during the period of the upheaval of nations, so now each of us must make a stand against dishonesty, all remedies will end in failure. As a Russian, therefore—as one bound to you by consanguinity and identity of blood—I make to you my appeal. I make it to those of you who understand wherein lies nobility of thought. I invite those men to remember the duty which confronts us, whatsoever our respective stations; I invite them to observe more closely their duty, and to keep more constantly in mind their obligations of holding true to their country, in that before us the future looms dark, and that we can scarcely...."
* * *
FOOTNOTES:
1 (return)
[ Essays on Russian Novelists. Macmillan.]
2 (return)
[ Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature. Duckworth and Co.]
3 (return)
[ This is generally referred to in the Russian criticisms of Gogol as a quotation from Jeremiah. It appears upon investigation, however, that it actually occurs only in the Slavonic version from the Greek, and not in the Russian translation made direct from the Hebrew.]
4 (return)
[ An urn for brewing honey tea.]
5 (return)
[ An urn for brewing ordinary tea.]
6 (return)
[ A German dramatist (1761-1819) who also filled sundry posts in the service of the Russian Government.]
7 (return)
[ Priest's wife.]
8 (return)
[ In this case the term General refers to a civil grade equivalent to the military rank of the same title.]
9 (return)
[ An annual tax upon peasants, payment of which secured to the payer the right of removal.]
10 (return)
[ Cabbage soup.]
11 (return)
[ Three horses harnessed abreast.]
12 (return)
[ A member of the gentry class.]
13 (return)
[ Pieces equal in value to twenty-five kopecks (a quarter of a rouble).]
14 (return)
[ A Russian general who, in 1812, stoutly opposed Napoleon at the battle of Borodino.]
15 (return)
[ The late eighteenth century.]
16 (return)
[ Forty Russian pounds.]
17 (return)
[ To serve as blotting-paper.]
18 (return)
[ A liquor distilled from fermented bread crusts or sour fruit.]
19 (return)
[ That is to say, a distinctively Russian name.]
20 (return)
[ A jeering appellation which owes its origin to the fact that certain Russians cherish a prejudice against the initial character of the word—namely, the Greek theta, or TH.]
21 (return)
[ The great Russian general who, after winning fame in the Seven Years' War, met with disaster when attempting to assist the Austrians against the French in 1799.]
22 (return)
[ A kind of large gnat.]
23 (return)
[ A copper coin worth five kopecks.]
24 (return)
[ A Russian general who fought against Napoleon, and was mortally wounded at Borodino.]
25 (return)
[ Literally, "nursemaid."]
26 (return)
[ Village factor or usurer.]
27 (return)
[ Subordinate government officials.]
28 (return)
[ Nevertheless Chichikov would appear to have erred, since most people would make the sum amount to twenty-three roubles, forty kopecks. If so, Chichikov cheated himself of one rouble, fifty-six kopecks.]
29 (return)
[ The names Kariakin and Volokita might, perhaps, be translated as "Gallant" and "Loafer."]
30 (return)
[ Tradesman or citizen.]
31 (return)
[ The game of knucklebones.]
32 (return)
[ A sort of low, four-wheeled carriage.]
33 (return)
[ The system by which, in annual rotation, two-thirds of a given area are cultivated, while the remaining third is left fallow.]
34 (return)
[ Public Prosecutor.]
35 (return)
[ To reproduce this story with a raciness worthy of the Russian original is practically impossible. The translator has not attempted the task.]
36 (return)
[ One of the mistresses of Louis XIV. of France. In 1680 she wrote a book called Reflexions sur la Misericorde de Dieu, par une Dame Penitente.]
37 (return)
[ Four-wheeled open carriage.]
38 (return)
[ Silver five kopeck piece.]
39 (return)
[ A silver quarter rouble.]
40 (return)
[ In the days of serfdom, the rate of forced labour—so many hours or so many days per week—which the serf had to perform for his proprietor.]
41 (return)
[ The Elder.]
42 (return)
[ The Younger.]
43 (return)
[ Secondary School.]
44 (return)
[ The desiatin = 2.86 English acres.]
45 (return)
[ "One more makes five."]
46 (return)
[ Dried spinal marrow of the sturgeon.]
47 (return)
[ Long, belted Tartar blouses.]
48 (return)
[ Village commune.]
49 (return)
[ Landowner.]
50 (return)
[ Here, in the original, a word is missing.]
51 (return)
[ Dissenters or Old Believers: i.e. members of the sect which refused to accept the revised version of the Church Service Books promulgated by the Patriarch Nikon in 1665.]