Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,234

of Khlestakov, impostor-hero of Gogol’s comedy Revizor (“The Inspector General”).

IN EXILE

1. See note 21 to “A Boring Story.”

WARD NO. 6

1. These “calendars” included edifying little stories and helpful advice as well as the days of the year.

2. See note 7 to “Small Fry.”

3. The Swedish Order of the Polar Star was also awarded in Russia.

4. The zemstvo was an elective provincial council with powers of local government; it came to be very important for reform-minded Russians in the latter nineteenth century.

5. See note 3 to “Easter Night.”

6. The 1860s in Russia were a period when liberalism became radicalized and the material and practical were exalted above the ideal.

7. See note 2 to “A Boring Story.”

8. “In the future” (Latin).

9. The French biochemist Louis Pasteur (1822–95) and the German doctor and microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910) were pioneers in the study of microbes and contagious diseases. Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacillus.

10. Mt. Elbrus in Georgia, at 18,481 feet, is the highest peak of the Caucasus and the highest mountain in Europe.

11. An old-fashioned method of treatment for various respiratory ailments, which consisted in applying a number of small heated glasses to the patient’s back. The heat would cause suction and draw the blood to the 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