Novels, Tales, Journeys

2. Tula: A city some 120 miles south of Moscow, known since the twelfth century for its metalwork—samovars, cutlery, firearms, seals—and also for its gingerbread and accordions.

3. 1812: On June 24, 1812, Napoleon ordered the Grande Armée to cross the River Nemen and the French invasion of Russia began.

4. Borodino: The town of Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow, was the scene of a bloody and indecisive battle between the French and Russian armies, the costliest in the Napoleonic Wars, fought on September 7, 1812. It was the last offensive action of the French.

5. Artemisia: Artemisia II of Caria (d. 350 BC) became ruler of Caria at the death of her husband, Mausolus, in commemoration of whom she built the splendid Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Her grief made her an example of pure marital devotion for later artists and writers.

6. “Vive Henri-Quatre”…Joconde: The song “Vive Henri-Quatre” (“Long Live Henry IV”) dates back to the time of the king himself (1553–1610); it gained new popularity in the comedy The Hunting Party of Henri IV (1770), by the French playwright Charles Collé (1709–1783), and is sung by French prisoners towards the end of War and Peace. Joconde (1814) is a comic opera by the French-Maltese composer Nicolas (Nicolò) Isouard (1773–1818).

7. “And into the air their bonnets threw”: A line from the comedy Woe from Wit (1825), the first true masterpiece of Russian theater, by Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov (1795–1829), poet, playwright, and diplomat.

8. the two capitals: A customary way of referring to the old capital, Moscow, and the new capital, St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1703.

9. a St. George in his buttonhole: The Order of St. George is the highest military order in Russia, established by Catherine the Great in 1769.

10. Se amor non è…: The opening words of sonnet 132 from the Canzoniere of Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374); the full line is S’amor non è, che dunque e quel ch’io sento? (“If it is not love, what then is it that I feel?”).

11. grande patience: A form of solitaire.

12. St. Preux: The middle-class private tutor who falls in love with his aristocratic pupil, Julie, in the epistolary novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

“The Coffin-Maker”

1. Derzhavin: See note 10 to The Moor of Peter the Great. The epigraph is from his poem “The Waterfall” (1794), in memory of Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin (1739–1791), general and favorite of Catherine the Great.

2. Pogorelsky’s postman…the former capital: The reference is to a story from the collection The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia (1828), by Anton Pogorelsky, pseudonym of Count Alexei Alexeevich Perovsky (1787–1836). The “former capital” is Moscow (see note 8 to “The Blizzard”); the city was burned down during the Napoleonic Wars.

3. “with a poleaxe…cuirass”: The quotation is from the tale in verse “The Female Fool Pakhomovna,” by Alexander Izmailov (1779–1831).

4. whose face seemed bound in red morocco: A slightly altered quotation from the comedy The Braggart (1786), by Yakov Borisovich Knyazhnin (1742–1791). Knyazhnin was a famous playwright during the reign of Catherine the Great, the son-in-law and successor to Sumarokov (see note 11 to The History of the Village of Goryukhino).

5. The deceased woman lay on the table: It was customary for a dead person to be laid in state on a table until the coffin was brought.

“The Stationmaster”

1. Prince Vyazemsky: Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky (1792–1878), one of Pushkin’s closest friends, was himself a poet and writer. The epigraph is a slightly altered quotation from his poem “The Post-Station.”

2. the bandits of Murom: The dense forest near the old town of Murom, on the Oka River southeast of Moscow, was notorious for harboring bandits. The town was also the home of the most famous hero of medieval Russian epic poetry, Ilya Muromets.

3. the fourteenth class: Collegiate registrar, mentioned in the epigraph, was the lowest of the fourteen ranks of the Russian imperial civil service established by Peter the Great.

4. the prodigal son: Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, from the Gospel of Luke (15:11–32), forms an ironic backdrop to Pushkin’s story.