Novels, Tales, Journeys

5. the Demut Inn: A small inn on the Moika Embankment in Petersburg, founded by Philipp-Jakob Demut of Strasbourg, very popular with Pushkin and the writers of his circle.

6. the Joy of the Afflicted: A church built in Petersburg between 1817 and 1820, named for the wonder-working icon of the Mother of God Joy of the Afflicted, the original of which is in the Church of the Transfiguration in Moscow.

7. Dmitriev’s wonderful ballad: See note 2 to The Moor of Peter the Great. In Dmitriev’s ballad “The Caricature” (1791), a conscripted soldier returns from years of service and learns from his servant Terentyich that his wife has run off to join a band of thieves.

“The Young Lady Peasant”

1. Bogdanovich: The poet Ippolit Fyodorovich Bogdanovich (1744–1803) was born of old Ukrainian aristocracy. His long comic poem Dushenka (1783), from which Pushkin quotes here, was modeled on La Fontaine’s Psyche (“Dushenka” in Russian).

2. But Russian grain won’t grow in foreign fashion: A line from the first of the Satires by Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Shakhovskoy (1777–1846), a prolific poet and playwright who remained neoclassical in the age of the romantics.

3. mortgage…courageous: Mortgaging one’s estate to the government was a newly instituted way of raising cash, which eventually left many landowners or their heirs deeply in debt or bankrupt.

4. Jean-Paul: Pen name of the prolific German writer Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825). Pushkin was reading him in a French translation: Pensées de Jean-Paul extraites de tous ces ouvrages (“Thoughts of Jean-Paul drawn from all his works”), a selection published in Paris in 1829.

5. neither in judgment nor in condemnation: Words echoing the Orthodox prayer before communion: “May the communion of Thy most holy mysteries be neither to my judgment nor to my condemnation, O Lord, but to the healing of soul and body.”

6. Pamela: That is, the English epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), which was a bestseller in its day.

7. Saint Friday: The third-century Greek martyr and saint Paraskeva was named by her parents after Holy Friday (paraskevi in Greek). The Russians added the Slavonic version of her name, Pyatnitsa, calling her Paraskeva-Pyatnitsa, and often dropped the first part: hence Svyataya Pyatnitsa, or “Saint Friday,” which sounds comical in Russian.

8. sleeves à l’imbécile: Very ample sleeves with small lead weights added near the elbows to make them hang down.

9. the Lancaster system: Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838) invented a system of mutual instruction, having more advanced pupils pass on what they had already learned to younger pupils. The system was widely used in the nineteenth century.

10. “Natalya, the Boyar’s Daughter”: A sentimental historical tale by the poet, writer, and historian Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766–1826), who was much admired by Pushkin.

11. Taras Skotinin: A character in Fonvizin’s The Dunce (see note 1 to The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin).

THE HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE OF GORYUKHINO (1830)

1. the New Grammar: The New Grammar, published in 1769 by Nikolai Gavrilovich Kurganov (1725–1796), professor of mathematics and navigation at Moscow University, had great influence on later Russian writers, Pushkin among them. Pyotr Grigorievich Plemyannikov (d. 1775) served as general under the empress Elizabeth I (1709–1762), the daughter of Peter the Great.

2. a new Niebuhr: Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831), German historian, was one of the founders of modern historiography.

3. zemstvo: The name, derived from zemlya (land, earth), for the local organization of peasants in a village or group of villages. It acquired a new official meaning after the reforms of Alexander II in 1864.

4. the year 1812: See note 3 to “The Blizzard.” “The twelve nations” in the next sentence refers to the alliance that formed the army of Napoleon.

5. Misanthropy and Repentance: A play by the German playwright and author August von Kotzebue (1761–1819), who also worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Russia and served for a time as Russian consul to Germany. His plays were popular among Russian audiences.