Novels, Tales, Journeys

2. mirandole: A term in the card game of faro, meaning to play only one card at a time and not double your bets. Faro (pharaon) is a simple French gambling game in which a banker plays individually against any number of players and winning depends on the matching of cards. To stake en routé is to bet repeatedly on the same lucky card. Paroli means to double bets on the same card, indicated by bending down the corners of the card. To punt is to place a bet against the bank.

3. Richelieu: See note 7 to The Moor of Peter the Great.

4. the comte de Saint-Germain…Casanova: The comte de Saint-Germain (ca. 1712–1784) was a prominent figure in European society, a wealthy and well-educated man and an accomplished musician, who claimed to be the son of Francis II Rakóczi, Prince of Transylvania. Various myths arose about him, to do with his interest in mysticism and alchemy, his membership in secret societies, his being the Wandering Jew, a prophet, and an “Ascended Master.” Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725–1798), born in Venice, was also a notable figure in society, a libertine and womanizer, a friend of royalty and also of Voltaire, Goethe, and Mozart. He is remembered mainly for his autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (“The Story of My Life”), written in French—a vivid description of the mores of eighteenth-century Europe and of his own in particular.

5. Pushkin’s friend Denis Davydov (see note 3 to “The Shot”) wrote to him about this epigraph: “Good heavens, what a devilish memory! God knows, I once told you my reply to M. A. Naryshkina about les suivantes qui sont plus fraîches, and you set it down word for word as an epigraph to a chapter of The Queen of Spades.”

6. Bitter…Dante…stairs: A paraphrase of Paradiso XVII:58–60: Tu proverai sì come sa di sale / lo pane d’altrui, e come è duro calle / lo scendere e ‘l salir per altrui scale (“You will taste how salty / is another’s bread, and how hard a path it is / going down and up another’s stairs”).

7. two portraits…Mme Lebrun: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755–1842) was one of the finest portrait painters of her time. Her successful career in Paris was interrupted in 1789 by the French Revolution, after which she lived abroad until 1802, spending the years from 1795 to 1801 in Russia.

8. Leroy…Montgolfier…Mesmer: Julien Leroy (1686–1759) was a famous Parisian clockmaker; in 1739 he was named Royal Clockmaker to Louis XV. The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel (1740–1810) and Jacques-Etienne (1745–1799), invented the hot-air balloon, which made its first flight in 1783. Franz Mesmer (1734–1815), a German doctor, proposed a theory of the transfer of energy between the animate and the inanimate, which he called “animal magnetism” and which later became known as “mesmerism.”

9. Homme sans moeurs et sans religion!: The phrase, which was much in the air during the Enlightenment, has been attributed to Diderot and to Voltaire. In the dialogue Des devoirs de l’Homme et du Prince (“On the Duties of Man and Prince”), by Jaques Vernet (1698–1789), professor of theology and history in Geneva, Socrates speaks of “un homme sans religion et sans moeurs.”

10. Oubli ou regret: “Forget or regret.” A game that allowed ladies to choose a partner at a ball. They would secretly take the name of oubli or regret, approach the man, and pose the question. He would choose at random and then take the next dance with the lady who bore the name.

11. Swedenborg: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish scientist and inventor who later became a mystic and visionary reformer of Christianity. The epigraph, as is often the case with Pushkin, is a playful stylization.

12. the midnight Bridegroom: See Matthew 25:1–13, Christ’s parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Pushkin suggests an ironic parallel between the Bridegroom and Hermann.

13. “Attendez!”: “Wait!” in French. In the original, Pushkin uses the Russified French word Atandé, used in faro when a player wants to change his stake before the betting is closed. In the epigraph, the aristocratic banker takes offense at the tone of it.

KIRDJALI (1834)

1. Ypsilanti…insurrection: See note 4 to “The Shot.”

2. Georgi Kantakuzin: A Greek prince, one of the notable participants in the Greek uprising. Pushkin met him when he was serving in Kishinev during the early 1820s. Kishinev, now the capital of Moldova, had recently been annexed by Russia from Turkey.