Novels, Tales, Journeys

24. General Bekovich: Fyodor Alexandrovich Bekovich-Cherkassky (1790–1835), a prince of Kabardian origin, served as a Russian general in the Caucasus.

25. And in goatskins…delight: A line from Book III of the Iliad.

26. The Prisoner of the Caucasus: An early “Byronic” narrative poem by Pushkin, published in 1822.

27. one traveler writes: The traveler was Nikolai Alexandrovich Nefedev (1800–1860), whose book Notes During a Trip to the Caucasus and Georgia in 1827 was published under the initials N. N. in 1829.

28. The Rape of Ganymede: Rembrandt’s painting (1635) from the Dresden Gallery shows a great eagle flying off with a grimacing little boy who is peeing between his legs as he is carried aloft. Pushkin would have known the painting from engravings, which were very popular at the time.

29. Pliny’s testimony: The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79) discusses the names of mountain passes in Book V, chapter 27, of his Natural History in XXXVII Books.

30. Count J. Potocki…Spanish novels: The Polish count and military engineer Jan Potocki (1761–1815) wrote books on his travels to Astrakhan and the Caucasus, as well as to Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco, but his fame rests on his “Spanish” novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1814), written in French.

31. Prince Kazbek…fugelman…Preobrazhensky regiment: Prince Kazbek is probably Gabriel Chopikashvili-Kazbegi, of the ruling family of the mountainous Kazbegi region in northeast Georgia, who remained loyal to Russia when the people of the region rebelled in the early nineteenth century. A fugelman (from the German flügelmann, “flank man” or “wing man”) was a well-trained soldier who was placed in front of a company at drill as a model for the others. For the Preobrazhensky regiment, see note 14 to The Moor of Peter the Great.

32. “holds up the heavenly vault”: A slightly altered quotation from the poem “A Half-Soldier” (1826), by Denis Davydov (see note 3 to “The Shot”).

33. Fazil Khan: Fazil Khan Sheyda (1784–1852), a Persian court poet and diplomat, was accompanying a diplomatic mission to Petersburg in 1829 when Pushkin met him. See following note.

34. Khozrev-Mirza: The young prince Khozrev-Mirza (1812–1878), grandson of the shah of Persia, led a mission to Petersburg to apologize for the destruction of the Russian ministry in Tehran and the murder of its minister plenipotentiary, the poet Alexander Griboedov (see note 7 to “The Blizzard”).

35. Rinaldo Rinaldini: See note 14 to Dubrovsky.

36. Kishinev: See note 2 to Kirdjali. The town had been under Ottoman rule since the sixteenth century.

37. Lalla Rookh: Pushkin quotes in English from the long poem Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance (1817), by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852).

38. Sankovsky…Tsitsianov…: Pavel Stepanovich Sankovsky (1798–1832) edited the Tiflis Gazette, the first Russian-language newspaper in the Caucasus. He met Pushkin on his way to Arzrum and became his great admirer. The Georgian prince Pavel Dmitrievich Tsitsianov (1754–1806), the hot-headed Russian military commander of Georgia, was killed in action at the siege of Baku.

39. Aga Mohammed: Aga Mohammed (1742–1797) was shah of Persia from 1789 until his murder in 1797. He succeeded in reuniting the territories of the Caucasus that had broken away during the previous centuries, and was known for the unusual cruelty of his actions, especially in the taking of Tiflis. It was he who moved the Persian capital to Tehran.

40. poor Clarence…Malaga: Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580), in his Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577), writes that the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of Richard III, “was cast into the Tower, and therewith adjudged for a traitor, and privily drowned in a butt of malmsey.” Shakespeare included this detail in Richard III (act 1, scene 4), which Pushkin read in French translation. Malmsey was a kind of Madeira, not Malaga.

41. Tbilis-kalar…“Hot City”: Pushkin’s error: the city was known as “Tbilis-kalak,” kalak being Georgian for “city.” The same error appears in A Geographical and Statistical Description of Georgia and the Caucasus, by the German author Ioann-Anton Guldenstedt (1745–1781), published in Russian translation in 1809, which Pushkin probably used.