The Brothers Karamazov

^[313]and various little vaudevilles ... Khlestakov: the quoted line is spoken by Khlestakov, the impostor-hero of Gogol’s comedy The Inspector-General (1836).

^[314] Je pense donc je suis: “I think, therefore I am,” the well-known phrase of the philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650).

^[315]a certain department .... see note 5 to page 555 in section 4.10.6.

^[316]rejected all ...: the quoted words are spoken by Repetilov in Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit (see note 1 to page 221 in section 2.5.1)

^[317] the ‘mellowing . . .’: a commonplace in the eighteenth-century debate on the progress of civilization.

^[318] the desert fathers ...: first line of a poem by Pushkin (1836) that goes on to paraphrase the fourth-century Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, recited in weekday services during the Great Lent.

^[319]the actor Gorbunov: I. F. Gorbunov (1831-96), a personal friend of Dostoevsky, also a writer and talented improvisor.

^[320] Ah, mon père ...: “Ah, father, it is such pleasure for him, and so little trouble for me.” This witticism goes back to an anonymous epigram on the French actress Jeanne-Catherine Gaussain (1711-67).

^[321]greatand beautiful: again, see note 2 to page 71 in section 1.2.6.

^[322] Belinsky: see note 3 to page 555 in section 4.10.6.

^[323]Idid think ...: Dostoevsky plays in this passage on the names of certain decorations and of certain publications: the “Lion and Sun” was a Persian order, which might be awarded to a Russian serving in the Caucasus; the “North Star” was a Swedish order, but also a Russian radical almanac; “Sinus,” the Dog Star, is also the hero of Voltaire’s Micro-mégas (1752), The devil teases Ivan with being a liberal.

^[324]Mephistopheles . . .: see Goethe, Faust, part 1, lines 1335-36.

^[325] à la Heine: Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German poet and essayist of irreverent wit.

^[326] Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!: “Ah, but how stupid, really!”

^[327]Luther’sinkstand: it is said that Martin Luther (1483-1546) was tempted by the devil while translating the Bible and threw his inkstand at him.

^[328]Monsieur sait-il ...: “Does the gentleman know what the weather is like? One wouldn’t put a dog outside . . “The first half of a joke, the punch line being: “Yes, but you are not a dog.” The whole joke appears in Dostoevsky’s notebooks of 1876-77.

^[329]Le mot de l’énigme: “the key to the riddle.”

^[330] the doors of heaven open: see Revelation 4:1.

^[331] Herrnhufer or “Moravian Brother”: the Herrnhufers emerged as a religious sect in eighteenth-century Saxony and subsequently spread to Russia. Their beliefs were rooted in the teachings of the fifteenth-century Moravian Brethren.

^[332]Gott der Vater ...: Herzenstube teaches Mitya to say “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” in German.

^[333]Bread and circuses!: in Latin, panem etcircenses; bitter words addressed by the poet Juvenal (65?-128 a.d.) to the Romans of the decadent period (Satires 10.81).

^[334]Le diable . . .: see note 10 to page 641 in section 4.11.9.

^[335]then he criedout with a frenzied cry: a Hebraism reminiscent of the cries of those possessed by evil spirits; cf. Acts 8:6-7, Luke 8:28, Matthew 8:29, Mark 9:26.

^[336]”accursed” questions: God versus reason, human destiny, the future of Russia, and so forth; questions that concerned Dostoevsky himself (see Terras, p. 412).

^[337]new open courts . . .: the judicial reform of 1864 introduced public jury trials in Russia.

^[338]least Hamletian question . . .: refers to Hamlet 3.1.78; not a quotation.

^[339]he livedamong us: first line of Pushkin’s poem to the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855).

^[340]A great writer ... comparison: the line “Ah, troika . . .” comes from Gogol’s Dead Souls, Sobakevich, Nozdryov, and Chichikov are the grotesque heroes of the novel.

^[341]like to the sun ...: a line from the ode “God” (1784) by the great Russian poet G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816).

^[342]aprèsmoi le déluge: “after me the flood,” attributed to Louis XV, and also to his favorite, the Marquise de Pompadour.

^[343]dark mysticism ... witless chauvinism: criticisms often leveled at Dostoevsky by his opponents, here treated good-humoredly.

^[344]what lies beyond: see note 3 to page 694 in section 4.12.6.