The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

10. Amalthea’s horn: That is, the horn of plenty. In Greek mythology, the goddess or goat-goddess Amalthea saved the infant Zeus from being devoured by his father Cronus by hiding him and nursing him on goat’s milk in a cave. Zeus accidentally broke off the goat’s (or goddess’s) horn, which then became a source of perpetual abundance.

11. an old antlion: A fantastic animal described in the medieval Russian Physiologist as having the front parts of a lion and the rear parts of an ant—probably a fanciful misinterpretation of the Latin myrmeleontid.

12. Belial: In the Old and New Testaments, Belial is one of the four princes of Hell, a demon of wickedness or impurity, or sometimes Satan himself.

13. passports: Russians were, and still are, required to have “internal passports” when moving from their registered place of residence.

14. Herodias: See Mark 6:17–29 and Matthew 14:1–12. Herodias was the wife of the tetrarch Herod Antipas; when John the Baptist condemned their marriage, she contrived by means of her daughter Salome to have his head brought to her on a platter.

15. the prophet Amos: “…   they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes” (Amos 2:6).

16. the prophets … earth: “And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; for these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth” (Revelation 11:10).

17. prayer book of Pyotr Mogila: Pyotr (Petro, or Peter) Mogila (1596–1646), bishop and then metropolitan of Kiev, was a major figure in the history of the Orthodox Church under Polish domination and among other things undertook an important printing program. His Trebnik (“Prayer Book”), published in 1646, contained the texts of all the Orthodox rites and services.

18. Ushakov … Rublev … Paramshin: Semyon Ushakov (1626–86), icon painter and theorist, was the most well-known of the newer “proto-Baroque” painters from the time of Nikon’s reforms (see note 6 to “Lady Macbeth”) and enjoyed the favor of the royal family. He was also a secular artist. Andrei Rublev (ca. 1360–ca. 1430) is considered the greatest Russian icon painter and the glory of the Moscow school. He was canonized by the Orthodox Church in 1988. Paramshin (or Paramsha) was a well-known silver- and goldsmith of the fourteenth century; in 1356 he made a gilded icon and cross for the grand prince of Moscow, which was remembered for several generations afterwards in the wills of the ruling family.

19. folding icons … he sold it: Folding icons were mainly intended for travelers. In Leskov’s time, this particular folding icon was wrongly dated to the thirteenth century; later it was shown to have been painted no earlier than the second half of the seventeenth century. It was actually bought by an Italian archaeologist from a relative of the father confessor of Peter the Great, who had given it to him.

20. Prince Potemkin … as a Jew: Grigory Potemkin (1739–91) was a Russian general and statesman, a favorite of the empress Catherine the Great, who made him governor general of the newly acquired southern provinces of Russia and gave him the title of Prince of Taurida. The reference to “Christ … depicted as a Jew” is probably to the painting Christ in the Desert (1872), by Ivan Kramskoy (1837–87), one of the founders of the group known as the Peredvizhniki (“Wanderers”), who broke with the conventions of academic painting in the 1860s.

21. Joseph’s lament: The lines that follow are from an anonymous spiritual song of the same title belonging to Russian oral tradition and dating approximately to the sixteenth century. The story of Joseph is told in Genesis 37–45.

22. with one mouth and one heart: These words come from the prayer preceding the reciting of the Creed in the Orthodox liturgy. Levonty suffers because he feels separated from the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” mentioned in the Creed.

23. the gates of Aristotle … the same view as theirs: The Gates of Aristotle was the title of a collection of apocryphal sayings, which was condemned by the Church in 1551, but continued to circulate in Russia until the eighteenth century. Remphan is mentioned in Acts 7:43 (“Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Remphan, figures which you made to worship them”). The words, with slight changes, come from Amos 5:26.

24. All the earth … dwell in it: A slightly altered version of Psalm 24:1 (“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”).