The Adolescent

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  3. Kutya (accented on the last syllable) is a special dish offered to people in church at the end of a memorial service, and in some places on Christmas Eve, made from rice, barley, or wheat and raisins, sweetened with honey.

  4. This day of commemoration of the dead, also known as Krasnaya gorka (“Pretty Little Hill”), falls on the Tuesday following Saint Thomas’s Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter. The Russian name probably comes from the custom of decorating the graves (“little hills”) for the occasion.

  5. In Part Three of both editions of The Adolescent published during Dostoevsky’s lifetime, the name of this character changes from Darya Onisimovna to Nastasya Egorovna. The same shift occurs in the notebooks for the novel, and evidently slipped from there into the final draft and hence into print. We follow the definitive Russian edition in preserving the change.

  6. See Part Two, note 5.

  7. Saint Mary of Egypt, a fifth-century saint greatly venerated in Orthodoxy, was a prostitute who was miraculously converted and spent the last forty-seven years of her life in the desert, in prayer and repentance.

  8. The merchant’s name, though a plausible one in Russian, is suggestive of his character: it means “cattle slaughterer.”

  9. There are twelve great feasts in the Orthodox liturgical year.

  10. A “holy fool” (or “fool in God,” or “fool for Christ’s sake”—yurodivy in Russian) is a saintly person or ascetic whose saintliness is expressed in a certain “folly” of behavior. Holy fools were known early in Christian tradition. However, the term may also be applied to a harmless village idiot.

  11. A distorted quotation of the Epistle of Jude: “hating even the garment spotted by the flesh” (Jude 23).

  12. Cenobitic order means a life in common (from the Greek koinobion, “common life”) for all the monks in a monastery, as opposed to the “idiorhythmic” life in which each monk is responsible for his own maintenance.

  13. In the Orthodox Church, young children are allowed to take communion without prior preparation, but after a certain age they are expected to prepare, like adults, by attendance at services, confession, and fasting.

  14. In Orthodox piety, the “gift of tears” is a sign of profound spiritual development. In The Brothers Karamazov the elder Zosima will say: “Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears.”

  15. In the Book of Job, God in his wager with Satan allows him to destroy Job’s seven sons and three daughters. Having won the wager by proving Job’s righteousness, God gives him another seven sons and three daughters. It is never said, however, that Job “forgot the former ones.”

  16. A nobleman convicted of a crime would be stripped of his legal and hereditary rights, but it was possible to have them restored in return for service to the state, for instance, in one of the new Russian “colonies” in Turkestan, which was being settled at the time.

  17. Arkhangelsk is in the northwest of Russia on the White Sea; Kholmogory is a small village about fifty miles south of Arkhangelsk on the Dvina River.

  18. The German title Kammerjunker (“gentleman of the bedchamber”) was adopted by the Russian court. It was a high distinction for a young man.

  19. This is an example of the long fellow’s (or Dostoevsky’s) absurd humor: the French often substitute a w for a v in writing German or Russian names, but the w is still pronounced as a v. However, Arkady’s name transliterated into French would be “Dolgorouky,” not “Dolgorowky.” What’s more, the long fellow obviously pronounces his fanciful version “Dolgorovky,” which is why Arkady thinks he has said “Korovkin.”

  20. The Journal des débats was a French daily newspaper founded in 1789 and continuously published until 1944, always with a moderate liberal tendency; the Indépendance belge was published in Brussels from 1830 to 1937.

  21. In Russian, the German Junker, meaning “young lord,” referred to a lower officer’s rank open only to the nobility.

  22. That is, Bolshaya Morskaya Street, which runs from Palace Square to Senate Square in Petersburg, parallel to the Moyka River. It was a wealthy street with many fine houses on it, including the mansion belonging to Vladimir Nabokov’s family.

  23. Noël-François-Alfred Madier de Montjau (1814–1892) was a French lawyer who became a people’s representative after the establishment of the Second Republic in 1848. Banished following Napoleon III’s coup d’état in 1852, his name became news again in 1874, when his election as a deputy of the extreme left caused a considerable stir. The “current Parisian events” were the declaration of the Third Republic, the elections, and the drafting of a new constitution. The Poles, who had been under Russian domination since the partition of Poland in 1772, were often ardent republican sympathizers.

  24. An imprecise quotation from the poem “I feel dull and sad . . .” by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841).

  25. The monumental two-part drama by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1852), based on the much older legend of the philosopher Faust, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for earthly power. Gretchen is a young girl seduced and abandoned by Faust.

  26. The first words (and title) of the great hymn from the missa pro defunctis (requiem mass): Dies irae, dies illa / solvet saeclum in favilla, / teste David cum Sibylla (“Day of wrath, day that will / dissolve the world to burning coals, / as witnessed David and the Sibyl”), a meditation on the Last Judgment attributed to Tommaso da Celano (1190–1260), one of the first disciples and also the first biographer of Saint Francis of Assisi.

  27. Alessandro Stradella (1644–1682) was an Italian singer and composer of cantatas, operas, oratorios, and instrumental music.

  28. In the Orthodox liturgy, these words are sung by the choir at the end of the Cherubic Hymn, which accompanies the entrance of the priest bearing the bread and wine of the eucharist: “Let us lay aside all earthly cares . . . That we may receive the King of all, who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” Trishatov recites the scene in the cathedral from the opera Faust, by French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893), but adds his own uplifting “hosanna” at the end.

  29. This famous phrase comes from the book What Is Property? (1840), by the French socialist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865).

  30. Alexander Herzen (1812–1870), a radical publicist and an acquaintance of Dostoevsky’s in the 1840s, went into self-imposed exile in 1847. In London, from 1857 to 1869, he published a revolutionary Russian-language weekly called The Bell, and also wrote two important books: From the Other Shore , a series of letters on socialism, and My Past and Thoughts.

  31. See Part One, note 21.

  32. Dostoevsky first intended this dream for the chapter entitled “At Tikhon’s” in his previous novel, Demons (1871–1872). That chapter was suppressed by his publisher, and the dream was then reincorporated into The Adolescent with modifications. Dostoevsky knew this painting from his own visits to the Dresden Pinakothek. Claude Gellée, called Le Lorrain (1600–1682), was a master of sun and light, and one of the greatest French painters of landscape. The Sicilian shepherd Acis, who was loved by the nymph Galatea, was crushed under a huge rock by the jealous cyclops Polyphemus. The cyclops in the picture makes the age a little less golden than Versilov likes to think.

  33. The allusions are to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the burning of the Tuileries (and much of the Louvre) in Paris under the Commune (1871).

  34. Pétroleurs were incendiaries who used oil or kerosene (pétrole) to start fires.

  35. The reference is to the poem “Frieden” (“Peace”), from the cycle Die Nordsee (“The North Sea”) in Das Buch der Lieder (“The Book of Songs”), by the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), which describes Christ’s return to earth and the regeneration of people under his love. Versilov (or Dostoevsky) changes the North Sea to the Baltic.

  36. Versilov is probably referring to the soliloquy that opens Act V, Scene ii of Othello (“It is
the cause, it is the cause, my soul”), not Othello’s last speech in lines 338–56 of the same scene (“Soft you! A word or two before you go”). “Evgeny at Tatyana’s feet ” refers to stanza XLI in the eighth and final chapter of Pushkin’s novel in verse Evgeny Onegin. The episode from Les Misérables (Part Two, Book Three) describes the meeting of the little girl Cosette with the escaped convict Jean Valjean.

  37. It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table while waiting for the coffin to be prepared.

  38. A panikhida is a memorial service for the dead, which may be held before as well as after the actual burial service.

  39. See Part Two, note 25. The Old Believers, in their wish to hold on to all that had characterized the Russian Orthodox Church before the reforms of the patriarch Nikon, managed to preserve some of the finest old Russian icons.

  40. See Part Two, note 28. As is often the case with Arkady’s allusions, the story of Abishag has no relation at all to what he is describing here.

  41. A vogue for spiritualism, or spiritism, as it was originally called, swept through upper-class Europe, including the courts, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when mediums and table-rapping séances became socially respectable. Tolstoy also refers mockingly to the vogue for spiritism in Anna Karenina, which was written at the same period as The Adolescent.

  42. The von Sohn murder trial caused a stir in Petersburg in 1869– 1870. The elderly von Sohn was murdered in a brothel to the dancing and singing of the prostitutes; he was then put in a trunk and shipped to Moscow as baggage. Dostoevsky refers to the case again in The Brothers Karamazov.

  43. An imprecise quotation of a line spoken apropos of Chatsky by the old lady Khlyostova in Woe from Wit (see Part One, notes 38 and 39).

  44. Militrisa is the daughter of King Kirbit in The Tale of Prince Bova, a sixteenth-century Russian version of Beuves d’Hanstone, a thirteenth-century French chanson de geste that was widely spread in Europe. Dostoevsky refers to the same tale again in The Brothers Karamazov.

  45. In the Orthodox Church, Great Lent is the forty-day period of fast that precedes Holy Week (see Part Two, note 31). Preparation for communion at Easter would include eating lenten meals (no meat, eggs, or dairy products), confessing, and attending the services of Lent and Holy Week.

  46. During the Bridegroom services that fall on the first three days of Holy Week, the hymn is sung which gives these services their name: “Behold! the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching . . .”

  47. Molchalin is the trivial and servile private secretary in Woe from Wit (see Part One, notes 38 and 39). Dostoevsky mentions Molchalin in his Diary of a Writer for October 1876 (Chapter One, section 3), and adds parenthetically, “Some day I am going to dwell on Molchalin. It is a great theme.”

  48. Nikolai Semyonovich is referring to Chapter Three, stanzas XIII–XIV, of Evgeny Onegin, where Pushkin says he may cease to be a poet and “descend to humble prose” in order to describe the “traditions of a Russian family, / love’s captivating dreams, / and manners of our ancientry,” and so on (Nabokov translation). Pushkin already speaks with a hint of irony here of the kind of novel that Nikolai Semyonovich advocates, and that Leo Tolstoy would go on to write. Dostoevsky was, of course, writing precisely the opposite kind of novel, and therefore appreciates Pushkin’s irony, which escapes both Tolstoy and Nikolai Semyonovich.

  49. The radical socialist communards seized control of Paris following the insurrection of March 18, 1871, when the Prussians lifted their siege of the city after the defeat of France. They were overthrown in May of the same year.

  50. Mother Mitrofania (Baroness Praskovya Grigoryevna Rosen in the world), the superior of a convent in Serpukhov, was convicted of passing counterfeit promissory notes for enormous sums and of forging a will, and sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia. According to the memoirs of Dostoevsky’s friend, the lawyer A. F. Koni, she was a woman of great intelligence and of a strongly masculine and practical character. Her trial caused a sensation in Petersburg.

  ENDNOTES

  1 “Organic collectivity” here is a translation of the nearly untranslatable Russian word sobornost, meaning a free, inner, organic “unity in multiplicity.” It is a central term in Russian religious philosophy, which drew much inspiration from Dostoevsky. A profound exploration of the meaning of sobornost, and one extremely pertinent to The Adolescent, is to be found in The Spiritual Foundations of Society, by the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank, translated by Boris Jakim (Ohio University Press, 1987).

  2 Dostoevsky’s title in Russian is Podrostok, which means “adolescent.” Constance Garnett altered it to A Raw Youth in her translation, and that title has also been used most often in English critical writings on the novel.

  3 See note to p. viii.

  4 My poor boy!

  5 Well!

  6 Isn’t it so?

  7 Eh, but . . . I’m the one who knows women.

  8 They are charming.

  9 I know everything, but I don’t know anything worthwhile.

  10 But what an idea!

  11 Dear boy, I love God . . .

  12 It was stupid.

  13 ;A residence.

  14 There’s another one!

  15 Unknown.

  16 This infamous story!

  17 What is not cured by medicines, will be cured by iron; what is not cured by iron, will be cured by fire.

  18 The strictly necessary.

  19 Hate in love.

  20 Throughout the world and other places.

  21 All genres . . .

  22 We always come back.

  23 You understand.

  24 Say, my friend.

  25 Spelling it all out.

  26 When you speak of a rope [in the hanged man’s house].

  27 This little spy.

  28 Monstrous.

  29 You’ll sleep like a little king.

  30 On the way out.

  31 But . . . that’s charming!

  32 Well, finally . . . finally let’s give thanks . . . and I bless you!

  33 Bad tone.

  34 What the devil!

  35 One fine morning.

  36 Pawn shop.

  37 Let’s break it off there, my dear.

  38 That goes without saying.

  39 Distortion of French renseignée, “informed.”

  40 It’s comical, but that’s what we’re going to do.

  41 But let’s drop that.

  42 That depends, my dear!

  43 For your pretty eyes, my cousin!

  44 Be it said between us.

  45 Very proper.

  46 The poetry in life.

  47 What a charming person, eh? The songs of Solomon . . . no, it’s not Solomon, it’s David who put a young girl in his bed to warm him in his old age. Anyhow, David, Solomon . . .

  48 That young beauty of David’s old age—it’s a whole poem.

  49; Warming-pan scene.

  50 But follow your mother, then [ . . . ] He has no heart, this child.

  51 Furnished rooms.

  52 Here!

  53 Poor boy!

  54 You understand, my girl? You have money . . .

  55 But you haven’t slept at all, Maurice!

  56 Shut up, I’ll sleep afterwards.

  57; Saved!

  58 Never was a man so cruel, so Bismarck, as this being, who looks at a woman as a chance bit of filth. A woman, what is she in our epoch? “Kill her!”—that’s the last word of the Académie Française.

  59 Alas, what good would it have done me to reveal it sooner . . . and wouldn’t I have gained just as much by keeping my shame hidden all my life? Perhaps it’s not honorable for a young woman to explain herself so freely in front of monsieur, but finally I’ll admit to you that if I were allowed to wish for something, oh, it would be to plunge my knife into his heart, but with my eyes averted, for fear that his execrable look would make my arm tremble and freeze my courage! He killed that Russ
ian priest, monsieur, he tore out his red beard to sell it to a hair artist on the Blacksmiths’ [i.e., Kuznetsky] Bridge, just near the Maison of Monsieur Andrieux—the latest novelties, articles from Paris, linen, shirts, you know it, don’t you? . . . Oh, monsieur, when friendship gathers wife, children, sisters, friends around the table, when a lively happiness enflames my heart, I ask you, monsieur; is any happiness preferable to that which everyone enjoys? But he laughs, monsieur, this execrable and inconceivable monster, and if it weren’t through the agency of Monsieur Andrieux, never, oh, never would I be . . . But what is it, monsieur, what’s wrong with you, monsieur?

  60 By this furious and inconceivable monster.

  61 Where are you going, monsieur?

  62 But it isn’t far, monsieur, it’s not far at all, it’s not worth the trouble of putting on your shuba, it’s nearby, monsieur.

  63 This way, monsieur, it’s this way!

  64; He’s leaving, he’s leaving!

  65 But he’ll kill me, monsieur, he’ll kill me!

  66 Calumny . . . something of it always remains.

  67 Notice.

  68 Excuse me, my dear.

  69 But let’s leave that.

  70 Wait (in mispronounced French).

  71 Mister prince, do you have a silver rouble for us, not two, but only one, if you will?

  72 We pay you back.

  73 In railway carriages.

  74 ;Ah, you damned . . .

  Say, then, would you like me to crack your skull, my friend!

  75 My friend, here’s Dolgorovky, the other my friend [sic].

  76 Here he is!

  77 It’s him!

  78 Mlle. Alphonsine, do you want to kiss me?

  79; Ah, the little rogue! . . . Don’t come near me, don’t dirty me, and you, you big booby, I’ll chuck you both out the door, do you know that!

  80 Mlle. Alphonsine, have you sold your bologne [deformation of bolognais]?

  81 What’s my bologne?

  82 Say, what is this gibberish?

  83; I talk like a Russian lady on the mineral waters [sic].

  What’s a Russian lady on the mineral waters and . . . so where’s your pretty watch that Lambert gave you?