3. Orel Assembly of the Nobility: See note 34 to “The Enchanted Wanderer.”
4. A Nest of Gentlefolk: A novel by Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), published in 1859. Turgenev, like Leskov, was born in Orel, but unlike Leskov he belonged to the wealthy landed gentry.
5. the hundred and four sacred stories … book: One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments, a popular eighteenth-century collection of biblical stories, translated from the German.
6. Alexei Petrovich Ermolov: General Ermolov (1777–1861) distinguished himself in the Napoleonic Wars (1805–1814) and was then sent to the Caucasus, where he was made commander in chief of Russian forces. He retired in 1831 and spent the last thirty years of his life on his estate near Orel.
7. molokan: The word comes from moloko (“milk”). It was applied derisively to a Christian sect that emerged in seventeenth-century Russia, because its members drank milk on fast days, contrary to Orthodox teaching. They called themselves “Spirit Christians” and rejected all churches, not only the Orthodox.
8. St. Agafya the Dairymaid: An eighteenth-century martyr, patron saint and protector of cattle, who died on February 5, 1738.
9. The Cool Vineyard: A handwritten book of medical advice translated from the Polish at the end of the seventeenth century. It became very popular and spread among the Russian people until the early nineteenth century. Leskov quotes from a printed edition of 1879.
10. Naum Prokofiev: Despite the author’s claim here, Russian scholars have been unable to identify the man.
11. athelaea … Manus-Christi sugar: A list of partly fanciful, partly authentic medicaments. “Sealed earth” is terra sigillata, a medieval medicinal earth; “Malvasian wine” is made from the Malvasian varieties of grapes, originally grown in the Mediterranean basin; “mithridate” is an ancient remedy made up of as many as sixty-five different ingredients, used in treatment of the plague; “Manus-Christi sugar” is a cordial made by boiling sugar with violet or rose water, thought to give enfeebled people “a hand” (manus).
12. bezoar-stone: A gray or black stone from the stomach of a goat or other herbivorous animal, much used in popular medicine and believed to cure many diseases.
13. rebaptizers: Leskov may be referring to the Anabaptists (literally “rebaptizers”), who had come to southern Russia from Germany in the later eighteenth century, but more likely he means Old Believers who practiced rebaptism (see note 6 to “Lady Macbeth”).
14. young St. George: The feast of St. George is celebrated on April 23.
15. Bishop Nikodim: Nikodim (d. 1839) was bishop of Orel from 1828 to 1839.
16. Apollos: Apollos Baibakov (1745–1801) was bishop of Orel from 1788 to 1798.
17. the saint … revealing himself: See note 16 to “The Enchanted Wanderer.” The saint in this case uses more radical methods to “reveal himself.” Reference will be made to the “revealing of relics” at the end of chapter 7.
18. the prophet Jeremiah … its own day: The prophet Jeremiah is commemorated on May 1, St. Boris on May 2, St. Mavra on May 3, St. Zosima (of Volokolamsk) on May 8, St. John the Theologian (the Evangelist) likewise on May 8, St. Nicholas on May 9, and Simon the Zealot on May 10, which is also the pagan Slavic feast day of Mother Earth.
19. St. John’s … the joints of the earth: The birth of St. John the Baptist is celebrated on June 24, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29. The feast day of St. Theodore of the Wells is June 8.
20. simple Old Believers … sent far away: A list of various sectarians. For Old Believers, see note 6 to “Lady Macbeth.” The Fedoseevans were a branch of the Old Believers who rejected marriage because they thought the end of the world was at hand; the “Pilipons” (Philippians) preached suicide as a way of preserving the true faith; the “rebaptized” were those who had originally been baptized in the Orthodox Church and accepted a second baptism from the Old Believers. The Flagellants (Khlysty) held ecstatic group rituals that included flagellation; “people of God” may refer to holy fools, pilgrims, or simple vagabonds.
21. the prophet Daniel: See Daniel 9:24 (“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins …”), where the “weeks” stand for years.
22. the “eagle’s wings” … the Antichrist: See the prophetic visions in Daniel 7:4 (“The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings …”) and Revelation 12:14 (“And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle …”). For the “seal of the Antichrist,” see Revelation 13:16–18 (“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads … and his number is Six hundred threescore and six”).
23. K. D. Kraevich: Konstantin Dmitrievich Kraevich (1833–92) was a noted physicist and the author of widely used school textbooks.
24. “I believe … invisible”: An abbreviated but perfectly correct version of the first section of the Orthodox (Nicene) Creed.
25. the poet Pope: The English neoclassical poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744). His philosophical poem, An Essay on Man, was published between 1732 and 1734. The poem is dedicated to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. In the couplet that follows, the second line is line 123 of Epistle I.
26. rich kulaks: Kulak is the Russian word for “fist.” It was commonly used to refer to rich peasants.
27. the emancipation of the peasants: In 1861—the first and most important of the reforms carried out by the “tsar-liberator” Alexander II (1818–81).
28. first … troubling of the water: The narrator is mistaken: cures in the troubled water occurred at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:2–9); in the pool of Siloam the man born blind goes to wash and be healed (John 9:7).
29. kibitka: See note 21 to “The Enchanted Wanderer.”
30. “aphedronian sores”: Probably hemorrhoids, from the Greek aphedron (“toilet”).
31. the cross, the spear, and the reed …: That is, the instruments of Christ’s passion.
32. “Praise the name of the Lord …”: The opening words of Psalm 135, sung at the vigil in the first part of matins.
33. the paralytic was healed … “glorifying and giving thanks”: The reference is to Luke 5:18–25, where the healed man “departed to his own house, glorifying God.”
34. a justice of conscience: A local court function established by Catherine the Great in 1775 under the influence of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The court was made up of a justice plus six representatives, two from the nobility, two from the townspeople, and two from the peasants.
The White Eagle (1880)
1. Theocritus (Idyll): The line comes from Idyll XXI, “The Fisherman,” by Theocritus, the father of Greek bucolic poetry, who lived in the third century BC.
2. “There are more things in heaven and earth”: Hamlet, act 1, scene 5, lines 166–167 (“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”).
3. to play at spiritualism: The vogue for spiritualistic mediums and séances came to Russia in the 1870s, where it spread among members of the aristocracy in Moscow and Petersburg. Tolstoy made fun of it in part 7 of Anna Karenina, which was published in those same years.
4. the Nevsky Lavra: That is, in the graveyard of the Trinity–St. Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1710.
5. Viktor Nikitich Panin: Count Panin (1801–74) served as minister of justice from 1841 to 1862. He was exceptionally tall.
6. marshal: See note 34 to “The Enchanted Wanderer.”
7. “White Eagle”: The Order of the White Eagle, founded in 1705, was the highest Polish decoration for military or civil service. In 1798, following the partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, it was taken over by the Russian royal family. Abandoned after the Russian revolution, it was revived in Poland in 1921 and is still awarded. For the order of St. Vladimir, see note 25 to “Singlemind.”
8. Tagli
oni … Bosio … Krestovsky Island: Maria Taglioni (1804–84), an Italian-Swedish ballet dancer, first came to Russia in 1827 on a three-year contract with the imperial ballet theater in Petersburg and last danced there in 1842. Angelina Bosio (1830–59) was an Italian soprano and prima donna who enjoyed great success in Europe, America, and Russia, where she first sang in 1853 and where she died of a cold while traveling from Moscow to Petersburg. Krestovsky Island, in the Neva delta in Petersburg, was home to various amusements in the nineteenth century, including open-air restaurants with Gypsy singers.
9. Polycrates: Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in the sixth century BC, was extremely lucky in all his endeavors, which made people predict a bad end for him. The prediction came true when he was murdered by his ally, Oroetes, satrap of Sardis.
10. “Saul and the Witch of Endor”: See I Samuel 28:3–35. Saul, the first king of Israel, goes secretly to ask the witch of Endor to consult the shade of the late prophet Samuel. She does so, and Samuel predicts his fall and the kingship of David.
11. What philosophy never dreamt of: See note 2 above.
12. laid out on a table: It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table until the body could be put in a coffin.
Lefty (1881)
1. Alexander Pavlovich … the Congress of Vienna: Alexander Pavlovich is the emperor Alexander I. The Congress of Vienna was a conference of representatives of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and France, held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815, to decide the future organization of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars and the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire.
2. the Don Cossack Platov: Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov (1757–1818) was a distinguished Russian general and ataman (commander) of the Don Cossacks under Field Marshal Suvorov (see note 36 to “The Enchanted Wanderer”) and later during the Napoleonic Wars. At the conclusion of the peace, he indeed accompanied the emperor to England. However, Leskov’s narrator grants him a mythical longevity well into the reign of Nicholas I.
3. two and ten nations: Napoleon’s army was referred to in Russia as “the army of twelve nations.”
4. a Mortimer musket: Harvey Walklate Mortimer (1753–1819) and his brothers and descendants were well-known English gunsmiths for several generations.
5. Tsarskoe Selo: The imperial country estate, fifteen miles south of Petersburg. The name means “Tsar’s Village.”
6. molvo sugar … Bobrinsky factory: Y. N. Molvo ran a sugar refinery in Petersburg during the early nineteenth century. Count Alexei Alexeevich Bobrinsky (1800–68) was also one of the first sugar refiners in Russia. William B. Edgerton, in Satirical Stories of Nikolai Leskov (New York, 1969) suggests that “Molvo” was a Russified form of the French name Mollevaut and comments, “If this supposition is true, then the irony of Platov’s Russian defense of ‘Mollevaut’ sugar becomes all the sweeter.”
7. Zhukov tobacco …: Vasily Zhukov produced pipe tobacco in his Petersburg factory from the 1820s to the 1850s.
8. The emperor Nikolai Pavlovich … at his ascension: Nikolai Pavlovich is the emperor Nicholas I (1796–1855). The “disturbances at his ascension” were the events of the Decembrist uprising of December 14, 1825, when young officers in Petersburg mutinied during the confusion following the death of Alexander I and demanded democratic reforms in Russia.
9. holy Athos: The mountain and peninsula of Athos is home to twenty Orthodox monasteries, among them the Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Panteleimon.
10. “Evening Bells”: “Evening Bells” is a song by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852), published in 1818, with the subtitle “The Bells of St. Petersburg.” Moore claimed it was based on a Russian original, but the source is unknown. In 1828, the Russian poet Ivan Kozlov (1779–1840) translated Moore’s poem into Russian. His version became immensely popular and is still widely sung. The musical setting by Alexander Alyabyev (1787–1851) is indeed “painted out.”
11. Count Nestlebroad: That is, Count Karl Vasilievich Nesselrode (1780–1862), of Baltic German birth, who entered the Russian navy and then the diplomatic service under Alexander I, becoming foreign minister in 1816 and remaining in that capacity for more than forty years.
12. our lace: The city of Tula had four specialties: firearms, samovars, gingerbread, and lace.
13. Count Kleinmichel: Count Pyotr Andreevich Kleinmichel (1793–1869) served from 1842 to 1855 as chief administrator of highways and public buildings under Nicholas I.
14. Commandant Skobelev: In 1839, General Ivan Nikitich Skobelev (1778–1849) was commandant of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress in Petersburg, which served as a prison.
15. Martyn-Solsky: The narrator’s variant on the name of Martyn Dmitrievich Solsky (1793–1869), doctor in a guards regiment and member of the medical council of the ministry of internal affairs.
16. Count Chernyshev: Count Alexander Ivanovich Chernyshev (1786–1857), cavalry general and statesman, served as minister of war under Nicholas I from 1826 to 1852.
17. “deeds … of old”: A reference to lines from Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820), a narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837).
The Spirit of Madame de Genlis (1881)
1. A. B. Calmet: Leskov is mistaken about the middle initial. Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757) was a Benedictine monk. His most well-known work, Dissertations on Apparitions, Angels, Demons, and Spirits, and on Ghosts and Vampires in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (Paris, 1746; re-edited in 1951), was published in Russia in 1867.
2. Mmes de Sévigné … de Genlis: Leskov gives a list of six famous letter writers or memoirists of the reign of Louis XIV, all ladies, before he comes to Mme de Genlis. He misspells most of the names, but we give them in their correct form. Mme de Genlis (Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St. Aubin Brûlart, marquise de Sillery, comtesse de Genlis, 1746–1830) first entered the royal palace as lady-in-waiting to the duchesse de Chartres and became the governess of her children, one of whom, Louis Philippe d’Orléans (1773–1850), later became king. She wrote verse, novels, plays, treatises, and some important memoirs.
3. Voltaire … criticism: Mme de Genlis met Voltaire at his estate in Ferney, near Geneva, and noted in her memoirs that he was a tasteless, ill-bred man with a love of crude flattery.
4. Kardec’s theory of “mischievous spirits”: Allan Kardec was the pen name of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail (1808–69), a French schoolteacher and a prime mover of the spiritualist vogue in the mid-nineteenth century (see note 3 to “The White Eagle”). Among other things, he coined the word “spiritism” and produced a five-volume theoretical synthesis, The Spiritual Codification.
5. Prince Gagarin: Prince Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin (1814–82) was serving as secretary of the Russian legation in Paris when, in 1842, he converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit. He lived the rest of his life in Paris, where Leskov met him in 1875.
6. Heine’s “Bernardiner und Rabiner”: The reference is to the poem “Disputation,” from Romanzero (1851), by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856). The poem, which is set in medieval Toledo, presents a dispute between a Capuchin friar and a rabbi about whose God is the true God. It is resolved by the young Doña Blanka, who says “I don’t know which of them is right, but they both stink.”
7. Mme du Deffand … Gibbon: Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (1697–1780), was a prolific letter writer who corresponded with many notable people of her time, including Voltaire and Horace Walpole, with whom she formed an enduring attachment. The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–94) is most famous for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88).
8. Lauzun: Armand Louis de Gontaut, duc de Lauzun (1747–1793), took part in the American War of Independence on the side of the colonists and in the French revolutionary wars. He was arrested and guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
9. Gibbon was … “vile joke”!: Leskov quotes this passage, with cuts and alterations, from the Russian edition of the memoirs of Mme de Genlis, Memoirs of Felicia L***, pu
blished in Moscow in 1809.
The Toupee Artist (1883)
1. February 19, 1861: The date of the imperial manifesto proclaiming the emancipation of the serfs.
2. Sazikov and Ovchinnikov … Heine … Worth …: Pavel Ignatyevich Sazikov (d. 1868) and Pavel Akimovich Ovchinnikov (1830–88) were well-known gold- and silversmiths with shops in Moscow and Petersburg. In his late prose work Lutezia (1854), Heine speaks not of a tailor but of a Parisian shoemaker named Sakosky, describing him as “an artist in leather footwear.” The Englishman Charles Frederick Worth (1825–95) became a famous Parisian couturier, inventor of the défilé de mode (“fashion show”).
3. Bret Harte …: The reference is to the story “A Sleeping-Car Experience,” by Francis Brett Harte (1836–1902), published in the collection Drift from Two Shores (1878), but Leskov’s recounting of it has little to do with the original.
4. Count Kamensky in Orel: Field Marshal Count Mikhail Fedotovich Kamensky (1738–1809) retired from the army to his estate in Orel in 1806. He was notorious for mistreating his serfs and was murdered by one of them three years later. He had two sons, both generals, Sergei (1771–1836) and Nikolai (1776–1811). Sergei retired from the army in 1822, returned to the Kamensky estate, and threw himself into running the serf theater started by his father. The troupe, including actors, dancers, and musicians, numbered about four hundred souls. Kamensky treated them quite tyrannically. Serf theaters arose in Russia in the late seventeenth century; by the nineteenth century there were more than 170 of them.
5. Alexander Pavlovich or Nikolai Pavlovich …: See notes 1 and 8 to “Lefty.”
6. camarine: That is, aquamarine, or blue beryl. Some of the best aquamarines come from Russia. Ironically, aquamarine is said to symbolize love, harmony, and marital happiness.
7. Snakes … your face: A somewhat inaccurate quotation from the Serbian song “Prince Marco in Prison.”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 70