24. ananas: Pineapple, an expensive taste throughout the nineteenth century and of Latin American revolutionaries today.
25. Limburg’s cheese’s living mass: Sharp, strong, soft and runny Belgian cheese, hence perhaps the epithet ‘living’ or, alternatively, because of the ‘living dust’ of microbes that covered it.
26. liberty’s admirers: The Russian has: ‘Where everyone, breathing liberty’, a Gallicism from ‘respirer l’air de la liberté’. At the Decembrist rising, the poet Ryleyev remarked: We are breathing freedom.’
27. Cleopatra, Phaedra… Moëna: It is unclear what work Cleopatra figured in. Phaedra: heroine of an opera adapted from Racine’s eponymous tragedy. Moëna: heroine of Ozerov’s tragedy Fingal.
28. Fonvizin: Denis Fonvizin (1745–92), author of The Minor, a satirical play about cruelty, smugness and ignorance.
29. Knyazhnin: Yakov Knyazhnin (1742–91), imitator of French tragedies and comedies.
30. Ozerov: Vladislav Ozerov (1769–1816), author of five tragedies in the French style, including Fingal (note 27 above), considered ‘very mediocre’ by Pushkin, who put his success down to the acting of Yekaterina Semyonova, whom he regarded highly.
31. Katenin: Pavel Katenin (1792–1853), playwright, critic and Decembrist, translated Corneille’s Le Cid, firing Decembrist ideals. See Chapter I, stanza 18.
32. Shakhovskoy: Prince Alexander Shakhovskoy (1777–1846), theatre director and author of comedies satirizing contemporary writers.
33. Didelot: Charles Louis Didelot (1767–1837), well-known ballet master in St Petersburg.
34. Terpsichore: Ancient Greek goddess of dance.
35. Istomina: Avdotya Istomina (1799–1848), prima ballerina of Petersburg ballet with whom Pushkin was smitten, pupil of Didelot.
36. Aeolus: Ancient Greek god of wind.
37. even Didelot’s boring stuff: Pushkin in his note 5 comments: ‘A feature of chilled feeling, worthy of Childe-Harold. Didelot’s ballets are filled with a liveliness of imagination and unusual charm. One of our romantic writers found in them far more poetry than in the whole of French literature.’ This ‘romantic writer’ was Pushkin himself.
38. Tsargrad: Old Russian name for Constantinople.
39. Perfumes: A fashionable novelty at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
40. Rousseau: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French writer and philosopher. In his note 6 Pushkin quotes at length from the description in Rousseau’s Confessions of Grimm’s toiletry.
41. Grimm: Melchior Grimm (1723–1807), French encyclopedist of German extraction.
42. Chaadaev: Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856), dandy and libertarian thinker, later a mystic, influenced the young Pushkin, famous for his later Philosophical Letters, contrasting Russian history unfavourably with the West, with which Pushkin disagreed. The journal carrying the first Letter was suppressed, Chaadaev being declared insane and placed under house arrest.
43. pantalons, frac and gilet: These were relatively new items of clothing at the beginning of the nineteenth century as yet without Russian names.
44. Chevalier Gardes: A privileged regiment of heavy cavalry created under Paul I to counterbalance the already existing Horse Guards regiment. Chevaliers Gardes were distinguished by their tall height and embroidered uniforms. However, in a manuscript note Pushkin mentions that in fact they wore court dress and shoes, but he included the spurs to give the picture a poetic touch.
45. Diana: Virgin goddess of the moon in ancient Rome.
46. Flora: Ancient Roman goddess of spring and flowers.
47. Elvina: Conventional name in erotic poetry of the time.
48. Armida: Chief heroine of the epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Liberated Jerusalem, 1580) by Torquato Tasso (1544–95), here meaning an enchantress.
49. Okhta: An outlying region of St Petersburg, populated by Finns supplying the capital’s dairy needs. The ‘Okhta girl’ is a milkmaid.
50. vasisdas: A window-pane. ‘Vasisdas’ has been taken to be a corruption either of fortochka, a ventilation-pane used in Russian windows, or of the French word vasistas (a small spy-window), which in turn is a corruption of the German was ist das? Pushkin keeps the more German spelling no doubt because the baker is German.
51. khandra: Russian for ‘chondria’, asin ‘hypochrondia’.
52. Childe Harold: The disillusioned and languid hero of Byron’s first great narrative poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1813), which brought him fame.
53. boston: A member of the whist family. Russian boston differs only slightly from ordinary boston.
54. bon ton: The Russian has ‘higher tone’, meaning well-bred conversation and manners. A near English equivalent would be ‘good form’.
55. Say and Bentham: Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), French publicist and economist, follower of Ricardo and Adam Smith, author of Traité d’économie politique (A Treatise on Political Economy, 1803). Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), liberal English publicist and jurist.
56. Capricious ladies… spleen: In note 7 Pushkin remarks: ‘The whole of this ironic strophe is nothing other than a subtle form of praise for our fair compatriots. So Boileau, in the guise of reproach, praises Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with that Eastern charm that so captivated Mme de Staël (see Dix ans d’exil).’ Posthumously published in 1818, the latter work describes de Staël’s visit to Russia in 1812.
57. How often… bright: Pushkin’s note 8 refers the reader to Nikolai Gnedich’s (1784–1833) idyllic poem ‘The Fishermen’ (1822) for its ‘charming description’ of the Petersburg night, from which he quotes at length.
58. the Poet: An ironic reference, underlined by the capital ‘P’ and the archaic Russian spelling, to Mikhail Muravyov (1757–1807), an insignificant poet and founder of Russian Sentimentalism. In his note 9, Pushkin quotes the lines of Muravyov’s poem ‘To the Goddess of the Neva’, from which he lifts the phrase ‘leaning on the granite’.
59. Millionaya: A street in Petersburg, alluding to Katenin’s habit of returning from the theatre at this hour to his regimental barracks on Millionaya Street.
60. Brenta: River with Venice at its delta.
61. Albion’s proud poetry: Byron’s poetry.
62. Petrarch: Francesco Petrarca (1304–74), Italian poet.
63. Above the sea, forever roaming: Pushkin’s note 10 has: ‘Written in Odessa.’ It was from here that Pushkin sought to escape from Russia.
64. my Africa: In his note 11 Pushkin refers the reader to the first edition of the chapter, where he provides an extended footnote on his African forebears.
65. Salgir: A river in the Crimea. The captive maids are the harem girls of Pushkin’s narrative poem The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (1824). The ‘maid of the mountain’ is the Circassian heroine of his poem The Captive of the Caucasus (1822). In Chapter VIII of Onegin he reviews his literary heroines up to the point where they transmogrify into Tatiana.
CHAPTER II
1. Endowed with Göttingenian soul: Göttingen university, where Lensky studied, was one of the most liberal universities, not just in Germany, but in Europe as a whole. Situated on Hanoverian territory, it was subject to English law. The future Decembrists N. I. Turgenev and Pyotr Kaverin (see Chapter I, stanza 16, and note 20) studied there.
2. Kant: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher, author of three Critiques – of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and Judgement. His emphasis on imagination and genius in the third Critique influenced the Romantic movement in Germany and beyond.
3. vessel: The Church Slavonic use of this term, which adds to the heightened language of this stanza, can mean ‘weapon’, which is what is meant here.
4. Schiller, Goethe: Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), German poet, philosopher, historian and dramatist. His early plays Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) and Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, 1784) and his idealist poetry fired the Romantics throughout Europe. He later joined
Goethe in Weimar to promote a classical aesthetic. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist, novelist and scientist. His masterpiece Faust and his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795–6) strongly influenced the Romantics in Germany, although he came to see himself (with Schiller) as a defender of classical values. Pushkin’s knowledge of German literature was largely drawn from Mme de Staël’s De l’ Allemagne (On Germany, 1813), which put a Romantic gloss on Kant, Schiller and Goethe. His ability to read German was very limited.
5. Richardson: Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English novelist, author of Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa Harlowe (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1754).
6. A Lovelace for a Grandison: Respectively villain of Clarissa Harlowe and hero of Sir Charles Grandison (see note 5 above).
7. She shaved the conscripts’ foreheads: Shaving foreheads was the way of marking out recruits for the army, thereby getting rid of unwanted serfs, who were torn away from their families and often had to serve for life.
8. shed tears… buttercups: A way of atoning for sins: the number of teardrops represents the number of sins.
9. kvas: Russian national soft drink (sometimes mildly fermented), usually made of leavened rye, dough or rye bread with malt. In other varieties honey or fruit is used.
10. a second crown: The first crown is the wedding crown.
11. barin: Squire or landowner.
12. penates: (Latin) guardian deities of the household.
13. Ochakov medal: Ochakov, on the Black Sea, was seized from the Turks in 1788 by Suvorov, under whom Larin served. The commemorative medal was given to all officers taking part in the campaign. Brigadier (a general’s rank) Larin might have expected the more illustrious ‘order’. Pushkin might have wanted thereby to keep Larin ordinary.
14. Lethe: River of fortgetfulness in Greek mythology.
15. Aonia’s maids: The Muses in Greek mythology. Aeonia was a region of ancient Boeotia, containing the mountains of Helicon and Cithaeron, sacred to the Muses.
16. will pat the old man’s laurel crown: Alongside the ignoramus, Pushkin addresses his future devotee. In the ‘old man’ Pushkin optimistically envisages his own future. A Latin teacher at Pushkin’s lycée, when introducing a classical text, would always remark: ‘Let’s pat the old man on the head.’
CHAPTER III
1. Elle était fille… Malfilâtre: ‘She was a girl, she was in love.’ A line from Narcisse, ou l’île de Venus (Narcissus, or the Island of Venus, 1768), a posthumous poem in four cantos by the second-rate French poet Jacques Charles Louis Clinchamp de Malfilâtre (1733–67), probably taken by Pushkin from Laharpe’s anthology of ancient and modern literature used at Pushkin’s lycée.
2. Jam in small dishes: Home-made preserves – cherry, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, red and blackcurrant – were presented to guests in small glass dishes on a tray. In a variant Pushkin has with but one spoon for all’. The guests would transfer their helpings (by means of that spoon) on to their respective saucers and then would eat the jam with their teaspoons or mix it with their tea.
3. board: Pushkin omitted the rest of the stanza in the final version, though it exists in his fair copy.
4. Svetlana: Heroine of Vasily Zhukovsky’s ballad of the same name (1812). Zhukovsky (1783–1852) was Russia’s outstanding Romantic poet, a friend and protector of Pushkin and a mentor of Nicholas I’s son and heir. Svetlana was a free adaptation of Gottfried August Bürger’s (1747–94) ballad Lenore (1773).
5. The lover of Julie Wolmar: St Preux, hero of Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (Julie, or the New Héloise, 1761). Julie and St Preux are lovers, but only until she marries and assumes her husband’s name, Wolmar.
6. Malek Adhel: Hero of Mathilde, ou Mémoires tires de l’histoire des croisades (Mathilde or the Crusades, 1805), a novel by Sophie Cottin (1774–1807), described by Pushkin in his note as mediocre’. Malek Adel is a Muslim general at the time of the Third Crusade who falls in love with Princesse Mathilde, sister of Richard Lionheart.
7. de Linar: ‘Hero of baroness Krüdener’s delightful tale,’ notes Pushkin. The tale in question is Valerie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G. (Valerie, or Letters from Gustave de Linar to Ernest de G., 1803). Mme von Krüdener (1764–1824) was a German novelist and mystic who wrote in French. De Linar, a dark-haired and violent young Swede, is the unrequited lover of Countess Valérie (probably from Livonia), who, like Julie in La Nouvelle Héloïse (see note 5 above), remains faithful to her older husband. She marries at fourteen and meets de Linar at sixteen.
8. Werther: Hero of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774). Werther commits suicide after failing to win the love of Lotte, who is married to his friend.
9. Grandison: Hero of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1754).
10. Delphine: Eponymous heroine of Mme de Staël’s novel Delphine (1802). It has been suggested, but not accepted, that the Delphine mentioned by Pushkin belongs to a story by Marmontel, L’Ecole de l’amitié (School of Friendship, 1792), translated in 1822 by Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), an important predecessor of Pushkin. In Mme. de Staël’s novel Delphine is a widow of twenty-one whose admirer she gives up out of consideration for his wife.
11. Clarissa: Heroine of Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe (1748).
12. The British Muse’s tales: Romanticism was in Russia largely taken to be an English trend in European literature.
13. the pensive vampire: Pushkin comments in his note: ‘A tale wrongly attributed to Lord Byron.’ During a stay in Switzerland in 1816 Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Byron’s physician Polidori competed in writing horror stories of which the most successful and famous was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Byron composed a fragment, The Vampyre, which Polidori later turned into a novel (1819).
14. Melmoth: Pushkin’s note: ‘Melmoth, Maturin’s work of genius.’ Charles Robert Maturin (1782–1824), an Irish clergyman, wrote Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a long Satanic horror tale.
15. The Wandering Jew: The legend of the Wandering Jew was common at the time. Pushkin’s sources are probably Mathew Lewis’s (1775–1818) The Monk (1796) and Jan Potocki’s (1761–1815) enormous novel The Manuscript Found in Sara-gossa, published between 1803 and 1814.
16. the Corsair: Hero of Byron’s poem of the same name.
17. Sbogar: Hero of Charles Nodier’s (1780–1844) Jean Sbogar (1818). Sbogar is the Dalmatian chief of a robber band who redistribute wealth in favour of the common good’.
18. Coquettes… more assuredly: An imitation of the French poet Evariste de Parny’s ‘La Main’ (‘The Hand’). Parny (1753–1814) was renowned for his elegant love poetry. See lines 13–14 of stanza 29.
19. The Well-Meaner: Pushkin’s note reads: ‘A journal edited by the late A. Izmailov in a rather slipshod way.’ Pushkin and his friends treated the journal as a joke and privately read line 4 as With a phallus in their hand’.
20. seminarist… in yellow shawl: In this case a seminarist is a learned woman.
21. Bogdanovich: Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich (1743–1803), poet, author of Dushen’ka (1783–9), based on the story of Cupid and Psyche; regarded as the founder of light poetry’ and valued by Pushkin for opening up poetry to popular speech. His influence on Pushkin is felt in Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820).
22. tender Parny’s: Evariste Désiré Desforges, Chevalier de Parny (1753–1814) French poet. He used the word tendre profusely in his elegies.
23. Bard of The Feasts: Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800–1844), an outstanding poet of Pushkin’s period. The Feasts was written in Finland in 1820, where he was serving as a private in the army, having been expelled from military school for theft. It evokes the ebullient days spent in St Petersburg in 1819, when he got to know Pushkin. But he was more famed as an elegiac poet.
24. Der Freischütz: Opera by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), a popular import when
Pushkin was writing his third chapter.
25. The rosy seal: A round piece of sticky paper used to seal envelopes.
26. Song of the Girls: Invented by Pushkin, but adapted from folk songs he heard on his family estate at Mikhailovskoye. This is a wedding song where the bridegroom is symbolized by cherries and the bride by berries. It has the double effect of keeping the girls from eating the fruit and adding to Tatiana’s situation.
CHAPTER IV
1. La morale… Necker: ‘Morality is in the nature of things.’ Jacques Necker (1732–1804) was a politician and financier, minister in Louis XVI’s government at the beginning of the French Revolution and father of Mme de Staël, who quotes Pushkin’s epigraph in her Considerations sur les Principaux Evénements de la Revolution Française (Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, 1818).
2. Chateaubriand: François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), French Romantic writer and politician, author of the novel René (1802).
3. Qu’écrirez-vous… Annette: ‘What will you write on these tablets?’… Ever yours, Annette.’
4. Tolstoy: Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783–1875), artist.
5. a madrigal: In this context is a complimentary poem written for society albums.
6. And, river-like… verities: A rare example of a two-rhyme octet resembling the Italian sonnet, which I render imperfectly – ababaabb. A similar, but less exact version is to be found in Chapter V, stanza 10.
7. Yazykov: Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov (1803–47), Romantic poet.
8. an awesome critic: The critic is Wilhelm Küchelbecker (1797–1846), who in an essay of 1824 denounced the elegy and praised the ode.
9. The Other Version: The reference is to Chuzhoy tolk (1795), a satirical verse narrative by Ivan Dmitriyev (1760–1837). The title may be translated as The Other Opinion’ or The Opinion of Others’. The poem ridicules the overblown style of the ode, attributing mercenary aims to its authors. The satirist and the lyric poet are characters in the poem.
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