The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

NOTES

THE PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS

1. “Ivan” was a generic name for Russians among the Caucasian mountaineers. Tolstoy never gives Zhilin a first name.

2. Bismillah al-rahman al-rahimi (“In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful”) is the opening phrase of every chapter but one of the Koran, and is also used in the call to daily prayers.

THE DIARY OF A MADMAN

1. See Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9.

2. “Tempting” in the older, biblical sense of putting to the test, involving the risk of doubt or disbelief.

3. See Matthew 5:45 (RSV): “that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

4. In the Orthodox Church, a prosphora (Greek for “offering”) is a small roll of leavened bread offered by an individual for the sacrament of communion. After blessing it and removing a piece for the common chalice, the priest returns the prosphora to the communicant, who may share it with others.

THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH

1. Vint is a Russian card game similar to auction bridge.

2. In 1722, the emperor Peter the Great (1672–1725) established a table of fourteen ranks for Russian civil servants, rising in importance from fourteenth to first.

3. I. G. Charmeur was a well-known Petersburg tailor of the time.

4. Donon’s restaurant, opened by the entrepreneur Zh. B. Donon in 1849, was one of the most fashionable in Petersburg.

5. The Old Believers, also known as Raskolniki (schismatics), rejected the reforms introduced in the mid–seventeenth century by the patriarch Nikon (1605–81), head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Historically, their relations with the civil administration were often strained.

6. The emperor Alexander II (1818–81) carried out a series of important legal reforms in 1864, establishing a new court system and trial by jury, among other things.

7. See note 2 above.

8. The empress Maria Alexandrovna (1824–80), wife of Alexander II, took over the administration of a number of charitable and philanthropic institutions, including the Petersburg Foundling Home, women’s educational institutions, and three banks.

9. Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter (1766–1819), German philosopher and follower of Immanuel Kant, was the author of many works, including a manual of logic which was translated into Russian. The syllogism about Caius actually appears in his manual.

10. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), the most famous French actress of her day, performed several times in Russia during the 1880s.

11. That is, combed forward in bangs.

12. A play about the eighteenth-century French actress Adrienne Lecouvreur, by Augustin Scribe (1791–1861) and Gabriel Legouvé (1764–1812). It was one of Sarah Bernhardt’s principal roles.

THE KREUTZER SONATA

1. The Epistle to the Ephesians 5:22–33 is read during the Orthodox marriage service. The final verse, “… and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (RSV), is translated into Slavonic as “… that she fears her husband.”

2. The Domostroy (“Domestic Order”) was a set of household rules (religious, social, and domestic) established in the sixteenth century. It came to have negative implications of old-fashioned patriarchal strictness and narrow-mindedness.

3. Marshal of the nobility was the highest elective office in a province before the reforms of Alexander II (see note 6 to The Death of Ivan Ilyich).

4. In prerevolutionary Russia, religious education was part of the school program.

5. The dancer and singer Marguerite Badel, known as Rigolboche, was briefly popular in Paris in the mid–nineteenth century. She published her memoirs in 1860. The name came to mean someone who likes amusement.

6. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), sometimes characterized as an “atheist idealist,” was influenced by Plato and Kant, but also by Hindu and Buddhist thought. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), a follower of Schopenhauer, published his most influential work, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, in 1869. Pozdnyshev uses the term “Buddhist” in the “nihilist” sense first defined by Schopenhauer.

7. Among the Russian lower classes, hysterical women, known as “shriekers,” were thought to be possessed by the devil. Dostoevsky describes the phenomenon in the chapter “Women of Faith” from The Brothers Karamazov.

8. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93) was a pioneering French neurologist who used hypnosis and “Charcot baths” in the treatment of hysteria.

9. Mnesarete, nicknamed Phryne (toad), was a hetaira of fourth-century Athens, famous for her beauty and for her high prices. The sculptor Praxiteles, one of her lovers, was said to have modeled his Aphrodite of Knidos on her. The area around Trubnaya Square and Trubnaya Street (formerly Grachevka Street) in Moscow was known for its houses of prostitution.

10. A kokoshnik is a characteristic Russian peasant woman’s headdress, with a high, rigid front, often pointed, decorated with gold braid, pearls, or embroidery.

11. See note 1 to The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

12. Trukhachevsky is a perfectly plausible Russian name formed from trukha, which means the dust of rotten wood or, figuratively, trash in general.

13. Uriah’s wife was Bathsheba, who was taken from her husband by King David (see II Samuel 11:2–26).

14. Vanka the Steward is the hero of a Russian folk song.

THE DEVIL

1. Tolstoy’s lapsus: earlier the name was Pechnikov.

2. A Russian superstition which survived at least until the time of World War II, if not longer.

3. Pentecost, the feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit, comes fifty days after Easter.

4. Holy Week is the week preceding Easter Sunday, which means that the house had not been cleaned for some seven weeks.

5. See note 3 to The Kreutzer Sonata.

6. The zemstvo, a local council for self-government, was introduced in 1864 by the reforms of Alexander II.

7. See note 6 to The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

MASTER AND MAN

1. The winter feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated on December 6; on May 9 there is the feast of the Translation of the Relics of St. Nicholas (the moving of the saint’s relics from Asia Minor to Bari, Italy, in the eleventh century).

2. Merchants were classified in guilds according to the amount of capital they had.

3. The Advent Fast begins on November 14 and continues until Christmas.

4. The Russian stove is an elaborate construction, used essentially for heating and cooking, but also for drying clothes and even for sleeping.

5. The reference is to the school Reader by the well-known Russian pedagogue I. I. Paulson (1825–98).

6. Misquoted lines from the poem “Winter Evening” by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837).

FATHER SERGIUS

1. The emperor Nikolai I (1796–1855), later referred to as Nikolai Pavlovich, came to the Russian throne in 1825, on the death of his brother Alexander I.

2. The Cadet Corps, founded in 1732 for sons of the nobility, was one of the most prestigious military schools in Russia. It furnished many generations of officers before it was closed in 1917.

3. A dacha is a summer residence. Tsarskoe Selo, a village some fifteen miles south of Petersburg, had been an imperial property since the time of Peter the Great. Many members of the court nobility built summer homes there.

4. It became fashionable among the Russian nobility after the Napoleonic invasion (1812) to adopt the English forms of first names.

5. The feast of the Protection (more fully, of the Protective Veil of the Mother of God) falls on October 1.

6. Paissy Velichkovsky (1722–94) is considered the “father of the Russian elders,” monks who serve as personal spiritual guides to fellow monks and laymen (cf. the elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov). Amvrosy (1812–91) was perhaps the most well-known of the elders of the monastery of Optino. Tolstoy had several meetings with him during his lifetime. Paissy and Amvrosy were both canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988.

7. A hieromonk is a monk who has been ordained a priest.

8. The proskomedia is the preparation of the bread for the Eucharist, with special prayers, performed by the priest before the liturgy.

9. The general is not being merely ironic: the nature of monkhood is considered “angelic” in its service to God.

10. Meatfare week is the week before the beginning of the Great Lent, the forty-day fast preceding Holy Week and Easter. Meat is no longer eaten, but it is a Russian custom to pay visits and eat pancakes (bliny) during that week.

11. St. Anthony (Anthony the Great, or Anthony of Egypt, ca. 251–356) was an Alexandrian Christian, a leading figure among the Desert Fathers, and one of the founders of monasticism.

12. That is, a rule of prayer: a sequence of prayers and passages from the psalms recited daily.

13. See Mark 9:24.

14. That is, in the Lives of the Saints.

15. The first line of Psalm 68; also one of the verses sung in the Orthodox Easter service.

16. Father Sergius recites the “Jesus Prayer,” also known as the “prayer of the heart,” which goes back at least to the sixth century. “Pray without ceasing” was St. Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians (I Thessalonians 5:17) and became monastic practice, especially using the Jesus Prayer.

17. The reference is evidently to the myth of Orpheus, who would have been allowed to lead Eurydice out of the underworld if he had been able to walk on without looking back at her.

18. See Matthew 18:7 (RSV).

19. The parable (Luke 18:2–8) tells of a judge who “fears neither God nor man,” but who grants a widow’s wish simply because she wears him out with her insistence.

20. In the Orthodox Church, an archimandrite is an abbot appointed by a bishop to oversee several monasteries, each having its own hegumen (abbot), or to head an especially important monastery. The title may also be bestowed honorifically.

21. The feast of Mid-Pentecost falls on the fourth Wednesday after Easter, twenty-five days between Easter and Pentecost.

22. A near quotation of Matthew 19:14.

23. See note 4 to The Diary of a Madman.

24. This is the Orthodox prayer to the Holy Spirit, which is recited in church services and may also be repeated by individuals before an undertaking.

25. Preparation for communion includes fasting, prayer, confession, and attending church services.

26. So-called “internal passports” were required in Russia for travel within the country.

AFTER THE BALL

1. See note 3 to The Kreutzer Sonata. Balls were not permitted during Lent.

2. Elizaveta Petrovna (1709–62), the second daughter of the emperor Peter the Great, became empress after staging a palace coup in 1741. She was a woman of strong character and kept a sumptuous court.

3. In a society game, two young men would choose personal qualities and then go up to a girl and ask her to guess which quality belonged to whom.

4. Alphonse Karr (1808–98), French novelist and journalist, became editor of Le Figaro in 1838 and in the same year founded his own satirical magazine, Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). He was famous for his wry sayings, among them the universally known Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (“The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”).

5. In fact, Noah had one bad son and two good ones. When they found him drunk and exposed, the bad one laughed and pointed, but the good ones approached him backwards and covered his “shame” (see Genesis 9:20–27).

6. See note 1 to Father Sergius. Ivan Vassilievich uses the French form of the emperor’s name.

THE FORGED COUPON

1. A detachable portion of a bank credit voucher, stating the amount of credit and usable as legal tender.

2. See note 1 to The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

3. People’s Houses were established in Russia beginning in the 1880s as cultural centers for workers and artisans, with theater, lecture hall, library, and tearoom.

4. See note 3 to The Kreutzer Sonata and note 6 to The Devil.

5. The feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God falls on September 8.

6. The fast of August 1–14 preceding the feast of the Dormition (Assumption) of the Mother of God on August 15.

7. See note 4 to Master and Man.

8. See Matthew 5–7, specifically 5:12.

9. The Russian word krestyanin, “peasant,” is derived etymologically from the word khristianin, “Christian” in the sense of “human being,” and is closely associated with it.

10. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly warned against the worship of idols.

11. See Matthew 10:8.

12. See John 15:20.

13. The Old Testament law of Moses teaches the taking of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Leviticus 24:20).

14. That is, internal exile, most often to Siberia.

15. There were major semi-autonomous Cossack settlements in the south of Russia, on the Dnieper, Yaik, Ural, and Don rivers.

16. An itinerant or circuit court traveling from town to town.

17. These are the names of the first three letters of the old Slavonic alphabet, still used in church texts.

18. See note 10 to Father Sergius.

19. A free reference to Mark 10:21–30.

20. In Orthodox church administration, a metropolitan is a bishop or archbishop who is in charge of an entire diocese and presides over the synod of bishops of the diocese. The ober-procurator of the Russian Orthodox Church, a position created by Peter the Great in his reform of church administration, was a layman who represented the emperor and replaced the traditional patriarch as head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church.

HADJI MURAT

1. Shamil (1797–1871) was the third imam (military-religious leader) of Daghestan and Chechnya to lead his people against the Russians, who sought to annex their land. He finally surrendered in 1859.

2. Prince Semyon Mikhailovich Vorontsov (1823–82) was an imperial adjutant and commander of the Kurinsky regiment. His early service was under his father, who was vicegerent of the Caucasus. He was married to Princess Marya Vassilievna Trubetskoy.

3. Vladimir Alexeevich Poltoratsky (1828–89) began his service in the Caucasus and rose to the rank of general. Tolstoy used material from his memoirs in writing Hadji Murat.

4. The Avars were a nomadic proto-Turkish people of the Hun family from so-called Tartary, a vast territory in Central Asia stretching from the Urals to the Pacific. By the nineteenth century, their remnant occupied part of Circassia and was ruled by its own khan. Hadji Murat was an Avar, as was the imam Shamil. Later Hanefi is referred to as a Tavlin, which is another name for Avar.

5. The phrase La ilaha il Allah (“There is no god but Allah”), which states the most central belief of Islam, is sung in the call to prayer five times a day and may also be used as a battle cry.

6. Abraham Louis Breguet (1747–1823), the most famous of Swiss watchmakers, founded a factory in Paris in 1775. A great innovator, he invented the self-winding watch and the “repeater,” which rings the hours.

7. See note 4 to Master and Man.

8. Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov (1782–1856) was a field marshal during the Napoleonic wars. Later he was made governor general of the new southern provinces of Russia, with their capital in Odessa. In 1844 he was named vicegerent of the Caucasus and awarded the title of prince. Between 1844 and 1853, he led a number of expeditions into the Caucasian mountains. In 1853 he retired to Odessa.

9. In fact, at the battle of Craonne, between Reims and Soissons on the north bank of the Aisne, on 7 March 1814, Napoleon led a force of 37,000 men against an army of 85,000 Russians and Prussians under the command of General Blücher and gained a clear victory, though with heavy losses.

10. Joachim Murat (1767–1815) was a cavalry commander and one of Napoleon’s most important generals. He married the emperor’s sister Caroline in 1800.

11. Franz Karlovich Klügenau (1791–1851), a lieutenant general, was commander of the Russian army of northern Daghestan. Tolstoy made use of his correspondence with Hadji Murat and of his journals.

12. Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov (1825–88) later became an important statesman and finally minister of the interior. In chapters XI and XIII, Tolstoy used Loris-Melikov’s actual transcript of his conversations with Hadji Murat.

13. Kazi Mullah (1794–1832) was the first imam of Daghestan and Chechnya to take up the ghazavat (holy war) against the Russians. He was killed in battle and was replaced as imam by Hamzat Bek (1797–1834).

14. In 1785, Sheikh Mansur (Elisha Mansur Ushurma, 1732–94), taking the title, not of imam, but of “preparatory mover,” preached unity among the Caucasian Muslims in a holy war against the Russians. In 1791 his forces were defeated by Prince Potemkin at Anapa, and Mansur was captured and taken to Petersburg, where he was imprisoned for life.

15. Tolstoy gives his own translation of Vorontsov’s actual letter. Alexander Ivanovich Chernyshov (1785–1857) was a Russian cavalry commander and adjutant general during the Napoleonic wars. He served as minister of war from 1827 to 1852 and was chairman of the State Council.

16. Count Zakhar Grigorievich Chernyshov (1797–1862), no relation to the minister of war, was a Decembrist and member of the Northern Secret Society of young noblemen whose aim was to make Russia a constitutional monarchy, if not a republic. His namesake, then General A. I. Chernyshov, was instrumental in crushing the Decembrist uprising of 1825, in which Zakhar Grigorievich took no actual part, but for which he was tried and sentenced along with other members of the Northern Society. The general did indeed try to take his inheritance.

17. The Eastern Catholic Church, Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite, or Uniate Church, existing in the Ukraine and western Russia, accepts the authority of the See of Rome, but follows Eastern Orthodox liturgical practices. The Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches occurred in 1054.

18. A prayer for health, prosperity, and “many years” of life for the person concerned is recited and sung at the end of the liturgy or on other occasions.

19. In a note to his novel The Cossacks (1862), Tolstoy wrote: “The most valued sabers and daggers in the Caucasus are called Gurda, after their maker.”

20. The imperial Corps of Pages was an elite military school founded in 1697 by Peter the Great for training aristocratic boys in personal attendance on the emperor. Graduates had the unique privilege of joining any regiment they chose, regardless of openings.

21. “Corners” and “transports” are terms from the game of shtoss, a gambling game similar to basset or the American faro, very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

22. In the biblical story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50), the young and handsome Joseph treats his master’s wife with the utmost respect and prudence.

23. See note 5 to The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

24. Iosif Ivanovich Karganov was the military commander of Nukha. Hadji Murat lived in his house before his flight. Tolstoy was in touch with Karganov’s widow, who supplied him with details about Hadji Murat’s knowledge of Russian, his horses, his lameness, the appearance of his murids, and about his flight and death.