The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

by Nikolai Gogol

  NOTES

  ST. JOHN’S EVE

  1. The Russian and Ukrainian stove was a large, elaborate structure used for heating and cooking, which one could also sit or sleep on and even get into in order to wash.

  2. The names of three half-legendary heroes from Ukrainian history: Ivan Podkova was a Cossack leader who seized the Moldavian throne in 1578 and was later executed by the Polish king; Karp Poltora Kozhukha was hetman of the Ukraine from 1638 to 1642; Sagaidachny (Pyotr Konashevich), also a Ukrainian hetman, led Cossack campaigns against the Turks and Tartars in 1616-21.

  3. A Ukrainian saying, meaning to lie at confession, as Gogol himself explains in a note to the story.

  4. The Poles and Lithuanians, whose territories bordered the Ukraine, were traditional enemies of the Cossacks, though they sometimes made alliances with each other against common enemies. The narrator refers to them in somewhat familiar, disrespectful terms. "Crimeans" here refers to the Crimean Tartars, a Muslim people inhabiting the Crimean peninsula, descendants of the Mongols.

  5. Kutya (pronounced koot-YAH) is a special dish made from rice (or barley or wheat) and raisins, sweetened with honey, offered to people after a church service in commemoration of the dead and sometimes also on Christmas Eve.

  6. Father Afanasy represents an exaggeration of the view of Roman Catholics (such as Poles and Lithuanians) taken by the Ukrainians, who belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

  7. The Zaporozhye (meaning "beyond the rapids" on the Dnieper River) was a territory in the southeastern Ukraine where the Cossacks lived and preserved some measure of independence from the Russian state during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

  8. The Cossacks customarily shaved their heads but grew a topknot on the top of the head, priding themselves on its length.

  9. That is, the feast in honor of the nativity of Saint John the Baptist, celebrated on June 24; in folklore the night before the feast is a time of magic and mystification.

  10. "Yaga" is the second half of the name Baba-yaga, the wicked witch of Russian folktales, here used generically.

  11. A Ukrainian folk dance and the music for it.

  12. Probably a slighting reference to the Jews, who often kept taverns in the Ukraine.

  13. A flurry is poured out in cases when we want to find out the cause of a fear; melted tin or wax is dropped into water, and whatever shape it takes is what has frightened the sick person; after that the fear goes away. We boil a bellyache for nausea and stomachache. A piece of hemp is set alight and thrown into a mug, which is then turned upside down in a bowl of water and placed on the sick person's stomach; then, after some whispered spell, he's given a spoonful of the same water to drink. (Author's note.)

  THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  * Among us, to go caroling [ koliadovat] means to sing songs called koliadki under the windows on Christmas Eve. The master or mistress of the house, or anyone staying at home, always drops into the carolers' sack some sausage or bread or a copper coin, whatever bounty they have. They say there used to be an idol named Koliada who was thought to be a god, and that is where the koliadki came from. Who knows? It's not for us simple people to discuss it. Last year Father Osip forbade going caroling around the farmsteads, saying folk were pleasing Satan by it. However, to tell the truth, there's not a word in the koliadki about Koliada. They often sing of the nativity of Christ; and in the end they wish health to the master, the mistress, the children, and the whole household. (The Beekeepers note.)

  ** Among us, anyone from a foreign land is called a German, whether he's a Frenchman, a Swiss, or a Swede—they're all Germans. (The Beekeeper's note.)

  1. Kutya (pronounced koot-YAH) is a special dish made from rice (or barley or wheat) and raisins, sweetened with honey, offered to people after a church service in commemoration of the dead and sometimes also on Christmas Eve.

  2. The Russian and Ukrainian stove was a large, elaborate structure used for heating and cooking, which one could also sit or sleep on and even get into in order to wash.

  3. The period of fast preceding the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29.

  4. A panikhida is an Orthodox prayer service in memory of the dead.

  5. A Zaporozhets was a Cossack from the Zaporozhye (see note 7 to "St. John's Eve").

  6. The only food permitted on the last day of the Advent fast (i.e., Christmas Eve).

  7. The Setch was the sociopolitical and military organization of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the Zaporozhye—a form of republic headed by a chief. The freedoms of the Setch were gradually curtailed in the eighteenth century, and in 1775 it was finally abolished.

  8. The term hetman (from the German Hauptmann) originally referred to the commander in chief of the Polish army. The Cossacks used it as the title of their own elected chief. It is comically misapplied here.

  9. Grigory Alexandrovich, Prince Potemkin (1739-91), field marshal and statesman, in 1774 became the favorite of the empress Catherine II (1729-96) and thereafter guided Russian state policy.

  10. The Italian carabinieri were members of an army corps also used as a police force—a degrading function in the opinion of the Cossacks.

  11. On "Crimeans" see note 4 to "St. John's Eve." The allusion is to the Russian conquest of the Crimea from the Turks in 1771.

  12. The empress is addressing the dramatist Denis Fonvizin (1745-92), whose plays The Brigadier and The Minor are classics of the Russian theater and the best Russian prose comedies before Gogol's ownInspector General.

  13. Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95), the great French poet and fabulist.

  14. The iconostasis is an icon-bearing partition with three doors that spans the width of an Orthodox church, separating the sanctuary from the body of the church.

  THE TERRIBLE VENGEANCE

  1. A Zaporozhets was a Cossack from the Zaporozhye (see note 7 to "St. John's Eve").

  2. Ksiedzy is the plural of ksiadz, Polish for priest; adopted by Russian, the word acquired pejorative connotations as referring to Roman Catholic priests (see note 6 to "St. John s Eve"). Rebaptizing implied that the priests did not consider the Orthodox Ukrainians to be Christians.

  3. The Zaporozhtsy under the leadership of Sagaidachny (see note 2 to "St. John's Eve") campaigned against the Crimean Tartar khanate, remnant of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, and fought them on the shore of the Sivash (the "Salt Lake") in 1620.

  4. The Russian and Ukrainian stove was a large, elaborate structure used for heating and cooking, which one could also sit or sleep on and even get into in order to wash.

  5. The Uniates are adherents of the so-called Union of Brest (Unia in Latin), declared at the church council at Brest in 1595, by which western Russian churches were placed under the jurisdiction of the pope of Rome, with the understanding that, while accepting the dogmas of Roman Catholicism, they would retain the rites of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Unia aroused great dissension at the time, and has been a cause of struggle in the Ukraine and elsewhere to this day.

  6. The Pospolitstvo was the combined nobility of Poland and Lithuania, united under one scepter in 1569.

  7. The term hetman (from the German Hauptmann) originally referred to the commander in chief of the Polish army. The Cossacks used it as the title of their own elected chief. It is comically misapplied here.

  8. The enemy of Christ whose appearance in the "last days" is prophesied in Revelation (11:7), and of whom Saint John writes in his first epistle: ". . . and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come . . ." (1 John 2:18).

  9. See note 4 to "The Night Before Christmas." It is a popular belief that the soul does not leave this world until forty days after death.

  10. See note 2 to "St. John's Eve" and note 3 above.

  11. A flurry is poured out in cases when we want to find out the cause of a fear; melted tin or wax is dropped into water, and whatever shape it takes is what has frightened the sick person; after that the fear goes away. We boil a bellyache for n
ausea and stomachache. A piece of hemp is set alight and thrown into a mug, which is then turned upside down in a bowl of water and placed on the sick person's stomach; then, after some whispered spell, he's given a spoonful of the same water to drink. (Author's note.)

  12. The Liman (an inlet of the Black Sea near Odessa) and the Crimea are in the very south of the Ukraine, as far as possible from Kiev; Galicia, extending to the northern slopes of the Carpathians, is now divided between the western Ukraine and eastern Poland; geographically, it is to the right, not the left, looking south from Kiev.

  13. See note 10 above. Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1593-1657), hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, rose up against the Poles in 1648.

  14. That is, Stefan Batory, a Hungarian prince who was king of Poland from 1575 to 1586.

  IVAN FYODOROVICH SHPONKA AND HIS AUNT

  1. Pirozhki (plural of pirozhok) are small pastries with sweet or savory fillings.

  2. A tax farmer was a private person authorized by the government to collect various taxes in exchange for a fixed fee.

  3. Latin for "knows," meaning that the student has learned the lesson.

  4. A concentrate produced by allowing wine to freeze and then removing the frozen portion.

  5. See note 1 to "St. John's Eve."

  6. Adult male serfs were known in Russia as "souls." Censuses for tax purposes were taken at intervals of as much as fifteen years, between which the number of souls on an estate might of course increase (or decrease).

  7. The feast of Saint Philip falls on November 14 and marks the beginning of the Advent fast.

  8. A book entitled The Journey of Trifon Korobeinikov, an account written by the Moscow clerk Trifon Korobeinikov of his journey to Mount Athos with a mission sent by the tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible"). First published in the eighteenth century, it went through forty editions, testifying to its immense popularity. Korobeinikov also wrote Description of the Route from Moscow to Constantinople after a second journey in 1594.

  OLD WORLD LANDOWNERS

  1. Mythological symbol of conjugal love, Philemon and Baucis were a Phrygian couple who welcomed Zeus and Hermes, traveling in disguise, when their compatriots refused them hospitality. In return, they were spared the flood that the divinities sent the Phrygians as a punishment. Their thatched cottage became a temple in which they ministered, and they asked that one of them not die without the other. In old age they were changed into trees.

  2. Ukrainian (Little Russian) names frequently end in 0, which would be Russified by the addition of a v.

  3. Peter III (1728-62) became emperor of Russia in 1762 and was assassinated at the instigation of his wife, the empress Catherine II, who thereafter ruled alone.

  4. Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess of La Valliere (1644-1710), was a favorite of Louis XIV. She ended her life as a Carmelite nun.

  5. A volunteer defense force in the Ukraine during the war with Napoleon in 1812.

  6. See note 1 to "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt."

  7. A dish made from grain (wheat, buckwheat, oats, rye, millet) boiled with water or milk.

  8. See note 1 to "St. John's Eve."

  9. The armies of Catherine II fought successfully against the Turks in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

  10. It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table until the coffin was prepared.

  11. See note 5 to "St. John's Eve."

  12. The final hymn of the Orthodox funeral service.

  13. "Small open," a French card-playing term.

  14. Patties of cottage cheese mixed with flour and eggs and fried.

  VIY

  * Viy is a colossal creation of folk imagination. This name is applied by people in Little Russia to the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids reach to the ground. The whole story is a popular legend. I did not wish to change it in any way and tell it almost as simply as I heard it. (Author's note.)

  1. Russian seminary education was open to the lower classes and was often subsidized by state scholarships; seminarians were thus not necessarily preparing for the priesthood.

  2. Herodias, wife of Herod the tetrarch and mother of Salome, ordered the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-11); Potiphar, an officer of the Egyptian pharaoh, bought Joseph as a slave and made him overseer of his house; his wife falsely accused Joseph of trying to lie with her (Genesis 39).

  3. See note 7 to "Old World Landowners."

  4. See note 8 to "St. John's Eve."

  5. Earlier of the two summer fasts (see note 3 to "The Night Before Christmas").

  6. "Master" in Latin.

  7. Thus in the original. The French bon mot means a clever or witty saying.

  8. See note 14 to "The Night Before Christmas."

  9. See note 4 to "The Night Before Christmas."

  THE STORY OF HOW IVAN IVANOVICH QUARRELED WITH IVAN NIKIFOROVICH

  1. A word of Hungarian origin meaning a frock coat, caftan, or jacket lined with fur.

  2. A Tartar word referring, in different regions, to different sorts of jackets— here, probably a simple caftan trimmed with leather on the hem, cuffs, and front.

  3. Moscow printers and publishers of the early nineteenth century.

  4. In Russian, the godfather and godmother of the same person call each other kum and kuma, as do all others thus related through the same baptism.

  5. A zertsalo was a small three-faced glass pyramid bearing an eagle and certain edicts of the emperor Peter the Great (1682-1725) that stood on the desk in every government office.

  6. A special dorsal section of flesh running the entire length of a salmon or sturgeon, removed in one piece and either salted or smoked; considered a great delicacy in Russia.

  7. The fourth-century saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom, sometimes venerated together by the Orthodox Church.

  8. St. Philips Day marks the beginning of the six-week Advent fast (see note 7 to "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt").

  9. In chapter I his last name is Pupopuz, meaning something like "bellybut-ton." Golopuz means "bare belly."

  10. See note 14 to "Old World Landowners."

  NEVSKY PROSPECT

  1. The Neva River divides into three main branches as it flows into the Gulf of Finland, marking out the three main areas of the city of St. Petersburg: on the left bank of the Neva is the city center; between the Neva and the Little Neva is Vasilievsky Island; and between the Little Neva and the Nevka is the Petersburg side. The Vyborg side, Peski ("the Sands") and the Moscow gate, neighborhoods well within the limits of present-day Petersburg, were once quite remote from each other.

  2. Ganymede, the son of King Tros, after whom the city of Troy was named, was the most beautiful of young men and was therefore chosen by the gods to be Zeus's cupbearer.

  3. An extremely tall, needle-shaped spire topped by a figure of a ship on the Admiralty building, one of the landmarks of Petersburg.

  4. The reference is to the image of the Madonna in the fresco The Adoration of the Magi, in the chapel of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in Citta della Pieve, painted by the Italian master Pietro Vannucci, called II Perugino (1446-1523).

  5. The star figured on the decoration of a number of Russian military and civil orders.

  6. The cemetery in Okhta, a suburb of Petersburg on a small tributary of the Neva.

  7. An amusingly ironic assortment of names: F. V. Bulgarin (1789-1859) and N. I. Grech (1787-1867), journalists and minor writers of much influence in their time, were editors of the reactionary and semiofficial magazine The Northern Bee, and at least one of them (Bulgarin) was also a police informer. They were archenemies of Russia's greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), who enjoyed mocking them in epigrams. A. A. Orlov (1791-1840) was the author of primitive, moralistic novels for 'a popular audience, derided by Bulgarin and Grech, though, as Pushkin pointed out in an article, Bulgarin's novels differed little from Orlov's.

  8. The reference is to vaudevilles about simple folk pop
ular in the 1830s, featuring a character named Filatka.

  9. Dmitri Donskoy is a historical tragedy by the mediocre poet Nestor Kukol-nik (1809-68), a great success in its day. Woe from Wit, a comedy in verse by Alexander Griboedov (1795-1829), stands as the first real masterpiece of the Russian theater.

  10. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), poet, playwright, historian, and literary theorist, is one of the greatest figures of German literature. The fantastic tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) are known the world over.

  11. In Russian, the German word Junker, meaning "young lord," refers to a lower officer's rank open only to the nobility (and thus, of course, not to the tinsmith Schiller).

  12. A junior clerk was expected to call at his superior's home to wish him good health on his name day and feast days, and to leave his card as evidence of having done so.

  13. Marie-Joseph, Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), French general and statesman, took the side of the Colonies in the American war of independence, and was active as a liberal royalist in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830.

  THE DIARY OF A MADMAN

  1. See note 7 to "Nevsky Prospect."

  2. The lines are in fact by the minor poet and playwright N. P. Nikolev (1758-1815).