The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Page 50
3. Ruch was a prominent Moscow tailor of the time.
4. See note 8 to "Nevsky Prospect."
5. The German title Kammerjunker ("gentleman of the bedchamber") was adopted by the Russian imperial court.
6. The reference is to the problem of royal succession in Spain following the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833. His three-year-old daughter, Isabella II, was put on the throne and ruled for thirty-five years, despite the efforts of the king's brother, Don Carlos, to depose her.
7. Under the stern and very Catholic Philip II (1527-98), the Inquisition reached its height in Spain. The Capuchins were Franciscan friars of the new rule established in 1528.
8. Jules-Armand, Prince de Polignac (1780-1847), French politican, was minister of foreign affairs under Charles X (1757-1836).
THE NOSE
1. In the first version of the story, the date was April 25th. The date Gogol finally chose, March 25th, is that of the feast of the Annunciation, one of the major feasts in the Christian calendar. This fact has seemed to support commentators seeking a specifically religious and even apocalyptical significance in "The Nose."
2. Bribery and other administrative abuses evidently worked more quickly in the Caucasus than in the capital or the Russian provinces.
3. See note 7 to "Nevsky Prospect."
4. The denominations of Russian paper currency were distinguished by color: a blue banknote had a value of five roubles, a red of ten roubles.
5. Gogol's slip, perpetuated in all Russian editions; her name is, of course, Palageya.
6. A fashionable shop in Petersburg, located on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Bolshaya Morskaya Street.
7. Grand admiral and later grand vizier of the Ottoman empire under the sultan Mahmud II (1785-1839), Khozrev-Mirza came to Petersburg in August 1829 at the head of a special embassy, following the murder in Teheran of the Russian ambassador, the poet Alexander Griboedov (see note 9 to "Nevsky Prospect"). During his stay, he lived in the Tavrichesky Palace.
THE CARRIAGE
1. Marshal of the nobility was the highest elective office in a province before the reforms of the 1860s. Governors and administrators were appointed by the tsar.
2. That is, in the war against Napoleon.
THE PORTRAIT
1. See note 7 to "The Nose."
2. A character from the popular story "Bova Korolevich," often portrayed in Russian folk prints, or lubok, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
3. That is, from the outskirts of the city (see note 6 to "Nevsky Prospect").
4. Yeruslan Lazarevich is a Russian version of the Rustem of Persian tales; he and the other folk figures listed here were also popular images in lubok.
5. The streets on Vasilievsky Island (see note 1 to "Nevsky Prospect"), called "lines," were laid out in a grid and numbered.
6. Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), who worked in Perugia, Florence, and Rome, was commonly considered the greatest of all painters by Russians of Gogol's time; Guido Reni (1575-1642) was known for the elegance of his brushwork, the correctness of his drawing, and the brilliance of his colors; Titian (1477-1576) was perhaps the greatest of the Venetian masters. For Russians, the Flemish school was represented by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Antoine (or Sir Anthony) van Dyck (1599-1641), who collaborated with Rubens for some time and later became court painter for Charles I of England.
7. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), painter and architect, a pupil of Michelangelo, is best known for his Lives of the Italian artists of the Renaissance. The portrait in question is Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
8. See note 1 to "Nevsky Prospect." Kolomna was a suburb to the west of Petersburg.
9. Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, prince of Smolensk (1745-1813), Russian field marshal, led campaigns in Poland, Turkey, and the Crimea, was defeated by Napoleon at Austerlitz, and successfully commanded the Russian army during Napoleon's disastrous Russian expedition of 1812.
10. A hero of the narrative poem Twelve Sleeping Maidens, by V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852), Gromoboy sold his soul to the devil.
11. Either David Teniers the Elder (1582-1649), or his son, David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), Flemish painters known for their realistic scenes of popular life, interiors, and so on.
12. The lady uses the French form of the name of the Italian painter Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1494-1534), known for his audacious use of aerial perspective and the sensuality of his mythological scenes.
13. The typical Byronic pose is a full profile with an open-collared shirt. Corinne is the heroine of a novel of the same name by the French writer Mme. de Stael (1766-1817); Ondine is the heroine of a poem of the same name by V. A. Zhukovsky, based on the tale by the German Romantic writer Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque (1777-1843); Aspasia (fifth century B.C.), an Athenian courtesan famous for her beauty and intelligence, belonged to Socrates' circle and was the lover of the general and statesman Pericles.
14. The basilisk is a legendary monster, hatched by a toad from a cock's egg, whose look is said to kill.
15. The reference is to the poem "The Demon" (1824), by Alexander Pushkin (see note 7 to "Nevsky Prospect").
16. The words "immersed in their zephyrs and cupids" are paraphrased from a line about a ruined landowner and lover of ballet in Griboedov's Woe from Wit (see note 9 to "Nevsky Prospect"); the name of Gaius Maecenas (c.70-8 B.C.), Roman statesman and important patron of literature, has become proverbial.
17. A shopping place that still exists in Petersburg.
18. A special design of oil lamp with a double draft and a reservoir higher than the wick, named for its French inventor.
19. See note 4 to "The Night Before Christmas."
20. The Senate in Petersburg acted as a civil court as well as a legislative body.
21. The noble and virtuous hero of The History of Sir Charles Grandison (I753-54). by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761).
THE OVERCOAT
1. See note 20 to "The Portrait."
2. That is, the church calendar, which lists saints' days and feast days, among other things; a child would be named for the saint (or one of the saints) on whose day it was born.
3. The famous equestrian statue of Peter the Great on the Senate square in Petersburg, by French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet (1716-91).
4. That is, one whose neglect of Orthodox feast days made her comparable to an unbeliever and even a sober Lutheran.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS
RICHARD PEVEAR has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy, Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as two books of poetry. He has received fellowships or grants for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the French Ministry of Culture.
LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY was born in Leningrad. She has translated works by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff into Russian.
Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated Dead Souls and The Collected Tales by Nikolai Gogol, and The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, The Idiot, and The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky. They have been twice awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, for their version of The Brothers Karamazov and more recently for Anna Karenina. They are married and live in France.