28. A reference to Pushkin’s comic poem Count Nulin, in which the heroine is said to have been “brought up / Not in the customs of our forefathers, / But in a noble girls’ boarding school / By some émigrée Falbala.”
29. The name Basavriuk (Dostoevsky added the second “s”) belongs to the satanic villain in Gogol’s first published story, “St. John’s Eve.”
30. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), one of the most influential writers of the French Enlightenment, favored natural settings and emotions.
THE GAMBLER
1. The original Vauxhall was a seventeenth-century pleasure garden in London. The word entered Russian as a common noun meaning an outdoor space for concerts and entertainment, with tearoom, tables, casino, and so on. The first railway line in Russia was the Petersburg–Pavlovsk line, and the first vauxhall was near the Pavlovsk railway station, so near, in fact, that vokzal also became the Russian word for “railway station.”
2. Until 1870, the Papal States in central Italy were under the sovereignty of the pope of Rome and maintained their own embassies in other capitals.
3. L’Opinion nationale was a liberal French newspaper which condemned the policies of tsarist Russia in Poland.
4. The year of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
5. V. A. Perovsky (1795–1857), general and aide-de-camp, participated in the war against Napoleon in 1812 and was later made military governor of Orenburg.
6. Hoppe and Co. was a well-known banking firm of Amsterdam and London.
7. The rooster became the symbol of France because of the similarity of the Latin words for rooster ( gallus) and Gaul (Gallia).
8. Germany was made up at that time of independent principalities or states, which were finally united only in 1871, after Bismarck’s defeat of the French. Dostoevsky probably drew his Roulettenburg from Wiesbaden, a spa he visited several times. Wiesbaden was a few miles from the border of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.
9. Polina’s real name is evidently Praskovya, in which case Polina is an affectation (though there is a Russian name Polina).
10. Dostoevsky often refers ironically to this pair of words, which come from the prefatory note to Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see note 30 to The Double): “Here is the only portrait of a man painted exactly from nature and in all its truth that exists and probably ever will exist.”
11. The French writer Paul de Kock (1794–1871) was the author of innumerable novels depicting petit bourgeois life, some of them considered risqué.
12. I. A. Balakirev was the court buffoon of the Russian empress Anna Ivanovna (1693–1740).
13. Sophie Armant Blanchard (1778–1819) was the wife of Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753–1809), one of the first French aeronauts and inventor of the parachute, and took part in his aerostatic travels. She died in a fire on a hot-air balloon.
14. Blanche and Alexei Ivanovich repeat with one slight modification the opening repartee of Don Diègue and Don Roderigue (father and son) in Act 1, Scene 5 of Le Cid, by Pierre Corneille (1606–84). The young Dostoevsky had been an avid reader of Corneille, especially of Le Cid.
15. Blanche modifies the famous saying, Après moi le déluge (“After me the great flood”), attributed both to Louis XV and to his mistress, Mme de Pompadour.
16. The Château des Fleurs was a dance hall near the Champs-Elysées in Paris, which flourished under the reign of Louis Philippe and closed its doors in 1866.
17. The reference is to an anonymous erotic book, Thérèsephilosophe, ou Mémoire pour servir à l’histoire de D. Dirray et de Mlle Erodice la Haye (“Thérèse the Philosopher, or a Memoir Contributing to the History of D. Dirray and Mlle Erodice la Haye”), published in 1748.
18. The Kalmucks, or Kalmiks, are a Mongolian people settled between the Don and the Volga, and also in Siberia.
19. The Bal Mabille was, in 1813, a drinking spot in the fields around the Champs-Elysées, run by a former dancing master named Mabille. It had great success and grew to great proportions under Mabille’s sons. The dancer Rigolboche (Marguerite Badel) created the cancan there in 1845. The Bal disappeared in 1875.
20. The Palais Royal was originally the palace of Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642). Before his death, he willed it to Louis XIII and his direct descendants, and in 1643 the widowed queen, Anne d’Autriche, moved to it from the Louvre with her two sons, Louis XIV and Philippe d’Orléans, aged five and three, thus making it the royal palace. In 1781–4, the central garden was surrounded on three sides by the present four-story structure, with 180 arcades on the ground floor containing some sixty shops, which were rented out to merchants.
21. The tragic poet Jean Racine (1639–99) is considered to have perfectly realized the ideal of French classical tragedy. In an early letter to his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky passionately defended Racine against the sort of criticism Alexei Ivanovich offers here.
22. The statue of Apollo in the Vatican Museum, a Roman copy of a Greek original, was once considered the model of male sculptural beauty.
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 The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov, 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 were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of The Brothers Karamazov, and more recently Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France, where Pevear teaches at the American University of Paris.
OTHER TRANSLATIONS BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Adolescent (2003)
The Idiot (2002)
Demons (1994)
Notes from Underground (1993)
Crime and Punishment (1992)
The Brothers Karamazov (1990)
NIKOLAI GOGOL
Dead Souls (1996)
The Collected Tales (1998)
ANTON CHEKHOV
The Complete Short Novels (2005)
LEO TOLSTOY
Anna Karenina (2003)
FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, JANUARY 2007
Copyright © 2005 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States in slightly different form by Everyman’s Library, an imprint of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom by Everyman’s Library, London, in 2005.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Everyman’s Library edition as follows:
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881.
[Dvoinik. English]
The double; and, the gambler / Fyodor Dostoyevsky; translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; with an introduction by Richard Pevear.
p. cm.
1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881—Translations into English. I. Pevear, Richard, 1943–. II. Volokhonsky, Larissa. III. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881. Igrok. English. IV. Title: Gambler. V. Title.
PG 3326.D8 2005
891.73'3—dc22 2005040065
eISBN: 978-0-307-27971-2
www.vint
agebooks.com
v2.0
FOOTNOTES
*1Without ceremony.
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*2Count and countess.
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*3Teacher or tutor [Russian in French transliteration].
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†4Common table.
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*5That was not so stupid.
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*6Gentleman.
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*7Overlook.
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*8The bad sort.
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*9Thirty and forty.
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*10The Gallic cock.
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*11Madame baroness…I have the honor of being your slave.
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†12Utmost.
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‡13Yes indeed.
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*14Are you crazy?
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*15Your emoluments.
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*16My dear monsieur, forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name, monsieur Alexis?…isn’t it?
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†17Madame her mother.
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‡18The baron is so irascible, a Prussian character, you know, he will finally make a German-style quarrel.
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*19Devil take it! a greenhorn like you…
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*20Perhaps.
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*21Thirty and forty.
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†22One fine morning.
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*23The Russian gentlefolk.
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*24Under the poor general’s nose.
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*25Yes, Madame…and believe me, I am so delighted…your health…it’s a miracle…to see you here, a charming surprise…
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*26This old woman has fallen into dotage.
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†27But, madame, it will be a pleasure.
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*28Alone she’ll do stupid things.
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*29Leave, leave.
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†30Red and black, even and odd, below and above eighteen.
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*31Thirty-six.
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*32Place your bets, gentlemen! Place your bets, gentlemen! No more bets?
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*33How much zero? twelve? twelve?
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†34The betting is closed!
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*35What a victory!
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†36But, madame, it was fire [exciting, brilliant].
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*37Madame princess…a poor expatriate…continual misfortune…Russian princes are so generous.
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*38Devil take it, she’s a terrible old woman!
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†39What the devil is this!
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‡40But, madame…luck can turn, one stroke of bad luck and you will lose everything…above all the way you play…it was terrible!
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§41You’ll surely lose.
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*42Eh! it’s not that.
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†43My dear sir, our dear general is mistaken…
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*44Oh, my dear Monsieur Alexis, be so good.
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*45What a shrew!
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*46We’ll drink milk, in the fresh grass.
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†47Nature and truth.
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*48Gambled away (distortion of the German verspielt).
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*49The deuce!
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†50She’ll live a hundred years!
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*51Scoundrel.
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*52Honor (Polish).
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*53The lady’s feet.
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†54Honorable gentleman (distorted Polish).
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*55The last three rounds, gentlemen!
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*56Twenty-two!
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†57Thirty-one!
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‡58Four!
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*59The gentleman has already won a hundred thousand florins.
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*60These Russians!
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*61Ah, it’s him! Come then, you ninny!…you won gold and silver? I’d prefer the gold.
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†62Bibi, how stupid you are…We’ll have a beanfeast, won’t we?
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‡63My son, have you a heart?
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§64Anyone else…
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¶65If you’re not too stupid, I’ll take you to Paris.
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*66Well, then!…you’ll see Paris. But tell me, what’s an outchitel? You were quite stupid when you were an outchitel.
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†67Well, then, what will you do if I take you along?…I want fifty thousand francs…We’ll go to Paris…and I’ll make you see stars in broad daylight.
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‡68Another hundred and fifty thousand francs…who knows?…I’m a good girl…but you’ll see stars.
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§69Ah, vile slave!…and afterwards the deluge! But you can’t understand, go!…Aie, what are you doing?
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*70Well, then, my outchitel, I’m waiting for you, if you want.
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†71Maybe I was asking for no better.
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‡72But you’ll be happy, like a little king.
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*73As for me, I want an allowance of fifty thousand francs and then…
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*74And the hundred thousand francs we have left, you’ll eat up with me, my outchitel.
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*75He won two hundred thousand francs.
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*76Why, you have the wits to understand. You know, my boy…
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*77But…you know…but tell me…But you know…What will you do afterwards, tell me?
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†78Yes, yes, that’s it, that’s magnificent!
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‡79Because I thought you were just an outchitel (something like a lackey, isn’t it?)…because I’m a good girl.
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§80Youth must pass.
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¶81Why, you’re a real philosopher, you know? A real philosopher…Well, then, I’m going to love you, I’m going to love you—you’ll see, you’ll be pleased.
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*82A true Russian, a Kalmuck.
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*83At sixes and sevens.
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*84He’s in luck.
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†85I’ll have a mansion, muzhiks [peasants], and besides I’ll still have my million.
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‡86All the same, he’s very proper.
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*87These devilish Russian names, well, then…with fourteen consonants! Pleasant, isn’t it?
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†88You’ve been a good boy…I thought you were stupid, and you look it…
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> ‡89We’ll always be good friends…and you’ll be happy!
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Translators’ Notes
THE DOUBLE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
THE GAMBLER
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
Notes
About the Translators
Other Translations by Richard Pevear and Laris…
Copyright
The Double and The Gambler Page 37
