13. Bashkirs: A Turkic people who inhabited territory to the north of Orenburg on both sides of the Urals. They fought the Russians over the building of the fortress in Orenburg and later supported Pugachev’s rebellion.
14. Knyazhnin: See note 4 to “The Coffin-Maker.” The quotation is from his comedy The Odd Birds (1790).
15. Sumarokov: See note 11 to The History of the Village of Goryukhino.
16. Tredyakovsky: Vasily Kirillovich Tredyakovsky (1703–1769), poet, translator, and critic, was of common origin, studied at the Sorbonne, and returned to Petersburg to promote classical notions of versification. Posterity has generally accepted Shvabrin’s opinion of his poetry.
17. “Duels are formally forbidden…”: Dueling became so common in the upper ranks of the Russian military that in 1715 Peter the Great formally forbade the practice on pain of death for both duelists.
18. one spirit and one flesh: In the Orthodox marriage service, the priest asks of God: “Unite them in one mind; wed them into one flesh.” The notion that man and wife are one flesh is repeated in many texts, starting with Genesis 2:22–24.
19. Major General Traubenberg: See note 9 above.
20. the late emperor Peter III: Peter III (1728–1762), the only child of the eldest daughter of Peter the Great, ruled for only six months before he was assassinated in a conspiracy said to have been headed by his wife, a German princess who went on to become Catherine the Great. After his death, a number of false pretenders appeared claiming to be Peter III, among them Emelyan Pugachev.
21. torture…abolished: Torture was regulated by law in Russia from the 1740s on; in the 1760s Catherine the Great issued orders against the use of torture, but that did not eliminate it; it was formally abolished in 1801 by a decree of Alexander I.
22. 1741: Date of the end of the first revolt of the Bashkirs against the building of the Orenburg fortress.
23. the mild reign of the emperor Alexander: Alexander I (1777–1825), the grandson of Catherine the Great, reigned from 1801 to 1825. He began in a rather liberal spirit, but became more conservative after the Napoleonic Wars.
24. bread and salt: By Russian custom, in the formal reception of honored visitors, an offering of bread and salt would be presented to them on a special embroidered towel.
25. the sovereign Pyotr Fyodorovich: That is, Peter III (see note 20 above).
26. Chumakov: Fyodor Fedotovich Chumakov (1729–1786), a Yaik Cossack, was Pugachev’s commander of artillery. In 1775, however, he seized Pugachev and turned him over to the Russians on the promise of his own pardon and a payment of 100,000 roubles. Pushkin drew the details of this passage from archival records and the accounts of witnesses. The song that follows (two lines of which were quoted in Dubrovsky) appears in a collection of Russian folk songs published in 1780.
27. Grishka Otrepev: Grigory (Grisha, Grishka) Otrepev, the first of the so-called “False Dmitrys,” was a defrocked monk who claimed to be Dmitry Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible and heir to the Russian throne. The real tsarevich Dmitry was murdered in 1591 at the age of nine. Otrepev succeeded in becoming tsar during the Time of Troubles and reigned for ten months (1605–1606).
28. Kheraskov: Mikhail Matveevich Kheraskov (1733–1807) came to prominence as a poet during the reign of Catherine the Great. The quotation is from his poem entitled, like the chapter, “Parting.”
29. The epigraph is from Kheraskov’s Rossiad (1771–1779), the first epic poem in Russian to be modeled on Homer and Virgil. The “he” referred to is Ivan the Terrible.
30. Mr. Collegiate Councilor: In the Russian table of fourteen civil, military, and court ranks, established by Peter the Great in 1722, collegiate councilor was sixth, the civil equivalent of colonel.
31. Lizaveta Kharlova: Daughter and wife of fortress commanders in the Orenburg region. Her father, mother, and husband were captured by Pugachev and brutally murdered; she herself was forced to become Pugachev’s concubine, but was later killed by Cossack chiefs.
32. A. Sumarokov: See note 11 to The History of the Village of Goryukhino. The lines are in fact a pastiche by Pushkin himself.
33. sitting under the icons: Icons (images of Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints) are traditionally hung in the far right-hand corner of a room, considered the place of honor.
34. a blue ribbon…gray peasant coat: See note 17 to The Moor of Peter the Great. The Order of St. Andrew accords strangely with a peasant coat.
35. the battle of Yuzeevo: Yuzeevo, a village some eighty miles northwest of Orenburg, where on November 8, 1773, Pugachev defeated Russian forces sent to relieve the fortress.
36. Frederick: That is, Frederick II (1712–1786), king of Prussia, whose military, political, and cultural achievements won him the title of “the Great.” Pugachev, in Russian peasant fashion, fits him out with a Russian name and patronymic.
37. Knyazhnin: See note 4 to “The Coffin-Maker.” The lines are Pushkin’s invention.
38. Prince Golitsyn: In August 1774, Russian relief troops under General Pyotr Mikhailovich Golitsyn defeated Pugachev’s forces at the town of Tatishchevo.
39. Ivan Ivanovich Mikhelson: Mikhelson (1740–1807) was one of the most prominent commanders in the Russian army. While still a lieutenant colonel, he successfully broke Pugachev’s siege of Kazan and pursued the enemy to a final defeat against great odds at the battle of Tsaritsyn.
40. Volynsky and Khrushchev: Artemy Petrovich Volynsky (1689–1740) was a minister under the cruel and arbitrary empress Anna Ioannovna (see note 10 above). He and his friend and assistant Andrei Fyodorovich Khrushchev (1691–1740) were accused of plotting to replace Anna with Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, and were executed.
41. Tsarskoe Selo: Literally “the Tsar’s Village,” located fifteen miles south of Petersburg. Originally an estate given by Peter the Great to his wife in 1708, it developed over time into a favorite country residence of the imperial family and the nobility and eventually into a town. Sofia, a neighboring town, merged with Tsarskoe Selo in 1808. Pushkin was in the first graduating class of the lycée at Tsarskoe Selo, founded by Alexander I in 1811. In 1937 the town was renamed Pushkin, in honor of the centenary of his death.
42. Rumyantsev’s recent victories: Count Pyotr Alexandrovich Rumyantsev (1725–1796) was a brilliant Russian general and later field marshal, involved mainly in the Russo-Turkish wars. His victories during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 forced the sultan Abdul Hamid I to sue for peace in 1774.
“The Omitted Chapter”
43. St. Elijah’s day: The Old Testament prophet Elijah (Elias) is commemorated as a saint in both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. His day is July 20 by the Julian calendar (still followed by the Russian Orthodox Church), August 2 by the Gregorian calendar.
JOURNEY TO ARZRUM (1836)
1. Voyages en Orient…: The author of the Voyages was Victor Fontanier (1796–1857), who was sent as a naturalist attached to the French embassy in Constantinople to explore the regions of the Black Sea and the Ottoman Empire (1822–1829). His book was published between 1829 and 1834.
2. Khomyakov…Muravyov…Count Dibich: Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov (1804–1860), poet, philosopher, and co-founder of the Slavophile movement, was one of the most influential Russian thinkers of his time and later. The poet Andrei Nikolaevich Muravyov (1806–1874) published an account of his journey to the Holy Land in 1834. The German-born Count Ivan Ivanovich Dibich, or Diebitsch (1785–1831), became a Russian field marshal and commanded the imperial forces during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829.
3. Detached Caucasus Corps: A corps of some 40,000 men, under General Paskevich (see following note), sent to fight the Turks on the Caucasian front of the war, to draw them away from the other front in the Balkan peninsula. The corps included a number of former Decembrists, a group of liberal-minded officers and soldiers who had been arrested after staging an uprising on December 26, 1825, in favor of constitutional reforms. Pushkin had been a close fri
end of some of the Decembrists and sympathized with their cause.
4. Paskewitch…Mouravieff…Tsitsevaze…Beboutof…Potemkine…Raiewsky: Pushkin is clearly amused by these French renderings of Russian names, as Byron was in Don Juan. Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich (1782–1856) shared command of the Russian forces with Dibich and headed the army after Dibich’s death in 1831. He was a field marshal and in reward for his successes was granted the titles of Count of Erevan and Prince of Warsaw. Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1794–1866) was chief of staff of the Caucasus Corps under Paskevich. The Georgian prince Alexander Garsevanovich Chavchavadze (1786–1846) was a poet and a general in the Russian army. Vasily Osipovich Bebutov (1791–1858), of Georgian-Armenian nobility, served in the Russian army from 1809 and distinguished himself during the Russo-Turkish wars. Prince Potemkin (see note 1 to “The Coffin-Maker”) had nothing to do with the Caucasus Corps. Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevsky (1771–1829) was an important general during the Napoleonic Wars. Pushkin met him in the Caucasus in 1821 and they became good friends; his sons were members of the Southern Society, which helped to plan the Decembrist uprising; they pulled out of the Society before the uprising took place, but were nevertheless “punished” by being sent to serve in the Caucasus.
5. Osman Pasha: Osman Pasha (“pasha” being an honorary title) was the governor of Arzrum.
6. the campaign of 1829: Paskevich’s campaign on the Caucasian front, which ended in September 1829 with the defeat of the Turkish army and the Treaty of Adrianople. It is the background subject of Pushkin’s Journey to Arzrum, in addition to which, despite his disclaimer, he also wrote a number of poems based on his experiences during the campaign.
7. Ermolov: Alexei Petrovich Ermolov (1777–1861) began his military career in the Preobrazhensky regiment (see note 14 to The Moor of Peter the Great), advanced rapidly during the Napoleonic Wars, became chief of staff of the First Western Army in 1812 and then chief of staff of the entire army in the same year. After the defeat of the French, he was made commander in chief of the Caucasus. But his stubborn temperament brought him into conflict with his superiors, and in 1827 Nicholas I abruptly replaced him with Paskevich. He spent the last thirty years of his life on his estate near Orel.
8. Dawe: The British painter George Dawe (1781–1829) moved to Petersburg in 1819, where he was commissioned to paint 329 portraits of Russian generals who participated in the Napoleonic Wars, to be hung in the military gallery of the Winter Palace.
9. the count of Jericho: For Paskevich see note 4 above. Ermolov plays on the similarity of the Russian words Erevansky (“of Erevan”) and Erikhonsky (“of Jericho”).
10. Count Tolstoy: Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy (1782–1846), known as “Tolstoy the American” because he had spent time in the Aleutian Islands during a two-year cruise around the world (1803–1805). He was a high-society bon vivant, duelist, gambler, and at various times Pushkin’s friend and enemy.
11. Karamzin’s History: See note 4 to Roslavlev.
12. Prince Kurbsky: Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbsky (1528–1583) was a close friend and advisor to Ivan the Terrible, but then became his enemy and defected to Lithuania. He is best remembered for his bitter and erudite exchange of letters with the tsar; he also wrote a History of the Grand Prince of Moscow on the life of Ivan the Terrible.
13. Griboedov: See note 7 to “The Blizzard.”
14. Count Pushkin: That is, Count Vladimir Alexeevich Musin-Pushkin (1798–1854), a distant relation of Pushkin’s. He had been involved in the Decembrist uprising, but was punished only by demotion.
15. Indomitable mares…: The quotation is from the poem “Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk” (1823), by the young poet and officer Kondraty Fyodorovich Ryleev (1795–1826), one of the five Decembrists who were hanged for inciting the rebellion.
16. Orlovsky: Alexander Osipovich Orlovsky (1777–1832) was a Russian artist of Polish origin. He was most noted for his lively drawings, for which he was invited to Petersburg by Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, brother of the emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. Pushkin greatly admired his work.
17. Hot Springs: Also known as the Caucasian Mineral Waters, now the town of Pyatigorsk. Pushkin had visited the place some years earlier (see the fragment “A Romance at the Caucasian Waters”).
18. A. Raevsky: Alexander Nikolaevich Raevsky (1795–1868), the eldest son of General Nikolai Raevsky (see note 4 above), was a close friend of Pushkin’s and the model for his poem “The Demon” (1823).
19. Count Gudovich: Field Marshal Ivan Vasilyevich Gudovich (1741–1820) took part in the Russo-Turkish wars of 1768–1774, 1787–1791, and 1806–1812, in which his many victories gained him great distinction.
20. the peaceful Circassians: The Circassians, the last native people of the Caucasus to be subdued by the Russians (only in 1868), had been largely driven out of their territories in what amounted to a genocide. Those who remained were “peaceful” in name only.
21. Mansur…Solovki monastery: “Mansur” means “the victorious one.” His name was Ushurma. His birthdate is variously given as 1732, 1750, and 1760; he died in 1794. A Chechen sheikh and imam, he led a revolt against the Russian invasion of the Caucasus, was finally defeated in 1791, and was imprisoned for life in the Schlüsselburg Fortress near Petersburg. Some say he died in the monastery of Solovki, in the north of Russia.
22. …like a warrior…around him: Pushkin quotes in English from the poem “The Burial of John Moore” (1817), by the Irish poet and clergyman Charles Wolfe (1791–1823), which was much admired by Byron.
23. Stjernvall…North: The Finnish baron Carl Emil Knut Stjernvall-Walleen (1806–1890) was the brother-in-law of Count Musin-Pushkin (see note 14 above). The quotation is from Derzhavin’s poem “The Waterfall” (see note 10 to The Moor of Peter the Great and note 1 to “The Coffin-Maker”).
24. General Bekovich: Fyodor Alexandrovich Bekovich-Cherkassky (1790–1835), a prince of Kabardian origin, served as a Russian general in the Caucasus.
25. And in goatskins…delight: A line from Book III of the Iliad.
26. The Prisoner of the Caucasus: An early “Byronic” narrative poem by Pushkin, published in 1822.
27. one traveler writes: The traveler was Nikolai Alexandrovich Nefedev (1800–1860), whose book Notes During a Trip to the Caucasus and Georgia in 1827 was published under the initials N. N. in 1829.
28. The Rape of Ganymede: Rembrandt’s painting (1635) from the Dresden Gallery shows a great eagle flying off with a grimacing little boy who is peeing between his legs as he is carried aloft. Pushkin would have known the painting from engravings, which were very popular at the time.
29. Pliny’s testimony: The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24–79) discusses the names of mountain passes in Book V, chapter 27, of his Natural History in XXXVII Books.
30. Count J. Potocki…Spanish novels: The Polish count and military engineer Jan Potocki (1761–1815) wrote books on his travels to Astrakhan and the Caucasus, as well as to Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco, but his fame rests on his “Spanish” novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1814), written in French.
31. Prince Kazbek…fugelman…Preobrazhensky regiment: Prince Kazbek is probably Gabriel Chopikashvili-Kazbegi, of the ruling family of the mountainous Kazbegi region in northeast Georgia, who remained loyal to Russia when the people of the region rebelled in the early nineteenth century. A fugelman (from the German flügelmann, “flank man” or “wing man”) was a well-trained soldier who was placed in front of a company at drill as a model for the others. For the Preobrazhensky regiment, see note 14 to The Moor of Peter the Great.
32. “holds up the heavenly vault”: A slightly altered quotation from the poem “A Half-Soldier” (1826), by Denis Davydov (see note 3 to “The Shot”).
33. Fazil Khan: Fazil Khan Sheyda (1784–1852), a Persian court poet and diplomat, was accompanying a diplomatic mission to Petersburg in 1829 when Pushkin met him. See following note.
34. Khozrev-Mirza: The youn
g prince Khozrev-Mirza (1812–1878), grandson of the shah of Persia, led a mission to Petersburg to apologize for the destruction of the Russian ministry in Tehran and the murder of its minister plenipotentiary, the poet Alexander Griboedov (see note 7 to “The Blizzard”).
35. Rinaldo Rinaldini: See note 14 to Dubrovsky.
36. Kishinev: See note 2 to Kirdjali. The town had been under Ottoman rule since the sixteenth century.
37. Lalla Rookh: Pushkin quotes in English from the long poem Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance (1817), by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852).
38. Sankovsky…Tsitsianov…: Pavel Stepanovich Sankovsky (1798–1832) edited the Tiflis Gazette, the first Russian-language newspaper in the Caucasus. He met Pushkin on his way to Arzrum and became his great admirer. The Georgian prince Pavel Dmitrievich Tsitsianov (1754–1806), the hot-headed Russian military commander of Georgia, was killed in action at the siege of Baku.
39. Aga Mohammed: Aga Mohammed (1742–1797) was shah of Persia from 1789 until his murder in 1797. He succeeded in reuniting the territories of the Caucasus that had broken away during the previous centuries, and was known for the unusual cruelty of his actions, especially in the taking of Tiflis. It was he who moved the Persian capital to Tehran.
40. poor Clarence…Malaga: Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580), in his Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577), writes that the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of Richard III, “was cast into the Tower, and therewith adjudged for a traitor, and privily drowned in a butt of malmsey.” Shakespeare included this detail in Richard III (act 1, scene 4), which Pushkin read in French translation. Malmsey was a kind of Madeira, not Malaga.
41. Tbilis-kalar…“Hot City”: Pushkin’s error: the city was known as “Tbilis-kalak,” kalak being Georgian for “city.” The same error appears in A Geographical and Statistical Description of Georgia and the Caucasus, by the German author Ioann-Anton Guldenstedt (1745–1781), published in Russian translation in 1809, which Pushkin probably used.
Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin Page 55
