[317]the ‘mellowing . . .’: a commonplace in the eighteenth-century debate on the progress of civilization.
[318]the desert fathers...: first line of a poem by Pushkin (1836) that goes on to paraphrase the fourth-century Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, recited in weekday services during the Great Lent.
[319]the actor Gorbunov:I. F. Gorbunov (1831-96), a personal friend of Dostoevsky, also a writer and talented improvisor.
[320]Ah, mon père...: “Ah, father, it is such pleasure for him, and so little trouble for me.” This witticism goes back to an anonymous epigram on the French actress Jeanne-Catherine Gaussain (1711-67).
[321]greatand beautifuclass="underline" again, see note 2to page 71 in section 1.2.6.
[322]Belinsky: see note 3 to page 555 in section 4.10.6.
[323]Idid think...: Dostoevsky plays in this passage on the names of certain decorations and of certain publications: the “Lion and Sun” was a Persian order, which might be awarded to a Russian serving in the Caucasus; the “North Star” was a Swedish order, but also a Russian radical almanac; “Sinus,” the Dog Star, is also the hero of Voltaire’s Micro-mégas(1752), The devil teases Ivan with being a liberal.
[324]Mephistopheles . . .:see Goethe, Faust, part 1, lines 1335-36.
[325]à la Heine:Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German poet and essayist of irreverent wit.
[326]Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!:“Ah, but how stupid, really!”
[327]Luther’sinkstand:it is said that Martin Luther (1483-1546) was tempted by the devil while translating the Bible and threw his inkstand at him.
[328]Monsieur sait-il...: “Does the gentleman know what the weather is like? One wouldn’t put a dog outside . . “The first half of a joke, the punch line being: “Yes, but you are not a dog.” The whole joke appears in Dostoevsky’s notebooks of 1876-77.
[329]Le mot de l’énigme: “the key to the riddle.”
[330]the doors of heaven open: see Revelation 4:1.
[331]Herrnhufer or “Moravian Brother”:the Herrnhufers emerged as a religious sect in eighteenth-century Saxony and subsequently spread to Russia. Their beliefs were rooted in the teachings of the fifteenth-century Moravian Brethren.
[332]Gott der Vater...: Herzenstube teaches Mitya to say “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” in German.
[333]Bread and circuses!:in Latin, panem etcircenses;bitter words addressed by the poet Juvenal (65?-128 a.d.) to the Romans of the decadent period (Satires10.81).
[334]Le diable . . .:see note 10 to page 641 in section 4.11.9.
[335]then he criedout with a frenzied cry:a Hebraism reminiscent of the cries of those possessed by evil spirits; cf. Acts 8:6-7, Luke 8:28, Matthew 8:29, Mark 9:26.
[336]”accursed” questions:God versus reason, human destiny, the future of Russia, and so forth; questions that concerned Dostoevsky himself (see Terras, p. 412).
[337]new open courts . . .: the judicial reform of 1864 introduced public jury trials in Russia.
[338]least Hamletian question . ..: refers to Hamlet 3.1.78; not a quotation.
[339]he livedamong us:first line of Pushkin’s poem to the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855).
[340]A great writer... comparison:the line “Ah, troika . . .” comes from Gogol’s Dead Souls,Sobakevich, Nozdryov, and Chichikov are the grotesque heroes of the novel.
[341]like to the sun...: a line from the ode “God” (1784) by the great Russian poet G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816).
[342]aprèsmoi le déluge:“after me the flood,” attributed to Louis XV, and also to his favorite, the Marquise de Pompadour.
[343]dark mysticism ... witless chauvinism: criticisms often leveled at Dostoevsky by his opponents, here treated good-humoredly.
[344]what lies beyond:see note 3 to page 694 in section 4.12.6.
[345]We’ll close Kronstadt . . .:island and port on the Gulf of Finland; in the nineteenth century Russia was a major exporter of wheat.
[346]strike the heart ...: quotation from Pushkin’s poem ”Reply to Anonymous”(1830).
[347]Udolpho:refers to The Mysteries of Udolpho(1794), a gothic novel by the English writer Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), very popular in Russia in the earlier nineteenth century.
[348]the power to bind and to loose:see Matthew 16:19,18:18; rather loosely applied by Fetyukovich.
[349]The crucified lover of mankind . .:the quotation is a conflation of John 10:11,14-15, with the last phrase added by Fetyukovich. On the epithet “lover of mankind,” see note 1 to page 18 in section 1.1.4.
[350]Fathers, provoke not...: cf. Colossians 3:21. Fetyukovich “adulters” by what he omits (see Colossians 3:20).
[351]vivosvoco!: “I call the living.” From the epigraph to Schiller’s “Song of the Bell,” used in turn as an epigraph by the radical journal The Bell(see note 5 to page 555 in section 4.10.6).
[352]With what measure ye mete ...: see note 1 to page 133 in section 1.3.8; Fetyukovich goes on to reverse the meaning of this “precept.”
[353]’metal and ‘brimstone’:refers to a passage from the play Hard Days(1863) by Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-86), in which a merchant’s wife is afraid to hear these biblical words.
[354]Drivenature out the door . ..: quotation from a Russian translation of La Fontaine’s “La Chatte métamorphosée en femme” (The cat changed into a woman), Fables 2.18.
[355]These people . . .: see Matthew 25:35-43.
[356]It is better . . .:the majestic voice is Peter the Great’s; the words are a slightly altered quotation from his Military Code(1716).
[357]For Thou art our God...: the phrase appears in many Orthodox prayers, particularly in the Hymn of the Resurrection sung at Matins.
[358]Thou art angry, Jupiter . ..: a well-known saying in Russia. Its ultimate source is unknown, but a somewhat similar phrase occurs in a dialogue by the Greek satirist Lucian. See N.S. Ashukin and M. G. Ashukina, Krylatye Slova(Winged words) (Moscow, 1986), pp. 721-22.
[359]I will breakthe sword . . .:a sword was broken over the condemned man’s head in the ceremony known as “civil execution” (see Terras, p. 436). Dostoevsky underwent such an “execution” on 22 December 1849, and described it in a letter to his brother Mikhail written that same day.
[360]Good God, gentlemen...: refers to an actual case, involving the actress A. B. Kairova, which Dostoevsky wrote about in his Diary of a Writer(May 1876).
[361]to the last Mohicans:James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans(1826) was very popular in Russia; Dostoevsky owned a French translation of it.
[362]fillet:a narrow band with a prayer of absolution written on it, customarily placed on the head of the deceased in Russian funeral services.
[363]may his memory ... ages of ages:liturgical language echoing the service they have all just attended; the prayer “Memory Eternal,” sung at the very end of the funeral service, refers to God’s memory.